You gotta read this
@bw
story, about the mental health implications of lockdowns and the treatment of workers in the cruise ship industry by
@AustinCarr
This
@bw
story is about SBFs parents and the role they played in helping to create his crypto empire. It’s also about privilege, and who is trusted with other peoples money 1/
as a country, we all basically engaged in magical thinking, imagining that the virus couldn't hurt us, assuming that that self-confidence would offer protection. but the virus doesn't care what you think.
in her goodbye note, Sheryl Sandberg wrote that, in 2007, she thought the internet "was a largely anonymous place to search for funny pictures." This is some truly heroic, Davos-level BS. So I wrote about that for
@bw
all i can think about is how annoying it would be to be married to someone working on this product right now. are they, like, constantly saying, "lets do this in horizon!"
I’ve got a cover story
@bw
this week on the long unfulfilled promise self driving cars, and the industry pioneer who now says the whole thing has been wildly overhyped
so much labor saving AI looks like this. you take an uber driver and a 30k Corolla and replace them with a team of phds, a call center full of "remote operators" and cars that cost 300k and call it efficient
Musk managed to do something that no amount of advertising dollars, marketing consultants, former Obama campaign strategists, and pretend hobbies couldn’t do: Make Mark Zuckerberg look good
Corporate marketers embraced BLM on social media, but have been underpaying the influencers they’re hiring to push their messages. Great piece by
@sarahfrier
This is sort of a chefs kiss detail. It’s amazing how similar EA is to the authoritarian technofuturism of Thiel. Both instances of Silicon Valley guys who think they know better than everyone else
One of the law students of Sam Bankman-Fried’s dad, Joe?
Peter Thiel!
Thiel told Joe Bankman that his tax law class was “his most valuable because he was able to put a lot of his Facebook stock in an IRA.”
❗️RT gets ready to... Rumble: After a multitude of platforms have moved to knock out our broadcast and limit social media...
... You can stay on top of our LIVE broadcast, any time, anywhere right here:
i met sheryl sandberg around this time. Her job was going around telling everyone how awesome data-driven internet advertising was. She is, for better or worse, one of the key architects of the hellscape that is the advertising driven internet
This 2021 video is notorious on crypto twitter and deserves wider viewership. Watch VCs David Sacks and Chamath Palihapitiya brag about buying huge amounts of Solana at a discount, planning to dump on retail. Solana has been called one of "Sam's coins" b/c SBF was a booster.
@SilvermanJacob
the thing that gets me is that he's made this huge brand pivot to the right, alienating an important (maybe even critical) customer demographic. Meanwhile on the right nobody really seems impressed
Just pubbed to terminal: At the National Conservarism conference Peter Thiel just said the FBI and CIA should investigate whether Google has been infiltrated by Chinese intelligence
one thing to keep in mind when asking, "how could vcs be so dumb as to start a run on their best banking partner"...these guys are OBSESSED with apocalyptic risk. they see it everywhere. 1/
for
@bw
i wrote about the campaign to pin FTX on Gary Gensler, and the incredibly self-service line from crypto boosters that all they need is "regulatory clarity"
we brought our son home from the NICU today. Hard to express how grateful we are to the doctors and nurses who risked their own health to care for him. Makes me feel optimistic about the skill and kindness of our health care workers--and about pretty much everything else
to date, Joe Bankman and Barbara Fried -- fixtures at Stanford with powerful friends in Silicon Valley and DC -- have mostly avoided scrutiny. But their in role the creation of FTX, especially in the case of Bankman, has been greater than previously reported 2/
oh, did it seem a little funny that the Valley's top venture capital firm put ~$200m into weird derivatives exchange based in a tax haven? well its a little less weird when you find out that a former SEC commissioner, stanford prof (and friend of family, natch) told them to 5/
This by
@jwherrman
is really good. Leave aside the apparent dishonesty in the scarjo thing, and you’re left with a company that working really hard to market a product of questionable value and utility
I don’t think people have really grappled with how frequently these ai systems just make stuff up, nor with the problems this presents for search…and lots of other proposed applications
At Microsoft's demo last week, the "new Bing" incorrectly summarized a Gap financial statement and provided wrong info on pet vacuums and Mexico City nightlife (
@dkbrereton
/ DKB Blog)
After years of research and hundreds of interviews, my book, The Contrarian, is out in the world! I'm proud of this thing and I think its important, and I hope you'll consider buying it. THREAD!
Hi!
@danprimack
wrote about this this morning, so think I'm safe to share. My book, The Contrarian, is coming out in September! I've been working on it for years and now you can order it
I deeply regret my participation in the board's actions. I never intended to harm OpenAI. I love everything we've built together and I will do everything I can to reunite the company.
Really interesting and thorough piece by
@SilvermanJacob
on David Sacks who seems to be trying to set himself up as a mini Thiel and a (the?) key Musk whisperer
boring professional update: i'm going back to writing full time. will be doing a column/newsletter thing for
@bw
and writing features. Much love to the writers who put up with me
remember that FTX super bowl ad -- the one that told you you were missing out if you didn't put money into an offshore crypto casino? Bankman was in it 3/
this piece by
@sarahfrier
is excellent and explains well why Musk and Zuck's efforts to prioritize engagement over all else have been so craven. We traded a "global town square" for "tiktok for text." The result is ugly.
this is a great scoop from
@markgurman
and should be another data point in the argument that for all the hype around LLMs, there are real questions about how valuable they are, esp given the cost of running them
musk's explanation of his free speech plans sounds, actually pretty limited. "if there are tweets that are wrong and bad those should be deleted or made invisible." Lotta editorial judgement there!
Bankman has portrayed himself as basically working on philanthropy and has talked in vague terms about crypto as a tool for financial empowerment. Actually...4/
One big takeaway for me while reporting my book is that Thiel cares less about ideas and more about money than his fans (and enemies) realize. He’s done this kind of this many times in his career.
So let me get this straight - Thiel was calling Warren Buffett a “sociopathic Grandpa” for shunning Bitcoin he was dumping billions on his unwitting fans. This is what psychologists call”projection”
i know that this is prolly just proof that i'm an AI future murderer or whatever, but these dudes should really try reading some literature thats not Harry Potter