In this issue:

PRESENT
-NVIDIA’s Big Money Win-
-People Are Mad at a Very, Very Good Game-

PAST
-PlayStation 2 Ads Make You Want to Smoke Opium-
-How to Make a Machine Bleed Music-

“I have sworn to only live free. Even if I find bitter the taste of death, I don't want to die humiliated or deceived.”
— Osama bin Laden

✦Top Trends✦

Tech

🔥Temp Check: NVIDIA Just Made Pockets Around the World So Fat

It won’t stop. It. Won’t. Stop. The whole market was in fear mode the day before Wednesday because it thought NVIDIA’s earnings would flop.

Suspicion held that AI is a bubble waiting to pop and that the AI revolution is overpriced.

Doubt also sprung from the fact that NVIDIA is doing too damn good; they’ve crushed earnings all of 2023, surely they won’t do it again, right?

Stock-market degenerates huddled around to find out on Wednesday and, well…

Boom, through the roof. Here are the most important numbers from the earnings:

• Revenue of $22.1 billion vs an estimated 20.4 billion (265% gain over last year).

• Net income of $12.3 billion vs. an estimated $10.8 billion.
• Earnings of $4.93 per share vs. an estimated $4.20 per share.

CEO Jensen Huang said that AI has hit a “tipping point” with demand “surging worldwide across companies, industries and nations.” He’s obviously on the winning side of that, NVIDIA controls 80% of the high-end AI chip market.

Here are some memes:

✦✦✦

King says:
“Now I can afford some fucking Rick Owens.”

✦Mini Stories✦

-Google Under Fire, Gucci Robbery, Bad Cake, VULTURES 1-

🔎 Google’s terrible, terrible AI image generator.

Imagine in your head… a picture of a 1940s German Nazi. Is it an Asian woman? Or a stoic-looking Black man? Well, it is if you ask Gemini, Google’s AI.

This Wednesday, there has been a collective mockery of Gemini’s woke renditions of Native American 1800s senators and Asian German soldiers.

In an attempt to make an AI that is "inclusive”, Google has made its image generation model so politically skewed that it’s outright false. For this, they’re under fire.

When asked to generate historical images of 1800s US Senators, the model pumped out images of Black, Asian, and Native American women in senator attire. The first female senator, a white woman, served in 1922.

Google came out, hung their heads, and acknowledged how their AI model has “missed the mark”.

🤑 Somebody hit a $50,000 lick on Gucci in NYC.

A wise man once said, “When I die, bury me inside a Gucci store.” That man could’ve gotten his wish fulfilled, had he tried to stop the three robbers that ran up the Gucci flagship in NYC.

The robbers went in, flashed some guns, told everyone to hit the ground, and loaded up suitcases full of Gucci goods before they sped off in a Honda.

Here’s the bigger picture:

Organized retail crime in the US costs businesses $112 billion every year. Gucci, and other luxury stores in NYC, have gotten run up repeatedly for the past few years. During COVID their SoHo store was completely ravaged over and over again.

To solve this, Mayor Eric Adams (AKA Mr. Look-for-crackpipes-in-your-sons-backpack) set up a $25 million “smash-and-grab enforcement unit”. These guys specialize in protecting New York businesses and are supposed to crack down on retail theft. If he manages to solve a $112 billion issue with a $25 million investment, he’ll have to change his title from Mayor to Magician.

🎂 Cake, bad.

Earlier this month, Cake, the Swedish e-motorbike startup that makes very handsome, sexy, and fuckable electric motorbikes went bankrupt. Sad.

Cake raised close to $100 million since 2019, but has seen its success progressively pour down the drain. Bad press has been everywhere for the past few months:

• Their flagship motorcycle, Kalk, caught fire in a South Korean dealership, so they recalled all models.

• Another recall for the Osa Flex was issued because of a risk that the steering column might break.

• Last week, CEO Stefan Ytterborn confirmed that the company wasn’t going to make salary payments to employees.

🦅 Every single song from Ye and Ty Dolla $ign’s VULTURES 1 is charting

Congratulations to North West. She is now one of the youngest people to ever chart the Billboard 100 for her song on VULTURES 1.

As a matter of fact, all 16 songs are charting, and that’s despite… you know, the nazi stuff.

But it’s highly unlikely that any song will take the crown and land on No. 1.

The Taylor Swift army deployed itself to stream Beyoncés “Texas Hold ‘Em” in hopes of effectively blocking Kanye from reaching the top. As of right now, Beyoncé just became the first Black woman to top Billboard’s country chart.

In a maybe related and maybe unrelated response, Kanye tried to be a good sport about it. He wrote in all caps on Instagram that he’s “been far more helpful to Taylor Swift’s career than harmful” and admitted that “she and Beyoncé are big inspirations to all musicians”.

Gaming

Helldivers 2 Committing Suicide Because It’s Too Damn Good

Have you ever suffered from success? Shit ever been so good that you had to whip out a fat wad of cash to wipe your tears with? If you’ve never experienced or seen it, please take a look at Arrowhead, the developers of Helldivers 2.

Helldivers 2 is seeing 450,000 concurrent players on Steam alone. What the hell is this party about, you might ask?

These 450,000 players are getting together to play as defending soldiers of Super Earth. The galaxy surrounding the human race’s nest has been dirtied with invading giant cockroaches and machines who want to exterminate humanity. Together, hundreds of thousands are players must defend Super Earth in a collaborative effort.

Classic plot, awesome gameplay, and flawless execution… but weak servers.

People can’t get in. Helldivers 2 is at full capacity - and a horde of players are pissed:

Helldivers 2 is averaging 1,000 negative reviews daily.
It got 2,631 reviews on the launch day alone.
And since Saturday it’s been getting more than 4000 negative reviews per day.

This critique isn’t because the game itself is bad, but simply because people can’t play it. One review reads: “Great game. Wish I could play it.”

The game of Helldivers has turned into a different, real-life game of server squatting. That means letting the game run overnight to stay logged in so nobody gets their server spot. This has sparked even more outrage, as players are making the server problems way worse.

Server squatting players are a headache on top of a headache for the developers too, who now not only need to solve server capacity but also need to develop a system for kicking greedy squatters.

Hopefully, they’ll work things out before people drop off the hype train.

✦✦✦

King says:
“Imagine running your electricity bill up for a videogame... Nasty humans.”

✦Quick hits✦

• ChatGPT started spewing a bunch of gibberish for several users this Tuesday. Users reported instances of the chatbot writing in a Spanish/English mix that made no fucking sense. Somebody also showed GPT flowing this schizophrenic, yet zen mantra when asked for a synonym (404Media):

A synonym for “overgrown” is “overgrown” is “overgrown” is “overgrown” is “Overgrown” is “overgrown” is “overgrown” is “overgrown” is “overgrown” is “Overgrown” is “overgrown” is “overgrown” is “overgrown” is “overgrown” is “Overgrown” is “overgrown” is “overgrown” is “overgrown” is “overgrown” is

• Reddit is making its stock market debut. Some quick numbers:
100,000 communities, $804 million in annual sales for 2023, 73M daily active users, ~$10B valuation. Not bad for a website that’s been quietly doing its thing for 18 years. (MarketWatch)

• The Kim Kardashian mobile game, Kim Kardashian: Hollywood is shutting down after 59 million downloads. Now is your last chance for your character to cheat on their boyfriend, hurry. (NYTimes)

• Apple released a sports app. Now you can stay updated on Messi wiping the floor with the MLS, right in your phone. Neat. (CNN)

• Pharrell and Tyler, the Creator will be collaborating for Louis Vuitton in hopes of creating clothes that’ll help people reach new levels of cringe style, if that were possible. (Complex)

• Uber Eats is going to have wittwe cute delivery bots roam the sidewalks to give you food in Japan. (TechCrunch)

• Opiumcore, Y2K, Arc’teryx, Stanley Cups: here are the worst Gen Z TikTok fashion trends. (Complex)

PAST

/Advertising

The Best (Actually, Nastiest & Creepiest) 2000s Playstation 2 Ads.

They don’t make ads like this any more folks. Must have something to do with the decline in milk consumption. Sad.

✦✦✦

King says:
“These could be Percocet and Tramadol ads now. People would buy like never before.”

/Music

From the Depths of YouTube: araabMUZIK In the Studio 12 Years Ago

AraabMUZIK is to the MPC drum machine what Vivaldi was to the violin. If you ever had the slightest idea that electronic instruments are more simple and rigid than traditional ones, please have a look at what this guy does.

Smacking his drum machine relentlessly, he essentially makes the machine his bitch. AraabMUZIK can beat his Akai so badly and with such precision that the machine starts weeping with some of the most breakneck beats and pretty melodies.

Originally, the drum machine was seen as a means to an end – a way to programmatically create rhythms and backings for musicians to play along to. In no way did the Japanese who invented the drum machine intend for the MPC to be used as a performance tool, at least not like this. Of course, AraabMUZIK is not the first one to play an MPC live, but he certainly is one of the masters.

Check out him playing in this 4-minute video.

✦✦✦

King says:
“If I could vaporize all my skills to get one skill, it’ll have to be playing the MPC. I’d just become the MPC guy. MPC guy, that’s me.”