No, We Don’t Live in a F—ing Simulation!
It's a fun thought experiment: what if the universe is a simulation, and nothing around us is real? But lately, some of the most powerful people in tech (and politics)…
Can we avoid the enshittification of clean-energy tech?
In this episode, I chat with author Cory Doctorow about "enshittification," his viral term for how digital platforms and smart technologies inevitably get worse over time. We explore how monopoly…
Microsoft deal would reopen Three Mile Island nuclear plant to power AI
Pennsylvania’s dormant Three Mile Island nuclear plant would be brought back to life to feed the voracious energy needs of Microsoft under an unprecedented deal announced Friday in which the…
Tumblr and WordPress to Sell Users’ Data to Train AI Tools
Tumblr and Wordpress are preparing to sell user data to Midjourney and OpenAI, according to a source with internal knowledge about the deals and internal documentation referring to the deals. …
Nightshade, the free tool that ‘poisons’ AI models, is now available for artists to use
It’s here: months after it was first announced, Nightshade, a new, free software tool allowing artists to “poison” AI models seeking to train on their works, is now available for…
James Bridle on our New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future
As the world around us increases in technological complexity, our understanding of it diminishes. Underlying this trend is a single idea: the belief that our existence is understandable through computation,…
Our Opinions Are Correct: Why Silicon Valley is doomed to misunderstand the future, with Dr. Joy Buolamwini
Silicon Valley markets itself as the place where futures are born, and yet tech corporations have no real understanding of where our civilizations are headed. We are wrapping up our…
The Best Substack Alternatives
It would be hard to leave Substack, granted. They are a very good, normal company—one that does not at all enable extremism (wink.) Everything Substack does is justified, and good,…
CEO Chris Best on racism on Substack
Substack CEO Chris Best on why racism is ok on substack
Amazon, Ashton Kutcher And America’s Surveillance Of The Sex Trade
“The cops can go to the media and say, ‘We were able to successfully rescue this woman from sex trafficking,’ when, no, you just spied on a chick,”