Facebook Marketplace is often fruitful for bargain hunting, if you don’t mind the hassle of coordinating a meetup to exchange goods. This item will put anyone to the test, though: three 402-foot-long ferries are currently listed on the platform. The massive vessels, built for $475m to transport up to 1k passengers and 250 vehicles around British Columbia, are a steal at $45m for the trio — but the buyer will need to travel to an Egyptian scrapyard to inspect the ships first.
In today’s email:
Deepfakes: Putting a legislative Band-Aid on AI’s runaway train.
Dollar stores: Why some towns have banned them.
A $27m problem: How to give away a massive inheritance.
Around the web: A game of rhyming pairs, a centuries-old mystery is solved, and more.
👇 Listen: Inheriting huge sums of money isn’t without its complications. (Still sounds nice, though).
THE BIG IDEA
The government vs. AI deepfakes
Laws are hurrying to keep up with all the creepy stuff people are doing with AI-generated deepfakes.
2024-01-17T00:00:00Z
Juliet Bennett Rylah
Give people new tech and they’ll find a way to be creepy with it.
Case in point: A new House bill — the No AI Fake Replicas and Unauthorized Duplications (FRAUD) Act — points to several instances of AI nonsense, including:
Bogus songs replicating artists like Drake and Bad Bunny.
Fake advertisements featuring celebrities like Tom Hanks.
A Department of Homeland Security report that found 100k+ AI images depicting women nude.
And did these people consent to having their likeness used by AI in those ways? Nope.
Thus, the bill…
… would make it illegal to create a “digital depiction” of any person, living or dead, without permission. This includes both their appearance and voice.
Violators would be subject to fines of up to $50k per violation, or damages.
The Senate’s Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe (NO FAKES) Act, which protects performers.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee’s Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security (ELVIS) Act, which protects voices.
Why they matter
Already, scammers are using AI to mimic the voices of people’s loved ones to trick them into sending money or providing personal info.
And a casual glance at history reveals that laws need to keep pace with technology to keep up with people’s bullshit:
In 1999, Gary Dellapenta was the first person charged under California’s cyberstalking law after posting online ads that attempted to trick men into assaulting a woman who rejected him.
California also led the way on revenge porn, or posting sexual content online for malicious purposes. In 2014, a man was sentenced to a year in jail for posting a topless photo of his ex on Facebook.
But…
… attorney Carrie Goldberg, who specializes in internet harassment, told Vice that the fight needs to happen on a systemic level, also leveling blame at the companies making deepfake products.
“We need to pressure search engines to not guide people to these products or promote sites that publish these images and we need to require that they make content removal simple for victims,” she said.
Free Resource
A simple sheet for snagging that gig
Most folks don’t just get lucky — they increase their odds by taking more shots. The numbers game is one way to win, but sending out dozens of job apps can get chaotic.
Use this sortable tracking sheet to organize app statuses, interview dates, and salary ranges, and easily evaluate your options.
Just keep shooting, uh, kid. We’re pulling for you.
A Washington DC pop-up is hawking $75 pizzas — and, sure, it’s understandable in that it’s got truffles on it and the chef’s regular truffle menu runs ~$600 — but that doesn’t mean it’s justifiable. Sometimes in life, you have to take a moral stand. Here’s ours: pizza should never exceed $25.
SNIPPETS
Off the air: A federal judge blocked JetBlue Airways’ $3.8B acquisition of Spirit Airlines. Regulators argued the merger, which would’ve created America’s fifth-largest airline, would increase fares and hurt consumers.
Uber is shutting down Drizly, the alcohol delivery service it purchased in 2021 for $1.1B. The company said it will instead double down on its Uber Eats strategy.
Burger King owner Restaurant Brands International is buying the fast-food chain’s largest US franchisee — Carrols Restaurant Group, which operates 1k+ Burger King locations — for $1B as part of the company’s $400m plan to revive its business.
Elon Musk is asking Tesla’s board for another ~$82B worth of company shares to raise his stake in the company from 13% to 25%. Musk said that he wouldn’t help Tesla become a leader in AI and robotics, and would build products elsewhere, without more voting control.
BMW remains the world’s top-selling luxury car maker, selling a record 2.25m vehicles in 2023. Mercedes-Benz landed second, followed by Audi, Tesla, Lexus, and Volvo.
For the first time, Apple shipped more smartphones than Samsung, with 234.6m shipments in 2023 compared to Samsung’s 226.6m, per an analysis from Canalys.
Otherwise, not a great time for Apple: It removed blood-oxygen testing tech from its newest watches to avoid a US ban, and SCOTUS refused its appeal against a ruling that will let developers use alternate purchasing options to avoid App Store fees.
OK, just one more Apple thing: Framing its Vision Pro as “the ultimate entertainment device,” Apple teamed with Disney to produce spatial experiences for Disney+, with 3D movie releases scheduled for the headset’s February debut.
Don't miss this...
Korean businesses are growing wicked fast and attracting billions of dollars. This week’s Trends introduces two new sectors in South Korea with big potential in 2024.
Dollar No More
The great dollar store backlash
Cascade, Maryland, a village of ~840 people, has three dollar stores within five miles of town.
When Allison Severance heard her next-door neighbor was selling his land to put up another one she made yard signs for Cascadians to plant on their lawns, walked the highway waving an enormous banner that read, “Say no to Dollar General,” and, along with a dozen others, hired a lawyer to fight the developer in court.
Dollar store backlash is happening all over the country.
The stores are routinely derided for gouging consumers, making it harder for stores selling healthier food to open nearby, and failing so many government safety inspections that even shareholders are concerned.
Some 60 communities have attempted to restrict their growth by limiting their locations or banning them outright. But replacing them with a viable alternative is much more complicated.
There are thousands of companies valued at $1B+. How many clues do you need to identify today’s billion-dollar brand?
Clue 1: This company was founded in 2006 by two brothers whose love of the outdoors was fostered by their dad, whose fishing rod sealant company is still in business today.
Clue 2: Its largest product can fit 353 pounds of ice, costs $1.5k, and is approved as bear-proof by the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee.
Clue 3: Though it shares a name with a mythical creature, there is no relation. One is a public company; the other is a weird, tall thing nobody’s actually seen.
👇 Scroll to the bottom for the answer 👇
Trust fun
Why are some uber-wealthy people giving their money away?
Some of today’s wealthiest people are having a change of heart.
2024-01-17T00:00:00Z
Sara Friedman
If you won the lottery or stumbled upon buried treasure, your first instinct might not be to give it all away.
But for some who have amassed huge sums of money — either through business or inheritance — getting rid of it is exactly what they want to do.
Take Marlene Engelhorn: The Austrian heiress is a descendant of Friedrich Engelhorn, the founder of BASF, one of the world’s biggest chemical companies. Last week, she announced that she’ll be giving away $27.4m of her inheritance.
Engelhorn formed a citizen’s council that will decide how her inheritance will be redistributed; 10k Austrian citizens were randomly selected to apply and 50 will be chosen to sit on the council.
They’ll then decide which charitable organizations to distribute the fortune to.
Engelhorn also co-founded Tax Me Now — a group of wealthy people in German-speaking countries who are addressing the inequality caused by tax policies — in 2021.
Stories like this…
… are becoming more common as countries grapple with how to tax billionaires fairly.
In Austria, the inheritance tax was abolished in 2008. In the US, a 2021 White House analysis found that the 400 wealthiest families paid an average of 8.2% of their income in taxes from 2010 to 2018, lower than the tax rate for most Americans.
Now, we’re hearing some pretty wild stories of riches getting dumped:
Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, gave away his company so that its $100m in annual profits could be used to fight climate change.
Nicolas Puech, the heir to $13B of the Hermes fashion fortune, adopted his gardener in order to leave him at least half of his money.
MacKenzie Scott has donated $16B+ to philanthropies since 2019, after her divorce from one of the world’s wealthiest people, Jeff Bezos.
What does all of this teach us? That maybe there is some good in the world — and that we should take up gardening.
