Just some Neuralink threads in a "brain." (Credit Neuralink)
Hello again
Welcome back to LanceLetter. Did you spend copiously on Black Friday and Cyber Monday? Despite tough economic times, it was a record early holiday shopping season. Collectively, we spent billions. The growth wasn’t monumental - just 2.9% - by one measure but considering most people currently have fewer discretionary funds, I’m sure retailers breathed a sigh of relief.
As for what we bought, it ranged from TVs (a big hit with huge discounts) to lots of Amazon devices like speakers and Kindles and, of course, gaming systems like Xbox and Nintendo Switch. Apple, which offered gift cards instead of discounts (smh), sold a lot of MacBooks and Apple Watches.
The other key feature of Black Friday is that it was not a one-day event, which made Cyber Monday feel like more of the same - not a bad thing at all if you were hoping to catch deals. Better yet, I think there will be solid deals right up until we’re unwrapping gifts - while supplies last, of course.
Which reminds me, I have some shopping to do.
AI Selfies
Perhaps you’ve seen them in your social media feeds, gorgeous, stylized, and artistic selfies of friends and celebrities. Everyone looks like a star, superhero, or character in a dystopian cyberpunk movie.
It’s all courtesy of Lensa.ai, the latest in a long line of apps that encourage you to upload images that it can manipulate, give back to you, and you can post.
As the name suggests, the platform uses AI to generate the images or what it calls Magic Avatars. Unlike a lot of other viral image apps, this one charges you for the pleasure of generating these images. You can download it for free and it promises a free trial-but there’s a smallish fee for uploading. What’s surprising to me is that a lot of people are happily paying. To be fair, the images are captivating. I’ve resisted, thus far.
As usual, not much is known about how Lensa.AI really works and what it does with your images. Plus, people who sign up must remember to cancel or they’ll end up with an expensive monthly fee.
My point is that, with almost every trend like this, there’s the other digital shoe. One where we learn that our images are stored in Lensa.AI’s servers or the information we share isn’t encrypted, or people can’t figure out how to turn off auto-renew, or they get addicted to magic avatars and end up spending way too much on the mesmerizing images.
All I’m saying is, be careful out there all you warrior princes and princesses.
The speed of a viral hit
Netflix’s Wednesday premiered on Nov. 23, right before Thanksgiving and the initial buzz was not good. I noticed a few people online and in my own feeds saying they disliked it - a lot.
Right after Thanksgiving though, I spotted a clip on TikTok from the show in which the titular teenage character, a perfectly cast Jenny Ortega, performs a bizarre dance in the middle of a school party. There’s a catchy Lada Gaga tune and Wednesday’s movements that seem a blend of her father Gomez’s theatricality and mother Morticia’s deadpan persona.
Within 24 hours, the clip went viral. When something goes viral on TikTok, you don’t just see the original clip, you see hundreds of people recreating the dance.
Very quickly, I realized that it didn’t matter if Wednesday’s Rotten Tomatoes score is an OK 71%, this one dance and TikTok’s massive reach was turning it into a hit. Even if you had no interest in the show, and if you wanted to recreate the dance, you need to watch the show on Netflix, and that scene multiple times. Netflix’s watch numbers for its new show must be rising.
As I write this, Wednesday’s dance is still going strong on TikTok, but it does have some competition, in the form of a highly spirited dance number from the musical Matilda (started as a movie, became a Broadway show, is now a movie musical). The movie is currently only playing in the UK, but I’ve seen that routine from just as many people as I have the Wednesday bit.
Is there a lesson here? Yes, don’t worry too much about whether or not your TV show or movie is good enough to be a hit, but make sure it contains at least one memorable bit and you should be golden.
Ready to plug in?
Elon Musk took a break from sh*tposting on Twitter last week to give the world an update on his Neuralink program.
Designed to let humans communicate directly with computers (and thereby stay ahead of rapidly advancing AI), Neuralink is a brain implant that sits about the dura and connects to dozens of ultra-thin fibers that plug into the brain.
The company has been testing on pigs and monkeys that can now play video games using only their brains. The monkeys can even use it to communicate in a rudimentary language.
The big news of the night was that Neuralink will be ready for human trials as early as six months from now.
Why would anyone want Neuralink? First, I’m not sure anyone does but the long-term vision is not about playing hands-free Pong. Musk said they envision it helping people with traumatic spinal cord injuries regain mobility.
Skeptics argue that people have been trying to use technology to bypass severed spinal cords for ages with no luck. Many are unconvinced that Neuralink can succeed where others failed.
The rest of the update revolved around how Neuralink is making the robot-controlled surgery less invasive (you’re still cutting away a quarter-sized piece of the skull), how interpreting the brain signals continues to advance, and how they’re close to no longer needed lab animals for testing.
I think it’s important work, probably a lot more important than the witch hunt Musk is currently conducting on Twitter. Let’s hope one business doesn’t implode and make it harder for him to advance his Neuralink dream.
That’s all for now.
Take care of each other
See you soon