Daily Archives: December 12, 2020

As CEOs of some of the worlds biggest companies testify before the United States Senate, we hear a ... [+] lot about free speech suppression, monopolies, and anti-competitive behaviors.

We are currently witnessing tech giants such as Twitter, Facebook, Google, and Amazon under a powerful spotlight, and it seems like a day of reckoning is coming soon. It all feels like a movie that we have all seen before during the Bell breakup in the 80s and the Microsoft antitrust lawsuits in the 90s. In this two-part article series, we will examine the challenges consumers face with tech giants, the potential consequences for inaction, and strategies that these tech giants can implement to get back on track.

With the potential repeal of Section 230 staring the industry down the face, it seems inevitable that changes must be made.As CEOs of some of the worlds biggest companies testify before the United States Senate, we hear a lot about free speech suppression, monopolies, and anti-competitive behaviors. It sounds familiar because we lived this conversation in the prior decades all the way back to the 18th century robber barons.

While I wont weigh into these allegations here, I will fault the tech giants for partly bringing this calamity onto themselves by allowing lax security on their platforms. Major tech companies kept turning a blind eye to fundamental security and authentication issues, creating a massive noise problem and lack of authenticity.

Bots Everywhere

Everywhere you turn, bots, troll farms, and malfeasance are affecting almost every service. For instance, search engines are famous for people that try to game the system and make illegitimate profit by sending bot traffic to sites. On social media, services such as Facebook face a whopping 16% certified fake or duplicate account rate. Reddit is a lot like the Wild West with fake and duplicate accounts all over the place. Twitter is also rife with bot problems, with thousands and thousands of fake and bot accounts found there regularly.

Lack of Authenticity Leads to Abandonment

When you think about social media, the point behind it all is that people want to connect to other real people. Scripted bots were never a part of the social media contractever! It is, however, a major reality that users face today. Unless corrected, this leads us to one possible fate for the tech giants that bring us the social tools we live with and use every day. That fate is abandonment, and it will arrive for a couple of reasons. People universally dont like their speech suppressed and they dont like to be bullied or followed or drowned out by things that are not real.

No One is Invincible

On the other hand, look at all the ramifications of what these technologies have become. The social platforms have become the arbiters of news and they have taken on an uncomfortable (for us) position of telling us what is real, contested, or partially inaccurate. Along with their market monopolies and dominance, the way these companies are parading around explaining things to Congress seems to lead to an imminent destiny with mandated dissolution. Again, no one is invisible. Some of the biggest companies in history have faced this, going back to Standard Oil, AT&T, American Tobacco, and more. Microsoft somehow survived similar efforts twenty years ago and ultimately had to settle its way out of courtrooms across the world. Even if a company survives, an antitrust case can take years to play out and cost millions upon millions in legal costs and brand damage.

Lessons to be Learned

In the hosting and cloud industry, we figured out long ago that we must enable the storage of information and the exchange of data, and we need to provide access to this information wherever you are. We viewed ourselves as a platform. It may sound unsexy, but it worked. We aim to do that in an increasingly more efficient, more secure, and more valuable way. We deal with illegal content accordingly, partnering with law enforcement and industry groups, and by aligning with the sort of clients we want to do work with.

Ultimately, we enable people and companies, and when web industries set on this course, we were able to make big things possible, including the foundation of the very same companies we consider giants of the industry today. With rare exception, the line between platform and information publishing never crossed.

In part two of my series, we will look at ways tech giants can get back on track through authentication and stronger security postures but no matter what, it is time for a change.

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Warnings For Tech Giants And An Ode To A Simpler Web - Forbes

Because today's tech landscape harbors multiple giants rather than a single behemoth, regulators trying to restrain the companies' power face a bedeviling challenge: It's tougher to make a "monopoly" charge stick to companies that are busy competing with one another.

Driving the news: This week's double-whammy antitrust suits against Facebook by the Federal Trade Commission and a coalition of states comes on the heels of a Department of Justice suit against Google and a broadly damning report from House Democrats, both in October.

Yes, but: While the critique is broad, each antitrust lawsuit must prove a case against a specific company, and that remains daunting.

The big picture: In previous cycles of antitrust enforcement against Microsoft, IBM and others one colossus seemed to control the entire industry's air supply.

The pentopoly's power and reach are unparalleled. Their products and services reach into every corner of our lives:

The pentopoly's combined market cap is now roughly $7 trillion or nearly one-third the total value of the S&P 500.

No company should have this much unchecked power," New York State Attorney General Letitia James said in announcing the states' Facebook suit but the complaint is one regularly heard about all five companies.

The companies say their power is checked by one another. They compete and quarrel in myriad ways:

This tangled web of oligarchic competition places a tough burden on the government's antitrust cases.

Of note: Of the five, Microsoft has most expertly avoided the antitrust spotlight despite its continued power and size. That's probably because the company learned from its experience 20 years ago as a solo target of federal antitrust prosecution.

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Editor's note: This story has been corrected to reflect that the combined market value of the five companies is $7 trillion, not $7 billion.

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Five tech giants are harder to slay than one - Axios

Europe produces a lot of IPOs. The trouble is that some of the regions biggest fish are slipping away to New York.

Tech companies founded in Europe overwhelmingly end up listing closer to homesome 94% go to exchanges run by Euronext, Germanys Deutsche Boerse, or the UKs London Stock Exchange, according to a report by venture capital firm Atomico. But the few that go to a US exchange tend to be the most valuable ones. When you look at the stream of where value flowed to, theres clear evidence of leakage to the US, said Tom Wehmeier, a parter at Atomico. He says more than50% of the enterprise value of European unicorns has gone to the US through acquisitions and IPOs on American exchanges.

The average market capitalization for a European tech company listed domestically is $1.6 billion, and the median is $49 million. Those that go to New York have a mean market capitalization of $5.7 billion and median of $970 million, which is around 20 times larger than the median for tech companies on European exchanges. Since 2000, about a quarter of Europes tech unicorns have listed in the US.

There are several things going on here. European exchanges tend to have a lot of smaller IPOs. Thats probably in part because the private market in the US is more robust, which gives entrepreneurs the scope to raise a bunch of money without undergoing the glare and scrutiny of listing on a public exchange. Some European markets like London Stock Exchange also go out of their way to cater to smaller enterprises.

Ego isnt the only reason for Europeans to fight for their startups to list nearby. A listings location creates gravity that can attract the companys corporate headquarters and scores of jobs. It also helps build a local ecosystem in which expertise, from analysts to investment bankers and investors, clumps up around that locale. Some investors have mandates to invest in assets in their home jurisdiction. If a UK firm lists its shares in New York, some portfolio managers in Britain might no longer be able to buy its shares (or else would have to change their mandates).

Every tech enterprise matters, because its hard to predict which one could go on to become the next trillion-dollar giant. The worlds top 1% most valuable public tech companies account for about 69% of all market capitalization, according to Atomico data; the top 10% account for 94%. Losing one tech champion to another region could deprive an economy of a titan that generates substantial tax revenue and thousands of jobs. That success can also seed a generation of future entrepreneurs.

Europe doesnt have a tech giant on the scale of Chinas Tencent or the USs Google, and it cant afford to let one slip away. The regions technological freedom is at stake, according to Klaus Hommels, chairman of Zurich-based venture capital firm Lakestar. He says the US giants Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google (FANGs) control everything from semiconductors to data storage, and he is urging the European community to protect the regions digital autonomy. Technologies that shape all modern life are being run without European values, ideas or input, he wrote recently. Being digitally-dependent has serious financial, political and cultural implications for Europe.

That said, Europe has narrowed the gap in recent years. After a lost decade in the 1990s, European tech companies share of global market cap has grown for the past 20 years, according to Atomico data. Consumer-internet group Prosus, semiconductor firm ASML, and SAP, the German software maker, have market caps of more than $100 billion. Adyen, the Amsterdam-based digital payment company that is listed on Euronext, is rising quickly and is worth more than $60 billion.

Venture capital could help turbocharge Europes tech sector. Some 80% of the largest US technology firms had VC backing, as did 90% of Chinas, according to Atomico. Meanwhile in Europe, as recently as 2017, none of Europes big companies had been supported by VC money. The emergence of VC-funded enterprises like Spotify and Adyen is changing that.

Behind the scenes, European executives, from startup founders to investors, have been looking to make the region more competitive. As firms like Index Ventures push for changes to European rules for stock options, which could make it easier for startups to attract and reward top-drawer talent, France has moved forward on overhauling some of those restrictions. Britain is considering reforms to its listing requirements to make London Stock Exchange more competitive with New York for tech IPOs. Among the considerations are allowing dual-class voting rights on the LSEs premium market, and changes to free-float (how much of a companys shares are available for the public to exchange) requirements.

Theres other good news. Wehmeier says Atomico crunched some data that suggests European firms may be as likely to thrive on a local exchange as they would in New York. During the past five years, 15 of the 16 companies that added more than $1 billion of market capitalization did so from a European public market. Theres often this questionto what extent will the public market support growth, value businesses in the right way, he said. The research indicates that Europes founders can get the credit they deserve from investors, without having to go to New York.

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Europe's tech giants are still choosing the US for their IPOs - Quartz

Austinites, watch out; another tech company is headed into town.

Just days after Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed during an interview that he has moved to Texas, and less than two weeks after HP Enterprise, a spin-out of the iconic Silicon Valley company Hewlett-Packard, announced that it is separately moving to Texas, yet another of the Bay Areas best-known brands Oracle is pulling up stakes and headed east to Texas, too.

The news was first reported by Bloomberg. Oracle confirmed the move in a statement sent to TechCrunch, saying that along with a more flexible employee work location policy, the company has changed its corporate headquarters from Redwood Shores, California, to Austin. We believe these moves best position Oracle for growth and provide our personnel with more flexibility about where and how they work.

A spokeswoman declined to answer more questions related to the move, but Oracle says that many of its employees can choose their office location, as well as continue to work from home part time or full time.

HPE and Oracle arent the first major tech companies to plot such moves in recent times. Late last year, the brokerage giant Charles Schwab said it was leaving the Bay Area for Texas as it was announcing its $26 billion merger with TD Ameritrade, though it chose Dallas, about 200 miles away from Austin.

Tech giants Apple and Google have also been expanding their presence in the state. Apple announced in 2018 that it was building a $1 billion campus in Austin. Meanwhile, Google, which opened its first Austin office 13 years ago, said last year that it was beginning to lease far more space in the city.

Taxes, a more affordable cost of living for employees, a lower cost of doing business and less competition for talent are among the top drivers for the companies moves, though there is also a growing sense that culture is a factor, as well.

While California is led by Democrats, Texas is led by Republicans, and as the divide between the two parties grows, so does the divide between their respective supporters, with even self-described centrists saying they feel alienated.

Oracle co-founder and Chairman Larry Ellison has notably been one of few top tech execs to openly support President Donald Trump.

Meanwhile, Joe Lonsdale, a co-founder of the venture firm 8VC and Palantir Technologies (which itself recently headed to Denver from Palo Alto), recently explained his own move this year to Texas from California in the WSJ, writing: Politics in the state is in many ways closed off to different ideas. We grew weary of Californias intolerant far left, which would rather demonize opponents than discuss honest differences of opinion.

This fall, in conversation with reporter Kara Swisher, Musk suggested he was also outside of Democratic circles, describing his political views as socially very liberal and then economically right of center, maybe, or center? I dont know. Obviously Im not a communist.

While Austin is becoming a go-to spot for many of Californias wealthiest contrarians, others are headed to Florida. Coincidentally or not, Florida is another Republican-controlled state that, like Texas, does not collect state tax.

Keith Rabois, a Founders Fund investor who recently left the Bay Area for Miami, contributed to the NeverTrump PAC in 2016 and said his first choice for U.S. president this year was Democratic contender Pete Buttigieg. But he has also worried openly about democratic socialism, of which the GOP has long accused Democrats of promoting.

Venture capitalist David Blumberg, a Trump supporter, is also headed to Miami, he announced recently. Blumberg said he had it with poor governance at the local level in San Francisco and statewide in California. Yet he seemed to have grown frustrated with the Bay Area some time ago.

As Blumberg told Vox last year, he believes that tech platforms are biased against conservatives. He also told the outlet that the Valley was home to many more Trump supporters than might be imagined, and that we generally keep our heads down because people who go out publicly for Republicans and for Trump can get business banned or get blackballed.

Impetus notwithstanding, a longer-term question is whether these moves particular for those individuals and smaller outfits that are relocating will prove permanent.

At least one tech exec, Twitter and Medium co-founder Ev Williams, has returned to the Bay Area after moving away in his case, to New York. Williams, who was largely looking for a change, made the move with his family late last year after spending 20 years in the Bay Area, he recently told TechCrunch. Then COVID struck.

I had never lived in New York and thought, Why not go? Now seems like a good time. Turns out I was wrong. [Laughs.] It was a very bad time to move to New York.

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Oracle is headed to Texas now, too - TechCrunch

Police bosses have warned the Government it needs to get tough on technology companies or risk another public inquiry into child sexual abuse.

The National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) told the final ever public session of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) that real leadership was needed in Westminster to ensure children are protected online.

The inquiry previously heard evidence of cases where children had been groomed online, including that of 14-year-old Breck Bednar, who was later murdered by computer engineer Lewis Daynes after being lured to the 18-year-olds home in Essex in 2014.

(NPCC'S) overriding concern is that... the end result is real change in how children are kept safe online something that industry has conspicuously failed to do by way of self-regulation

In a closing speech as the inquirys final hearing drew to a close on Friday afternoon, James Berry, on behalf of the NPCC, called for the introduction of an independent regulator for the tech sector and a duty of care which platforms must agree to.

He said: Real leadership is needed by Parliament in passing an Online Harms Act, no doubt over considerable opposition including from ordinary internet users, who dont want the way in which they enjoy using the internet to be affected.

But the bottom line is surely that corporate profit margins, user experience and privacy cannot trump the paramount concern of keeping children safe.

Much has been said about the proposed duty of care on industry having teeth, and being enforced by a competent regulatory body. The NPCC agrees.

But its overriding concern is that whatever the means, the end result is real change in how children are kept safe online something that industry has conspicuously failed to do by way of self-regulation.

If that does not happen, in five years or 10 years time, there will be another inquiry like this, where we will look back and ask: How on Earth did we as a society allow this to happen to our children?

The Online Harms Bill is expected before Parliament in the first half of 2021, despite concerns that delays may mean the internet will be unregulated for years.

In October, Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee chairman Julian Knight criticised the timeline and accused the Government of failing to act with urgency.

He said: People need that protection against online harms now and further delay is unjustifiable.

IICSA was set up by then home secretary Theresa May in 2014 to look into allegations of historical abuse by establishment figures.

The inquiry comprised 15 different strands focusing on a separate area of abuse, hearing from more than 600 live witnesses about allegations dating back decades.

Arguably its most high-profile investigation was its conclusion that the political establishment spent decades turning a blind eye to allegations of child sexual abuse, with senior politicians protected from police action as aides sought to avoid gossip and scandal which would damage the parties.

But it found there was no evidence of a Westminster paedophile ring allegations in the House of Commons in 2012 which kick-started the multi-million pound inquiry.

Other strands have focussed on abuse in the church, at residential schools and in childrens homes.

A final report of overarching findings from all 15 sections of the investigation is expected to be laid before Parliament in 2022.

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MPs told to take action on tech giants or risk fresh inquiry into child abuse - NewsChain

The global crypto exchange Binance is analyzing how Bitcoin, Ethereum and XRP stack up to three of the largest tech companies in the world.

The company spotlights an increasing focus on Bitcoins market cap compared to large publicly-traded companies. With its current market cap of about $338 billion, BTC is worth more than some of the most recognized companies in the world, including Walt Disney Company, Mastercard and Uber.

Binance notes that this has all been accomplished with relatively low clout in the mainstream.

The fast growth of Bitcoins overall value bodes well for hodlers and traders who have been steadily buying Bitcoin (BTC) over the years. Bitcoin is on more peoples minds than ever before, but interest from mainstream audiences is still comparatively low.

Although Bitcoin, Ethereum and XRP have surged in 2020, the amount of interest that the top three cryptocurrencies are receiving is well below all-time highs set in late 2017, according to search engine data from Google.

This, plus the fact that the current market caps of BTC, ETH and XRP are far below many large-cap tech companies, suggests theres plenty of room for growth, according to Binance.

Ethereum debuted at the end of July 2015, and grew its total market cap to $65.5 billion at the time of writing, a remarkable feat in under 6 years. XRPs market cap, meanwhile, peaked at over $29 billion by the end of November.

Despite this growth, the 3 top largest cryptocurrencies are still dwarfed by tech giants like Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN) and Google (GOOGL), which are each valued at over $1 trillion.

I

Whether its fair to compare the growth of digital currencies and smart contract platforms with corporate tech giants is up for debate. But according to Binance, the potential of crypto assets in the world of finance alone implies theres room for growth.

Its not hard to imagine the additional headroom that cryptocurrencies have to grow. Though this is just speculation, if past growth is any indication, cryptocurrencies may still be undervalued as financial assets.

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Binance Compares Growth of Bitcoin, Ethereum and XRP to Tech Giants Apple, Amazon and Google - The Daily Hodl

News Corps global CEO has revealed the media business is in advanced stage discussions about paying for news with Google and Facebook.

Speaking at the UBS TMT virtual conference, News Corp CEO Robert Thomson said: The negotiations are ongoing. Its fair to say theyre at an advanced stage and its not in one particular country at the moment, these are global negotiations because were a global company.

The contours of digital content have changed fundamentally. The sort of negotiations that are taking place now were regarded as fanciful by many in the digital industry two or three years ago.

Some, frankly, mocked News Corp for being such a strong advocate of a premium for premium content.

The news of these discussions come as the Federal Government finalises the mandatory News Media Bargaining Code.

Earlier this week, it was revealed that both Facebook and Google will be made to negotiate payments with local media businesses including the ABC and SBS under the code.

Payments will include provisions around the two-way value exchange media businesses and tech giants share. It also stipulates that an independent arbiter be used to determine the final payment if the two parties are unable to reach an agreement.

Google recently revealed it had signed deals with Australian publishers to pay for content as part of the global News Showcase initiative.

However, the tech giant has currently paused the rollout of the initiative in Australia, due to its concerns with the News Media Bargaining Code.

It is unclear whether or not Google will proceed with the News Showcase in Australia following this weeks announcement about the code.

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Tech Giants In "Advanced Discussions" With News Corp About Paying For News - B&T

Appen CEO Mark Brayan says the company has been hit by a change in customer behaviour not competition. Credit:James Brickwood

Appen is one of the big five WAAAX stocks on the ASX, along with WiseTech, Afterpay, Altium and Xero that have found favour with investors in recent years.

It makes most of its money in the US from crowdsourcing a global workforce that does the low-level grunt work for the technology giants. The workers teach computers to recognise basic images and speech, laying down the basic groundwork for the development of 'Artificial Intelligence' solutions.

Around 80 per cent of Appen's revenue is generated by just five customers which includes Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft.

November results, just finalised, show that while Q4 has improved on Q3 the usual ramp up we traditionally see at this time of year is not occurring, Appen said on Thursday.

"COVID has clearly disrupted and reshaped the priorities and activities of our customers."

RBC Capitals Garry Sherriff said that in the wake of Facebook, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon all beating consensus advertising revenue estimates in their latest quarterlies, Appen's downgrade begs the question - "Is it customer behavior changing or also competitive pressures?

However, Appen chief executive Mr Brayan assured analysts it was a change in customer behaviour.

"We're in the middle of a storm of activity," he said, as Appen's major tech customers reshape their priorities in the wake of the pandemic.

"The pandemic has meant that our major customers are accelerating the new product development," he said.

Mr Brayan added that while work on some large mature projects had slowed down Appen was well placed to pick up new projects in the new year.

"Material projects have slowed as a result and reduced our revenue and the new projects are yet to require the data volumes that offset the slowdown."

"Although it is impacting this year, it is setting a foundation for a strong year in 2021," he said.

"This new product development trend is positive for us and we are seeing a significant increase in the number of new projects amongst our major customers, albeit some are early in their lifecycle."

The top technology stories and reviews delivered weekly. Sign up to The Age's newsletter here and The Sydney Morning Herald's here.

Colin Kruger is a business reporter. He joined the Sydney Morning Herald in 1999 as its technology editor. Other roles have included the Herald's deputy business editor and online business editor.

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Appen hit as tech giants pivot to new AI projects - Sydney Morning Herald

Tony Hsieh had ambitions that reached far beyond the shoe-selling business. After moving Zappos, his billion-dollar e-commerce company, to the Las Vegas suburbs and selling it to Amazon, he set his sights on transforming the city itself, pouring $350 million mostly of his own money into its hollowed-out downtown core, two miles north of the glitz of the Strip.

For all the attention what came to be known as the Downtown Project attracted, few of Hsiehs grand proclamations had come true by the time he relocated to Park City, Utah, in August, having long since walked away from an active role in the initiative. Las Vegas was not the world capital of co-working or co-learning, or a new tech utopia in the desert, and vacant lots and empty buildings still peppered the neighborhood.

Hsieh died in late November at age 46 after what people close to him have described as a downward spiral of extreme behavior, but his vision lives on in his adopted home. With the pandemic making places like Las Vegas newly attractive to exactly the sorts of people and companies he struggled to attract, the seeds he planted nearly a decade ago in the desert soil are bearing fresh fruit.

Tech companies have shifted to remote work, in some cases permanently, sparking an exodus from the overheated housing markets of the West Coast. Austin has been the clearest beneficiary of this trend, with a significant tech economy already in place, but the Sun Belt as a whole is absorbing a wave of economic migrants, drawn by warm weather, low taxes and relatively affordable homes.

In Las Vegas, a city facing double-digit unemployment rates as the pandemic keeps its tourism industry shuttered, the downtown infrastructure of restaurants, parks, coffee shops and housing that Hsieh helped build is serving as a magnet for a new wave of tech talent. Ryan Smith, who works as the business development manager for the city of Las Vegas, said that the city is aggressively courting emigrants from Silicon Valley and Seattle with a targeted ad campaign and one-on-one conversations, with Hsiehs legacy providing a key part of the pitch.

Especially for younger workers who value walkability, Smith said, were talking about what Tony did for downtown everybody knows who he is and then how thats kind of spilled over into other developments.

Smith credits Hsiehs initiative with proving that apartment buildings could be viable even in Las Vegas, a city where comfort has traditionally been equated with a sprawling mansion in the suburbs, and stimulating growth in the nearby Arts District, which is home to its own mix of bars, restaurants and shops. When Tony decided to move downtown, that was a crazy thought at the time, Smith said.

Despite the boom-bust cycle of the Downtown Projects early days, workforce numbers show that tech employment in the metropolitan area has ticked steadily upward since 2011, growing at twice the rate of other sectors in a city dominated by gaming and hospitality. The goal for the city, Smith said, is to attract enough skilled tech workers that start-ups no longer have a difficult time hiring and tech giants such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft see enough of their employees moving to the area to open formal satellite offices.

Hsieh conceived of the Downtown Project at a time when he could have done anything with his life.

Raised in the Bay Area by parents who had emigrated from Taiwan, Hsieh went on to Harvard, returned to California for a stint at Oracle, and then founded an online advertising company with former classmates called LinkExchange. Two years later, he sold the company to Microsoft for $265 million.

With his new fortune, Hsieh started an investment firm and backed a budding online shoe retailer which he helped rename Zappos in 1999. As its chief executive, he developed an offbeat management philosophy that put company culture above all else. If employees were happy and dedicated to the company, his thinking went, then customers would end up happy too, and the profits would flow.

In addition to a pioneering free-shipping-on-returns policy, Hsiehs attention to customer satisfaction meant hiring full-time employees to staff the customer service phone lines rather than an outside agency. In 2004, when Zappos was considering opening a new call center in Las Vegas, Hsieh instead decided to move the whole company there from San Francisco.

In 2009, Hsieh, then 35, sold Zappos to Amazon for more than a billion dollars. While he continued to lead the company, he found a new target for his attention, and growing fortune, in downtown Las Vegas.

Where most people saw a dusty husk of a business district a patchwork of vacant lots, abandoned buildings, and dollar-ante casinos overshadowed by the big money and bright lights of the Strip two miles south Hsieh saw a blank canvas.

Over the next four years, Hsieh poured $350 million into his vision of the city as a start-up through the Downtown Project. The vision was expansive: By bringing tech start-ups and small businesses into the area and fostering a culture like the one at Zappos quirky, collaborative and focused on fun Hsieh would create the most community-focused large city in the world.

He moved Zappos headquarters into what used to be Las Vegas City Hall and bought a block of condos in a building called the Ogden just a block away, which became the unofficial headquarters for the endeavor. He started an investment firm, the Vegas Tech Fund, to pump money into companies that would move into the zone, and whipped up a whirlwind of events and press coverage to gin up interest.

The Vegas Tech Fund bought up vacant lots and built Container Park, an outdoor mall and green space and concert venue, out of old shipping containers, and placed a two-story flame-throwing praying mantis sculpture from Burning Man by the entrance.

(Getty Images)

Hundreds of believers were drawn in by Hsieh his vision, low-key charisma, penchant for partying and deep pockets. Soon there was a new restaurant, Eat, started by a woman Hsieh encountered on the sidewalk who said shed always wanted to open a restaurant after years cooking at the casinos on the Strip; Hsieh gave her a $350,000 no-interest loan to make it happen.

A self-driving car start-up, a tech-events start-up, a bowling-betting start-up, a co-working start-up, an online polls start-up and more soon flooded into town, their teams often staying in rooms at the Ogden offered by Hsieh, backed by money from the Tech Fund. The project bought up vacant lots and built Container Park an outdoor mall, green space and concert venue out of old shipping containers, and placed a two-story flame-throwing praying mantis sculpture from Burning Man by the entrance.

The doors seemed to pretty much always be open, both literally and figuratively Tony was available, said Rich Belsky, a Las Vegas entrepreneur whose start-up, Rolltech, was one of Vegas Tech Funds local investments. Belsky moved into the Ogden to take part in the project; Hsiehs penthouse apartment played host to brainstorm meetings, parties and podcast recordings.

Everybody was just doing everything they could to contribute to the community, to build the scene, Belsky said. There was just nothing like it that I had ever experienced or heard about.

Hsiehs sprawling ambition soon met some difficult realities. Promising start-ups failed or left town, finding it difficult to grow in a place without a deep bench of tech talent to hire. Three people associated with the Downtown Project a start-up founder, a small-business owner and a member of the projects planning team died by suicide in the course of a year. In late 2014, the Downtown Project laid off 30 of its 300 employees, and a former leader of the project who quit wrote an open letter calling the endeavor a collage of decadence, greed, and missing leadership. Hsieh stepped down from formal leadership of the company.

Hsieh turned his management attention elsewhere notably to an effort to eliminate traditional management entirely within Zappos and replace it with a nonhierarchical system called Holacracy, an effort that largely lost steam after a few difficult years. The Vegas Tech Fund rebranded as VTF Capital in 2016 and announced that it would no longer focus on start-ups in the city. Two years later, it made its last investment, according to industry tracker Crunchbase, and did not attempt to raise another fund.

But even if its early ambitions were not quite met, the Downtown Project went on. A lot behind a vacant motel was turned into a trailer park, and Hsieh moved out of the Ogden and into an Airstream, where he kept pet alpacas in the yard and spent nights talking around the fire pits with his neighbors.

Megan Fazio, a spokesperson for the rebranded DTP Co., said in a statement that while Hsieh was no longer involved in day-to-day operations, he was our original visionary, adding that the company plans to continue to carry on his legacy and fulfill its mission of revitalizing downtown Las Vegas by investing in people, projects, and economic opportunity on the roughly 45 acres of downtown property that it holds.

While Zappos continued to thrive, Hsieh stepped down as chief executive in August, after 20 years leading the company. In the months that followed, his life quickly unraveled.

According to accounts in Forbes and the Wall Street Journal drawing on dozens of interviews, Hsieh had taken on partying and testing the limits of his own body as his next ambitious project, and pushed himself to extremes of physical exertion, starvation and oxygen deprivation often with the aid of nitrous oxide at different times. He went on a house-buying spree in the tony ski town of Park City and paid friends and acquaintances to leave Las Vegas and follow him there.

I dont think you are well and in your right mind, the singer Jewel, a friend of Hsiehs, wrote after visiting him in Park City in August, in a letter obtained by Forbes. Voicing concern about his drug use, she wrote, the people you are surrounding yourself with are either ignorant or willing to be complicit in you killing yourself.

At 3:26 a.m. on Nov. 18, the fire department of New London, Conn., responded to an emergency call for a structure fire with a person trapped inside. Somehow, a fire had started in a small shed attached to a house where Hsieh was staying with some family and friends, with Hsieh inside. The Wall Street Journal reported that Hsieh had locked the doors himself, while operating an open flame that he used to lower the oxygen level in the enclosed space.

A week later, Hsieh died in the burn ward of a regional hospital. The state medical examiner said the cause of death was accidental smoke inhalation.

After news of his death, eulogies from thousands of friends and admirers poured out on Twitter.

Chris Sacca, an influential tech investor, captured the spirit of many of the remembrances, writing that Hsieh might be the most original thinker Ive ever been friends with, a man who questioned every assumption and shared everything he learned along the way and genuinely delighted in making anyone and everyone happy.

The earth has lost a beautifully weird and helpful person, Sacca said.

After offering love and condolences to Tonys family and friends during this difficult time, Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak acknowledged Hsiehs vast impact on his adopted city: Tony Hsieh played a pivotal role in helping transform downtown Las Vegas.

Smith, the Las Vegas business development manager, said Hsieh was an unforgettable presence in the city. Smith recalls meeting Hsieh at an event downtown in 2019, where he was shocked to see the ultra-wealthy tech executive working as a cater-waiter, circulating with a tray of short rib sandwiches for guests. He asked a friend who worked at Zappos what was going on and was told that he believes in servant leadership.

Paul Carr, a journalist and entrepreneur who counted Hsieh as a friend, uprooted his life to take part in the Downtown Project in its heyday and chronicled its glories and missteps in a publication started with Vegas Tech Fund financing. In terms of this idea that it would be a capital for start-ups doing self-driving cars one day or 3-D printing or drones, Carr said, the project was a disaster. But he sees it as a different kind of success.

When he last visited and saw Hsieh, he found that it had found its own level he had created a campus where he was surrounded by people that he enjoyed spending time with, and with his alpaca, and people would come in and do music.

Thanks to Hsiehs efforts, he said, in the final analysis, downtown Vegas is infinitely better.

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Tony Hsieh is gone, but his Vegas vision is finding new life - Los Angeles Times

An F-35B Lightning II fighter aircraft with Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron (VMM) 265 (Reinforced), 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), prepares to take off from the flight deck of amphibious assault ship USS America (LHA 6) prior to a strike exercise of an inflatable maritime target.

Lance Cpl. Joshua Brittenham | US Marine Corps | FlickrCC

WASHINGTON The Senate approved a colossal defense policy bill Friday despite multiple threats from President Donald Trump that he would veto the measure.

At least 75 members of the Republican-led Senate voted for the sweeping $740 billion annual defense bill, a number larger than the two-thirds majority that would be needed to defeat Trump's promised veto.

With the weight of the House and the Senate behind the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, the bill breezes from Congress to Trump's desk with overwhelming support.

The NDAA, which typically passes with strong bipartisan support and veto-proof majorities, authorizesa topline of $740 billion in spending and outlines Pentagon policy.

Earlier this month, Trump threatened to veto the must-pass defense bill if lawmakers do not include a measure eliminating legal protections for social media companies.

Trump is calling for the repeal of a federal law, known asSection 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects tech giants like Facebook and Twitter from being held legally liable for what is posted on their platforms.

Last week, Trump referred to the provision as a "liability shielding gift" to "Big Tech" and called for it to be "completely terminated" otherwise he would nix this year's NDAA.

The president also said the measure posed a serious threat to U.S. national security as well as election integrity but did not give any further explanatory details. Trump has also said thatTwitter, his social media platform of choice, has unfairly censored him.

The president's issue with Section 230 came to light this summer after Twitteradded warning labels to several of his tweets that alleged mail-in voting is fraudulent. Trump has still not conceded the U.S. presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden.

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks following the ceremonial swearing-in of James Mattis as secretary of defense on January 27, 2017, at the Pentagon in Washington, DC.

Mandel Ngan | AFP | Getty Images

This year's legislation includes a 3% pay raise for U.S. troops, a plan to rename military installations bearing names of Confederate leaders as well as a slew of other provisions.

The NDAA, in its current form, does not include any measure in relation to Section 230.

This is not the first time the president has targeted the NDAA. Earlier this year, Trump said he would veto the measure if it included language on changing U.S. military installations named after Confederate generals.

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Senate overwhelmingly passes $740 billion defense bill as Trump's veto threat looms - CNBC