OH MY GOD

"[T]he best productivity hack in the world is simply liking your job. If you enjoy what you do, you will find ways to do it, and in 2025 almost any software remotely suited to the purpose will be more than good enough." - @caseynewton.bsky.social www.platformer.news/productivity...

NEW: Reporters at @calmatters.org and @themarkup.org ‬ found dozens of data brokers hiding opt-out tools from search results. US senator Maggie Hassan is now pressing top offenders to disclose their practices and pledge to improve access to privacy controls. By me @wired.com

Congratulations to greenhouse gas

Still thinking about this illiterate line in the Trump WSJ lawsuit

SCOOP: Elon Musk’s associates at DOGE have begun vacating their headquarters at the General Services Administration in Washington, DC, and they’re leaving behind an apocalyptic scene of toddler play sets, mattresses, and pillows. We got photos. 👇

A new Pew study offers data to back up what we have suspected for a while now: AI answers are draining all the traffic out of the web www.platformer.news/google-ai-ov...

New in The Important Work: Jenny Lederer and Jennifer Trainor share thoughts about blue books, AI in the classroom, and the value of human interaction after attending an OpenAI webinar sponsored by CSU. theimportantwork.substack.com/p/even-opena... Illustration from @betterimagesofai.bsky.social

This report may have been a good time to note Marc will be testifying live in court this week along with several board members on the largest privacy settlement ever and allegations of insider trading for Zuckerberg and a coverup to protect him. Sandberg, Zuckerberg next week @nitasha.bsky.social

NEW: In a forceful memo, OpenAI’s chief research officer has responded to Meta poaching the company’s employees: “Someone has broken into our home.” By @zoeschiffer.bsky.social www.wired.com/story/openai...

Exclusive: OpenAI Starts Selling ChatGPT at a Discount, Hurting Microsoft Microsoft Loses Copilot Deals After OpenAI Discounts ChatGPT Read more Aaron Holmes and Sri Muppidi 👇 www.theinformation.com/articles/ope...

Remember how the Twitter bird sign from its old SF office was auctioned for $34,000 earlier this year? I can exclusively report the fate of Larry: his new owners, a marketplace startup, blew him up in the Nevada desert (with Cybertrucks on the scene) in a massive, fiery spectacle

LOL yeah I hope they're raising equity. *MUSK’S XAI BURNING THROUGH $1 BILLION A MONTH AS COSTS PILE UP

Fantastic and troubling piece by @kashhill.bsky.social about AI chatbots leading people into delusional behavior. One man whose wife was affected said he doesn’t think the AI companies fully understand what they are doing. “You ruin people’s lives,” he said. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/13/t...

“‘Information warfare is always a symptom of conflict, stoked often by those in power to fuel their own illiberal goals … It confuses audiences, scares people who might otherwise have empathy for the cause and divides us when we need solidarity most.’”

Sources: Meta agrees to take a 49% stake in Scale AI for $14.8B, in a deal that gives cash to Scale's shareholders and makes Alexandr Wang a top Meta executive (Cory Weinberg/The Information) Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

Here's Kate's perspective from the NYT. On the WaPo biz/tech team, we reporters often write multiple potential headlines and then test them among ourselves in a Slack channel. Sometimes overruled by homepage / editors but it's cool being able to focus-group ideas and often they end up way better

“The paper cited is not a real paper that I or my colleagues were involved with.” Just amazing from @notusreports.bsky.social www.notus.org/health-scien...

It was just last month that Musk and the White House denied a Politico report that Musk was leaving in May, calling the report "garbage" and "fake news."

Producer of potential reality show in which immigrants complete to be U.S. citizens says “This isn’t ‘The Hunger Games’ for immigrants... This is not, ‘Hey, if you lose, we are shipping you out on a boat out of the country.’” www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

Sad to see humans taking the jobs of AI fortune.com/2025/05/09/k...

Some news: I'm leaving the Wall Street Journal today, after a decade covering Facebook, then tech + politics, and now AI. I’ve reported from so many corners of Silicon Valley but mostly its white-hot center. It’s been a huge privilege. 🧵

New: the relationship bw MSFT and OpenAI is now very strained w/ the two sides arguing over: — OpenAI's access to compute / advanced chips, — MSFT's access to OpenAI's tech and — how close OpenAI is to AGI and if that’s even a thing Gift link: www.wsj.com/tech/ai/sam-...

WSJ: “The Trump rout is taking on historic dimensions.” www.wsj.com/finance/inve...

As I fly to DC for the FTC v. Meta antitrust trial tomorrow, a detail in our preview story that hasn’t been reported before: “Meta now makes more than $10 billion a year from ads on Facebook and Instagram that point people to chat with business accounts on WhatsApp”

When scholars of authoritarianism and fascism leave U.S. universities because of the deteriorating political situation here, we should really worry.

Today, @mattbarnum.bsky.social and I detailed how educators are still struggling with the fallout of AI in their classroom with students surrounded by a thicket of conflicting advice about AI’s use as well as companies explicitly trying to get them to cheat via social media ads.

Low key the funniest thing I’ve written in a while. www.wsj.com/livecoverage...

A new White House executive order on AI directs the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense to identify federal sites owned by the agencies to lease to the private sector for building “gigawatt-scale AI data centers.” sherwood.news/power/white-...

Reporter: Meta announced they will stop doing fact checks.. Trump: I think they’ve come a long way Reporter: Do you think he’s responding to the threats you’ve made in the past Trump: Probably

We’ve been hearing so much about reasoning lately but what happened to OpenAI’s big project: GPT-5 aka Orion? It was to be a “significant leap forward” per Altman. Microsoft expected to see GPT-5 in mid-2024, per sources. But one problem after another popped up which… www.wsj.com/tech/ai/open...

Full Trump Media response to me for this story: “This ridiculously tendentious story ... is a great example of what Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos now describes as the media’s ‘long and continuing fall in credibility’—in fact, it’s hard to explain how Bezos hasn’t fired you yet" wapo.st/3UVnY1G

Hey hi hello, I’m popping back on Bluesky. Is this place as fun as everyone says? For new followers: 👋 I started my career as a temp, writing market reports during the financial crisis. I covered autos after the bailout + social media in the first Trump era. Now I cover AI for the WSJ. Ping me 🤙

One of my wise friends once said of UNDERCOVER BOSS, “The final frontier of corporate greed is demanding to be loved.” I think about it a lot.

Sources, court filings, and internal documents detail how a flourishing partnership between Sam Altman and Elon Musk turned sour, culminating in Musk's lawsuit (Wall Street Journal) Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

In testimony Monday, Microsoft CEO Nadella suggested he was overly enthusiastic about ChatGPT’s potential earlier. “Yeah, I mean, look, that’s called exuberance of someone who has like 3% share, that maybe I’ll have 3.5% share,” Nadella said. www.wsj.com/tech/ai/micr...

It’s Hard Fork Friday! This week, SBF goes to jail. Then: Wharton Prof. Ethan Mollick on how AI is changing college. PLUS: your criticisms of our AV activist interview https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/18/podcasts/sam-bankman-fried-goes-to-jail-back-to-school-with-ai-and-a-self-driving-car-update.html

Google co-founder Sergey Brin has returned to the company almost full time, sitting with AI researchers developing the Gemini model in Mountain View. And also hosting a weekly AI paper discussion group! From @MilesKruppa & me. https://www.wsj.com/articles/sergey-brin-google-ai-gemini-1b5aa41e

Dipping back into the social-media beat for a second! https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-mark-zuckerberg-cage-fight-b71fa4ff

Together, but not exclusive: Microsoft and OpenAI’s open relationship has yielded benefits but also sparks confusion & conflict behind the scenes. Our story: https://www.wsj.com/articles/microsoft-and-openai-forge-awkward-partnership-as-techs-new-power-couple-3092de51

An analysis of more than 5,000 images created with Stable Diffusion found that it takes racial and gender disparities to extremes — worse than those found in the real world. Here's what @leonardonclt.bsky.social and I found: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-generative-ai-bias/?terminal=true

NEW: Tesla crashes in Autopilot nearly triple, data shows. The latest tally: 736 crashes, 17 deaths. "Tesla is having more severe — and fatal — crashes than people in a normal data set." https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/06/10/tesla-autopilot-crashes-elon-musk/ w/ @jeremybmerrill.com

The British Library deleted a thread about a species of fish that can change its sex after hundreds of transphobic responses

Generative AI startups, investors are scrounging around for computational firepower. Per one founder, “It’s like toilet paper during the pandemic.” https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-ai-boom-runs-on-chips-but-it-cant-get-enough-9f76f554

Amazing reporting from the Washington Post's Hannah Natanson, who looked at requests to ban books in more than 100 school districts across the country, and found that the majority of them were filed by .... 11 people. https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/05/23/lgbtq-book-ban-challengers/

The inequality of surveillance, as told through public housing. In one city, "residents are about 25 times more likely to have their daily lives observed by government-controlled cameras" https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/05/16/surveillance-cameras-public-housing/