Over the last two newsletters (three, if you include my reply to Google’s “rebuttal” of the Prabhakar Raghavan newsletter), I’ve made the case that while rot economics are responsible for making technology products manifestly worse, this transformation was only possible thanks to … | Continue reading
Google has chosen to send a response to my article to Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable. Here is my response. (1) On the March 2019 core update claim in the piece: This is baseless speculation. The March 2019 core update was designed to improve the quality of our search | Continue reading
This is the story of how Google Search died, and the people responsible for killing it. The story begins on February 5th 2019, when Ben Gomes, Google’s head of search, had a problem. Jerry Dischler, then the VP and General Manager of Ads at Google, and Shiv Venkataraman, | Continue reading
Last week, Meta revealed (in a motion trying to dismiss an FTC anti-monopoly lawsuit) that Instagram made an astonishing $32.4 billion in advertising revenue in 2021. That figure becomes even more shocking when you consider Google's YouTube made $28.8 billion in the same period. … | Continue reading
As I previously warned, artificial intelligence companies are running out of data. A Wall Street Journal piece from this week has sounded the alarm that some believe AI models will run out of "high-quality text-based data" within the next two years in what an AI researcher called … | Continue reading
Money can't buy happiness, but it can get you pretty damn close. As the second richest man alive, Elon Musk should be rolling electric coal down Rodeo Drive in a cybertruck, smugly aware of the fact that, despite what the haters say, he's kind of | Continue reading
Hello! I have been deliberately not dropping every episode of my new show iHeartRadio/Cool Zone Media show Better Offline onto the newsletter feed, as I don't want to start sending you two emails a week, or make you feel like you're being spammed. I am | Continue reading
Last week, the Wall Street Journal published a 10-minute-long interview with OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, with journalist Joanna Stern asking a series of thoughtful yet straightforward questions that Murati failed to satisfactorily answer. When asked about what data was used to train … | Continue reading
Sometime this month, Reddit will go public at a valuation of $6.5bn. Select Redditors were offered the chance to buy stock at the initial listing price, which it hasn’t announced yet but is expected to be in the range of $31-34 per share. Regardless of the actual | Continue reading
As I wrote a year ago in The Rot Economy (and as I argued on the first episode of my podcast Better Offline), I believe that both public and private markets have become decoupled from the concept of "good business," ruled instead by a hunger for the eternal | Continue reading
Episodes 1 and 2 Out Now Hello everybody! A short newsletter today to announce the launch of my new podcast Better Offline - my new tech show from iHeartRadio and Cool Zone Media. It's a weekly exploring the tech industry’s influence and manipulation of society - | Continue reading
Please scroll to the bottom for news on my next big project, Better Offline, coming this Wednesday! Last week, Sam Altman debuted OpenAI's "Sora," a text-to-video AI model that turns strings of text into full-blown videos, much like how OpenAI's DALL-E turns text into | Continue reading
I’ve spent a lot of time with the Vision Pro, turning my experience into both the newsletter you’re reading and one of the first two episodes of my upcoming iHeartRadio podcast Better Offline. I wrote the majority of this newsletter on the Vision Pro itself, though | Continue reading
Last week, Apple opened pre-orders for the Vision Pro, a $3500 “spatial computer” that is its first real “new” thing since the Apple Watch, and arguably its most notable release since the iPad or iPhone. Ming-Chi Kuo, one of the few truly reliable Apple analysts, estimates | Continue reading
Amongst the sludge of AI-powered everything at last week’s Consumer Electronics Show, a robbery took place. “Dudesy —” allegedly a “comedy artificial intelligence” with its own podcast — put out an hour-long “impression” of Ge … | Continue reading
Amongst the sludge of AI-powered everything at last week’s Consumer Electronics Show, a robbery took place. “Dudesy —” allegedly a “comedy artificial intelligence” with its own podcast — put out an hour-long “impression” of George Carlin, in which it had “listened to all of Carli … | Continue reading
At the end of a newsletter back in 2022, I retold a story shared by Michael B. Tager about a situation in a crust-punk bar, where he watched somebody get thrown out almost immediately on entering: The patron, a pleasant-seeming guy wearing what seemed to be regular punk gear, | Continue reading
Editor’s note: Platformer has announced it will leave Substack and be moving to Ghost next week. Casey did the right thing. The following story ran January 11 2024. At the end of a newsletter back in 2022, I retold a story shared by Michael B. Tager about a situation in a crust-p … | Continue reading
Read inside for a special announcement... | Continue reading
Read inside for a special announcement... | Continue reading
Editor’s Note: Due to the length of this piece, you may need to click a button to read the whole thing in your email. Every single stupid, loathsome, and ugly story in tech is a result of the fundamentally broken relationship between venture capital and technology. And, as … | Continue reading
This week I’m joined by Youtube influencer Steve Linkowski, better known as UrinatingTree. We discussed Steve’s transition from politics coverage to sports, how capitalism has made sports worse, and whether we may see the end of contact football. Even if you’re … | Continue reading
Editor’s Note: Due to the length of this piece, you may need to click a button to read the whole thing in your email. Sorry! Last week, dressed like a destitute bombardier, Elon Musk delivered a stark message to advertisers: don’t want to advertise on X? | Continue reading
This week I’m joined by labor and politics journalist Hamilton Nolan. Hamilton joins me to discuss the American social contract. We dig into what the hell a CEO does, to how workers’ livelihoods have been affected by the gig economy, outsourcing, and now, AI. | Continue reading
We have now entered the age of consequence, where the results of foolish decisions have compounded upon themselves so viciously that entire institutions are crumbling in front of us. As I predicted a year ago, Binance and Changpeng “CZ” Zhao have faced a massive recko … | Continue reading
Listen now (17 mins) | This week I’m joined by journalist David Weigel. David joins me to chat about how the general public’s ability to process news has deteriorated, as well as why many people feel things are getting worse when economic indicators say otherwise. The … | Continue reading
Listen now (16 mins) | This week I’m joined by journalist Zeke Faux, author of the Washington Post and Financial Times best book of the year “Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall.” Zeke joins me to chat about seeing first-hand the da … | Continue reading
Editor’s Note: Due to the length of this piece, you may need to click a button to read the whole thing in your email. Sorry! On Friday, Sam Altman was unceremoniously fired as CEO of OpenAI, with the board citing that he was “not consistently candid with his communica … | Continue reading
It’s been about a year since Sam Bankman-Fried’s empire of dirt collapsed, leading to him being found guilty of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy earlier this month. We won’t find out until March 2024 exactly how many of the potential 110 years he’ll se … | Continue reading
Listen now (16 mins) | This week I’m joined by rock & roll musician Max Collins of Eve 6. Max joins me to talk about his unusual rise to fame after his success in the ‘90s, what makes alt rock unique, and the band’s choice to not put their music up on streaming … | Continue reading
In one of my first jobs, I remember the oppressive feeling that enveloped me as I walked through the door. One’s presence wasn’t simply noted, it was actively surveilled, incentivizing people to seem as busy as possible rather than actually doing anything. The practic … | Continue reading
Listen now (16 mins) | Welcome to episode 14 of 15 Minutes In Hell. This week I’m joined by journalist Ken Klippenstein. Ken joins me to chat about his unusual news beat that ranges from the FBI to UFO “authorities”, the future of Twitter, and the truth behind t … | Continue reading
Back in November 2022, I tried to warn everybody that something bad was coming at the scale of an FTX, something that would almost exclusively harm US investors, and I was sadly right. In February 2021, Gemini (one of the largest and most respected US cryptocurrency exchanges) be … | Continue reading
Listen now (19 mins) | This week I’m joined by the creator of the Xbox - Seamus Blackley. Seamus shares a brief yet spirited tale of going from begging Bill Gates for a middle management job to successfully pitching, inventing and launching the Xbox, as well as his current … | Continue reading
A stick man flashing a fine-lined smile, junk bond trader trying to sell a sucker a stock Rich man in a poor man’s clothes, the permanent installment of the daily dose Elon Musk is not an inventor, a creator or an innovator. He is not a thoughtful leader or steward of compa … | Continue reading
Listen now (16 mins) | Hello and welcome to the 12th episode of 15 Minutes In Hell. Today I’m joined by Kari Byron, former Mythbuster and director of the National STEM Challenge. We discussed what it takes to go from introvert to a television host, how to help kids learn to … | Continue reading
Marc Andreessen, a man worth nearly two billion dollars, a man who lives in a $177 million compound in Malibu, a man who has been on the board of Facebook and Hewlett-Packard and who likely hasn’t experienced a struggle in decades, wants you to believe he’s a victim. | Continue reading
Listen now (16 mins) | This week I’m joined by former BBC journalist and author Rory Cellan-Jones. Rory shares his thoughts on the state of social media, what it’s like having a mega-famous dog, and his book - Ruskin Park: Sylvia, Me and the BBC. The 15 Minutes In Hel … | Continue reading
Listen now (16 mins) | This week I’m joined by Molly White (Web3 is Going Just Great). She joins to share her observations as a longtime crypto-critic, discussing who the biggest scumbags are in the world of crypto, and if the blockchain really has any value at all. The 15 … | Continue reading
Most companies eventually fail. The only real variable is the speed in which they do so.. While the slow declines of Blackberry and Nokia (at least, as consumer brands) were agonizing to watch, both were a result of a lack of foresight and an outright failure to recognize the sig … | Continue reading
Listen now (17 mins) | This week I’m joined by journalist David Roth of Defector. It’s one of my favourite episodes - and I think you’ll get a lot out of it even if you’re not a sports fan. We spoke about the morality of watching the NFL, how things could … | Continue reading
Two years ago, I remember reading multiple people emphatically telling their readers that NFTs (non-fungible tokens) would change everything — that people “wanted” to own a unique digital object, and indeed that said uniqueness would make pictures of apes | Continue reading
Listen now (16 mins) | Welcome to the eighth episode of 15 Minutes In Hell. Today’s guest is political commentator and news anchor Chris Hayes of MSNBC. We talked about the growth of cult-like grifters in the media, how American democracy is in a trust crisis, and how doing … | Continue reading
Listen now (20 mins) | Welcome to the seventh episode of 15* Minutes In Hell. Today’s guest is Twitch streamer and political commentator Hasan Piker. I talked about how Hasan sees his role in the political ecosystem, the flop-era of Tucker Carlson, and how men like Andrew T … | Continue reading
I have rewritten the lede of this newsletter eleven times, trying to find the words to encapsulate an unavoidable truth: Elon Musk is dangerous to society. As a result of our market-driven government and compliant media, Musk has caused (and will continue to cause) human sufferin … | Continue reading
Listen now (16 mins) | Welcome to the sixth episode of 15 Minutes In Hell. Today’s guest is astrophysicist and author Neil deGrasse Tyson. We talked about his very particular online critiques, whether or not artificial intelligence is a threat to society, and, of course, hi … | Continue reading
How venture capital fattened up startup culture to sell on the public markets — and brought out the bolt gun when things got tough | Continue reading
Listen now (17 mins) | Welcome to the fifth episode of 15 Minutes In Hell. Today’s guest is TV writer David Slack (credits include Person of Interest, Teen Titans, Law & Order, Lie To Me, Jackie Chan Adventures, and Dark Crystal), who was also on the Writer’s Guild of … | Continue reading