HilliTech's Newsletter: Don't call it a HomePod

OpenAI is in all sorts of trouble and the summer anime season is the best we've seen in years. Let's survive the apocalypse together.

Here are some stories I'd like to share this week:

The ‘Witch Hat Atelier’ and ‘Owl House’ Creators Had a Magical Meetup

After years of digital back-and-forth, Kamome Shirahama and Dana Terrace got to meet face-to-face and talk shop at Kodansha House.

GizmodoJustin Carter

OpenAI’s first hardware device will be a HomePod, but don’t tell them that

The description for OpenAI’s first hardware device suggests it will be a speaker that can wiggle around a bit while it reads your email, so a HomePod, but more annoying and privacy-invasive.

AppleInsiderWesley Hilliard

Scientists Discover Planet Has Everything to Host ‘Earth-Like Life’ In Breakthrough

For the first time, scientists found that a rocky planet in the habitable zone of its star has an atmosphere. It’s the best place to look for alien biosignatures, scientists say.

404 MediaBecky Ferreira

Fans Rail Against Xbox Layoffs, Which Also Did A Number On Teams Responsible For The Platform

“Leadership will spend billions on marketing, or content, or acquisitions, or other things they think will attract customers, but completely neglect the actual people building the products”

AftermathNathan Grayson

Is it okay if I never beat games?

Let me tell you about my DNF list

MothershipZoë Hannah

OpenAI might be in trouble

Apple's lawsuit against OpenAI is the least of that company's problems. Sure, it is the most popular AI platform on Earth, but its market share has shrunk below 50% as AI becomes commodified.

Anthropic and OpenAI both have similar problems: they offer relatively cheap access to powerful cloud processing platforms that can't sustain themselves at current rates. Neither have trillion-dollar businesses behind them to keep them afloat and all signs point to their inevitable implosion within the decade.

So, Apple suing OpenAI just as it prepared to enter the hardware space to subsidize some of these bleeding costs isn't ideal. The lawsuit could lead to an injunction that halts OpenAI's ability to sell hardware during the lawsuit, which could take years to resolve.

Some speculation suggests Apple could let OpenAI settle if it chooses to do so. I'm not so sure. I expect Apple wants to hammer home that it won't put up with (alleged) trade secret theft at the scale that's being accused. While OpenAI clearly scraped the world of all of its knowledge to develop its frontier models, Apple draws the line at its intellectual property.

I'm curious how this might affect Apple and OpenAI's partnership. I expect we'll see ChatGPT withdrawn as an "extension" entirely once that contract expires, which is later this year, I believe. Good riddance, really, as OpenAI seems happy and willing to be a partner to the Department of Defense.

I keep banging this drum because it seems like very few people are talking about this eventuality. OpenAI admitted it would be in financial trouble by 2028 unless it saw billions of income soon. Do people really think they'll just bullshit their way through this? Or are we all just waiting for the inevitable?

I'm not so sure. So many nerds I follow are either excited by their use of the latest ChatGPT models or complain about the new ChatGPT app. Odd that so many are willingly throwing in with such a scummy business, but then again, people also pay for Spotify.

I'll never understand.

Quite the anime summer season

I grew up with 4Kids TV and Toonami. My exposure to anime was slow and very controlled by entities that sought to westernize Japanese media, but yet my love of the medium persevered.

Annoyingly, I grew up when liking anime was considered weird and niche. By the time I was in high school, it was odd to encounter people that not only knew what DBZ was, but liked it. It was one of those clichés where I realized I was both born too soon and too late.

Thankfully, the Western love of anime expanded quickly to what it is today. I went to my first anime convention in 2016 and learned to truly embrace the medium for what it was – something beyond something simply nerdy.

Anyway, my tastes have evolved quite a lot in the past decade. I'm glad I have been someone that introduced various anime to different people and helped more people realize it's just another way to consume stories.

The last few months of anime have been some of the best that I can remember in my time as a fan with access. What makes it even more fun is I've been watching everything with my wife, Natalie, who is relatively new to the anime scene.

We fell in love with Witch Hat Atelier, but we were already fans of Owl House, so it makes sense. The Invisible Man and His Soon to be Wife was spectacular and I hope we see more soon, and it pairs perfectly with the absolutely exhausting (positive) English voice acting in You and I are Polar Opposites.

Even more recently, I fell in love with Sayonara, Lara. Maybe it has something to do with my obsession with Kingdom Hearts, but holy hell do I enjoy a fun spin on a classic fairy tale.

I'm also really liking Kaiju Girl Caramelise. I loved Turning Red and the themes are weirdly reflective of Beastars (not liking the beast you are, learning to love yourself), so yeah, this show was made for me.

What is wild that no matter how much anime I've watched, new or old, I seem to stumble into new properties all the time. Chris Person shared a silly video from an anime called Kodocha, which was from the mid '90s, and wow, what a silly little time capsule. Problematic? Maybe, but definitely a snippet of time, especially from the perspective of anime art style and voice acting.

I watched an episode on a lark and my wife asked if cocaine was used in the voice actor's booth.

Anyway, realize even if you've never bothered with anime, it is never too late to get into it. It isn't just power levels and magical girls (both really good things) it's also slice of life, romance, and the occasional talking vending machine. There has never been a better time to be a fan.

A little more vacation

I've got a few more vacation days to burn, so I'll be heading out to visit some friends at the end of next week. Yes, that likely means I'll continue my hiatus from daily posts (unless something necessitates a post).

I haven't been doing this blog long, and I've only been doing daily posts this past year. Perhaps July will become my time off month each year going forward. We'll see. I am glad that those that do enjoy reading my work keep coming back even when I'm only posting weekly.

Thanks again for reading. I'll be back in a week, likely writing the newsletter from Virginia Beach, so see you then.