I admit, this is an innovation I did not see coming: Silicon Valley has invented the philosophical zombie from the classic thought experiment “lol how crazy would it be if there were a philosophical zombie.” Until recently, the philosophical zombie was a concept closely associated with Australian philosopher David Chalmers, who defines it as “someone […]
Prediction markets are working to ingratiate themselves with mainstream news and culture: The Golden Globes broadcast in January was plastered with Polymarket odds, the AP is licensing election data to Kalshi, and a partnership between Polymarket and Substack means more prediction market data in newsletters. Some prediction market exchanges are now attempting to strike deals […]
Today, let’s talk about the big Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger. This deal could reshape all of media and entertainment if and when it closes. That’s still an if, which we’ll come back to — right now Paramount head David Ellison is very much acting like he’s over the finish line after outbidding Netflix, which walked […]
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has a problem: It’s not very good at policing insider trading. And insider trading has become a pressing concern for prediction markets. Even Kalshi’s recently publicized fines for insider trading – levied against a politician and an employee of YouTube influencer MrBeast – were effectively self-policing. The exchange says it’s […]
Today, I’m talking with Jim Lanzone, who is the CEO of Yahoo. It’s basically impossible to sum up the Yahoo story, but the short version of it is that a long time ago Yahoo paid Google to run the search box on its website, and basically everything has gone sideways since. You’ll hear Jim refer […]
David Sacks, the White House’s AI and crypto czar, has warned that a continued war in Iran could be catastrophic. On the All In podcast, Sacks said that “we should try to find the off-ramp.” He expressed concern that Iran could demolish oil and gas infrastructure across the Middle East, but more alarmingly, that it […]
In September, Donald Trump claimed that “the United States is getting a tremendous fee” for brokering the TikTok deal. Now sources tell the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times that fee is expected to be in the range of $10 billion. The money is supposedly being paid by new investors, including Oracle and […]
According to Reuters, Meta is looking to offset spending on AI and data centers with a massive round of layoffs. Sources familiar with the matter say the company could lay off as much as 20 percent of its staff, eliminating roughly 15,800 positions. That would be the largest series of layoffs at the company since […]
It’s only been a year since Digg founder Kevin Rose, Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian, and a few others announced the link-sharing site would relaunch, promising a “social discovery built by communities, not by algorithms.” Now, two months after opening its Reddit-like platform to the public, Digg is announcing a “hard reset” that’s shutting down operations […]
Jay Graber became the first CEO of Bluesky in 2021 when the network and its AT Protocol spun out from life as a Twitter research project to go independent, but now she’s leaving that role, as reported previously by Wired. While venture capitalist and former Automattic CEO Toni Schneider steps in as interim CEO until […]