Netflix disables AirPlay support for Apple TV

Up until this week, you could stream your Netflix content into your Apple TV box using Apple's AirPlay feature. Netflix has disabled this feature likely in response to Apple's announcement last week of launching a competitive product. https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/6/18298146/netflix-confirms-it-yanked-airplay-support-wont-let-you-beam-shows-to-apple-tvs-anymore

Key Takeaway

In TV, we officially have a new "last ten yards" of delivery. Five years ago, this was your cable box. Since then - the cable box has becoming more and more obsolete as we add more online services into our TVs. So it's not surprising that Apple has one of the better opportunities in this market with the only polished piece of hardware. Hopefully Netflix will open their service back up to Apple TV, and rely on their content as their core product rather than punish Apple TV users.

Elon Musk has been designing Teslas to compete with Uber and Lyft

In a conversation on Twitter, Musk announced that newer Teslas have been equipped with cameras so that Tesla owners can one day monitor "autonomous customers". Basically - if you own a Tesla, you may one day be able to let people hail your car the same way they'd hail an Uber, and make money while you're not using it. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/05/elon-musk-self-driving-teslas-are-going-to-compete-with-uber-lyft.html

Key Takeaway

The concept of car ownership is dying. With more cars going autonomous, people will own them for one of two reasons:

1. Disposable income
2. Passive income

AirBnB, Uber and others have created a "Reputation Economy" in which we're afraid to be ourselves

This is a great article on Market Watch that dives into the perils of our current need to worry about every rating we get from our ride sharing to our lodging. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-rating-everything-from-your-uber-driver-to-your-airbnb-host-has-become-a-nightmare-2019-04-01?siteid=rss&rss=1

In short - we're all worried more about what our social cues will do to our future scores - AKA - whether we'll get a decent ride to that dinner date, or qualify for that loft that overlooks the park.

Key Takeaway

The social credit system that China's been working on for the last few years is alive and well globally. And we did it to ourselves. Hopefully as we continue to understand the implications of these kinds of scoring systems - we'll find better ways to apply people metrics that don't stifle our humanity.