Good morning. The 2014 launch of Amazon’s Fire Phone will forever be seared into my mind thanks to the image of a grinning (smug?) Jeff Bezos holding the device high.
TL;DR
- EU may ease privacy rules like GDPR to boost AI development and economic expansion.
- Chinese bus maker Yutong investigated for potential remote deactivation of 700 UK electric buses.
- TikTok Shop's global sales in Q3 neared eBay's, showing rapid e-commerce growth.
- Tech layoffs linked to financial stress from AI spending, not AI itself.
It was never a question that Amazon wanted an oh-so-hot smartphone to sell you goods; what was, however, was whether anyone would want one, given that subtext. It became apparent swiftly: the Fire Phone was discontinued twelve months afterward.
It's surprising to think that Amazon today could experience such a public failure in a widely-used product area, making the Version History podcast's latest episode about it an enjoyable retrospective.
Today’s tech news below. —Andrew Nusca
P.S. Don’t miss colleagues Jeremy Kahn and Leo Schwartz’s hard look at the fundamentals of CoreWeave, “potentially the first domino to fall in the AI ecosystem” if it isn’t able to grow its way out of substantial debt. We anticipate CEO Michael Intrator will provide further insights during his upcoming address at our Coins2Day Brainstorm AI event in San Francisco.
You can share your thoughts or suggestions with Coins2Day Tech by sending a message here.
The European Union could ease privacy rules to spur AI development.
A new Politico report the European Commission, which serves as the EU's executive body, is reportedly intending to ease certain privacy regulations. This move is aimed at reducing bureaucratic hurdles and stimulating economic expansion powered by artificial intelligence.
Key legislation slated for review includes the comprehensive GDPR, or General Data Protection Regulation, implemented in 2018 and well-known to all marketers and software engineers.
Among the changes, according to the report: Exceptions for AI companies that would allow them to “legally process special categories of data to train and operate their tech,” such as religion or ethnicity, and a reframing of “personal data” to exclude pseudonymized data.
Modifying current legislation presents significant challenges. Consumer protection laws are a significant feature of the region. Conversely, business executives are expressing mounting worry that they'll struggle to compete internationally due to such stringent rules.
There are valid grounds for concern. Google, Meta, Microsoft’s LinkedIn, and Elon Musk’s X have all delayed, adjusted, or flat-out refused to launch AI products because of the bloc’s laws. And several executives—some European—have made their concerns clear.
“There’s a whole range of areas where I think the risks are minimal and we should let innovation run there,” Amazon CTO Werner Vogels told CNN last year, adding: “We need to make sure that innovation continues to happen and that the innovation doesn’t just come outside Europe. We already have a very long history in Europe of underinvesting in R&D.” —AN
Chinese firm to kill 700 UK buses?
It’s not often that transit officials ask to pump the brakes, but here we are.
The British government is investigating whether the world’s largest bus maker—China’s Yutong—can remotely deactivate some 700 electric buses already on U.K. Roads.
Most of the buses supplied to the U.K. Are on streets in Glasgow, Nottingham, and South Wales. The company was also working with Transport for London on a double-decker electric bus, but the agency has yet to place an order.
Questions arose after a similar probe in Norway revealed that the Zhengzhou-based company could stop or render inoperable supplied buses, according to a Financial Times report.
Ruter, the transport group for Oslo, found that Yutong retained remote access to the battery and power supply management system of a bus it tested.
Denmark is also looking into the issue.
Yutong told the Sunday Times that it “strictly complies with the applicable laws, regulations, and industry standards of the locations where its vehicles operate.”
Whatever the case, sensitivities about national security risks remain high as China’s relationship with Western nations grows tense. —AN
TikTok Shop rivals eBay sales
There’s scale, and then there’s scale.
According to the market research firm EchoTik, the TikTok Shop sold $19 billion worth of products globally in the third quarter of this year, from July through September. (TikTok doesn’t disclose sales figures.)
That’s a notch short of eBay, which raked in just over $20 billion in its latest quarter.
If that doesn’t astonish you, consider that eBay, founded in 1995, is No. 411 on the latest Coins2Day 500.
Meanwhile TikTok, founded in 2016 as Douyin, added commerce features in China in 2018 and launched its U.S. Shop in late 2023.
Wowza.
Most TikTok usage in the U.S. Is social media-focused versus social commerce-focused. (That, of course, is what the federal ban is all about.)
Still, EchoTik told Wired that it estimates that the U.S. Market accounted for upwards of $4.5 billion in TikTok Shop sales as people gravitate toward seeing products in action.
Will “livestream shopping” take off in the U.S. The way it has in, say, China? Looking back to an example that rose to prominence decades ago—QVC—it’s only a matter of time before someone gets it right for a new generation. —AN
More tech
—Tech layoffs 🤝 AI spending. It’s not the AI, but the financial stress from spending on it, that’s causing cuts to human gigs, according to two academics.
—Rivian spins off Mind Robotics, a standalone industrial AI and robotics company with $110 million in outside capital.
—Cold storage crypto wallets: so hot right now. A growing pushback on hack attacks.
—Apple Music’s kryptonite? A lack of a free tier might be stopping the audio service from global domination.
—Subsea cable investment: $13 billion between 2025 and 2027, 2X the previous two years.
—OpenAI petitions U.S. For AI infrastructure relief. A request to extend a Chips Act tax credit to AI data centers.
—AI investors are as good as humans, which is to say, not very good at all!