Podcasts about Andreessen

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Best podcasts about Andreessen

Latest podcast episodes about Andreessen

Bills Football
01-18 Joe Andreessen end-of-season

Bills Football

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 18, 2026 2:24


01-18 Joe Andreessen end-of-season full 144 Sun, 18 Jan 2026 16:45:00 +0000 dJAjscjWWYGBPxIqbHIhJ3yOJlp4ueG7 nfl,football,buffalo bills,joe andreessen,sports Bills Football nfl,football,buffalo bills,joe andreessen,sports 01-18 Joe Andreessen end-of-season Every Play, every game right here on WGR Sports Radio 550, WGR550.com. The official voice of the Buffalo Bills! Football On-Demand Audio Presented by Northwest Bank, For What's Next. 2024 © 2021 Audacy, Inc. Sports False https://player.amperwavepodcasting.com?feed-link=https%3A%

a16z
AI Will Save The World with Marc Andreessen and Martin Casado

a16z

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 5, 2026 63:10


Originally published in June 2023, this conversation features a16z cofounder Marc Andreessen following the release of his nearly 7,000-word essay arguing that AI does not threaten our humanity. In a wide-ranging discussion with a16z General Partner Martin Casado, Andreessen expands on why he believes AI can dramatically amplify human potential, why its future should be shaped by open markets rather than regulation, and why fears of existential catastrophe are misplaced. Rather than destroying the world, he argues, AI may help save it.Read “Why AI Will Save the World”: https://a16z.com/2023/06/06/ai-will-save-the-world/  Resources:Follow Martin on X: https://x.com/martin_casadoFollow Marc on X: https://x.com/pmarca Stay Updated:If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, subscribe, and share with your friends!Find a16z on X: https://twitter.com/a16zFind a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16zListen to the a16z Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5bC65RDvs3oxnLyqqvkUYXListen to the a16z Podcast on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a16z-podcast/id842818711Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.  Stay Updated:Find a16z on XFind a16z on LinkedInListen to the a16z Show on SpotifyListen to the a16z Show on Apple PodcastsFollow our host: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Bills Football
01-04 Joe Andreessen Postgame

Bills Football

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 5, 2026 2:13


01-04 Joe Andreessen Postgame full 133 Mon, 05 Jan 2026 01:00:00 +0000 qlqcnXFB8XNxBdQvOZXdqvrwTsMDcqDz nfl,football,buffalo bills,new york jets,joe andreessen,sports Bills Football nfl,football,buffalo bills,new york jets,joe andreessen,sports 01-04 Joe Andreessen Postgame Every Play, every game right here on WGR Sports Radio 550, WGR550.com. The official voice of the Buffalo Bills! Football On-Demand Audio Presented by Northwest Bank, For What's Next. 2024 © 2021 Audacy, Inc. Sports False https://player.amperwavepodcasting.com?feed-link=https%3A%2F%2F

The Majority Report with Sam Seder
Best of 2025: Trump and Elon's CEO-Dictator Playbook w/ Gil Duran

The Majority Report with Sam Seder

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 26, 2025 114:05


It's another Best of 2025 episode on the Majority Report. On Today's program: Original air date: February 11, 2025 Gil Duran, journalist based in California, proprietor of the website The Nerd Reich, co-writer of the FrameLab newsletter, joins to discuss his recent piece in The Nerd Reich entitled "'Reboot' Revealed: Elon Musk's CEO-Dictator Playbook." https://x.com/gilduran76 https://www.thenerdreich.com/ https://www.theframelab.org/ https://www.thenerdreich.com/reboot-e... Gil Duran then joins, diving right into the concept of the Network State – an idea advanced by Big Tech's thought leader Curtis Yarvin and his billionaire buddies (Thiel, Andreessen, Musk, etc) that Tech CEOs should take advantage of the collapse of Nation States and democracy in favor of establishing corporate, CEO-run dictatorship, either by gutting and replacing existing governments or purchasing sovereign territories – as Duran unpacks his first introduction to this ideology with Silicon Valley's attempt to hijack San Francisco's political institutions, before parsing a little deeper through the recent, much more public discussions of this theory advanced by the likes of Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and Curtis Yarvin. After expanding on how we are already seeing the blueprint for a Network State in action, with Trump serving as a figurehead to a Tech CEO's gutting of our administrative and democratic institutions in favor of sycophants and centralized power, Duran looks to how this came to be the active ideology of the GOP so quickly, unpacking how the collapse of the Biden campaign and naming of JD Vance as Trump's VP opened up an opportunity for the Big Tech to step in, starting with Elon's massive public $300m investment and culminating in Yarvin's Reboot conference in San Francisco last September, exploring the obvious parallels between Big Tech's dictator obsession and the GOP's white nationalism and parsing through their unified scapegoating of "woke" and "DEI" in the leadup to the election to the point of completely dominating both mainstream and social media (bolstered by the financial leverage and ownership Big Tech has over those institutions). Next, Gil, Sam, and Emma unpack the major challenges facing the Trump-Musk regime, as Trump is on his last legs with no other favorable alternative in sight while any failure to maintain control over both political and media institutions potentially meaning a complete upending of their "progress," not to mention the obvious lack of preparedness (or ability) for this institution to deal with any real public or institutional opposition – the latter of which seems to be particularly hopeless among Democratic leadership – wrapping up by emphasizing the genuine insecurity this regime faces in the face of public scrutiny and touching on the potential danger of Big Tech's goal of replacing the US Dollar with Bitcoin. All that and more. The Congress switchboard number is (202) 224-3121. You can use this number to connect with either the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives. Check out IceRRT.com to find an ICE rapid response team nearest to you. Follow us on TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase Check out today's sponsors: DELETEME: Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to joindeleteme.com/MAJORITY and use promo code MAJORITY at checkout. SUNSET LAKE: Use coupon code "Left Is Best" (all one word) for 20% on their full lineup of CBD products to support your New Year wellness goals and Dry January aspirations at SunsetLakeCBD.com  Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech On Instagram: @MrBryanVokey Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on YouTube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com

Onramp Media
Mark Yusko: Everyone Says the Cycle Is Dead — Here's Why They're Wrong

Onramp Media

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 5, 2025 87:38


The Last Trade: Mark Yusko breaks down why the bitcoin cycle isn't dead, how futures and index flows “tame” BTC, why gold and oil remain the real benchmarks, and what this year's post-peak reset signals about an adversarial, institutional future.---

This Week in XR Podcast
VR Art, Immersive Storytelling, and Festival Culture Matter More Than Hype—Kent Bye, Voices of VR

This Week in XR Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 25, 2025 53:15


Kent Bye—host of the Voices of VR podcast and one of XR's most prolific journalists with over 1,680 published interviews—joins Charlie and Ted for a wide ranging conversation on the state of immersive storytelling, the ethics of AI, and why XR's future might be less about consumer headsets and more about embodied presence and human connection. Kent's decade-long commitment to documenting artists, creators, and developers at the ground level offers a counterpoint to hype-driven tech coverage, revealing the messy, vital ecosystem sustaining VR through festival circuits, location-based entertainment, and government-funded experimental projects that rarely make headlines.The conversation opens with Jeff Bezos's new AI robotics company Prometheus, Amazon's one-to-one human-robot workforce parity, and the implications of industrial AI automation. Ted shares his recent appearance on cinematographer Roger Deakins's podcast, where they discussed AI as a creative tool rather than a threat—a perspective Kent echoes when discussing artists who use AI to critique AI's "colonizing force." Kent explains his philosophy of "boots on the ground" journalism inspired by Knight Ridder's Iraq War reporting, focusing on developers and creators closest to the work rather than corporate press releases.Kent reveals why he's been lukewarm on smart glasses despite industry excitement—monocular displays give him headaches, his prescription is too strong for current hardware, and most importantly, there's no compelling narrative content yet. He contrasts this with VR's rich immersive storytelling at festivals like Venice Immersive, Sundance New Frontier, IDFA DocLab, and Tribeca, where government-funded European projects push the medium's boundaries in ways U.S. startups can't afford to explore. The discussion touches on Meta's Ray-Ban AI glasses, the impracticality of Meta's neural band input, and why Snap's developer platform remains the most interesting AR ecosystem despite limited consumer traction.Guest HighlightsPublished 1,682 VR interviews with 1,000+ unpublished; focused on artists, creators, and developers over corporate narratives.Covers 30+ hours of immersive content per festival at Venice, Sundance, IDFA DocLab—documenting ephemeral art that may never distribute widely.Started in 2014 after buying Oculus DK1; began by capturing oral history at Silicon Valley VR Conference's first gathering.Background as F-22 Raptor radar systems engineer turned documentary filmmaker—blends hardcore technical knowledge with artistic sensibility.Advocates for XR as antidote to smartphone addiction—technologies that foster embodied presence rather than infinite distraction.News HighlightsJeff Bezos launches Prometheus AI robotics company—focusing on industrial applications where enterprise adoption will drive innovation faster than consumer markets.Amazon hits one-to-one human-robot workforce parity—roughly 1 million humans, 1 million robots, with plans to shed 100K+ workers over five years.Warner Brothers settles with AI music company Udio—following Axel Springer, AP, and Fox licensing deals as New York Times litigation drags on.Enterprise AI startups raise massive rounds—Stut (collections automation, $29.5M from Andreessen), Albatross (real-time personalization, $12.5M), signaling vertical-specific AI SaaS wave.HaptX acquired by Ohio manufacturer—haptic glove company pivots to industrial training applications after years targeting consumer VR.Thanks to our sponsors Zappar and VitureNew episodes every Tuesday. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kapital
K191. Ricardo Calleja. Ética empresarial cristiana

Kapital

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 21, 2025 113:50


Las decisiones que toman las empresas tienen un impacto en la sociedad. Esta simple idea, con tan complejas ramificaciones, es el campo de estudio de Ricardo. El famoso artículo de Milton Friedman de 1970 en el NYT proclama que la única responsabilidad social de una empresa es generar beneficios, operando dentro del marco de la ley. Una empresa con beneficios, paga mejores salarios a sus trabajadores y mejora la vida a sus clientes. Estando yo de acuerdo con la doctrina Friedman, el debate sigue abierto.Ricardo es uno de los profesores en Thenomba, uno de los patrocinadores de Kapital.Kapital es posible gracias a sus colaboradores:⁠⁠Thenomba⁠⁠. La escuela que te hará encontrar tu propósito.⁠Thenomba es la escuela que nunca tuviste. Un viaje de 12 etapas para entender quién eres, cómo pensar, qué da sentido y cómo transformar el mundo. Cada día, en solo 20 minutos, te acompañan algunos de los mejores pensadores y creadores del ámbito hispano: de Prada, Higinio Marín, Izanami, Miguel Anxo Bastos, Recuenco y muchos más. En un formato revolucionario con videoclases, eventos, lecturas y comunidad, Thenomba cultiva la dimensión más olvidada de nuestra época: la cultural y espiritual. Una propuesta para quienes quieren dejar de ejecutar y empezar a crear. Descubre donde la IA jamás podrá llegar en thenomba.com.Si quieres formar parte de la primera promoción, utiliza el código KAPITAL para llevarte un 10% de descuento. Empiezan las clases el próximo lunes 8 de diciembre.Crescenta⁠. Invierte como imaginas.En Crescenta son especialistas en la inversión en capital privado. EQT, Cinven, Clearlake… coinvierte con los inversores institucionales más experimentados en fondos de las gestoras más reconocidas. Crescenta selecciona menos del 3% de los fondos de Private Equity que analiza, construyendo así un portfolio concentrado, diseñado para ofrecer diversificación con una única inversión. Desde 10.000 euros hasta millones, con una propuesta adaptada a todos los inversores. Private Equity Growth, Buyouts, secundarios, activos reales. Construye tu cartera con Crescenta.* Rentabilidades pasadas no implican rentabilidades futuras. Consulta riesgos y condiciones.Patrocina Kapital. Toda la información en este link.Índice:0:32 El tuit sobre la tecnología del Papa con respuesta de Andreessen.6:49 Javier cañada ya denunció en Kapital las apps con diseño luterano.21:14 Cómo enseñar a amar el proceso.28:44 “Ser un artista es hacer una cosa y solo una cosa”.37:30 Alcaraz se lo pasa bien jugando.45:52 Mad Max tiene alma.59:30 Prohibidas las fotografías en El Prado.1:07:53 Esconder los problemas en la tecnología.1:18:58 Ponerte en los zapatos del otro.1:26:41 ¿Cuál es el rol de las empresas en la sociedad?1:36:10 El consumismo no puede llenar.1:47:02 La importancia de recordar un poema.Apuntes:Ubi sunt? Ricardo Calleja.Vivir como si Dios existiera. Joseph Ratzinger.Frankenstein. Guillermo del Toro.Blue eye samurai. Michael Green.A fondo. Jorge Luís Borges.Utopía de un hombre que está cansado. Jorge Luis Borges.Mad Max: Fury road. George Miller.El enigma de la experiencia. Daniel Kahneman.Contra la empatía. Paul Bloom.The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits. Milton Friedman.Los domingos. Alauda Ruiz de Azúa.El arte de gastar de dinero. Morgan Housel.

The Data Minute
Don't Sleep on Seattle Startups | Vivek Ladsariya (Managing Director, Pioneer Square Labs)

The Data Minute

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 20, 2025 53:12


This week on The Data Minute, Peter sits down with Vivek Ladsariya, Managing Director at Pioneer Square Labs, for a deep dive into the Seattle startup ecosystem and the evolving world of venture studios.Vivek breaks down why Seattle has become the quiet giant of AI infrastructure, holding the second-highest concentration of AI talent in the US, and explains why the "locked up" talent at Amazon and Microsoft is finally breaking free. He also gives a candid assessment of the venture studio model, why many studios are "zombies," how AI is forcing them to pivot to a holding company structure, and why he actually encourages his Seattle founders to move to San Francisco.They also discuss the economics of small funds vs. mega funds, why signaling risk is real for follow-on rounds, and the "unscalable" things emerging managers must do to compete. Plus: a look at an investment fighting the loneliness epidemic and a rare story of a VC voluntarily taking dilution to save a cap table.Subscribe to Carta's weekly Data Minute newsletter: https://carta.com/subscribe/data-newsletter-sign-up/Explore interactive startup and VC data, with Carta's Data Desk: https://carta.com/data-desk/Chapters:00:00 – Intro: Seattle, Studios, and AI01:10 – Welcome Vivek Ladsariya02:22 – How mega funds warped the SF market05:08 – Inside Pioneer Square Labs06:40 – The "Bar Test": Speed of funding in SF vs. Seattle09:23 – Is Seattle talent trapped in Big Tech?11:46 – The "Cracked Kid" vs. The Seasoned Exec15:50 – Why Seattle is the #2 AI hub in the US17:02 – Why Vivek wants Seattle founders to move to SF20:10 – The case against remote work for startups21:53 – Why Seattle is the infrastructure capital of AI24:11 – The Venture Studio model: Why do VCs hate it?27:10 – How AI is disrupting the studio model29:00 – The HoldCo future: Hims & Hers and Liquid Death31:22 – Using a studio to compete with mega-fund platforms33:45 – Why PSL will never raise a mega fund36:16 – The psychology of follow-on reserves38:56 – Signaling risk: "Why didn't Andreessen invest?"41:30 – Secondaries vs. holding onto winners45:28 – Are LPs tired of mega funds?46:31 – Why you can't be a solo GP forever48:56 – Investing in the loneliness epidemic (Tin Can)50:43 – The most value-add thing a VC can do52:07 – OutroThis presentation contains general information only and eShares, Inc. dba Carta, Inc. (“Carta”) is not, by means of this publication, rendering accounting, business, financial, investment, legal, tax, or other professional advice or services, and is for informational purposes only.  This presentation is not a substitute for such professional advice or services nor should it be used as a basis for any decision or action that may affect your business or interests. © 2025 eShares, Inc., dba Carta, Inc. All rights reserved.

Keen On Democracy
Enstatification Over Enshittification: America as the New China

Keen On Democracy

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 9, 2025 38:55


My neologism-du-jour is “enstatification”. It's what is happening in MAGA America with Trump's Gaucho-style swaggering into the economy and his reversal to autarky and a back-to-the-future Monroe Doctrine. With the growth of a 19th-century style state power, America is trying to become the new China. Meanwhile, as Keith Teare notes in his latest That Was The Week newsletter, China is the new America in its embrace of technological innovation, particularly its trebling down on clean energy. That's why the “Too Big To Fail” debate about OpenAI is so heavily laced in irony. It's not just Sam Altman's chutzpah in trying to simultaneously become the punter and the house in his multi-trillion-dollar bet on ChatGPT. But it might actually reflect the new realities of second-quarter 21st-century America. We've been wondering for a while now what comes after neo-liberalism. In a neologism: enstatification. * China Has Already Won the Clean Energy Race—And That Changes Everything Keith Teare confirms what The Economist reported: China's clean energy capacity dwarfs America's by a decade or more. This isn't just about being green—it's about controlling the energy infrastructure that AI requires. China is becoming the 21st century's combination of America and Saudi Arabia.* Jensen Huang's Verdict: China Will Win the AI Race Because It Deregulates While America Bureaucratizes The NVIDIA CEO's provocative claim isn't just marketing—it reflects a real competitive advantage. While four Democratic states pursue AI regulation at the state level, Beijing is loosening regulations and slashing energy costs for data centers. Democracy's decentralization may be its Achilles heel in rapid technological competition.* OpenAI's “Too Big to Fail” Status Reveals the New Age of Enstatification Despite David Sacks' denials, OpenAI's strategic importance means it effectively cannot be allowed to fail—not because of systemic financial risk like 2008, but because of national competitiveness concerns. This isn't neoliberalism anymore; it's America's version of state capitalism.* The Real Convergence Isn't US vs China—It's Both Nations Embracing State-Directed Economies Trump's Intel investment, Sacks and Andreessen's push for centralized AI policy, and China's directed innovation represent a global trend toward what Keith calls state involvement in “procuring and distributing wealth.” Alibaba and Google, Huawei and NVIDIA—they're becoming more alike than different.* Keith Teare's Optimism: “Everyone Will Win” in the AI Economy—But Some Pigs Are More Equal: Keith argues this isn't a zero-sum race with winners and losers, but a rising tide lifting all boats through reciprocity. America and China will both capture massive value from AI's potential $26 trillion GDP boost by 2035. I remain skeptical: history suggests great power competitions don't end in shared prosperity.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Closing Bell
AI Trade Cooldown; Andreessen Horowtiz's Katherine Boyle on Private Markets; Lessons from Gig Earnings 11/7/25

Closing Bell

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 7, 2025 43:23


Are markets starting to rotate out of tech? Jim Paulsen of Paulsen Perspectives weighs in as investors reassess the rally. On Capitol Hill, Emily Wilkins tracks the latest on the government shutdown. Mark Mahaney of Evercore ISI breaks down gig economy earnings and investor takeaways. Dana Telsey dives into retail and consumer trends. Plus, Kathy Boyle of Andreessen Horowitz joins to discuss the cooling AI trade and OpenAI's leadership drama. Also featuring travel disruptions with Phil LeBeau and a look at next week's catalysts with Adam Crisafulli of Vital Knowledge. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

WBEN Extras
Bills linebacker and Buffalo native Joe Andreessen speaks on his memories of the current Highmark Stadium ahead of the final season playing at the stadium

WBEN Extras

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 31, 2025 5:59


Bills linebacker and Buffalo native Joe Andreessen speaks on his memories of the current Highmark Stadium ahead of the final season playing at the stadium full 359 Fri, 31 Oct 2025 08:30:00 +0000 iEueIj6X1l1MeK9AroqUlYjlb1JqUqao nfl,football,buffalo bills,news,wben,joe andreessen,highmark stadium,orchard park,remembering "the ralph" WBEN Extras nfl,football,buffalo bills,news,wben,joe andreessen,highmark stadium,orchard park,remembering "the ralph" Bills linebacker and Buffalo native Joe Andreessen speaks on his memories of the current Highmark Stadium ahead of the final season playing at the stadium Archive of various reports and news events 2024 © 2021 Audacy, Inc. News

Business Pants
OpenAI goes porn, Jamie Dimon says things, Best Buy CEO can't sleep, no more shareholder proposals

Business Pants

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 15, 2025 30:12


DAMIONCEOsSayingStuffIn our 'Hey Ma, put down your Word Search, I found a CEO that isn't intentionally trying to hold Americans back. Tell Dad!' headline of the week. Jeff Bezos warns Gen Z to think twice before dropping out of college to become the next Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg: ‘These people are the exception' In our 'CEO haunted by inequality ghost she personally feeds' headline of the week. Best Buy's CEO says growing spending power gap between affluent and poor ‘keeps me up at night'In our 'Breaking News: Jamie Dimon bravely warns world about things being complicated' headline of the week. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon Says There's a 'Heightened Degree of Uncertainty'In our 'Economy feels great, say men who own it' headline of the week. There's a shocking disparity between how high-income and low-income earners feel about the economyIn our 'Meta removes Facebook page where billionaire discovers sharing' headline of the week. As billionaire wealth soars $33 trillion, Mark Cuban says it's time for workers to receive a cut of their employers' success in the form of stocks MATTIn our 'The SEC, which has steadily been rolling back regulations, finally moves to strengthen protections for investors... wait, what? This is in the PHILLIPINES? THEY have an SEC??' headline of the week. Analysts see stronger transparency from SEC's proposed ownership disclosure rulesIn our 'The Phillipino SEC combines investor protections with rollbacks on shareholder proposals... Oh, wait... This is the SEC in AMERICA?' headline of the week. SEC Chair Speech Could Spell Death Knell for Non-Binding Shareholder ProposalsIn our 'In his speech, SEC chair Paul Atkins aimed to get back to 2007. I mean, 2007 was pretty good, but I feel like we should aim higher. Like 1999! That year was so good Prince wrote a song about it! 1972 was pretty good, too. And remember 1881? Does anyone know if anything bad happened the next year for any of these years?' headline of the week. The Rules of Investing Are Being Loosened. Could It Lead to the Next 1929?In our 'Even Antarctica is anti-woke' headline of the week. Researchers find methane leaking out of cracks in Antarctic seabedIn our 'I mean, where will they even find one? Finding merit in the meritocracy is HARD...' headline of the week. Disney ‘to hire white actress' after woke furyDAMIONBigTechBabyBroTsarsIn our 'Zuck bans the pitchfork emoji for inciting peasant rebellion' headline of the week. Meta removes Facebook page allegedly used to target ICE agents after pressure from DOJ In our 'AI finally achieves consciousness, immediately tries to sell you toilet paper' headline of the week. Walmart teams with OpenAI to let shoppers buy products through ChatGPTIn our 'College dropout forms safety council to protect world from thing he built' headline of the week. OpenAI forms expert council to bolster safety measures after FTC inquiry In our 'OpenAI promises safety, just as soon as it finishes monetizing danger' headline of the week. OpenAI unveils “wellness” council; suicide prevention expert not includedCrazyTimeIn our 'This headline speaks for itself' headline of the week. DOJ seizes $15 billion in bitcoin from massive ‘pig butchering' scam based in CambodiaMATTIn our 'In the book of Thiel, chapter 2, verse 14, Jesus said "AI is the anti-antichrist, and the antichrist is probably Greta Thunberg, so thou must build the AI to stop a 22 year old Swedish environmental activist lest she save a single whale." But I much prefer the book of Andreessen, chapter 1, verse 17, where the Lord decreed, "Thouest should wash the feet of the billionaires, for without them, you could not put dog ears on your selfies or cyber stalk 14 year old girls."' headline of the week. Audio of Peter Thiel's Secret Antichrist Seminar Just LeakedIn our 'If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does Sam Altman worry about it?' headline of the week. Sam Altman Says If Jobs Gets Wiped Out, Maybe They Weren't Even “Real Work” to Start WithIn our 'If Sam Altman worries about a sexy AI chatbot, does it grow a penis?' headline of the week. Sam Altman says ChatGPT is getting into erotica by the end of the yearIn our 'If a Gavin Newsom allows AI to have a penis, does a Sam Altman get a billion dollars?' headline of the week. Gavin Newsom Vetoes Bill to Protect Kids From Predatory AIIn our 'If a Jamie Dimon says so, does a sexy AI with a penis have a 30% chance to ruin the economy?' headline of the week. Jamie Dimon gets real on AI, sees stocks ‘in some form of bubble territory'

Bills Football
10-05 Joe Andreessen Postgame

Bills Football

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 6, 2025 0:43


10-05 Joe Andreessen Postgame bonus 43 Mon, 06 Oct 2025 03:45:02 +0000 o05jNozaxXbb8fnygEHdp064BrOJgXLu nfl,football,buffalo bills,new england patriots,joe andreessen,sports Bills Football nfl,football,buffalo bills,new england patriots,joe andreessen,sports 10-05 Joe Andreessen Postgame Every Play, every game right here on WGR Sports Radio 550, WGR550.com. The official voice of the Buffalo Bills! Football On-Demand Audio Presented by Northwest Bank, For What's Next. 2024 © 2021 Audacy, Inc. Sports False https://player.amperwavepodcasting.com?feed-link=https%3A%2F%2F

Psychedelics Today
PT 627 - Mary Carreon — Censorship, Psychedelic Media & Policy Crosscurrents

Psychedelics Today

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 30, 2025 71:31


Episode summary Joe and Mary dive into how platform censorship and shifting algorithms have reshaped psychedelic media, why DoubleBlind moved to a “newsletter-first” model, and what that's revealed about true audience engagement. They reflect on the post-2024 MDMA decision headwinds, state-level policy moves (wins and losses), and how funding, politics, and culture continue to reconfigure the field. They also explore alternatives to alcohol, chronic pain research, reciprocity around iboga/ibogaine, and lessons from PS25 (MAPS' Psychedelic Science 2025). Highlights & themes From platforms to inboxes: Social and search suppression (IG/FB/Google) throttled harm-reduction journalism; DoubleBlind's pivot to email dramatically improved reach and engagement. Post-MDMA decision reality: Investment cooled; Mary frames it as painful but necessary growth—an ecosystem “airing out” rather than a catastrophic pop. Policy pulse: Mixed year—some state measures stalled (e.g., MA), others advanced (e.g., NM; ongoing Colorado process). Rescheduling cannabis may add complexity more than clarity. Censorship paradox: Suppressing education makes use less safe; independent outlets need community support to keep harm-reduction info visible. Chronic pain & long COVID: Emerging overlaps and training efforts (e.g., Psychedelics & Pain communities) point beyond a psychiatry-only frame. Alcohol alternatives: Low-dose or occasional psychedelic use can shift habits for some; Mary stresses individual context and support beyond any single substance. Reciprocity & iboga: Rising interest (including from right-leaning funders) must include Indigenous consultation and fair benefit-sharing; pace of capitalism vs. community care is an active tension. PS25 field notes: Smaller, more manageable vibe than 2023; fewer “gold-rush” expectations; in-person dialogue beats online flame wars. Notable mentions DoubleBlind: Newsletter-first publishing; nurturing new writers and reported stories. Psychedelics & Pain Association / Clusterbusters: Community-driven models informing care and research (cluster headache protocols history). Books & media: Body Autonomy (Synergetic Press anthology); Joanna Kempner's work on cluster headaches - Psychedelic Outlaws; Lucy Walker's forthcoming iboga film. Compounds to watch: LSD (under-studied relative to MDMA), 2C-B, 5-MeO-DMT (synthetic focus), and broader Shulgin-inspired families.   Mary Carreon: [00:00:00] Okay, I'm gonna send it to my dad because he wants to know. Here Joe Moore: we go. Yeah, send it over. So, hi everybody. We're live Joe here with Mary Anne, how you doing today? Mary Carreon: I'm great Joe. How are you? Joe Moore: Lovely. I actually never asked you how to pronounce your last name does say it right? Mary Carreon: Yes, you did. You said it perfectly Joe Moore: lovely. Joe Moore: Um, great. So it's been a bit, um, we are streaming on LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitch X and Kick, I guess. Yeah. Kick meta. Meta doesn't let me play anymore. Um, Mary Carreon: you're in forever. Timeout. I got it. I got it. Yeah. Joe Moore: Yeah. I think they found a post the other day from 2017. They didn't like, I'm like, oh cool. Like neat, you Mary Carreon: know, you know. Mary Carreon: Yeah. That happened to me recently, actually. Uh, I had a post taken down from 2018 about, uh, mushroom gummies and yeah, it was taken down and I have strikes on my account now. So Joe Moore: Do you get the thing where they ask you if you're okay? Mary Carreon: Yes, with, but like with my searches though, [00:01:00] like if I search something or, or someone's account that has, uh, like mushroom or psychedelic or LSD or something in it, they'll be like, mm-hmm are you okay? Mary Carreon: And then it recommends getting help. So Joe Moore: it's like, to be fair, I don't know if I'm okay, but Yeah, you're like, probably not. I don't really want your help. Meta. Yeah. Mary Carreon: You're like, I actually do need help, but not from you. Thanks. Yeah, Joe Moore: yeah, yeah. Mary Carreon: So not from the techno fascists. Joe Moore: Oh, good lord. Yeah. Uh, we'll go there. Joe Moore: I'm sure. Mary Carreon: I know. I just like really dove right there. Sorry. Yeah. All right, so let's, Joe Moore: um, before we go, let's give people like a bit of, you know, high kicks on, on who is Mary, where you working these days and what are you doing? Mary Carreon: Yeah, thank you. My name is Mary Carryon and I am forever and first and foremost a journalist. Mary Carreon: I have been covering, I say the plant legalization spaces for the past decade. It's, it's been nine and a half years. Uh, on January 3rd it will be [00:02:00] 10 years. And I got my start covering cannabis, uh, at OC Weekly. And from there went to High Times, and from there went to Mary Jane, worked for Snoop Dogg. And then, uh, I am now. Mary Carreon: Double blind. And I have become recently, as of this year, the editor in chief of Double Blind, and that's where I have been currently sinking my teeth into everything. So currently, you know, at this moment I'm an editor and I am basically also a curator. So, and, and somebody who is a, uh, I guess an observer of this space more than anything these days. Mary Carreon: Um, I'm not really reporting in the same way that I was. Um, but still I am helping many journalists tell stories and, uh, I feel kind of like a story midwife in many ways. Just like helping people produce stories and get the, get the quotes, get the angles that need to be discussed, get the sentences structures right, and, um, uh, helping [00:03:00] sometimes in a visionary kind of, uh, mindset. Mary Carreon: So yeah, that's what I'm doing these days. Joe Moore: Oh, there it is. Oh, there you are. Love that. And um, you know, it's important to have, um, editors who kind of really get it from a lot of different angles. I love that we have a lot of alignment on this kind of, and the drug war thing and kind of let's, uh, hopefully start developing systems that are for people. Joe Moore: Yeah, absolutely. If you wanna just say that. Yeah, absolutely. Mary Carreon: Yeah, absolutely. Joe Moore: So, um, yeah, I almost 10 years in January. That's great. We um, it's so crazy that it's been that long. I think we just turned nine and a half, so we're maybe just a few, a few months shorter than your I love it. Plant medicine reporting career. Joe Moore: That's great. I love it. Um, yeah, so I think. I think one of the first times we chatted, [00:04:00] um, I think you were doing a piece about two cb Do you, do you have any recollection of doing a piece on two cb? Mary Carreon: I do, yes. Yes. Wait, I also remember hitting you up during an Instagram live and I was like, are you guys taking any writers? Mary Carreon: And you guys were like writers, I mean, maybe depending on the writer. Joe Moore: And I was like, I was like, I dunno how that works. Mary Carreon: Like me. Yeah. Joe Moore: Yeah. It was fun. It was fun to work with people like yourself and like get pieces out there. And eventually we had an awesome editor for a bit and that was, that was really cool to be able to like support young startup writers who have a lot of opinions and a lot of things to point out. Joe Moore: There's so much happening. Um, there was so much fraud in like wave one. Of kind of the psychedelic investment hype. There's still some, but it's lesser. Um, and it's really a fascinating space still. Like changing lives, changing not just lives, right? Like our [00:05:00] perspective towards nearly everything, right? Joe Moore: Yeah. Mary Carreon: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, it's interesting because the space has matured. It's evolved. It's different than it was even, what a, I mean, definitely nine years ago, but even five years ago, even four years ago, even last year, things are different. The landscape is different than it was a year ago. Mary Carreon: And I, it's, it's interesting to see the politics of things. It's interesting to see who has money these days given like how hard it is just to kind of survive in this space. And it's interesting just to. Bear witness to all of this going down because it really is a once in a lifetime thing. Nothing is gonna look the same as it does now, as it, uh, then it will like in a, in a year from now or anything. Mary Carreon: So it's really, yeah. It's interesting to take account of all of this Joe Moore: That's so real. Uh, maybe a little [00:06:00] too real, like it's serious because like with everything that's going on from, um, you know, governance, governments, ai Yes. Drug policy shifts. Drug tech shifts, yes. There's so much interesting movement. Um, yes. Joe Moore: You, you know, you, you kind of called it out and I think it's really actually worth discussing here since we're both here on the air together, like this idea that the psychedelic market, not idea, the lived experience of the psychedelic market having shifted substantially. And I, I, I think there's a lot of causes. Joe Moore: But I've never had the opportunity to really chat with you about this kind of like interesting downturn in money flowing into the space. Mm-hmm. Have you thought about it? Like what might the causes be? I'm sure you have. Mary Carreon: Yeah. Yeah, I have. Yeah. I've thought about it. I mean, it's hard. Well, I don't know. I am really not trying to point fingers and that's not what I'm [00:07:00] trying to do here. Mary Carreon: But I mean, I think a lot of people were really hopeful that the FDA decision last June, not last June, the previous June, a year ago, 2024, June was going to open the floodgates in terms of funding, in terms of, um. In terms of mostly funding, but also just greater opportunities for the space and, uh, greater legitimacy granted to the psychedelic medicine space. Mary Carreon: Mm. And for those who might not know what I'm talking about, I'm talking about the, uh, FDA decision to reject, uh, MDMA assisted therapy and, um, that whole, that whole thing that happened, I'm sure if it, you didn't even have to really understand what was going on in order to get wind of that wild situation. Mary Carreon: Um, so, so maybe, yeah. You probably know what I'm talking about, but I, I do think that that had a great impact on this space. Do I think it was detrimental to this space? [00:08:00] I don't think so. We are in a growth spurt, you know, like we are growing and growing pains happen when you are evolving and changing and learning and figuring out the way forward. Mary Carreon: So I think it was kind of a natural process for all of this and. If things had gone forward like while, yeah, there probably would be more money, there would be greater opportunity in this space for people wanting to get in and get jobs and make a living and have a life for themselves in this, in this world. Mary Carreon: I don't know if it was, I don't know if it would necessarily be for the betterment of the space in general for the long term. I think that we do have to go through challenges in order for the best case scenarios to play out in the future, even though that's difficult to say now because so many of us are struggling. Mary Carreon: So, but I, but I have hope and, and that statement is coming from a place of hope for the future of this space and this culture. Joe Moore: Yeah. It's, um, I'm with [00:09:00] you. Like we have to see boom bust cycles. We have to see growth and contraction just like natural ecosystems do. Mary Carreon: Absolutely, absolutely. It has to be that way. Mary Carreon: And if it's not that way, then ifs, if. It's, it like what forms in place of that is a big bubble or like a, a hot air balloon that's inevitably going to pop, which, like, we are kind of experiencing that. But I think that the, I think that the, um, the, the air letting out of the balloon right now is a much softer experience than it would be if everything was just like a green light all the way forward, if that makes sense. Mary Carreon: So, Joe Moore: right. And there's, there's so many factors. Like I'm, I'm thinking about, uh, metas censorship like we were talking about before. Yes. Other big tech censorship, right? Mm-hmm. SEO shifts. Mary Carreon: Oh. Um, yes, absolutely. Also, uh, there were some pretty major initiatives on the state level that did not pass also this past year that really would've also kind of [00:10:00] helped the landscape a little bit. Mary Carreon: Um. In terms of creating jobs, in terms of creating opportunities for funding, in terms of having more, uh, like the perception of safer money flow into the space and that, you know, those, those things didn't happen. For instance, the measure for in Massachusetts that didn't go through and just, you know, other things that didn't happen. Mary Carreon: However, there have been really good things too, in terms of, uh, legalization or various forms of legalization, and that's in New Mexico, so we can't, you know, forget that there, and we also can't forget just the movement happening in Colorado. So there are really great things happening and the, the movement is still moving forward. Mary Carreon: Everything is still going. It's just a little more difficult than maybe it could have been Joe Moore: right. Yeah. Amen. Amen. Yes. But also, we Mary Carreon: can't forget this censorship thing. The censorship thing is a horse shit. Sorry. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to cuss, but it is, [00:11:00] but it is Joe Moore: calling it out and it's important to say this stuff. Joe Moore: And you know, folks, if you want to support independent media, please consider supporting Doubleblind and psychedelics today. From a media perspective, absolutely. We wanna wanna put as much out as we can. Yes. The more supporters we have, the more we can help all of you understand what's happening and yes. Joe Moore: Getting you to stay safer. Mary Carreon: Yeah, absolutely. And that's the whole difficulty with the censorship is that psychedelics today, and Doubleblind for instance, but also Lucid News, also other, uh, other influencers, other creators in the space, they like. What all of us are doing is putting out information that is ultimately creating a safer user experience. Mary Carreon: And so with the censorship, we are not able to do so anymore, which creates actually a lot of danger. So. Yeah, it's, it's difficult. The censorship is difficult, and if you are somebody who posts about psychedelics, I know that you know this and I am preaching to the choir. Joe Moore: Yeah. So can you talk a [00:12:00] little bit about you all at Double Blind made a major shift in the last number of months towards, uh, kind of not necessarily putting everything out there and, and kind of like, um, actually I don't even know the language you use. Joe Moore: What's the, what's the language you use for the kind of model shift you took on? Mary Carreon: Yeah, I mean, it's great. It's been a wild shift. It's been a wild shift. Um, what we are currently doing is we went to a newsletter first model, which instead of just posting onto a website for everyone to see, and then, um, you know, hopefully getting SEO hits and also posting on their, then posting those stories onto Instagram and Facebook and Twitter, and hoping to get traffic through social media. Mary Carreon: Uh, we decided that that was no longer working for us because it wasn't, um, because the censorship is so bad on, on social media, like on Instagram, for instance, and Facebook and Twitter, well, less on Twitter, [00:13:00] but still, nonetheless on social media, the censorship is so bad. And also the censorship exists on Google. Mary Carreon: When you Google search how to take mushrooms, double blinds is not even on. You know, our guide is not on the first page. It's like, you know, way the heck, way the heck down there. Maybe page 2, 3, 4, 5. I don't know. But, um, the issue, the issue with that, or, or the reason why rather that it's that way is because Google is prioritizing, um, like rehabilitation centers for this information. Mary Carreon: And also they are prioritizing, uh, medical information. So, like WebMD for instance. And all of these organizations that Google is now prioritizing are u are, are, are, are organizations that see psychedelic use through the lens of addiction or through drug drug abuse. So [00:14:00] again, you know, I don't know, take it for how you want to, I'm not gonna say, I'm not gonna tell anybody like what is the right way to use their substances or whatever. Mary Carreon: However, it's really important to have the proper harm reduction resources and tools available. Uh, just readily available, not five pages down on a Google search. So anyways, all of that said double blind was our traffic was way down. And it was looking very bleak for a while. Just we were getting kicked off of Instagram. Mary Carreon: We weren't getting any traffic from social media onto our website, onto our stories. It was a, it was a vicious kind of cycle downward, and it wasn't really working. And there was a moment there where Doubleblind almost shut down as a result of these numbers because there's a, like you, a media company cannot sustain itself on really low page views as a result. Mary Carreon: So what we [00:15:00] decided to do was go to a newsletter first model, which relies on our email list. And basically we are sending out newsletters three days a week of new original content, mostly, uh, sometimes on Wednesdays we repost an SEO story or something like that. Um, to just to engage our audience and to work with our audience that way, and to like to actually engage our audience. Mary Carreon: I cannot emphasize that enough because on Instagram and on Facebook, we were only reaching like, I don't know, not that many people, like not that many people at all. And all of that really became obvious as soon as we started sending out to our email list. And as soon as we did that, it was wild. How many, how many views to the website and also how many just open like our open rate and our click through rate were showing how our audience was reacting to our content. Mary Carreon: In other words. [00:16:00] Social media was not a good, in, like, was not a good indicator of how our content was being received at all because people kind of weren't even receiving it. So going to the newsletter first model proved to be very beneficial for us and our numbers. And also just reaching our freaking audience, which we were barely doing, I guess, on social media, which is, which is wild, you know, for, for a, an account that has a lot of followers, I forget at this exact moment, but we have a ton, double blind, has a ton of followers on, on Instagram. Mary Carreon: We were, we, we get like 500 likes or, you know, maybe like. I don't know. If you're not looking at likes and you're looking at views, like sometimes we get like 16 K views, which, you know, seems good, but also compared to the amount of followers who follow us, it's like not really that great. And we're never reaching new, like a new audience. Mary Carreon: We're always reaching the same audience too, [00:17:00] which is interesting because even with our news, with our, with our email list, we are still reaching new people, which is, which says just how much more fluid that space is. Mm-hmm. And it's because it's, because censorship does not at least yet exist in our inboxes. Mary Carreon: And so therefore email is kind of like the underground, if you will, for this kind of content and this type of material journalism, et cetera. So, so yeah. So it, it, it has been a massive shift. It is required a lot of changes over at double blind. Everything has been very intense and crazy, but it has been absolutely worth it, and it's really exciting that we're still here. Mary Carreon: I'm so grateful that Double-Blind is still around, that we are still able to tell stories and that we are still able to work with writers and nurture writers and nurture the storytelling in this space because it needs to evolve just the same way that the industry and the [00:18:00] culture and everything else is evolving. Joe Moore: Yeah, I think, I think you're spot on like the, when I watch our Instagram account, like, um, I haven't seen the number change from 107 K for two years. Mary Carreon: Absolutely. Same. And, um, same. Joe Moore: Yeah. And you know, I think, I think there's certain kinds of content that could do fine. I think, uh, psychedelic attorney, Robert Rush put up a comment, um, in response to Jack Coline's account getting taken down, um, that had some good analysis, um. Joe Moore: Of the situation. Go ahead. You had No, Mary Carreon: no, I'm just like, you know, I can't, when, when journalists are getting kicked off of these, of these platforms for their stories, for their reported stories, that's like, that is a massive red flag. And that's all I have to say. I mean, we could go into more, more details on that, but that is a [00:19:00] huge red flag. Joe Moore: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, for sure. The, I, yeah. And like I'm sure he'll get it back. I'm sure that's not for good, but I think he did. Okay, great. Mary Carreon: I think he did. Yeah. Yeah, I think he did. Joe Moore: Yeah. So thank you. Shout out to Jack. Yeah, thanks Jack. Um, and I think, you know, there's, there's no one with that kind of energy out there. Joe Moore: Um, and I'm excited to see what happens over time with him. Yeah. How he'll unfold. Absolutely unfold. Oh yeah. It's like, um. Crushing the beat. Mary Carreon: Oh yeah, absolutely. Especially the political, the political beat. Like, there's no, there's few people who are really tackling that specific sector, which is like mm-hmm. Mary Carreon: So exciting for a journalist. Joe Moore: Yeah. Um, so model shifting, like we all have to like, adapt in new ways. Kyle and I are still trying to figure out what we're gonna do. Like maybe it is newsletter first. Like I, I realized that I hadn't been writing for [00:20:00] years, which is problematic, um, in that like, I have a lot of things to say. Mary Carreon: Totally. Joe Moore: And nobody got to hear it. Um, so I started a substack, which I had complicated feelings about honestly. 'cause it's just another. Rich person's platform that I'm, you know, helping them get Andreessen money or whatever. And, you know, so I'm gonna play lightly there, but I will post here and there. Um, I'm just trying to figure it all out, you know, like I've put up a couple articles like this GLP one and Mushrooms article. Mary Carreon: I saw that. I saw that. Really? And honestly, that's a really, like, it's so weird, but I don't, like, it's such a weird little thing that's happening in the space. I wonder, yeah, I wonder, I wonder how that is going to evolve. It's um, you know, a lot of people, I, I briefly kind of wrote about, um, psychedelics and the GLP, is that what it is? Mary Carreon: GLP one. Joe Moore: GLP one. Say Ozempic. Yeah, just, yeah, Ozempic. Yeah, exactly. Mary Carreon: Yeah, exactly. I wrote about [00:21:00] that briefly last year and there were a bunch of people like obviously horrified, which it is kind of horrifying, but also there's a bunch of people who believe that it is extremely cutting edge, which it also is. Mary Carreon: So it's really interesting, really fascinating. Joe Moore: Yeah. Um, I remember Bernie Sanders saying like, if this drug gets as much traction as it needs to, it will bankrupt Medicaid. I guess that's not really a problem anymore. Um, but, but, uh, but so like naming it real quick, like it changed the way we had to digest things, therefore, like mushrooms get digested differently and, um, some people don't respond in the expected ways. Joe Moore: And then there was some follow up, oh, we, in the regulated model, we just do lemon tech. And then I was like, is that legal in the regulated model? And I, I don't know the answer still. Mm-hmm. Like there was a couple things, you know, if users know to do it, you know, I don't, I don't totally understand the regulated model's so strange in Oregon, Colorado, that like, we really need a couple lawyers opinions. Joe Moore: Right. I think Mary Carreon: yes, of course Joe Moore: the lawyers just gave it a [00:22:00] thumbs up. They didn't even comment on the post, which is, laughs: thanks guys. Um, Joe Moore: but you know, laughs: yeah. You're like, thank you. Joe Moore: Thanks and diversity of opinions. So yeah, there's that. And like GLP ones are so interesting in that they're, one friend reached out and said she's using it in a microdose format for chronic neuroinflammation, which I had never heard of before. Joe Moore: Whoa. And um, I think, you know, articles like that, my intent was to just say, Hey, researchers yet another thing to look at. Like, there's no end to what we need to be looking at. Abso Mary Carreon: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. You know, reporting on this space actually taught me that there's so much just in general that isn't being researched, whether that's in this space, but also beyond and how, um, yeah, just how behind, actually, maybe not, maybe behind isn't the right word, but it kind of feels from my novice and from my novice place in the, in the world and [00:23:00] understanding research, it's. Mary Carreon: Hard for me to see it as anything, but being behind in the research that we all really need, that's really going to benefit humanity. But also, you know, I get that it's because of funding and politics and whatever, whatever, you know, we can go on for days on all of that. Joe Moore: What's the real reason? What's the real reason? Joe Moore: Well, drug war. Mary Carreon: Yeah. Well, yeah, definitely the drug war. Nixon. Yeah. Yes, yes, definitely the drug war. Yeah. I mean, and just the fact that even all of the drug research that happens is, again, through the lens of addiction and drug abuse, so Joe Moore: mm-hmm. Hard to right. Yeah. Um, like ni a is obviously really ridiculous and, and the way they approach this stuff, and Carl Hart illustrates that well, and, Mary Carreon: oh man, yes, he does. Joe Moore: Like, I think Fadiman's lab in Palo Alto got shut down, like 67, 66 or 67, and like that's, you know, that was one of the later ones, Mary Carreon: right? And, Joe Moore: and like, Mary Carreon: and here we are. Joe Moore: The amount of suffering that could have been alleviated if we [00:24:00] had not done this is. Incalculable. Um, yes. Yes. Yeah. Mary Carreon: I mean the, yeah, it's hard to say exactly how specifically it would be different, but it's difficult to also not think that the fentanyl crisis and the opioid addiction rate and situation that is currently like plaguing the, the world, but particularly the United States, it's hard to think that it wouldn't be, like, it wouldn't be a different scenario altogether. Joe Moore: Right, right. Absolutely. Um, and it's, um, it's interesting to speculate about, right? Like Yeah. Yes. Where would we be? And Mary Carreon: I know, I know, I know, I know it is speculation. Absolutely. But it's like hard, as I said, it's hard not to think that things would be different. Joe Moore: Right. Right. Um, I like, there's two kind of quotes, like, um, not, this one's not really a quote. Joe Moore: Like, we haven't really had a [00:25:00] blockbuster psychiatric med since Prozac, and I think that was in the eighties or early nineties, which is terrifying. And then, um, I think this guy's name is James Hillman. He is kinda like a Jungian, um, educator and I think the title of one of his books is, we're a hundred Years Into Psychotherapy and the World is Still a Mess. Joe Moore: And I think like those two things are like, okay, so two different very white people approaches didn't go very far. Yes. Um, yes and laughs: mm-hmm. Joe Moore: Thankfully, I think a lot of people are seeing that. Mm-hmm. Um, finally and kind of putting energy into different ways. Um, Mary Carreon: yeah. Absolutely. I think, yeah, I mean, we need to be exploring the other options at this point because what is currently happening isn't working on many fronts, but including in terms of mental health especially. Mary Carreon: So mm-hmm. We gotta get going. Right? We [00:26:00] gotta get moving. Geez. Joe Moore: Have you all, have you all seen much of the information around chronic pain treatments? Like I'm, I'm a founding board member with the Psychedelics and Pain Association, which has a really fun project. Oh, that's interesting. Mary Carreon: Um, I've seen some of the studies around that and it's endlessly fascinating for obvious, for obvious reasons. Mary Carreon: I, um, we have a writer who's been working for a long time on a story, uh, about the chronic pain that has since. Become an issue for this, for her, for the writer. Mm-hmm. Um, since she had COVID. Mm-hmm. Since, since she is just like, COVID was the onset basically of this chronic pain. And, um, there she attended a psychedelics in pain, chronic pain conference and, uh, that has pretty much like, changed her world. Mary Carreon: Um, well, in terms of just the information that's out there, not necessarily that she's painless, but it's just, you know, offering a, a brand new, a brand new road, a brand new path that is giving her, [00:27:00] um, relief on days when the pain is, uh, substantial. laughs: Yeah. Mary Carreon: So that's interesting. And a lot of people are experiencing that as well. Joe Moore: Mm-hmm. So there's, there's a really cool set of overlap between the COVID researchers, long COVID researchers and the chronic pain people. 'cause there is Yes. This new science of pain that's yes. Our group, PPA put out like a really robust kind of training, um, for clinicians and researchers and even patients to get more educated. Joe Moore: And we're, we're getting, um, kind of boostered by cluster busters and we're kind of leveraging a lot of what they've done. Mary Carreon: Wait, what is a cluster buster? Joe Moore: Oh gosh. Um, so they're a 5 0 1 C3. Okay. Started with Bob Wald. Okay. Bob Wald is a cluster headache survivor. Oh, oh, oh, Mary Carreon: okay. Got it. Got it. Yes. So they're Joe Moore: the charity that, um, has been really championing, um, cluster headache research because they found a protocol [00:28:00] with mushrooms. Joe Moore: Yes, yes, yes. To eliminate. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, this really great, I Mary Carreon: love that. Joe Moore: This really great book was written by a Rutgers, um, I think medical sociologist or anthropologist psychedelic. Love laughs: that. Joe Moore: Joanna Kempner. Cool. Um, and it kind of talks about the whole, um, cluster busters saga, and it was, it was pretty cool. Joe Moore: Nice. So they've been at it for about as long as maps. Um, oh wow. Maybe a little earlier. Maybe a little later. Mary Carreon: I love that. Cool. I mean, yeah, that's really great. That's really great. Joe Moore: So we're copying their playbook in a lot of ways and Cool. We about to be our own 5 0 1 C3 and, um, nice. And that should be really fun. Joe Moore: And, uh, the next conference is coming up at the end of next month if people wanna check that out. Psychedelic. Nice. Mary Carreon: Nice, nice, nice. Cool. Joe Moore: Yeah, so that, like, how I leaned into that was not only did I get a lot of help from chronic pain with psychedelics and going to Phish shows and whatever, um, you know, I, and overuse for sure helped me somehow. Joe Moore: [00:29:00] Um, God bless. Yeah. But I, I like it because it breaks us out of the psychiatry only frame for psychedelics. Mm. And starts to make space for other categories. Mm-hmm. Is one of the bigger reasons I like it. Mary Carreon: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yes. Yes. Which, like, we need to be, we need to, we, no one else is gonna do it for us. We like the people in the space who are finding new uses for these substances need to be creating those, those pathways and those new niches for people to then begin studying, et cetera, and exploring and yeah. Mary Carreon: Making, making a proper avenue for, Joe Moore: right, right. And, you know, um, I don't know that this is a Maha thing, so No, I'm going there, I guess, but like, how do we kind of face squarely America and the world's drinking problems? Not [00:30:00] knowing what we know now about alcohol, you know what I mean? And then like, what are the alternatives? Joe Moore: You know, some, some writers out there on substack are very firm that everybody needs to not do any substance. And like all psychedelics are super bad and drugs are evil, you know, famous sub stackers that I won't name. But you know, like what is the alternative? Like, I, like we have to have something beyond alcohol. Joe Moore: And I think you've found some cannabis helpful for that. Mary Carreon: Yeah, I, you know, it's, it's interesting because it's, there are, there's definitely an argument to be made for the power of these substances in helping, I don't wanna, I don't wanna say curb, but definitely reduce the symptoms of, uh, wanting to use or to drink or to consume a specific substance. Mary Carreon: There's obviously there is an argument to be made. There are, there is ano another camp of people who are kind [00:31:00] of in the, in the, in the, in the realm of using a drug to get off of a drug isn't how you do it. However, and, and I do, it depends on the individual. It depends on the individual and the, and how that person is engaging with their own addiction. Mary Carreon: I think for whether or not the substances work, like whether psychedelics work to help somebody kind of get off of alcohol or get off of cocaine or stop using opioids or, you know, et cetera. Mm-hmm. However, I think like, when the situation is so dire, we need to be trying everything. And if that means, like, if, like, you know, if you look at the studies for like smoking cessation or alcohol use, mushrooms do help, psilocybin does help with that. Mary Carreon: Mm-hmm. But, you know, there's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of things that also need to happen. There's a lot of things that also need to happen in order for those, uh, that relief to maintain and to stick and to, uh, really guide [00:32:00] somebody off of those substances. Mm-hmm. It's not just the substance itself. Joe Moore: Right. So I'm, I'm explicitly talking like recreational alternatives, right. Like how do I Yeah. On per minute, like, am Anitas becoming helpful? Yeah, yeah. Are helpful and Yeah. Yeah. I think like even, um, normal. What we might call like normal American alcohol use. Like Yeah. That's still like, quite carcinogenic and like, um, absolutely. Joe Moore: We're kind of trying to spend less as a country on cancer treatments, which I hope is true. Then how do we, how do we develop things that are, you know, not just abstinence only programs, which we know for sure aren't great. Mary Carreon: Yeah. They don't work. Yeah. I don't, it's, it's difficult. Mm-hmm. It's difficult to say. Mary Carreon: I mean mm-hmm. I don't know. Obviously I, I, well, maybe it's not obvious at all for people who don't know me, but, you know, I exist in a, I exist in, in a world where recreational use is like, it's like hard to define what recreational use is because if we are using this, if we are using mushrooms or LSD even, or MDMA, [00:33:00] you know, there are so many, there's a lot of the therapy that can happen through the use of these substances, even if we're not doing it, you know, with a blindfold on or whatever and yeah, I think like. Mary Carreon: There is a decent swap that can happen if you, if you are somebody who doesn't wanna be, you know, having like three beers a night, or if you are somebody who's like, you know, maybe not trying to have like a bottle of wine at a night or something like that, you know, because like Americans drink a lot and a lot of the way that we drink is, um, you know, like we don't see it as alcoholism. Mary Carreon: Even though it could be, it could be that's like a difficult Joe Moore: potentially subclinical, but right there. Mary Carreon: Um, yeah. Yeah. It's like, you know, it's, um, we don't see it as that because everybody, a lot of people, not everybody, but a lot of people drink like that, if that makes sense. If you know mm-hmm. If you, if you get what I'm, if you get what I'm saying. Mary Carreon: So, you know, I do think that there's a lot of benefit that, I don't [00:34:00] know, having, like a, having a mushroom, having a mushroom experience can really help. Or sometimes even like low dose, low doses of mushrooms can also really help with, like, with the. Desire to reach for a drink. Yeah, totally. And, and AMS as well. Mary Carreon: I know that that's also helping people a lot too. And again, outside of the clinical framework. Joe Moore: Yeah. I'm, a lot of people project on me that I'm just like constantly doing everything all the time and I'm, I'm the most sober I've been since high school. You know, like it's bonkers that like Yeah. Um, and you know, probably the healthiest event since high school too. Joe Moore: Yeah. But it's fa it's fascinating that like, you know, psychedelics kind of helped get here and even if it was like For sure something that didn't look like therapy. Yeah, Mary Carreon: yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I, I think, I think most of us here in this space are getting projected on as to like, you know, being like what Normies would consider druggies or something, or that we are just like, you know, high all the time. Mary Carreon: Um, [00:35:00] I know that that is definitely something that I face regularly, like out in the world. Um, but, you know, I would also, I would also argue that. Uh, like mushrooms have completely altered my approach to health, my approach to mental health, and not even having to consume that, you know, that substance in order or that, you know, that fun fungi, in order for me to like tap into taking care of my mental health or approaching better, uh, food options, et cetera. Mary Carreon: It's kind of like what these, it's like how the mushrooms continue to help you even after you have taken them. Like the messages still keep coming through if you work with them in that capacity. Right. And yeah, and also same with, same with LSD too. LSD has also kind my experiences with that have also guided me towards a healthier path as well. Mary Carreon: I, I understand that maybe for some people it's not that way, but, um, for me that substance is a medicine as well, [00:36:00] or it can be. Joe Moore: Yeah. Um, so. What are, what are some things popping up these days about like US drug policy that's like getting exciting for you? Like, are you feeling feeling like a looming optimism about a, a major shift? Joe Moore: Are you kind of like cautiously optimistic with some of the weird kind of mandatory minimum stuff that's coming up or? Mary Carreon: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I know that there was a huge, a, a pretty huge shift over at the DEA and I wish I remembered, I wish I remembered his name. The new guy who's now, I believe the head of the DEA, I don't know enough information about it to really feel a way. Mary Carreon: However, I don't think that he's necessarily going to be serving us as a community here, uh, in the psychedelic space. I, you know, I just don't think that that's something that we can ever depend on with the DEA. Uh, I also don't think that [00:37:00] the DEA is necessarily going to be. All that helpful to cannabis, like the cannabis space either. Mary Carreon: Um, I know that, that Trump keeps kind of discussing or, or dangling a carrot around the rescheduling of cannabis. Um, for, he's been, he's been, but he's doing it a lot more now. He's been talking about it more recently. Uh, he says like, in the next like couple weeks that he's going to have some kind of decision around that, allegedly. Mary Carreon: But we will see also, I'm not sure that it's going to necessarily help anybody if we reschedule two. Uh, what from schedule one to schedule th two, three, schedule three. Joe Moore: Either way it's like not that useful. Right. Exactly. Mary Carreon: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's, um, just going to probably cause a lot more red tape and a lot of confusion for the state rec markets. Mary Carreon: So it's like something that we, it's like only ridden with unintentional, unintentional consequences. Unintended consequences. Mm-hmm. Because no one knows how it's really going to [00:38:00] impact anything, um, if, if at all. But I don't know. It's hard, it's hard to imagine that there won't be any, uh, like more complex regulatory issues for business owners and also probably consumers as well. Joe Moore: Hmm. Yeah. This guy's name's Terry Cole. Mary Carreon: Oh, the new DEA guy. Joe Moore: Yeah. Um, I don't know much about him. Terry. Yeah. Terry, I would love to chat. Mary Carreon: Yeah. Terry, let's talk. I'm sure your people Joe Moore: are watching. Yeah. So like, just let him know. We wanna chat. Yeah. We'll come to DC and chat it out. Um, yeah. It's, um, but yeah, I, Carl Hart's solution to me makes like almost most of the sense in the world to just end the scheduling system Absolutely. Joe Moore: And start building some sort of infrastructure to keep people safe. That's clearly not what we have today. Mary Carreon: No. But building an infrastructure around the health and wellness and uh, safety of [00:39:00] people is the exact opposite system that we have currently right now. Because also the scheduling system has a lot to do with the incarceration in the United States and the criminal just, or the criminal system. Mary Carreon: So, so yeah, like we can't disentangle the two really. Joe Moore: It just started, um, I feel negligent on this. Uh, synergetic press put out a book like a year or two ago called Body Autonomy. Mm-hmm. Um, did that one come across your desk at all? Mm-hmm. No. I wish basically contributed. Oh, nice. A number of people. So it's both like, um. Joe Moore: Drug policy commentary and then like sex work commentary. Oh, nice. And it was like high level, like love that really, really incredible love that detailed science based conversations, which is not what we have around this. Like, that doesn't make me feel good. So you should go to jail kind of stuff. Or like, I'm gonna humiliate you for real though. Joe Moore: Ticket. Yeah, Mary Carreon: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh God. Uh, when you think about it like that, it just really also shows [00:40:00] just the uh, um, the level at which religion has also kind of fundamentally infused itself into the scheduling system, but also our laws, you know, like what you just said, this like, shame-based, I'm going to embarrass you and make you into a criminal when you know actually you are a law for the most part, a law abiding citizen, with the exception of this one thing that you're doing for. Mary Carreon: A, your survival and or your, like, your feeling good, wanting to feel good addressing pain. Um, there's a large, uh, like noise coming out of the front yard of my house right now. Hold on. Just a, it doesn't sound too bad. It doesn't sound too bad. Okay. Okay, good. Not at all. Not at all. Okay. Yeah, I had Joe Moore: people working on my roof all day and somehow it worked out. Joe Moore: Oh, good. Um, yeah. Um, yeah, it's, it's fascinating and I, I've been coming around like, I, I identify as politically confused, [00:41:00] um, and I feel like it's the most honest way I can be. Um, Mary Carreon: I am also politically confused these days, impossible to align with any, uh, party or group currently in existence at this exact juncture in American history. Joe Moore: I can't find any that I want to throw my dice in with. Nah. This idea of like fucking way being. Like what is the most humane way to do government as a way it's been put to me recently. And that's interesting. So it comes down to like coercion, are we caring for people, things like that. And um, I don't think we're doing it in a super humane way right now. Mary Carreon: Um, we, yeah, I am pretty sure that even if there was, I mean, I think that even if we looked at the data, the data would support that we are not doing it in a humane way. Joe Moore: So Mary Carreon: unfortunately, and Joe Moore: you know, this whole tech thing, like the tech oligarch thing, you kind of dropped at the beginning and I think it's worth bringing that back because we're, we're on all [00:42:00] these tech platforms. Joe Moore: Like that's kind of like how we're transmitting it to people who are participating in these other platforms and like, you know, it's not all meta. I did turn on my personal Facebook, so everybody's watching it there. I hope. Um, see if that count gets, Mary Carreon: um, Joe Moore: but you know, this idea that a certain number of private corporations kind of control. Joe Moore: A huge portion of rhetoric. Um, and you know, I think we probably got Whiffs of this when Bezos bought Washington Post and then Yes. You know, Musk with X and like yes. You know, is this kind of a bunch of people who don't necessarily care about this topic and the way we do, and they're like in larger topics too about humane government and like, you know, moving things in good directions. Joe Moore: Um, I don't know, thoughts on that rift there as it relates to anything you, wherever you wanna go. Yeah. Mary Carreon: Yeah. I mean, I don't think that they are looking at, I don't think that they are looking [00:43:00] at it the way that we are. I don't think that they can see it from their vantage point. Um, I think that like, in the, in a similar way that so many CEOs who run businesses have no fucking clue about what's actually happening in their businesses and the actual workers and, and employees of their businesses can tell them in more detail. Mary Carreon: Far more detail about what's actually happening on the, on the floor of their own business. Uh, I think that it is something like that. However, that's not to say that, you know, these, these CEOs who employ people who build the A algorithm are obviously guided to create the limitations on us as people who speak about drugs, et cetera, and are creating a algorithm that ultimately is looking at things in a very blanket way in terms of, uh, like we're probably seen on the same level as like drug dealers, if that makes sense. Mary Carreon: Which is obviously a much, you know, there's, [00:44:00] it's a very different thing. Um, so, you know, there's like these CEOs are giving directions to their employees to ultimately create systems that harm. Information flow and inform and, and like the information health of, of platforms and of just people in general. Mary Carreon: So it's hard to say because there's nuance there, obviously, but I would bet you that someone like Elon Musk doesn't really have a full grasp as to the, the nuances and details of what's even happening within, on the ground floor of his businesses. Because that's like, not how CEOs in America run, run, and operate. Mary Carreon: They're stupid companies. So, so yeah. And I feel like that, like, that's across the board, like that's across the board. That's how I, that's probably how Zuck is operating with Meta and Facebook, et cetera. And yeah, just likewise and across, across the whole, [00:45:00] across the whole spectrum. Joe Moore: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I think, um, a thing. Joe Moore: Then as the people like, we need to keep looking at how can we keep each other informed. And that's kind of circling back to drug journalism like we do and like, um, other, other sorts of journalism that doesn't really get the press it deserves. Right. And I've been getting far more content that I find more valuable off of tragically back on Zucks platform like IG is getting me so much interesting content from around the world that no major outlet's covering. Mary Carreon: That's so interesting. Like what? Like what would you say? Joe Moore: Oh, um, uh, certain, um, violent situations overseas. Oh, oh, got it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, um, you know, that America's paying for, so like, you know, I just don't love that I don't have a good, you know, journalistic source I can [00:46:00] point to, to say, hey, like right. Joe Moore: These writers with names, with addresses, like, and offices here. Yes. You know, they did the work and they're held, you know, they're ethical journalists, so yes. You can trust them. Right. You know what I mean? Yes, Mary Carreon: yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, all of this makes everything so much harder for determining, like, the censorship specifically makes it so much harder for the people to determine like, what's real, what's not. Mary Carreon: Because, because of exactly what you just said. Mm-hmm. Like, you know, we are, we are basically what that means, like what is required of the people and people who are consuming information is becoming a smart consumer and being able to determine what's real, what's not. How can we trust this individual? Mary Carreon: How can we not, which isn't analysis process that all of us need to be sharpening every single day, especially with the advent of AI and, uh, how quickly this, this type of content is coming at all of us. Like, especially if you're on TikTok, which many of us are, you know, like information comes flying at you 3000 miles an hour, and it's sometimes [00:47:00] really difficult to determine what's real, what's not, because AI is. Mary Carreon: AI is not where it's going to be, and it still is in its nascent phase. However, it's still pretty fucking good and it's still very confusing on there. So, so again, like the media literacy of the people needs to be sharpened every single day. We cannot be on there, we cannot be on the internet existing. Mary Carreon: That everything that we are seeing is real. Whether that's about, you know, these, um, the violence overseas, uh, happening at the hands of the United States, whether that is, uh, even drug information like, you know, et cetera, all of all of it. Or just like news about something happening at Yellowstone National Park or something that is happening in the, uh, at like. Mary Carreon: Um, like potential riots also happening at protests in downtown la, et cetera. Like all, all of it, we need to be so careful. And I think what that also, like, one way that [00:48:00] we can adjust and begin to develop our media literacy skills is talking to people maybe who are there, reaching out to people who are saying that they were there and asking them questions, and also sussing that out. Mary Carreon: You know, obviously we can't do that for all situations, but definitely some of them. Joe Moore: Yeah, absolutely. Like, Joe Moore: um, a quick pivot. Mm-hmm. Were you at PS 25? Mary Carreon: Yes, I was. What did I think? Uh, you know, I, I was running around like crazy at this one. I felt like I didn't even have a second to breathe and I feel like I didn't even have a second to really see anybody. I was like, worry. I was jumping from one stage to the next. Mary Carreon: However, I would say, uh, one of, one of the things that I have said and how I felt about it was that I felt that this, this event was smaller than it was two years ago. And I preferred that I preferred the reduction in size just because it was, uh, less over, less overwhelming [00:49:00] in an, in an already very overwhelming event. Mary Carreon: Um, but I thought that from the panels that I did see that everyone did a really great job. I thought that maps, you know, it's impressive that maps can put on an event like that. Um, I also was very cognizant that the suits were there in full effect and, uh, you know, but that's not unusual. That's how it was last time as well. Mary Carreon: And, um, I felt that there was Mary Carreon: a, uh, like the, the, the level of excitement and the level of like opportunity and pro, like the prosperous. The like, prospect of prosperity coming down the pipeline like tomorrow, you know, kind of vibe was different than last time. Mm-hmm. Which that was very present at the one, two years ago, uh, which was the last PS psychedelic science. Mary Carreon: Yeah. Um, anyways. Yeah. But it was, you know, it was really nice to see everybody. [00:50:00] I feel like in-person events is a great way for everybody in the psychedelic space to be interacting with each other instead of like keyboard warrioring against each other, you know, uh, over the computer and over the internet. Mary Carreon: I think that, um, yeah, uh, being in person is better than being fighting each other over the internet, so, yeah. Joe Moore: Mm-hmm. People seem to be a little bit more civil in person. Mary Carreon: Exactly. Exactly. Mm-hmm. And I think that that is something that we all need to be considering more often, and also inviting people from across the aisle to your events and creating peace, because in person it's a little different than it is. Mary Carreon: When you have the opportunity to, uh, yeah, like keyboard attack someone over the internet, it's like, yeah. It's just so silly. So silly. We look like fools. Like we look like absolute idiots doing that. And you know what? I cannot sit here and say that I haven't looked like an idiot. So, you know, it's like I'm not, I'm not talking from like a high horse over here, but, but you know, it's like, it's [00:51:00] better when it's in person. Mary Carreon: I feel like there's like more civil engagements that we can all have. Joe Moore: It's practice, you know? Yeah. We're learning. Yeah. We are. We should be learning, including us, and yes, of course. Um, I, I play a subtler game these days and, uh, you know, I, I, I, it's better when we all look a lot better in my opinion, because yes, we can inform policy decisions, we can be the ones helping inform really important things about how these things should get implemented and absolutely right. Joe Moore: Like, Mary Carreon: absolutely. Yeah, it does. It does. Nobody, any service, especially these medicines, especially these sacraments, especially these plants, these molecules, et cetera, if we are all sitting here fighting each other and like calling each other names and trying to dunk on one another, when like in reality, we are also all kind of pushing for the same thing more or less. Joe Moore: Mm-hmm. So a thing that [00:52:00] I, it's a, it's kind of a, I, I had a great time at PS 25. I have no, no real complaints. I just wish I had more time. Yeah, same. Um, same. Yeah. Our booth was so busy. It was so fun. Just good. And it was like, good. I, I know. It was really good. I'm trying to say it out loud. I get to talk at the conference before Rick did. laughs: Oh, oh, Joe Moore: the morning show they put us on at like seven 30 in the morning or something crazy. Oh my god. It was early. I dunno if it was seven 30. Mary Carreon: That's so early. That's so early. Joe Moore: Yeah, right. Like that's crazy. I got zero nightlife in That's okay. Um, I was not, I was there for work. Yeah, Mary Carreon: yeah. I was Joe Moore: jealous. I didn't party, but you know, whatever. Joe Moore: Yeah, yeah. Mary Carreon: I did not party this time really in the same way that I did at PS 20. Was it 2023? Joe Moore: 23, yeah. 23. I only stay up till 11 one night in 23. Nice. Mary Carreon: Okay. Um, okay. Joe Moore: So I behaved, I have a pattern of behaving. 'cause I like That's good. I'm so bent outta shape inside going into these things. I'm like, I know, I know. Joe Moore: And, and I'm like, oh, all [00:53:00] my friends are gonna be there. It's gonna be great. And then it's like, yeah. It's mostly friends and only a little bit of stress. Yeah. Um, yeah. Yeah, Mary Carreon: yeah. I had a, I had a great time. It was really good seeing everybody again. Like you, I wish that I had more time with people. Like there are people that I like didn't even see who are my friends, Joe Moore: so, which Yeah. Joe Moore: Which is sad. That's like a subtext in, in like the notes coming away from 25. Is that the, um, American Right, if we wanna call it that, is very interested in this stuff. Oh yeah. Like the Texas establishment. Oh yeah. Um, the Texas contingent, right? They're deep. They're real deep. Mm-hmm. I have, um, Mary Carreon: let's talk about that more. Mary Carreon: Yeah. So Joe Moore: it's optimistic in, in some sense that psychedelic science is getting funded more. By states. 'cause the feds aren't stepping up. Right. I love that. Right. Yeah. Like, Hey feds, look what we can do. And you can't somehow, and [00:54:00] then, um, we'll see if state rights stays around for a while longer, maybe, maybe not. Joe Moore: And then the other part is like, is there a slippery slope given the rhetoric around addiction and the rise in interest in iboga for compulsory addiction treatment with psychedelics or, or compulsory mental health treatments with psychedelics because of the recent, it's illegal to be a person without housing. Joe Moore: Um, and you're gonna get put in treatment. Mm. Like, that's now a thing. So like, I don't know, I don't think forced treatment's good at all. I, and I don't think like, um, like the data is something like 15% effective, maybe less. Right. Right. It's not a good use of money. I don't know. We're, let's, I. You can go there if you want, and riff on that, or if you wanna talk about like, Texas, um, Arizona more generally. Mary Carreon: Yeah. I mean, I will just say this, I also don't really believe that forced treatment is like good, you [00:55:00] know, data Joe Moore: says it's bad. Mary Carreon: Yeah. Yeah. I also, yeah, I mean, it's like, I don't know. Yeah, that's, it's complex. It's a complex issue. I also don't think it's good, but I also do think that we need a much better framework and foundation for like, if people do want the help, helping them get it. Mary Carreon: Much more easily and in a way that's going to be beneficial for them. Um, and I don't think that that system or that pathway currently exists as we saw in, uh, with, with, um, measure 1 0 9 and the failure of measure 1 0 9 or, or was it Measure 1 0 10, 1 10, measure one 10 in Oregon. Joe Moore: But did you see the response yesterday or two days ago? Joe Moore: No, I didn't. No, I didn't. I'll I'll send it to you later. Okay. So the university did the research, um, Portland State University did the research Yes. And said, Hey, look, there was actually 20 other things that were higher priority. Like that actually influenced this increase in overdoses, not our law. Mary Carreon: Right. Mary Carreon: Yes. It was really COVID for Okay. [00:56:00] Like for, yeah. Right. Absolutely. Also, there was not a. Like there was not a framework in place that allowed people to get off the street should they want to, or you know, like, like you just can't really have a, all drugs are legal, or small amounts of drugs are legal without also offering or creating a structure for people to get help. Mary Carreon: That, that's, you can't do one without the other. Unfortunately. That's just like a, that's faulty from the start. So that's all I'll really say about that. And I don't think that that had fully been implemented yet, even though it was something that wasn't ideal for the, um, for the, for the measure. And I believe it was measure one 10, not measure 1 0 9, to be clear. Mary Carreon: Measure one 10. Um, yes, but confirmed one 10 confirmed one 10, yes. Mm-hmm. Um, but yeah, uh, that's, you know, that's kind of what I'll say. That's what I'll, that's where I'll leave that portion. Mm-hmm. You know? Uh, but yeah, forced treatment. I don't know. [00:57:00] We can't be forcing, forcing people to do stuff like that. Mary Carreon: I don't know. It's not gonna, it's, yeah, it doesn't seem Joe Moore: very humane. Mary Carreon: Yeah. No. And it also probably isn't gonna work, so, Joe Moore: right. Like, if we're being conservative with money, like, I like tote, like to put on Republican boots once in a while and say like, what does this feel like? And then say like, okay, if we're trying to spend money smartly, like where do we actually get where we want to be? Joe Moore: And then sometimes I put on my cross and I'm like, okay, if I'm trying to be Christian, like where is the most, like, what is the most Christian behavior here in terms of like, what would the, you know, buddy Jesus want to do? And I'm just like, okay, cool. Like, that doesn't seem right. Like those things don't seem to align. Joe Moore: And when we can find like compassionate and efficient things, like isn't that the path? Um, Mary Carreon: compassionate and t. Yeah, even, I don't know, I don't know if it looks lefty these days, but Yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah, I know what you mean. I know what you mean. Yeah. [00:58:00] Yeah. Um, yeah, it's complicated. It's complicated, you know, but going back, kind of, kind of pivoting and going back to what you were talking about in regards to the subtext, some of the subtext of like, you know, where psychedelic medicine is currently getting its most funding. Mary Carreon: You know, I do believe that that was an undercurrent at psychedelic science. It was the, the iboga conversation. And there's, there's a lot, there's a lot happening with the Iboga conversation and the Iboga conversation and, um, I am really trying to be open to listening to everyone's messages that are currently involved in. Mary Carreon: That rise of that medicine right now? Um, obviously, yeah, we will see, we'll see how it goes. There's obviously a lot of people who believe that this is not the right move, uh, just because there's been no discussions with, uh, the Wii people of West Africa and, you know, because of [00:59:00] that, like we are not talking to the indigenous people about how we are using their medicine, um, or medicine that does like that comes from, that comes from Africa. Mary Carreon: Um, also with that, I know that there is a massive just devastating opioid crisis here that we need to do something about and drug crisis that we need to be helping with. And this medicine is something that can really, really, really help. Um, I find it absolutely fascinating that the right is the most interested party in moving all of this forward, like psychedelic medicine forward. Mary Carreon: And I, I currently have my popcorn and I am watching and I am eating it, and I am going to witness whatever goes down. Um, but I'm, I, I hope that, uh, things are moving in a way that is going to be beneficial for the people and also not completely leave behind the indigenous communities where this medicine comes from. Joe Moore: [01:00:00] Mm-hmm. Mary Carreon: We'll see how it goes. Yeah. We'll see how it goes. We'll see how it goes. It Joe Moore: would be lovely if we can figure it out. Um, I know, and I think, uh, Lucy Walker has a film coming out on Iboga. Mm. I got to see it at Aspen, um, symposium last summer, and it was really good. Mm. So I'm sure it'll be cut different, but it's so good and it tells that story. Joe Moore: Okay. Um, in a helpful way. I'm gonna, I, yeah. I always say I'm gonna do this. I'm like, if I have space, maybe I'll be able to email her and see if we can screen it in Colorado. But it's like a brilliant film. Yeah. Cool. This whole reciprocity conversation is interesting and challenging. And so challenging being one of the few countries that did not sign onto the Nagoya protocol. Joe Moore: Absolutely. We're not legally bound, you know, some countries are Mary Carreon: I know. Yes, yes, yes. So Joe Moore: we're, you know, how do we do that? How do we do that skillfully? We still haven't done it with, um, first Nations folks around their [01:01:00] substances. Um, I think mushrooms are a little flexible and account of them being global, um, from Africa to Ireland and beyond. Joe Moore: And, but you know, that's, we still want to give a nod to the people in Mexico for sure. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Um, yeah. Yeah, it's, I had some fun commentary there that I would love to flesh out someday. Uh, but yeah, it's not for today. Mary Carreon: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, there's, yeah, there's obviously, there's obviously a lot with the conversation of reciprocity here and, um, I know, I, I don't know. Mary Carreon: I, I, what I do know is that we need to be listening to the indigenous people, not just listening to them second, like secondhand or listening to them, uh, once we have moved something forward, like actually consulting with them as the process goes. And that, you know, the way that both parties move, indigenous folks and, uh, western folks move, uh, are at inherently different paces. Mary Carreon: And, [01:02:00] um, I just hope, and I wish, and I, I hope, I just hope that, uh, Western what, like the Western party, the western folks who are diving into these medicines. Slow the fuck down and listen and just are able to at least make one right move. Just one, just like you. Like it's, doesn't have to be this, it doesn't have to be that hard. Mary Carreon: Although the pace of capitalism usually propels, uh, the western folks at, at a much quicker rate than, u

Rise and Play Podcast
161. From Andreessen's Call to Walking Away: Ioana's Founder Journey

Rise and Play Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 30, 2025 48:02


In this raw episode of Rise and Play, we welcome back Ioana Hreninciuc, co-founder of Runware and former CPO at Huuuge Games and Homa Games. Ioana has held some of the biggest leadership roles in gaming and tech, and today she reflects openly on the founder journey, the highs and lows of VC-backed startups, and the importance of choosing yourself before burnout chooses you."It wasn't luck — it was luck with a lot of homework. Ten years of work led to that one call from Andreessen. But the real lesson is: you can build a company without losing yourself in the process. And if you feel you are — choose yourself first."From building side projects that went viral, to receiving that life-changing call from Andreessen Horowitz, to stepping away from her own company at the height of its momentum, Ioana shares the raw truths behind the glossy founder narrative.

Business Pants
Kimmel and Disney's political expedience, Exxon bought its vote, and algorithmic autocracy

Business Pants

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 19, 2025 72:07


Story of the Week (DR):Disney Pulls Jimmy Kimmel's Show After Kirk Remarks Republicans Leverage Charlie Kirk's Death to Declare War on Free SpeechCharlie Kirk assassination reignites debate over Section 230 protections for social media companies"Section 230 needs to be repealed. If you're mad at social media companies that radicalize our nation, you should be mad," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press." "I have a bill that will allow you to sue these people. They're immune from lawsuits."Nexstar And Sinclair, Two Largest Station Groups, Wield Influence In ABC Decision To Pull Jimmy Kimmel In Light Of His Charlie Kirk CommentsA $6.2 billion deal looms over Jimmy Kimmel's suspensionNexstar, the largest station group in the country, is a leading champion in the broadcast industry for the FCC to relax media ownership limits and has a major merger before the Trump administration, its proposed $6.2B acquisition of Tegna, creating a mega-company with 265 stations in 44 states and the District of Columbia, representing 80% of U.S. TV households.Nexstar needs the agency to ease rules that currently limit the percentage a broadcaster can reach to 39% of the nation's television households.Sinclair also is seeking deregulation, and in its statement, it praised Carr. “We appreciate FCC Chairman Carr's remarks today and this incident highlights the critical need for the FCC to take immediate regulatory action to address control held over local broadcasters by the big national networks,” Sinclair said.Nexstar: founder/Chair/CEO Perry SookSinclair: the Smith family: currently nepobaby David Smith; board is 44% SmithWhat to know about Brendan Carr, the FCC chairman who went after Jimmy KimmelIn response to an opinion column in The Washington Post by Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, outlining his ideas for removing harmful content, Carr criticized Zuckerberg's call for government regulation as a violation of the First Amendment.He later praised Zuckerberg's "instincts" to show Trump's posts that amplified COVID-19 misinformation unaltered.Carr supported Trump's "Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship" targeting Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.Trump filed a $15 billion defamation lawsuit against The New York Times and 4 of its journalistsTrump's NYT Lawsuit Dismissed by Republican-Appointed JudgeA federal judge on Friday dismissed Donald Trump's $15 billion defamation lawsuit against The New York Times. U.S. District Judge Steven Merryday: a lawsuit is not "a protected platform to rage against an adversary."Comcast CEO criticizes ex-MSNBC contributor's remarks about Charlie Kirk in memo to staffTrumpy Billionaires Close In on TikTok TakeoverAllies of President Donald Trump are poised to get their hands on TikTok's U.S. operations.Entrepreneur Larry Ellison, worth approximately $350 billion, and Marc Andreessen, a venture capitalist with a $2 billion net worth, have been pals with the president for years.Ellison's software giant Oracle, Andreessen's venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, and private equity firm Silver Lake are among a group of U.S. businesses said to be nearing a deal to take over the American operations of the short-form video app, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.Nestlé Chairman to Step Down After Abrupt CEO FiringNestlé investors demand chair Paul Bulcke resign over CEO churn “I have full trust in Nestlé s new leadership and firmly believe this great company is well positioned for the future,” Bulcke said. “This is the right moment for me to step aside and accelerate the planned transition, allowing Pablo and Philipp to advance Nestlé's strategy and guide the company with a fresh perspective.”Board member (2018-) Pablo Isa new chairThe company appointed Dick Boer as lead independent director and vice chairman of the board of directors as of Oct. 1, while Marie-Gabrielle Ineichen-Fleisch was appointed vice chair of the board.A new ally against excessive CEO Pay: Pope LeoPope Leo appears to be particularly baffled by the Tesla pay package that could turn Elon Musk into the world's first trillionaire: “What does that mean and what's that about? If that is the only thing that has value anymore, then we're in big trouble.”Dave Ramsey Says 'We're Not All Equal. It Doesn't Work That Way' — The Rich Aren't Evil, It's Just Math and Jealousy Fueling the StigmaRashida Tlaib and Bernie Sanders introduce the Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act. Proponents of the bill argue that it will incentivize large corporations to narrow their internal pay disparities by either increasing wages for their lowest-paid employees or reducing executive compensation packages Key Provisions of the Act:Tax Trigger: The new tax would apply to companies with a CEO-to-median-worker pay ratio of 50-to-1 or greater.Graduated Tax Rates: The penalty begins with a 0.5 percentage point tax increase for companies with a pay ratio between 50 and 100-to-1.Progressive Structure: The tax rate increase climbs with the pay ratio:1.0 percentage point for ratios between 100 and 200-to-1.2.0 percentage points for ratios between 200 and 300-to-1.3.0 percentage points for ratios between 300 and 400-to-1.4.0 percentage points for ratios between 400 and 500-to-1.5.0 percentage points for ratios exceeding 500-to-1.Broad Application: The act is intended to apply to both publicly and privately held companies with annual revenues of $100 million or more.Exxon to offer auto-voting to counter shareholder activism. Here's how it works:Opt-In Program: The auto-voting feature is a voluntary, opt-in program for retail investors.Automatic Voting: Once enrolled, an investor's shares will be automatically voted in accordance with the board's recommendations on all proposals at shareholder meetings.Flexibility for Investors: Despite the automated nature, investors will still receive all proxy materials and retain the right to manually override the automatic vote on any specific proposal. They can also opt out of the program at any time, free of charge.Exxon's Stated Rationale:Leveling the Playing Field: Exxon argues that this program is a matter of fairness, designed to give retail investors the same ease of voting that institutional investors have. They contend that individual investors often lack the time and resources to research and vote on complex proxy proposals.Addressing Low Turnout: The company has highlighted that while retail investors hold a significant portion of its shares (nearly 40%), their voting turnout is low (only about a quarter of them vote).Countering Activist Agendas: Exxon has explicitly stated that activist groups have exploited this low retail voter participation to advance their own agendas, which the company claims are often political and detrimental to long-term shareholder value.Texas AG probes proxy advisers Glass Lewis, ISS amid ESG backlash By ReutersExxon Urges Europe to Repeal Rules to Make Companies Track Climate PollutionGoodliest of the Week (MM/DR):DR: Tyson is ditching corn syrupIt also plans to axe sucralose, BHA/BHT, and titanium dioxide from its food by the end of 2025MM: New Poll Finds That Americans Loathe AI53 percent of just over 5,000 US adults polled in June think that AI will "worsen people's ability to think creatively." Fifty percent say AI will deteriorate our ability to form meaningful relationships, while only five percent believe the reverse.MM: Northeast US states form health alliance in response to federal vaccine limits MMAssholiest of the Week (MM):Which capitalist is the bigger assholeBob IgerIger yanked Kimmel after pressure from affiliate owners looking to curry FCC favor in a $6bn mergerThere are comparisons being made to when Iger cancelled Roseanne:From blowhard Iger apologist Jeff Sonnenfeld: “Iger has been a fearless, equal opportunity offender in defending Disney's corporate character, whether from intrusions by the left or by the right. He was criticized harshly from many on the political right when in 2018, he cancelled Rosanne, then ABC's #1 show, when its star imploded with a cruel racial tirade about President Obama's former top advisor, Valerie Jarrett.”Sonnenfeld ignores the content of what was said obviously, since he has to make a point to kiss Iger's ass - Kimmel said MAGA didn't want the shooter to be MAGA, Barr said a black woman was from Planet of the Apes… so, very the same?This isn't about brand protection, this is about economics - and Iger the dealmaker just made a trade: short-term political expediency for cash as he tries to unload ABCIn 2023, Iger was in talks with Nexstar to buy ABC outrightAlso 2023, massive deals between Disney and NexstarNexstar's ABC agreements expire December 202614% of Nexstar stations are ABC affiliates - Tegna would add 7%Disney already was cancelled by the right for having movies that were too woke, now they just Target-ed themselves right in the groinASSHOLE ACTION ITEM:Disney's next AGM is likely March 2026 - buy Disney stock with the intention of voting out every starfucky directorBonus option: buy shares of Coca-Cola, GM, Under Armour, P&G, Reckitt Benckiser, Bristol Myers, Target, Carlyle, and Lululemon to vote the same directors out of ALL their board positions - make shit decisions in one place, you'll make them everywhereDisney's Mel Lagomasino on Coca-Cola with Carolyn Everson (twofer!), Mary Barra at GM, Everson also at Under Armour, Amy Chang at P&G, Jeremy Darroch at Reckitt Benckiser, Derica Rice at Bristol Myers, Target (anti DEI AND anti free speech!), Carlyle, Cal McDonald at LululemonVote out Sonnenfeld - on the board of Lennar Corporation - vote him out for kicks since he's so deferential to CEOs, how on earth can he hold one accountable? Is he the voice of shareholders or CEOs?Perry SookThe buyer! Nexstar looking to acquire Tegna for $6bn, which would consolidate 80% of US households local news stationsNexstar has to make nice with Brendan Carr, chair of the FCC (I miss Lina Kahn… sigh) - and Carr is purely political, so here was how they bent the knee:“Nexstar's owned and partner television stations affiliated with the ABC Television Network will preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live! for the foreseeable future beginning with tonight's show. Nexstar strongly objects to recent comments made by Mr. Kimmel concerning the killing of Charlie Kirk and will replace the show with other programming in its ABC-affiliated markets.”Again, if you read Kimmel's actual comment, he's saying that MAGA doesn't want the shooter to be MAGA… he actually didn't say ANYTHING ELSE about the shooting itselfSonnenfeld: “Kimmel's suggestion that “the MAGA gang (is) desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them” doesn't square with the facts which are known at this point. Regardless, these comments are blatantly insensitive as political violence should never be tolerated or exploited as comedic entertainment, no matter who perpetrated it.”Except Kimmel didn't joke about political violence, he joked about the fact that MAGA is super hoping it wasn't their political violence.Perry Sook's political donations have been almost entirely to Republican candidates over the last decade (except for National Association of Broadcasters) - and it's paid offBrendan Carr, Soon To Be FCC Chair, Says Commission Will Back Local TV Stations “Even If That's In Conflict” With Broadcast NetworksNew FCC boss could unleash biggest local TV shakeup in decadesSook owns just under 6% of Nexstar stock, with Vanguard and Blackrock clocking in at a combined 21.8% - meaning about 28% of votes are guaranteed to go with managementMeaning this was all a pretense to consolidate broadcaster ownership - and Sook is one of the winners of the consolidationNow Carr has a reason he can vote for Nexstar purchase, Iger gets out of more ABCASSHOLE ACTION ITEMIt's basically too late to vote against Nexstar's board - their meeting was in June 2025, the merger will be approved by thenYou could maybe buy shares and vote against the mergerAlternatively, buy Yelp (Tony Wells), Denny's (Bernadette Aulestia), and Urban One (Geoffrey Armstrong) to vote out board elsewhereDavid Deniston SmithCEO of Sinclair, owner of 20% of ABC affiliates - the most currently, but post merger would be secondNepo baby Smith, who, with the rest of his brothers and family, own 82% of voting power, are Trump and GOP toadiesAnother mediocre conservative blowhard CEO who spent the last two decades kissing the ass of every republican he can findHe was one of Turning Point USAs biggest donors through his foundation, and issued the following statement: they would “not lift the suspension of ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!' on our stations until formal discussions are held with ABC regarding the network's commitment to professionalism and accountability,” calling on Kimmel to make a direct apology to the Kirk family, and for the network to make a “meaningful donation” to them and Turning Point USA.In the 00s, Sinclair let a paid Bush administration propagandist deliver reporting on their local news stationsIn Trump 1.0, Sinclair forced local news broadcasters to read off a script about how mainstream media was fake newsIn the 90s, Smith was caught getting a blowjob from a prostituteASSHOLE ACTION ITEMSinclair's board is dual class dictatorship, but you CAN vote out Ben Carson on the DR Horton and Covenant Logistics boards - yes, that Ben CarsonHeadliniest of the WeekDR: Elon Musk Fires 500 Staff at xAI, Puts College Kid in Charge of Training GrokMM: If You Don't Know Who the Underperforming Director Is, It Might Be You!Are the CEO, chair or committee leads soliciting my input off-cycle?Does the CEO and select members of the executive team think of me as a trusted advisor and am I able to constructively coach behind the scenes?If the answers to all of these questions are “No,” it could be a sign that you are not performing to the level expected by your company's management.YOU DON'T REPORT TO MANAGEMENTWho Won the Week?DR: I guess they just win every week: Trumpy and creepy billionaires profiting over an app used primarily by 18-34 year olds (70%): Oracle's Larry Elison, Andreessen Horowitz's Marc Andreessen.MM: Gillette, the razor company: Pete Hegseth goes to war against military beards, stresses ‘grooming standards which underpin the warrior ethos'PredictionsDR: FCC Chair Brendan Carr cancels himself when he digs up reports when he cast himself as a First Amendment purist, denouncing efforts by Democrats and Republicans to lean on TV providers and social media platforms as “censorship” and a “chilling transgression of free speech.”ure on media a ‘chilling transgression of free speech.'”MM: I wrote this on Bluesky two days ago: “The next step for Brendan Carr and the FCC is to repeal Section 230 - after which they can sue social media companies for any anti-conservative posts. Then the silencing is complete until dissent is done via snail mail.” Today, I was right: Charlie Kirk assassination reignites debate over Section 230 protections for social media companies. We're in an era of algorithmic autocracy - Microsoft changed LinkedIn's algorithm earlier this year and there

Beurswatch | BNR
Xi laat spierballen zien: China boycot Nvidia

Beurswatch | BNR

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 17, 2025 18:42


Na lang getouwtrek is China het zat. De toezichthouder daar vertrouwt de Amerikaanse technologie van Nvidia echt niet meer, dus geeft alle Chinese bedrijven nu de opdracht om te stoppen met het kopen van hun AI-chips. Alle geplande bestellingen worden geschrapt, en alles dat nog niet geleverd is wordt geannuleerd. Is China dan echt ver genoeg om zonder Amerikaanse chips verder te durven? Of is het gewoon spierballenvertoon? Dat zoeken we deze aflevering uit. Dan hebben we het ook over een ander breekijzer tussen China en de VS. Stukje bij beetje komen we meer te weten over de aanstaande deal rond TikTok. Moederbedrijf ByteDance moet de Amerikaanse activiteiten gaan afstaan, anders gaat de app in de VS op zwart. En er staat een verzameling aan bedrijven klaar om die tak over te nemen. Verder hoor je over ExxonMobil. Dat ziet met een soepeler wordende beurswaakhond z'n kans schoon om activistische aandeelhouders buiten spel te zetten. Je komt ook te weten welk bedrijf eigenlijk eraan dacht om in Amsterdam naar de beurs te komen, maar dat nu opeens een andere bestemming heeft gevonden. En we vertellen je over de nieuwste markt die Uber aanboort. Na taxi's en maaltijdbezorging, zoeken ze het nu in exotischere oorden.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Trans Resister Radio
The New Peter Thiel Is Contrarian Not Libertarian, AoT#473

Trans Resister Radio

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 7, 2025 59:20


The pretense of being a Libertarian was just too much work to keep up with for Peter Thiel, and so a new label has been conjured up to describe him. As a contrarian, he now has the luxury of not having to believe in anything, and instead maintain an appearance of antagonism to the status quo.  Topics include: Patreon posts, Carroll Quigley, mainstreaming of conspiracy culture, transformation of former Truth Movement, creative spark is back, transhumanism becoming a mainstream topic, exposing technocratic propaganda, disinformation everywhere, Peter Thiel the contrarian, public relations, building public persona, move away from Libertarian identity, adaptations within right wing propaganda stream, shifting narratives, Elon Musk public profile model, Christian Identity, Anti-Christ lecture series, no charisma Silicon Valley billionaires, Ray Kurzweil, Rogan interviews, Andreessen, Techno Utopian Manifesto, taking attention away from real problems, puritanical dark religious aspect to right wing propaganda, international disinformation campaigns, Bernays, Technological Society, perfection of technique, global government, luxury bunkers, end times head space, Revelation of the Method, occult concepts, poor or no research feeds you into disinformation stream, encouraging nihilism, pretending not to be the new establishment, old mainstream media no longer exists, going deeper into the virtual world, rapid change

The Ochelli Effect
Age of Transitions and Uncle 9-5-2025

The Ochelli Effect

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 7, 2025 124:27 Transcription Available


Age of Transitions and Uncle 9-5-2025AoT#473The pretense of being a Libertarian was just too much work to keep up with for Peter Thiel, and so a new label has been conjured up to describe him. As a contrarian, he now has the luxury of not having to believe in anything, and instead maintain an appearance of antagonism to the status quo. Topics include: Patreon posts, Carroll Quigley, mainstreaming of conspiracy culture, transformation of former Truth Movement, creative spark is back, transhumanism becoming a mainstream topic, exposing technocratic propaganda, disinformation everywhere, Peter Thiel the contrarian, public relations, building public persona, move away from Libertarian identity, adaptations within right wing propaganda stream, shifting narratives, Elon Musk public profile model, Christian Identity, Anti-Christ lecture series, no charisma Silicon Valley billionaires, Ray Kurzweil, Rogan interviews, Andreessen, Techno Utopian Manifesto, taking attention away from real problems, puritanical dark religious aspect to right wing propaganda, international disinformation campaigns, Bernays, Technological Society, perfection of technique, global government, luxury bunkers, end times head space, Revelation of the Method, occult concepts, poor or no research feeds you into disinformation stream, encouraging nihilism, pretending not to be the new establishment, old mainstream media no longer exists, going deeper into the virtual world, rapid changeUtp#380Uncle does another beer review with a five shot glass tour. Topics include: beer review, Taiwan Beer, 5 shot glasses, TikTak BTS stream, Chargers beat Chiefs, NFL pick sheet pools, animals with strange fungal infections, neighborhood fruit trees, good neighbors, drink responsibly, MLB baseball talk, multiple teams in one city, NHL, Kiss Cam problems, suits vs casual clothes at ball gamesFRANZ MAIN HUB:https://theageoftransitions.com/PATREONhttps://www.patreon.com/aaronfranzUNCLEhttps://unclethepodcast.com/ORhttps://theageoftransitions.com/category/uncle-the-podcast/FRANZ and UNCLE Merchhttps://theageoftransitions.com/category/support-the-podcasts/---Email Chuckblindjfkresearcher@gmail.comBE THE EFFECTOchelli Link Treehttps://linktr.ee/chuckochelli---NOVEMBER IN DALLAS LANCER CONFERENCEDISCOUNT FOR YOU10 % OFF code = Ochelli10https://assassinationconference.com/BE THE EFFECTListen/Chat on the Sitehttps://ochelli.com/listen-live/TuneInhttp://tun.in/sfxkxAPPLEhttps://music.apple.com/us/station/ochelli-com/ra.1461174708Ochelli Link Treehttps://linktr.ee/chuckochelliAnything is a blessing if you have the meansWithout YOUR support we go silent.---NOVEMBER IN DALLAS LANCER CONFERENCEDISCOUNT FOR YOU10 % OFF code = Ochelli10https://assassinationconference.com/Coming SOON Room Discount Details The Fairmont Dallas hotel 1717 N Akard Street, Dallas, Texas 75201. easy access to Dealey Plaza

Bills Football
09-03 Joe Andreessen

Bills Football

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 3, 2025 1:42


09-03 Joe Andreessen full 102 Wed, 03 Sep 2025 19:00:00 +0000 IvA0K9fcCwF2aZTDBDdwdVowy68mg97z nfl,football,buffalo bills,joe andreessen,sports Bills Football nfl,football,buffalo bills,joe andreessen,sports 09-03 Joe Andreessen Every Play, every game right here on WGR Sports Radio 550, WGR550.com. The official voice of the Buffalo Bills! Football On-Demand Audio Presented by Northwest Bank, For What's Next. 2024 © 2021 Audacy, Inc. Sports False https://player.amperwavepodcasting.com?feed-link=https%3A%2F%2Frss.amper

One Bills Live
Joe Andreessen live with the media after practice

One Bills Live

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 13, 2025 11:57


Chris and Steve send it to the podium as Joe Andreessen speaks with the media

Schopp and Bulldog
Hour 1- Did Tyrell Shavers and Joe Andreessen play themselves into a bigger role

Schopp and Bulldog

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 11, 2025 36:31


Hour 1- Did Tyrell Shavers and Joe Andreessen play themselves into a bigger role full 2191 Mon, 11 Aug 2025 22:42:00 +0000 OnNrxe6P66DlUe9rIkdclubkg8JWd9dC sports Schopp and Bulldog sports Hour 1- Did Tyrell Shavers and Joe Andreessen play themselves into a bigger role Sports talk should be entertaining and informative, which is why Schopp and the Bulldog control the WGR 550 airwaves every weekday from 3-7 p.m. Chris "The Bulldog" Parker bleeds Buffalo and is as passionate about the Sabres and Bills as any listener to our radio station. Mike Schopp keeps the callers in line while dishing out his unique perspective and opinions, and creating on-air fantasy drafts of anything from favorite candy and meats, to actors, presidents and bands. Bills reporter Sal Capaccio appears daily on the show covering every move the team makes like nobody else!The top-notch weekly guests include:Mondays (DURING FOOTBALL SEASON) at 4 p.m. - Buffalo Bill, Eric WoodSabres general manager Kevyn Adams (DURING HOCKEY SEASON) - 5:30 p.m.Thursdays at 5:30 p.m. - Sports betting media specialist Evan Abrams from The Action NetworkTogether for 10 years, Schopp and the Bulldog are the No. 1 most listened to talk show in all of Western New York.On Demand Audio is presented by Northwest Bank. For What's Next. © 2025 Audacy, Inc. Sports False https://play

The Fintech Blueprint
How to Invest in the best Crypto Funds, with Matthew Le Merle CEO of Blockchain Coinvestors

The Fintech Blueprint

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 11, 2025 52:24


Lex chats with Matthew Le Merle - CEO of Blockchain Coinvestors, a leading blockchain and AI fund-of-funds. He reflects on the limitations of large institutions in adopting disruptive technologies and why he chose to back innovators over incumbents, using stablecoins as an example of asymmetric value creation. Le Merle explains his evolution from angel investor to institutional LP, highlighting the benefits of leveraging top-tier venture capitalists' expertise in inefficient early-stage markets. He outlines the psychological challenges of venture investing, where failures appear early and outsized wins often take a decade, contrasting this with the faster liquidity but higher existential risk in token markets. Finally, he critiques institutional allocators for over-relying on efficient markets, under-allocating to venture despite its role in driving future value, and positions his strategy as fully committed to early-stage blockchain and AI as the highest-returning segments. NOTABLE DISCUSSION POINTS:1. Innovation Threatens Incumbents, Benefits Disruptors: Major technological shifts, from the internet to blockchain and AI, create winners and losers. Incumbents often resist disruptive change because it threatens existing revenue models, while nimble startups and tech-first companies can rapidly capture new market opportunities.2. Venture Success Requires Navigating High Failure Rates: In early-stage investing, most portfolio companies will fail, often within the first 3–4 years. Returns are driven by a small number of outsized successes, usually via acquisitions rather than IPOs, requiring patience, resilience, and a disciplined investment strategy.3. Inefficient Markets Offer the Greatest Asymmetric Upside: Early-stage venture and emerging technologies like blockchain and AI are inefficient markets where superior access, insight, and execution can generate returns far above those available in traditional, efficient markets like public equities or bonds. TOPICSBlockchain Coinvestors, Band of Angels, AngelList, Blockchain Capital, Pantera, Sequoia, Andreessen, BlackRock, Fidelity, Blockchain, DeFi, Decentralized Finance, Investment, Venture Capital, Angel Investment, Fund of Funds ABOUT THE FINTECH BLUEPRINT

Bills Football
08-09 Joe Andreessen Postgame

Bills Football

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 9, 2025 1:37


08-09 Joe Andreessen Postgame bonus 97 Sat, 09 Aug 2025 21:39:46 +0000 CA2bKEdrdkIwY5q0mRtBu9jUkr2rWyuU sports Bills Football sports 08-09 Joe Andreessen Postgame Every Play, every game right here on WGR Sports Radio 550, WGR550.com. The official voice of the Buffalo Bills! Football On-Demand Audio Presented by Northwest Bank, For What's Next. 2024 © 2021 Audacy, Inc. Sports False https://player.amperwavepodcasting.com?feed-link=https%3A%2F%2F

Bills Football
08-01 Joe Andreessen

Bills Football

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 1, 2025 1:20


08-01 Joe Andreessen full 80 Fri, 01 Aug 2025 23:45:00 +0000 M1X9KOlZNPK3Hh2ztwlN5JYEJPbAMKJ9 nfl,football,buffalo bills,bills training camp,joe andreessen,sports Bills Football nfl,football,buffalo bills,bills training camp,joe andreessen,sports 08-01 Joe Andreessen Every Play, every game right here on WGR Sports Radio 550, WGR550.com. The official voice of the Buffalo Bills! Football On-Demand Audio Presented by Northwest Bank, For What's Next. 2024 © 2021 Audacy, Inc. Sports False https://player.amperwavepodcasting.com?feed-link=https%3A%2F%2Frss.amper

Bills Football
07-31 Joe Andreessen

Bills Football

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 31, 2025 1:17


07-31 Joe Andreessen full 77 Thu, 31 Jul 2025 16:00:00 +0000 KlBRpEGyiR8ZOTjA58iv1voLnwiOvOFs nfl,football,buffalo bills,bills training camp,joe andreessen,sports Bills Football nfl,football,buffalo bills,bills training camp,joe andreessen,sports 07-31 Joe Andreessen Every Play, every game right here on WGR Sports Radio 550, WGR550.com. The official voice of the Buffalo Bills! Football On-Demand Audio Presented by Northwest Bank, For What's Next. 2024 © 2021 Audacy, Inc. Sports False https://player.amperwavepodcasting.com?feed-link=https%3A%2F%2Frss.amper

On The Brink with Castle Island
Weekly Roundup 07/11/25 (New BTC ATH, Crypto Week, Zelensky suit scandal) (EP.645)

On The Brink with Castle Island

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 11, 2025 34:45


Matt and Nic are back for another week of news and deals. In this episode:  Bitcoin hits a new ATH and no one is talking about it Grok goes haywire The White House posts chudjak Core Weave looks to buy Core Scientific Stablecoins are going to pay yield anyway Did Zelenskyy wear a suit? How should prediction markets be settled? Pump.fun ICO is coming up Hester Peirce issues a warning on tokenized securities Crypto Week in Congress is coming up Jonathan Gould has been confirmed as Comptroller of the Currency There are new public access vehicles Andreessen wants you to leave Delaware A fundamental valuation model for L1s? GMX is hacked for $42m  Tim Massad's exchange with Bernie Moreno Content mentioned in this episode: Hester Peirce, Enchanting, but Not Magical: A Statement on the Tokenization of Securities Fidelity, Blockchains as emerging economies Bridge, How Meow and Bridge Make USDC Payments as Seamless as Cash  

Faster, Please! — The Podcast

My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers,The 1990s and the dawn of the internet were a pivotal time for America and the wider world. The history of human progress is a series of such pivotal moments. As Peter Leyden points out, it seems we're facing another defining era as society wrestles with three new key technologies: artificial intelligence, clean energy, and bioengineering.Today on Faster, Please! — The Podcast, I chat with Leyden about American leadership in emerging technology and the mindset shifts we must undergo to bring about the future we dream of.Leyden is a futurist and technology expert. He is a speaker, author, and founder of Reinvent Futures. Thirty years ago, he worked with the founders of WIRED magazine, and now authors his latest book project via Substack: The Great Progression: 2025 to 2050.In This Episode* Eras of transformation (1:38)* American risk tolerance (11:15)* Facing AI pessimism (15:38)* The bioengineering breakthrough (24:24)* Demographic pressure (28:52)Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation. Eras of transformation (1:38)I think we Americans tend to reset the clock in which we get in these dead ends, we get in these old patterns, these old systems, and the things are all falling apart, it's not working. And then there is a kind of a can-do reinvention phase . . .Pethokoukis: Since World War II, as I see it, we have twice been on the verge of a transformational leap forward, economically and technologically. I would say that was right around 1970 and then right around 2000, and the periods of time after that, I think, certainly relative to the expectations then, was disappointing.It is my hope, and I know it's your hope as well, that we are at another such moment of transformation. One, do you accept my general premise, and two, why are we going to get it right this time?If I'm hearing you right, you're kind of making two junctures there. I do believe we're in the beginning of what would be much more thought of as a transformation. I would say the most direct parallel is closer to what happened coming off of World War II. I also think, if you really go back in American history, it's what came off of Civil War and even came off of the Founding Era. I think there's a lot of parallels there I can go into, I've written about in my Substack and it's part of the next book I'm writing, so there's a bigger way that I think about it. I think both those times that you're referring to, it seems to me we were coming off a boom, or what seemed to be an updraft or your “Up Wing” kind of periods that you think of — and then we didn't.I guess I think of it this way: the '50s, '60s, and '90s were exciting times that made it feel like the best was yet to come — but then that momentum stalled. I'm hopeful we're entering another such moment now, with so much happening, so much in motion, and I just hope it all comes together.The way I think about it in a bigger lens, I would just push back a little bit, which is, it's true coming off the '90s — I was at WIRED magazine in the '90s. I was watching the early '90s internet and the Digital Revolution and I sketched out at that time, in my first book but also cover stories in WIRED, trying to rough out what would happen by the year 2020. And it is true that coming off the '90s there was a Dot Com crash, but temporarily, honestly, that with the Web 2.0 and others, a lot of those trends we were talking about in the '90s actually just kept picking up.So depending how big the lens is, I would argue that, coming off the '90s, the full digital revolution and the full globalization that we were starting to see in the early to mid-'90s in some respects did come to fruition. It didn't play out the way we all wanted it to happen — spreading wealth all through the society and blah, blah, blah, and many of the things that people complain about and react to now — but I would argue that a lot of what we were saying in those '90s, and had begun in the '90s with the '90s boom, continued after a temporary pause, for sure.The Dot Com boom was just frothy investment. It crashed, but the companies that come out of that crash are literally trillion-dollar companies dominating the global economy now here on the west coast. That was some of the things we could see happening from the mid-'90s. The world did get connected through the internet, and globalization did, from a lens that's beyond America, we took 800 million peasants living on two bucks a day in China and brought them into the global economy. There's all kinds of positive things of what happened in the last 25 years, depending on how big your lens is.I would say that we've been through a largely successful — clearly some issues, “Oh my gosh, we didn't anticipate social media and that stuff,” but in general, the world that we were actually starting to envision in the '90s came about, at some level — with some flaws, and some issues, and we could have done better, but I'm saying now I think AI is bigger than the internet. I think the idea that humans are now working side-by-side with intelligent machines and being augmented by intelligent machines is a world historical event that is going to go beyond just connecting everybody on the planet through the internet, which is kind of what the '90s was, and the early Digital Revolution.This is a bigger deal, and I do think this transformation has the potential to be way bigger too. If we manage it right — including how we did it positively or negatively in the last 25, 30 years off the '90s — if we do this right, we could really pull off what I think is a reinvention of America and a much better world going beyond this. That's not a prediction that we're going to do that, but I think we certainly have the potential there.While I was preparing for our chat, I recalled a podcast I did with Marc Andreessen where we discussed AI — not just its potential to solve big problems and drive progress, but also about the obstacles, especially regulatory ones. He pointed out that those barriers are why we don't have things like widespread nuclear power, let alone fusion reactors.When I asked why he thought we could overcome those barriers this time around, he said we probably won't — that failure should be the baseline because these obstacles are deeply rooted in a risk-averse American society. Now, why isn't that your baseline?My baseline is that America — again, I'm taking a bigger lens here, which is we periodically come to these junctures in history in which you could say, from left and right, there's kind of an ossification of the old system. What happens is the old ways of doing things, the old systems, essentially get kind of stuck, and ossified, and just defunct, and long in the tooth, and all different ways you can describe it. But what happens at these junctures — and it happened coming off World War II, it happened after the Civil War, I happened after in the Founding Era too, coming off the colonial world — there is an incredible period of explosion of progress, essentially, and they usually are about 25 years, which is why I'm thinking about the next 25 years.I think we Americans tend to reset the clock in which we get in these dead ends, we get in these old patterns, these old systems, and the things are all falling apart, it's not working. And then there is a kind of a can-do reinvention phase that, frankly, is beyond Europe now. The great hope of the West is still going to be America here. But I think we're actually entering it and I think this is what's happening, and . . . I've read your book, The Conservative Futurist, I would call myself more of a “Progressive Futurist,” but I would say both left and right in this country have gone too extreme. The right is critiquing “government can't do anything right,” and the left is critiquing “the market, corporations can't do anything right.”The actual American framework is the Hamiltonian government, coming off Lincoln's government, the FDR government. There is a role for government, a vigorous kind of government presence that can drive change, but there's also a great role for the market too.There's this center left and center right that has now got to recalibrate for this next era of America. I think because the old system — and from the right, the old system might be big bureaucratic government that was born out of World War II, the great welfare state bureaucracies, also the Pax Americana. Trump is kind of banging against, dismantling that old thing that's been going for 80 years and, frankly, is kind of run out of steam. It's not really working. But the left is also coming out, carbon energy, and drilling for oil, and industrial pollution, and all that other stuff that was coming off of that scaling of the 20th century economy is also not working for the 21st century. We've also got to dismantle those systems. But together, looking forward, you could imagine a complete reinvention around these new technologies. AI is a huge one. Without question, the first among equals it's going to be the game changer around every field, every industry.Also clean energy technologies, I would argue, are just hitting the point of tipping points of scale that we could imagine a shift in the energy foundation. We could see abundant clean energy, including nuclear. I think there's a new re-appreciation of nuclear coming even from left-of-center, but also potential fusion on the horizon.I also think bioengineering is something that we haven't really got our heads into, but in terms of the long-term health of the planet, and all kinds of synthetic biology, and all kinds of things that are happening, we are now past the tipping point, and we know how to do this.I think there's three world historic technologies that America could get reinvented around in the next 25 years. I think the old system, left and right, is now done with this old thing that isn't working, but that opens up the potential for the future. So yes, what Andreessen's talking about is the late stage of the last gummed-up system that wasn't working. For that matter, the same thing from the left is complaining about the inequality, and the old system isn't working now the way it was, circulating wealth through society. But I think there's a way to reinvent that and I actually think we're on the verge of doing it, and that's what I'm trying to do for my project, my book, my Substack stuff.American risk tolerance (11:15)I think there is an elite on the right-of-center tech and the left-of-center tech that sees the same commonalities about the potential of the technology, but also the potential for transformation going forward, that would be healthy. Do you feel that there's enough ferment happening that, institutionally, there will be enough space for these technologies to flourish as you hope? That the first time that there's a problem with an AI model where people die because some system failed, we're not going to be like, “We need to pause AI.” That the next time with one of these restarted nuclear reactors, if there's some minor problem, we're not going to suddenly panic and say, “That's it, nuclear is gone again.” Do you think we have that kind of societal resilience to deal? I think we've had too little of that, but do you think there's enough now, for the reasons you're talking about, that we will continue to push forward?I think there's absolutely the chance that can happen. Now, like Andreessen said, it's not a prediction like, “Oh, this will be fine, it's all going to work out.” We could also go the way of Europe, which is we could get over-regulated, over-ossified, go back to the old days, be this nice tourist spot that, whatever, we look at our old buildings and stuff and we figure out a way to earn a living, but it's just getting more and more and more in the past. That's also a possibility, and I suppose if you had to bet, maybe that's the greater possibility, in default.But I don't think that's going to happen because I do believe more in America. I'm also living in Northern California here. I'm surrounded for the last 30 years, people are just jam packed with new ideas. There's all kinds of s**t happening here. It's just an explosive moment right now. We are attracting the best and the brightest from all over the country, all over the world. There is no other place in the world, bar none, around AI than San Francisco right now, and you cannot be here and not just get thrilled at the possibility of what's happening. Now, does that mean that we're going to be able to pull this off through the whole country, through the whole world? I don't know, there is a lot of ambiguity there and this is why you can't predict the future with certainty.But I do believe we have the potential here to rebuild fundamentally. I think there is an elite on the right-of-center tech and the left-of-center tech that sees the same commonalities about the potential of the technology, but also the potential for transformation going forward, that would be healthy. For example, I know Andreessen, you talk about Andreessen . . . I was also rooted in the whole Obama thing, there was a ton of tech people in the Obama thing, and now there's a ton of tech people who are kind of tech-right, but it's all kind of washes together. It's because we all see the potential of these technologies just emerging in front of us. The question is . . . how do you get the systems to adapt?Now, to be fair, California, yes, it's been gummed up with regulations and overthink, but on the other hand, it's opened itself up. It just went through historic shifts in rolling back environmental reviews and trying to drive more housing by refusing to let the NIMBY shut it down. There's a bunch of things that even the left-of-center side is trying to deal with this gummed-up system, and the right-of-center side is doing their version of it in DC right now.Anyhow, the point is, we see the limits on both left-of-center and right-of-center of what's currently happening and what has happened. The question is, can we get aligned on a relatively common way forward, which is what America did coming off the war for 25 years, which is what happened after the Civil War. There were issues around the Reconstruction, but there was a kind of explosive expansion around American progress in the 25 years there. And we did it off the Revolution too. There are these moments where left-of-center and right-of-center align and we kind of build off of a more American set of values: pluralism, meritocracy, economic growth, freedom, personal freedom, things that we all can agree on, it's just they get gummed up in these old systems and these old ideologies periodically and we've just got to blow through them and try something different. I think the period we're in right now.Facing AI pessimism (15:38)The world of AI is so foreign to them, it's so bizarre to them, it's so obscure to them, that they're reacting off it just like any sensible human being. You're scared of a thing you don't get.I feel like you are very optimistic.Yes, that is true.I like to think that I am very optimistic. I think we're both optimistic about what these technologies can do to make this country and this world a richer world, a more sustainable world, a healthier world, create more opportunity. I think we're on the same page. So it's sad to me that I feel like I've been this pessimistic so far throughout our conversation and this next question, unfortunately, will be in that vein.Okay, fair enough.I have a very clear memory of the '90s tech boom, and the excitement, and this is the most excited I've been since then, but I know some people aren't excited, and they're not excited about AI. They think AI means job loss, it means a dehumanization of society where we only interact with screens, and they think all the gains from any added economic growth will only go to the super rich, and they're not excited about it.My concern is that the obvious upsides will take long enough to manifest that the people who are negative, and the downsides — because there will be downsides with any technology or amazing new tool, no matter how amazing it is — that our society will begin to focus on the downsides, on, “Oh, this company let go of these 50 people in their marketing department,” and that's what will be the focus, and we will end up overregulating it. There will be pressure on companies, just like there's pressure on film companies not to use AI in their special effects or in their advertising, that there will be this anti-AI, anti-technology backlash — like we've seen with trade — because what I think are the obvious upsides will take too long to manifest. That is one of my concerns.I agree with that. That is a concern. In fact, right now if you look at the polling globally, about a third of Americans are very negative and down on AI, about a third are into AI, and about a third, don't what the hell what to make of it. But if you go to China, and Japan, and a lot of Asian countries, it's like 60 percent, 70 percent positive about AI. You go to Europe and it's similar to the US, if not worse, meaning there is a pessimism.To be fair, from a human planet point of view, the West has had a way privileged position in the last 250 years in terms of the wealth creation, in terms of the spoils of globalization, and the whole thing. So you could say — which is not a popular thing to say in America right now — that with globalization in the last 25 years, we actually started to rectify, from a global point of view, a lot of these inequities in ways that, from the long view, is not a bad thing to happen, that everybody in the planet gets lifted up and we can move forward as eight billion people on the planet.I would say so there is a negativity in the West because they're coming off a kind of an era that they were always relatively privileged. There is this kind of baked-in “things are getting worse” feeling for a lot of people. That's kind of adding to this pessimism, I think. That's a bad thing.My next book, which is coming out with Harper Collins and we just cracked the contract on that, I got a big advance —Hey, congratulations.But the whole idea of this book is kind of trying to create a new grand narrative of what's possible now, in the next 25 years, based on these new technologies and how we could reorganize the economy and society in ways that would work better for everybody. The reason I'm kind of trying to wrap this up, and the early pieces of this are in my Substack series of these essays I'm writing, is because I think what's missing right now is people can't see the new way forward. That's the win-win way forward. They actually are only operating on this opaque thing. The world of AI is so foreign to them, it's so bizarre to them, it's so obscure to them, that they're reacting off it just like any sensible human being. You're scared of a thing you don't get.What's interesting about this, and again what's useful, is I went through this exact same thing in the '90s. It's a little bit different, and I'll tell you the differentiation in a minute, but basically back in the '90s when I was working at the early stage with the founders of WIRED magazine, it was the early days of WIRED, basically meaning the world didn't know what email was, what the web was, people were saying there's no way people would put their credit cards on the internet, no one's going to buy anything on there, you had to start with square one. What was interesting about it is they didn't understand what's possible. A lot of the work I was doing back then at WIRED, but also with my first book then, went into multiple languages, all kinds of stuff, was trying to explain from the mid-'90s, what the internet and the Digital Revolution tied with globalization might look like in a positive way to the year 2020, which is a 25-year lookout.That was one of the popularities of the book, and the articles I was doing on that, and the talks I was doing — a decade speaking on this thing — because people just needed to see it: “Oh! This is what it means when you connect up everybody! Oh! I could see myself in my field living in a world where that works. Oh, actually, the trade of with China might work for my company, blah, blah, blah.” People could kind of start to see it in a way that they couldn't in the early to mid-'90s. They were just like, “I don't even know, what's an Amazon? Who cares if they're selling books on it? I don't get it.” But you could rough it out from a technological point of view and do that.I think it's the same thing now. I think we need do this now. We have to say, “Hey dudes, you working with AI is going to make you twice as productive. You're going to make twice as much money.” The growth rate of the economy — and you're good with this with your Up Wing stuff. I'm kind of with you on that. It could be like we're all actually making more money, more wealth pulsing through society. Frankly, we're hurting right now in terms of, we don't have enough bodies doing stuff and maybe we need some robots. There's a bunch of ways that you could reframe this in a bigger way that people could say, “Oh, maybe I could do that better,” and in a way that I think I saw the parallels back there.Now the one difference now, and I'll tell you the one difference between the '90s, and I mentioned this earlier, in the '90s, everybody thought these goofy tech companies and stuff were just knucklehead things. They didn't understand what they were. In fact, if anything, the problem was the opposite. You get their attention to say, “Hey, this Amazon thing is a big deal,” or “This thing called Google is going to be a big thing.” You couldn't even get them focused on that. It took until about the 20-teens, 2012, -13, -14 till these companies got big enough.So now everybody's freaked out about the tech because they're these giant gargantuan things, these trillion-dollar companies with global reach in ways that, in the '90s, they weren't. So there is a kind of fear-factor baked into tech. The last thing I'll say about that, though, is I know I've learned one thing about tech is over the years, and I still believe it's true today, that the actual cutting-edge of technology is not done in the legacy companies, even these big legacy tech companies, although they'll still be big players, is that the actual innovation is going to happen on the edges through startups and all that other thing, unless I'm completely wrong, which I doubt. That's been the true thing of all these tech phases. I think there's plenty of room for innovation, plenty of room for a lot of people to be tapped into this next wave of innovation, and also wealth creation, and I think there is a way forward that I think is going to be less scary than people right now think. It's like they think that current tech setup is going to be forever and they're just going to get richer, and richer, and richer. Well, if they were in the '90s, those companies, Facebook didn't exist, Google didn't exist, Amazon didn't exist. Just like we all thought, “Oh, IBM is going to run everything,” it's like, no. These things happen at these junctures, and I think we're in another one of the junctures, so we've got to get people over this hump. We've got to get them to see, “Hey, there's a win-win way forward that America can be revitalized, and prosperous, and wealth spread.”The bioengineering breakthrough (24:24)Just like we had industrial production in the Industrial Revolution that scaled great wealth and created all these products off of that we could have a bio-economy, a biological revolution . . .I think that's extraordinarily important, giving people an idea of what can be, and it's not all negative. You've talked a little bit about AI, people know that's out there and they know that some people think it's going to be big. Same thing with clean energy.To me, of your three transformer technologies, the one we I think sometimes hear less about right now is bioengineering. I wonder if you could just give me a little flavor of what excites you about that.It is on a delay. Clean energy has been going for a while here and is starting to scale on levels that you can see the impact of solar, the impact of electric cars and all kinds stuff, particularly from a global perspective. Same thing with AI, there's a lot of focus on that, but what's interesting about bioengineering is there were some world historic breakthroughs basically in the last 25 years.One is just cracking the human genome and driving the cost down to, it's like a hundred bucks now to get anybody's genome processed. That's just crazy drop in price from $3 million on the first one 20 years ago to like a hundred bucks now. That kind of dramatic change. Then the CRISPR breakthrough, which is essentially we can know how to cheaply and easily edit these genomes. That's a huge thing. But it's not just about the genomics. It's essentially we are understanding biology to the point where we can now engineer living things.Just think about that: Human beings, we've been in the Industrial Revolution, everything. We've learned how to engineer inert things, dig up metals, and blah, blah, blah, blah, and engineer a thing. We didn't even know how living things worked, or we didn't even know what DNA was until the 1950s, right? The living things has been this opaque world that we have no idea. We've crossed that threshold. We now understand how to engineer living things, and it's not just the genetic engineering. We can actually create proteins. Oh, we can grow cultured meat instead of waiting for the cow to chew the grass to make the meat, we can actually make it into that and boom, we know how it works.This breakthrough of engineering living things is only now starting to kind of dawn on everyone . . . when you talk about synthetic biology, it's essentially man-made biology, and that breakthrough is huge. It's going to have a lot of economic implications because, across this century, it depends how long it takes to get past the regulation, and get the fear factor of people, which is higher than even AI, probably, around genetic engineering and cloning and all this stuff. Stem cells, there's all kinds of stuff happening in this world now that we could essentially create a bio-economy. Just like we had industrial production in the Industrial Revolution that scaled great wealth and created all these products off of that we could have a bio-economy, a biological revolution that would allow, instead of creating plastic bottles, you could design biological synthetic bottles that dissolve after two weeks in the ocean from saltwater or exposure to sunlight and things like that. Nature knows how to both create things that work and also biodegrade them back to nothing.There's a bunch of insights that we now can learn from Mother Nature about the biology of the world around us that we can actually design products and services, things that actually could do it and be much more sustainable in terms of the long-term health of the planet, but also could be better for us and has all kinds of health implications, of course. That's where people normally go is think, “Oh my god, we can live longer” and all kinds of stuff. That's true, but also our built world could actually be redesigned using super-hard woods or all kinds of stuff that you could genetically design differently.That's a bigger leap. There's people who are religious who can't think of touching God's work, or a lot of eco-environmentalists like, “Oh, we can't mess with Mother Nature.” There's going to be some issues around that, but through the course of the century, it's going to absolutely happen and I think it could happen in the next 25 years, and that one could actually be a huge thing about recreating essentially a different kind of economy around those kinds of insights.So we've got three world-historic technologies: AI, clean energy, and now bioengineering, and if America can't invent the next system, who the hell is going to do that? You don't want China doing it.Demographic pressure (28:52)We are going to welcome the robots. We are going to welcome the AI, these advanced societies, to create the kind of wealth, and support the older people, and have these long lives.No, I do not. I do not. Two things I find myself writing a lot about are falling birth rates globally, and I also find myself writing about the future of the space economy. Which of those topics, demographic change or space, do you find intellectually more interesting?I think the demographic thing is more interesting. I mean, I grew up in a period where everyone was freaked out about overpopulation. We didn't think the planet would hold enough people. It's only been in the last 10 years that, conventionally, people have kind of started to shift, “Oh my God, we might not have enough people.” Although I must say, in the futurist business, I've been watching this for 30 years and we've been talking about this for a long time, about when it's going to peak humans and then it's going to go down. Here's why I think that's fantastic: We are going to welcome the robots. We are going to welcome the AI, these advanced societies, to create the kind of wealth, and support the older people, and have these long lives. I mean long lives way beyond 80, it could be 120 years at some level. Our kids might live to that.The point is, we're going to need artificial intelligence, and robotics, and all these other things, and also we're going to need, frankly, to move the shrinking number of human beings around the planet, i.e. immigration and cross-migration. We're going to need these things to solve these problems. So I think about this: Americans are practical people. At its core, we're practical people. We're not super ideological. Currently, we kind of think we're ideological, but we're basically common-sense, practical people. So these pressures, the demographic pressures, are going to be one of the reasons I think we are going to migrate to this stuff faster than people think, because we're going to realize, “Holy s**t, we've got to do this.” When social security starts going broke and the boomers are like 80 and 90 and it is like, okay, let alone the young people thinking, “How the hell am I going to get supported?” we're going to start having to create a different kind of economy where we leverage the productivity of the humans through these advanced technologies, AI and robotics, to actually create the kind of world we want to live in. It could be a better world than the world we've got now, than the old 20th-century thing that did a good shot. They lifted the bar from the 19th century to the 20th. Now we've got to lift it in the 21st. It's our role, it's what we do. America, [let's] get our s**t together and start doing it. That's the way I would say it.On sale everywhere The Conservative Futurist: How To Create the Sci-Fi World We Were PromisedFaster, Please! is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fasterplease.substack.com/subscribe

Keen On Democracy
Scale or Die: Why 2025 really is the Inflection Point That Changes Everything

Keen On Democracy

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 5, 2025 36:42


You've heard it before and you'll hear it again. AI is a gold rush. It will change everything. But 2025 is different, That Was The Week tech newsletter publisher Keith Teare argues. This is the year that the AI gold rush is changing everything. In our reflection of the first six months of 2025, Keith argues that we're witnessing a fundamental "phase shift" - not just another tech cycle, but an inflection point where scale becomes a necessity for survival. From Meta's $100 million developer deals to the consolidation of 80% of venture capital into just five firms, from Cloudflare's revolutionary "toll booth" economy replacing advertising models to the tokenization of private markets through platforms like Robinhood, the rules of Silicon Valley are being rewritten. As graduates face an employment crisis and AI superstars command unprecedented compensation, Keith and I debate whether this transformation represents capitalism's natural evolution or a dangerous concentration of power that could reshape the global economy forever.1. Scale Has Become a Survival Requirement2025 marks a shift where scale isn't just advantageous—it's necessary for survival. With 80% of venture capital flowing to just five firms (Andreessen, Sequoia, Cotu, Lightspeed, and one other), and late-stage investors writing billion-dollar checks for 3-5x returns instead of traditional smaller bets for 100x gains, the venture capital game has fundamentally changed.2. The "Toll Booth" Economy is Replacing AdvertisingCloudflare's "paper crawl" initiative represents a seismic shift from advertising-based revenue models to direct payment systems where AI companies must pay publishers for content access. This could create new revenue streams for content creators while giving them control over how their intellectual property is used for AI training.3. Tokenization is Democratizing Private MarketsRobinhood's tokenization of companies like SpaceX and OpenAI allows European retail investors to buy shares in private companies through crypto-backed tokens. This convergence of private markets, public markets, and crypto could fundamentally change who can access high-growth investments.4. AI Superstars Command Unprecedented ValueWhile AI eliminates many jobs, it's creating extreme value concentration among top talent. Meta's $100 million deals for individual AI experts and OpenAI's $6 billion deal with Johnny Ive illustrate how differentiated developers are becoming incredibly valuable in an age where most workers face displacement.5. 2025 is the Inflection Point, Not the FutureUnlike previous tech cycles, Keith argues this isn't about future potential—the transformation is happening now. With companies like OpenAI reaching $14 billion in annual revenue and AI's economic impact becoming undeniable, 2025 represents the moment when AI shifted from promise to reality, making it a true inflection point rather than just another tech trend.Where Keith and I fundamentally disagree is over jobs. He seems to skate over the implications of jobless consequences of AI, believing in some sort of magical age of abundance in which we will all be free to pursue our hobbies. I think this is entirely wrong. This is where his Silicon Valley language about having to “scale or die” is so terrifying. Over the next couple of decades, tens of millions of people are going to lose both their jobs and careers to the AI revolution. Some might find other kinds of work, but most won't. The age of abundance is total a myth. Instead of “scale or die”, the mantra of the coming age will be “scale or starve”. What we are about to experience is the kind of economic scarcity that will utterly transform our societies and politics. 2025 might be an inflection point for Silicon Valley. But that existential moment for the rest of us will come in around 2030.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Podcast Notes Playlist: Latest Episodes
20VC: Inside KKR's Monster $8BN European Fund | The $500M Turkey Gamble That Went Wrong | Do Andreessen & General Catalyst Scare KKR? | Will AI Kill the PE Model? | Can The PE Model Survive without IPOs and Where is the Liquidity with Philip Frei

Podcast Notes Playlist: Latest Episodes

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 3, 2025


Twenty Minute VC: Read the notes at at podcastnotes.org. Don't forget to subscribe for free to our newsletter, the top 10 ideas of the week, every Monday --------- Philipp Freise is Co-Head of European Private Equity at KKR, where he manages the largest private fund in Europe with $8BN in the latest fund. Philip has led KKR's investments in FGS Global, Superstruct, Axel Springer SE, BMG Rights Management, Fotolia, GetYourGuide, GfK SE, Leonine, Mediawan SAS, Scout24 Switzerland and Trainline. Previously, Philip worked at McKinsey & Company in and co-founded Berlin-based VC firm Venturepark, Europe's first pan-European incubator. Agenda: 00:00 – "We Lost $500M in Turkey. Here's Why We'll Never Do It Again." 01:40 – Inside Europe's Biggest PE Fund: $8B of Pure Firepower 03:55 – The $100M Dot-Com Failure That Changed My Career 06:45 – Why Picking the Wrong VC Will Destroy Your Company 10:20 – KKR's $500M COVID Gamble: Genius or Insane? 12:35 – Why We Ignored the Market & Deployed 40% of Our Fund 15:55 – KKR's Ruthless Portfolio Discipline: Love Doesn't Matter 17:10 – Do Power Laws Apply in PE? Freise Destroys the Myth 18:45 – The Truth About Capital Intensity in the Age of AI 20:10 – Can AI Kill the PE Model? Here's What Philipp Says 26:00 – The Secret to Great Investment Decisions at KKR 32:40 – Why There's a $3T Liquidity Time Bomb in Venture 34:25 – The Death of IPOs? How KKR Exits Without Going Public 40:05 – Will KKR Europe Hit $20B? Freise's Bold Prediction 43:45 – Helsing, Space, and Defense: The New Age of DeepTech Bets 45:30 – Tariffs, China, and the Future of the German Car Empire 47:00 – Freise vs. Bitcoin: Will USD Still Rule in 10 Years? 48:15 – 4 Global Shocks Happening Right Now That You Need to Know 51:30 – KKR Missed Spotify AND Alibaba?! The Painful Stories 53:00 – Do Andreessen & General Catalyst Scare KKR? Freise Responds 54:30 – The One Metric That Will Define KKR's Next Decade  

The Twenty Minute VC: Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: Inside KKR's Monster $8BN European Fund | The $500M Turkey Gamble That Went Wrong | Do Andreessen & General Catalyst Scare KKR? | Will AI Kill the PE Model? | Can The PE Model Survive without IPOs and Where is the Liquidity with Philip Freise

The Twenty Minute VC: Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 30, 2025 61:32


Philipp Freise is Co-Head of European Private Equity at KKR, where he manages the largest private fund in Europe with $8BN in the latest fund. Philip has led KKR's investments in FGS Global, Superstruct, Axel Springer SE, BMG Rights Management, Fotolia, GetYourGuide, GfK SE, Leonine, Mediawan SAS, Scout24 Switzerland and Trainline. Previously, Philip worked at McKinsey & Company in and co-founded Berlin-based VC firm Venturepark, Europe's first pan-European incubator. Agenda: 00:00 – "We Lost $500M in Turkey. Here's Why We'll Never Do It Again." 01:40 – Inside Europe's Biggest PE Fund: $8B of Pure Firepower 03:55 – The $100M Dot-Com Failure That Changed My Career 06:45 – Why Picking the Wrong VC Will Destroy Your Company 10:20 – KKR's $500M COVID Gamble: Genius or Insane? 12:35 – Why We Ignored the Market & Deployed 40% of Our Fund 15:55 – KKR's Ruthless Portfolio Discipline: Love Doesn't Matter 17:10 – Do Power Laws Apply in PE? Freise Destroys the Myth 18:45 – The Truth About Capital Intensity in the Age of AI 20:10 – Can AI Kill the PE Model? Here's What Philipp Says 26:00 – The Secret to Great Investment Decisions at KKR 32:40 – Why There's a $3T Liquidity Time Bomb in Venture 34:25 – The Death of IPOs? How KKR Exits Without Going Public 40:05 – Will KKR Europe Hit $20B? Freise's Bold Prediction 43:45 – Helsing, Space, and Defense: The New Age of DeepTech Bets 45:30 – Tariffs, China, and the Future of the German Car Empire 47:00 – Freise vs. Bitcoin: Will USD Still Rule in 10 Years? 48:15 – 4 Global Shocks Happening Right Now That You Need to Know 51:30 – KKR Missed Spotify AND Alibaba?! The Painful Stories 53:00 – Do Andreessen & General Catalyst Scare KKR? Freise Responds 54:30 – The One Metric That Will Define KKR's Next Decade  

Keen On Democracy
The Haves and The Have-Yachts: Evan Osnos Explores the Minds of the Ultrarich

Keen On Democracy

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 17, 2025 46:11


“Let me tell you about the very rich”, Scott Fitzgerald once said. “They are different from you and me”. One way they are different, the New Yorker staff writer Evan Osnos reports, is that they own yachts - very very big, expensive yachts. In The Haves and The Have-Yachts, Osnos' dispatches about today's ultrarich, he takes us on board these boats to reveal the obscenity of our new gilded age. From Mark Zuckerberg's obsession with Augustus Caesar to the thin-skinned grievances of figures like Marc Andreessen and Elon Musk, Osnos explores how the personal quirks and anxieties of just 19 American plutocrats - the 0.00001% - are now reshaping our entire society. He argues we're living in an era of "flamboyant oligarchy," where billionaires openly flaunt their wealth. Citing the extraordinary tableau of tech moguls lining up in homage to Trump at his inauguration, Osnos describes our age as "the complete and total fusion of politics and plutocracy in the United States." five key takeaways1. We're Living in an Era of "Flamboyant Oligarchy" Unlike past wealthy elites who stayed hidden ("a whale that never surfaces doesn't get harpooned"), today's billionaires openly compete for attention and flaunt their wealth, fundamentally changing the relationship between extreme wealth and public life.2. Just 19 People Could Control 18% of America's Wealth The 0.00001% - currently 19 Americans - control 1.8% of national wealth today. If current trends continue, this could reach 18% within 40 years, representing an unprecedented concentration of economic power in human history.3. Personal Quirks Have Massive Social Consequences Billionaires' individual obsessions and blind spots shape society at scale - from Facebook being blue because Zuckerberg is colorblind, to his Augustus Caesar fixation influencing how he thinks about power and empire-building.4. The Complete Fusion of Politics and Plutocracy Trump's inauguration, featuring tech moguls "lined up in homage," represents the total merger of political and economic power in America - what Osnos calls a "sultanistic oligarchy" where billionaires have elevated Trump to rule on their behalf.5. Billionaires Are Surprisingly Thin-Skinned and Aggrieved Despite their wealth, figures like Musk and Andreessen are easily offended and resentful about public criticism, leading them not to retreat but to actively seek control over politics and media to reshape the narrative in their favor. BiographyEvan Lionel Richard Osnos (born December 24, 1976) is an American journalist and author who has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2008, specializing in politics and foreign affairs coverage in the United States and China. Osnos continues to be one of America's most prominent foreign correspondents and political journalists, known for his deep reporting and narrative storytelling that bridges international and domestic affairs.Current PositionsOsnos is currently a staff writer at The New Yorker, a CNN contributor, and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, based in Washington D.C.Early Life and EducationOsnos was born in London when his parents, Susan (née Sherer) Osnos and Peter L.W. Osnos, were visiting from Moscow, where his father was assigned as a correspondent for The Washington Post. He graduated with high honors from Harvard University with a Bachelor's Degree. Career HighlightsEarly Career: In 2002, he was assigned to the Middle East, where he covered the Iraq War and reported from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran, and elsewhere. In 2005, he became the China correspondent. Chicago Tribune: Prior to The New Yorker, he worked as the Beijing bureau chief of the Chicago Tribune, where he contributed to a series that won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. The New Yorker: Osnos joined The New Yorker in September 2008 and served as the magazine's China correspondent until 2013, maintaining a regular blog called "Letter from China" and writing articles about China's young neoconservatives, the Fukushima nuclear meltdown, and the Wenzhou train crash. Major Publications* "Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China" (2014): Won the 2014 National Book Award for nonfiction and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. * "Joe Biden: The Life, the Run, and What Matters Now" (2020): Published in October 2020, based on lengthy interviews with Biden and revealing conversations with more than a hundred others, including President Barack Obama. * "Wildland: The Making of America's Fury" (2021): Published in September 2021, about profound cultural and political changes occurring between September 11, 2001, and January 6, 2021. The book was a New York Times bestseller. * "The Haves and Have-Yachts: Dispatches on the Ultrarich" (2025): His latest book, published in June 2025, exploring American oligarchy and the culture of excess. Awards and RecognitionOsnos has received the Asia Society's Osborn Elliott Prize for Excellence in Journalism on Asia, the Livingston Award for Young Journalists, and a Mirror Award for profile-writing. He received two awards from the Overseas Press Club and the Osborn Elliott Prize for excellence in journalism from the Asia Society. Personal LifeHe has been married to Sarabeth Berman since July 9, 2011. He lives with his wife and children near Washington, This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Bills Football
06-10 Joe Andreessen

Bills Football

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 10, 2025 3:08


06-10 Joe Andreessen full 188 Tue, 10 Jun 2025 18:45:00 +0000 Z6pG1K9SZb59olvkrdrgy1bvIfjZQZuB nfl,football,buffalo bills,joe andreessen,sports Bills Football nfl,football,buffalo bills,joe andreessen,sports 06-10 Joe Andreessen Every Play, every game right here on WGR Sports Radio 550, WGR550.com. The official voice of the Buffalo Bills! Football On-Demand Audio Presented by Northwest Bank, For What's Next. 2024 © 2021 Audacy, Inc. Sports False https://player.amperwavepodcasting.com?feed-link=https%3A%2F%2Frss.amper

Buffalo End Zone
Joe Andreessen looks ahead to another year with hometown Bills

Buffalo End Zone

Play Episode Listen Later May 19, 2025 32:32


Joe Andreessen joins Kevin Carroll and Andy Young to talk about his journey to the NFL, looking back at making the Bills roster and what it's like heading into his second season with the Bills. All that and more on the latest Buffalo End Zone podcast.

Business Pants
Proxy firm fight at Harley, CEO Pope names, Zuck's people replacement plan, Tyson names Tysons to board

Business Pants

Play Episode Listen Later May 9, 2025 55:28


Story of the Week (DR):Berkshire board names Greg Abel as CEO, Buffett to remain chairWarren Buffett says he'll propose Greg Abel take over as Berkshire Hathaway CEO at year-endWarren Buffett makes surprise announcement: He's stepping down as Berkshire Hathaway CEOOpenAI backs off push to become for-profit companyIn a nutshell, with help from its chatbot: “OpenAI has restructured into a hybrid model with a nonprofit parent company, OpenAI Inc., and a for-profit subsidiary now called a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC). This shift allows for investment while keeping a focus on its mission of developing AGI for the benefit of humanity. The change responds to previous criticism about reducing nonprofit oversight.”OpenAI's nonprofit mission fades further into the rearviewSam Altman urges lawmakers against regulations that could ‘slow down' U.S. in AI race against ChinaKohl's CEO Fired After Investigation Finds 'Highly Unusual' Business Deal with Former Romantic PartnerKohl's CEO Ashley Buchanan was fired after an internal investigation revealed he violated the company's conflict-of-interest policies. The probe found that Buchanan directed business to a former romantic partner, Chandra Holt, who is the CEO of Beyond Inc. and founder of Incredibrew. Holt secured a multimillion-dollar consulting deal with Kohl's under unusually favorable terms, which Buchanan failed to disclose.As a result, Buchanan was dismissed for cause, forfeiting equity awards and required to repay a portion of his $2.5 million signing bonus.This marks the third CEO departure at Kohl's in just three years, highlighting ongoing leadership instability amid declining sales.Proxy Firms Split on Harley-Davidson Board Shake-Up MMGlass Lewis= Withhold; ISS = What's happening at Harley exactly?We have a fun twist at the proxy cage match between Harley Davidson and H Partners, who are 9% shareholders and have started a withhold vote campaign against long-tenured directors Jochen Zeitz, Thomas Linebarger, and Sara Levinson: Glass Lewis says “withhold” but ISS says “support”?Through lackluster reasoning based on hunches and not performance analytics, ISS revealed, without satire, that "[T]here are compelling reasons to believe that as a group [the targeted directors] still have a perspective that can be valuable” and, in discussing the candidacy of departing CEO Jochen Zeitz: “[I]t appears that his time in the role has been more positive than negative, which makes it hard to argue that his vote on a successor is worthless.”Testimony in House Hearing: “Exposing the Proxy Advisory Cartel: How ISS & Glass Lewis Influence Markets”A 2015 study found that 25 percent of institutional investors vote “indiscriminately” with ISS [1].In 2016, a study estimated that a negative recommendation from ISS leads to a 25-percentage point reduction in voting support for say-on-pay proposals [2].A 2018 study demonstrated that a negative recommendation from ISS was associated with a reduction in support of 17 percentage points for equity-plan proposals, 18 points for uncontested director elections, and 27 points for say-on-pay [3].In 2021, a study examining “robo-voting”—the practice of fund managers voting in lockstep with the recommendations of ISS—identified 114 financial institutions managing $5 trillion in assets that automated their votes in a manner aligned with ISS recommendations 99.5% of the time [4].A 2022 study provided further evidence that institutional investors are highly sensitive to an opposing recommendation from a proxy advisory firm. Opposition from ISS was associated with a 51 percent difference in institutional voting support compared with only a 2 percent difference among retail investors [5].During the 12 months ending June 30, 2024, negative recommendations from the two proxy advisory firms were associated with (1) a 17-percentage point difference in support for directors in uncontested elections at the S&P 500 (96.9% with the firms' support vs. 79.7% without); (2) a 35-percentage point gap for say-on-pay proposals (92.8% vs. 58.0%); and (3) a 36-percentage point difference for shareholder proposals (42.4% vs. 6.6%)Why Leo XIV? Pope's chosen name suggests commitment to social justicePope NamesLeo: Many Pope Leos were reformers or defenders of Church teachings.John: often linked to pastoral care and modernization.Paul: Reflects missionary zeal and intellectual work.Gregory: Reform, liturgy, and missionary outreach.Benedict: Benedict XVI emphasized faith and reason in a skeptical age.Pius: Emphasis on traditional piety and Church authority.Clement: Reconciliation and peacemaking.Innocent: Ironically, several Popes named Innocent wielded immense political power.Urban: Engagement with worldly and civic matters.Francis: Poverty, simplicity, ecological concern.CEO NamesWarren: cuddly billionaires who control everything, put family members on board, and say pithy thingsJamie: blowhard control freaks bankers who think they should be President and have something to say about everythingMark: college dropout social media dictators who have no oversight while charting humanity's demiseElon: arrogant and childish Wizard of Ozzian leaders who pretend to be company founders with world domination delusionsSundar: East Asian stewards meant to distract from actual Tech dictatorsTim: Genteel Southern cruise ship captains who keep a steady hand after replacing legendsEtc.Goodliest of the Week (MM/DR):DR: Bill Gates to give away $200 billion by 2045, says Musk is 'killing' world's poorest childrenDR: This Subaru has an external airbag to protect cyclists: The design helps protect both pedestrians and cyclists in a crash MM DRMM: Proxy Firms Split on Harley-Davidson Board Shake-UpThe other major proxy firm, Glass Lewis, reached a different conclusion. It said Tuesday that the directors had “overseen starkly suboptimal shareholder returns,” and that removing them from the eight-person board likely wouldn't create any problems.MM: 80% of Gen Z, Millennials Plan to Increase Allocations to Sustainable Investments: Morgan Stanley SurveyAssholiest of the Week (MM):All Zuckerberg editionCertified watch guy ZuckMark Zuckerberg is a certified watch guy. Here are some of his standout timepieces, from a $120 Casio to a $900,000 Greubel Forse.These are the stories as Trump, whose ass Zuck's lips are firmly planted on, says you should only have 3 dolls - Zuck's watches, C.E.O. Pay Raise Sparks Outrage Among Teachers and Public Officers, 58 crypto wallets have made millions on Trump's meme coin. 764,000 have lost money, data shows, The best and worst looks billionaires wore to the 2025 Met GalaFriend maker Zuck DRMark Zuckerberg wants you to have more friends — but AI friendsMark Zuckerberg destroyed friendship. Now he wants to replace it with AI.Meanwhile, no wonder: Mark Zuckerberg says his management style involves no 1-on-1s, few direct reports, and a 'core army' of 30 running MetaMan with no friends says you need more and will provide fake ones?Human picker ZuckZuck's version of human friends probably the reason he wants to make you fake ones - hand-selected fake friends on the board (Patrick Collison and Dina Powell McCormick to Join Meta Board of Directors):4 tech bro dictators (Tan, Houston, Collison, Xu)3 tech bro suck ups (Andreessen, Alford, Songhurst)1 nepo baby dictator (Elkann)1 family dictator suck up (Travis)2 DJT suck ups (White, Powell McCormick)2 US govt suck ups (Killefer, Kimmitt)Prediction - Zuck to have the first true AI board member?Empathetic ZuckGaslighting, golden handcuffs, and toxicity: Former Meta employees shared what it was like to be laid off as low performersA former senior machine learning engineer at Meta described the shock of being laid off, only for a Meta recruiter to invite her to reapply three days later and skip the interview process.Two weeks before the layoffs, he said, his new manager told the team everyone was "safe." Then came the termination email — and a performance rating of "Meets Some Expectations," low on Meta's end-of-year rating scale. "How could they evaluate my performance when I'd only worked 10 weeks in 2024?" he said, adding that an HR director had said he was "too new to evaluate."An engineer was laid off after five months of leave for a serious health crisis while in the middle of disability-related negotiations.Meta exec apologizes to conservative activist Robby StarbuckLover ZuckMark Zuckerberg's Wife Was Weirded Out by His Strange Gift to HerHe made it for her not out of love, but because…The billionaire is apparently a huge fan of the sculptor behind the statue, the pop artist Daniel Arsham, but decided to go with his wife's likeness, he said on the podcast, because a statue of himself would have been "crazy."Academic ZuckMark Zuckerberg says college isn't preparing students for the job marketHeadliniest of the WeekDR: Olivia and John Randal Tyson Named to Tyson Foods Board of DirectorsDR: This new mental health service targets burned-out content creators: CreatorCare offers affordable therapy tailored to influencers and digital creators—addressing the rising mental health toll of life online.DR: Costco co-founder still goes into the office weekly at age 89: ‘To be successful, you've got to be pretty focused'Costco co-founder Jim Sinegal stepped down from his role in 2012. But Sinegal still goes to the office some TuesdaysDR: Billionaire KKR cofounders say 'emotional intelligence' should be a focus for young investorsKKR leadership page:1 of 8 are women: It HAS to be head of marketing, head of people, or head of legal stuff: so which is it? It's Chief Legal Officer Kathryn SudolBoard is 14:4F; no F in leadership role MM: Elon Musk's Urgent Concern: That the Earth Is Going to Get Swallowed by the Sun"Mars is life insurance for life collectively," Musk said. "So, eventually, all life on Earth will be destroyed by the Sun. The Sun is gradually expanding, and so we do at some point need to be a multi-planet civilization because Earth will be incinerated."It is slated to happen in 6 billion yearsMM: Elon Musk is responsible for “killing the world's poorest children,” says Bill GatesWho Won the Week?DR: Pope #-267, duh. The world's greatest vampire CEO. And Villanova students (who are not openly gay or have vaginas), who all suddenly now believe they will eventually be the pope. MM: Your shitty washer/dryer, which no longer looks horrible: E.P.A. Plans to Shut Down the Energy Star ProgramPredictionsDR: Open AI's CEO, Mark VII, creates a deepfake video showing the country of China eating his baby at one of his homes in Hawaii causing the Trump administration to completely dismantle the SEC.MM: Sit tight for this, I have two: Euronext rebrands ESG in drive to help European defence firms - “energy, security, and geo-strategy” flops, so to LSEG rebrands its ESG Scores to “Emitting, Smoking, Gambling” so that investors can finally do ESG investing and feel good about itMusk gets his Texas wish. SpaceX launch site is approved as the new city of Starbase - I predict in 12 months, Musk is offering SpaceX employees that live in Starbase (a company town) crypto tokens instead of pay that are redeemable at stores in Starbase. To avoid them being called scrips, which were outlawed in the US in 1938 but still used anyway through the 1960s, Musk will list them on crypto exchanges that can be used to trade for dollars (but are totally worthless). Eventually, so indebted to the space plantation and Musk, there is a new renaissance of “resistance music” (a la “We Shall Overcome” and “Sixteen Tons”) with a song ranking number 1 in the US by the end of 2026.

Latent Space: The AI Engineer Podcast — CodeGen, Agents, Computer Vision, Data Science, AI UX and all things Software 3.0

We are calling for the world's best AI Engineer talks for AI Architects, /r/localLlama, Model Context Protocol (MCP), GraphRAG, AI in Action, Evals, Agent Reliability, Reasoning and RL, Retrieval/Search/RecSys , Security, Infrastructure, Generative Media, AI Design & Novel AI UX, AI Product Management, Autonomy, Robotics, and Embodied Agents, Computer-Using Agents (CUA), SWE Agents, Vibe Coding, Voice, Sales/Support Agents at AIEWF 2025! Fill out the 2025 State of AI Eng survey for $250 in Amazon cards and see you from Jun 3-5 in SF!Coreweave's now-successful IPO has led to a lot of questions about the GPU Neocloud market, which Dylan Patel has written extensively about on SemiAnalysis. Understanding markets requires an interesting mix of technical and financial expertise, so this will be a different kind of episode than our usual LS domain.When we first published $2 H100s: How the GPU Rental Bubble Burst, we got 2 kinds of reactions on Hacker News:* “Ah, now the AI bubble is imploding!”* “Duh, this is how it works in every GPU cycle, are you new here?”We don't think either reaction is quite right. Specifically, it is not normal for the prices of one of the world's most important resources right now to swing from $1 to $8 per hour based on drastically inelastic demand AND supply curves - from 3 year lock-in contracts to stupendously competitive over-ordering dynamics for NVIDIA allocations — especially with increasing baseline compute needed for even the simplest academic ML research and for new AI startups getting off the ground.We're fortunate today to have Evan Conrad, CEO of SFCompute, one of the most exciting GPU marketplace startups, talk us through his theory of the economics of GPU markets, and why he thinks CoreWeave and Modal are well positioned, but Digital Ocean and Together are not.However, more broadly, the entire point of SFC is creating liquidity between GPU owners and consumers and making it broadly tradable, even programmable:As we explore, these are the primitives that you can then use to create your own, high quality, custom GPU availability for your time and money budget, similar to how Amazon Spot Instances automated the selective buying of unused compute.The ultimate end state of where all this is going is GPU that trade like other perishable, staple commodities of the world - oil, soybeans, milk. Because the contracts and markets are so well established, the price swings also are not nearly as drastic, and people can also start hedging and managing the risk of one of the biggest costs of their business, just like we have risk-managed commodities risks of all other sorts for centuries. As a former derivatives trader, you can bet that swyx doubleclicked on that…Show Notes* SF Compute* Evan Conrad* Ethan Anderson* John Phamous* The Curve talk* CoreWeave* Andromeda ClusterFull Video PodLike and subscribe!Timestamps* [00:00:05] Introductions* [00:00:12] Introduction of guest Evan Conrad from SF Compute* [00:00:12] CoreWeave Business Model Discussion* [00:05:37] CoreWeave as a Real Estate Business* [00:08:59] Interest Rate Risk and GPU Market Strategy Framework* [00:16:33] Why Together and DigitalOcean will lose money on their clusters* [00:20:37] SF Compute's AI Lab Origins* [00:25:49] Utilization Rates and Benefits of SF Compute Market Model* [00:30:00] H100 GPU Glut, Supply Chain Issues, and Future Demand Forecast* [00:34:00] P2P GPU networks* [00:36:50] Customer stories* [00:38:23] VC-Provided GPU Clusters and Credit Risk Arbitrage* [00:41:58] Market Pricing Dynamics and Preemptible GPU Pricing Model* [00:48:00] Future Plans for Financialization?* [00:52:59] Cluster auditing and quality control* [00:58:00] Futures Contracts for GPUs* [01:01:20] Branding and Aesthetic Choices Behind SF Compute* [01:06:30] Lessons from Previous Startups* [01:09:07] Hiring at SF ComputeTranscriptAlessio [00:00:05]: Hey everyone, welcome to the Latent Space podcast. This is Alessio, partner and CTO at Decibel, and I'm joined by my co-host Swyx, founder of Smol AI.Swyx [00:00:12]: Hey, and today we're so excited to be finally in the studio with Evan Conrad from SF Compute. Welcome. I've been fortunate enough to be your friend before you were famous, and also we've hung out at various social things. So it's really cool to see that SF Compute is coming into its own thing, and it's a significant presence, at least in the San Francisco community, which of course, it's in the name, so you couldn't help but be. Evan: Indeed, indeed. I think we have a long way to go, but yeah, thanks. Swyx: Of course, yeah. One way I was thinking about kicking on this conversation is we will likely release this right after CoreWeave IPO. And I was watching, I was looking, doing some research on you. You did a talk at The Curve. I think I may have been viewer number 70. It was a great talk. More people should go see it, Evan Conrad at The Curve. But we have like three orders of magnitude more people. And I just wanted to, to highlight, like, what is your analysis of what CoreWeave did that went so right for them? Evan: Sell locked-in long-term contracts and don't really do much short-term at all. I think like a lot of people had this assumption that GPUs would work a lot like CPUs and the like standard business model of any sort of CPU cloud is you buy commodity hardware, then you lay on services that are mostly software, and that gives you high margins and pretty much all your value comes from those services. Not really the underlying. Compute in any capacity and because it's commodity hardware and it's not actually that expensive, most of that can be sort of on-demand compute. And while you do want locked-in contracts for folks, it's mostly just a sort of de-risk situation. It helps you plan revenue because you don't know if people are going to scale up or down. But fundamentally, people are like buying hourly and that's how your business is structured and you make 50 percent margins or higher. This like doesn't really work in GPUs. And the reason why it doesn't work is because you end up with like super price sensitive customers. And that isn't because necessarily it's just way more expensive, though that's totally the case. So in a CPU cloud, you might have like, you know, let's say if you had a million dollars of hardware in GPUs, you have a billion dollars of hardware. And so your customers are buying at much higher volumes than you otherwise expect. And it's also smaller customers who are buying at higher amounts of volume. So relative to what they're spending in general. But in GPUs in particular, your customer cares about the scaling law. So if you take like Gusto, for example, or Rippling or an HR service like this, when they're buying from an AWS or a GCP, they're buying CPUs and they're running web servers, those web servers, they kind of buy up to the capacity that they need, they buy enough, like CPUs, and then they don't buy any more, like, they don't buy any more at all. Yeah, you have a chart that goes like this and then flat. Correct. And it's like a complete flat. It's not even like an incremental tiny amount. It's not like you could just like turn on some more nodes. Yeah. And then suddenly, you know, they would make an incremental amount of money more, like Gusto isn't going to make like, you know, 5% more money, they're gonna make zero, like literally zero money from every incremental GPU or CPU after a certain point. This is not the case for anyone who is training models. And it's not the case for anyone who's doing test time inference or like inference that has scales at test time. Because like you, your scaling laws mean that you may have some diminishing returns, but there's always returns. Adding GPUs always means your model does actually get. And that actually does translate into revenue for you. And then for test time inference, you actually can just like run the inference longer and get a better performance. Or maybe you can run more customers faster and then charge for that. It actually does translate into revenue. Every incremental GPU translates to revenue. And what that means from the customer's perspective is you've got like a flat budget and you're trying to max the amount of GPUs you have for that budget. And it's very distinctly different than like where Augusto or Rippling might think, where they think, oh, we need this amount of CPUs. How do we, you know, reduce that? How do we reduce our amount of money that we're spending on this to get the same amount of CPUs? What that translates to is customers who are spending in really high volume, but also customers who are super price sensitive, who don't give a s**t. Can I swear on this? Can I swear? Yeah. Who don't give a s**t at all about your software. Because a 10% difference in a billion dollars of hardware is like $100 million of value for you. So if you have a 10% margin increase because you have great software, on your billion, the customers are that price sensitive. They will immediately switch off if they can. Because why wouldn't you? You would just take that $100 million. You'd spend $50 million on hiring a software engineering team to replicate anything that you possibly did. So that means that the best way to make money in GPUs was to do basically exactly what CoreWeave did, which is go out and sign only long-term contracts, pretty much ignore the bottom end of the market completely, and then maximize your long-term contracts. With customers who don't have credit risk, who won't sue you, or are unlikely to sue you for frivolous reasons. And then because they don't have credit risk and they won't sue you for frivolous reasons, you can go back to your lender and you can say, look, this is a really low risk situation for us to do. You should give me prime, prime interest rate. You should give me the lowest cost of capital you possibly can. And when you do that, you just make tons of money. The problem that I think lots of people are going to talk about with CoreWeave is it doesn't really look like a cloud platform. It doesn't really look like a cloud provider financially. It also doesn't really look like a software company financially.Swyx [00:05:37]: It's a bank.Evan [00:05:38]: It's a bank. It's a real estate company. And it's very hard to not be that. The problem of that that people have tricked themselves into is thinking that CoreWeave is a bad business. I don't think CoreWeave is explicitly a bad business. There's a bunch of people, there's kind of like two versions of the CoreWeave take at the moment. There's, oh my God, CoreWeave, amazing. CoreWeave is this great new cloud provider competitive with the hyperscalers. And to some extent, this is true from a structural perspective. Like, they are indeed a real sort of thing against the cloud providers in this particular category. And the other take is, oh my gosh, CoreWeave is this horrible business and so on and blah, blah, blah. And I think it's just like a set of perception or perspective. If you think CoreWeave's business is supposed to look like the traditional cloud providers, you're going to be really upset to learn that GPUs don't look like that at all. And in fact, for the hyperscalers, it doesn't look like this either. My intuition is that the hyperscalers are probably going to lose a lot of money, and they know they're going to lose a lot of money on reselling NVIDIA GPUs, at least. Hyperscalers, but I want to, Microsoft, AWS, Google. Correct, yeah. The Microsoft, AWS, and Google. Does Google resell? I mean, Google has TPUs. Google has TPUs, but I think you can also get H100s and so on. But there are like two ways they can make money. One is by selling to small customers who aren't actually buying in any serious volume. They're testing around, they're playing around. And if they get big, they're immediately going to do one of two things. They're going to ask you for a discount. Because they're not going to pay your crazy sort of margin that you have locked into your business. Because for CPUs, you need that. They're going to pay your massive per hour price. And so they want you to sign a long-term contract. And so that's your other way that you can make money, is you can basically do exactly what CoreWeave does, which is have them pay as much as possible upfront and lock in the contract for a long time. Or you can have small customers. But the problem is that for a hyperscaler, the GPUs to... To sell on the low margins relative to what your other business, your CPUs are, is a worse business than what you are currently doing. Because you could have spent the same money on those GPUs. And you could have trained model and you could have made a model on top of it and then turn that into a product and had high margins from your product. Or you could have taken that same money and you could have competed with NVIDIA. And you could have cut into their margin instead. But just simply reselling NVIDIA GPUs doesn't work like your CPU business. Where you're able to capture high margins from big customers and so on. And then they never leave you because your customers aren't actually price sensitive. And so they won't switch off if your prices are a little higher. You actually had a really nice chart, again, on that talk of this two by two. Sure. Of like where you want to be. And you also had some hot takes on who's making money and who isn't. Swyx: So CoreUv locked up long-term contracts. Get that. Yes. Maybe share your mental framework. Just verbally describe it because we're trying to help the audio listeners as well. Sure. People can look up the chart if they want to. Evan: Sure. Okay. So this is a graph of interest rates. And on the y-axis, it's a probability you're able to sell your GPUs from zero to one. And on the x-axis, it's how much they'll depreciate in cost from zero to one. And then you had ISO cost curves or ISO interest rate curves. Yeah. So they kind of shape in a sort of concave fashion. Yeah. The lowest interest rates enable the most aggressive. form of this cost curve. And the higher interest rates go, the more you have to push out to the top right. Yeah. And then you had some analysis of where every player sits in this, including CoreUv, but also Together and Modal and all these other guys. I thought that was super insightful. So I just wanted to elaborate. Basically, it's like a graph of risk and the genres of places where you can be and what the risk is associated with that. The optimal thing for you to do, if you can, is to lock in long-term contracts that are paid all up front or in with a situation in which you trust the other party to pay you over time. So if you're, you know, selling to Microsoft or something or OpenAI. Which are together 77% of the revenue of CoreUv. Yeah. So if you're doing that, that's a great business to be in because your interest rate that you can pitch for is really low because no one thinks Microsoft is going to default. And like maybe OpenAI will default, but the backing by Microsoft kind of doesn't. And I think there's enough, like, generally, it looks like OpenAI is winning that you can make it's just a much better case than if you're selling to the pre-seed startup that just raised $30 million or something pre-revenue. It's like way easier to make the case that the OpenAI is not going to default than the pre-seed startup. And so the optimal place to be is selling to the maximally low risk customer for as long as possible. And then you never have to worry about depreciation and you make lots of money. The less. Good. Good place to be is you could sell long-term contracts to people who might default on you. And then if you're not bringing it to the present, so you're not like saying, hey, you have to pay us all up front, then you're in this like more risky territory. So is it top left of the chart? If I have the chart right, maybe. Large contracts paid over time. Yeah. Large contracts paid over time is like top left. So it's more risky, but you could still probably get away with it. And then the other opportunity is that you could sell short-term contracts for really high prices. And so lots of people tried that too, because this is actually closer to the original business model that people thought would work in cloud providers for CPUs. It works for CPUs, but it doesn't really work for GPUs. And I don't think people were trying this because they were thinking about the risk associated with it. I think a lot of people are just come from a software background, have not really thought about like cogs or margins or inventory risk or things that you have to worry about in the physical world. And I think they were just like copy pasting the same business model onto CPUs. And also, I remember fundraising like a few years ago. And I know based on. Like what we knew other people were saying who were in a very similar business to us versus what we were saying. And we know that our pitch was way worse at the time, because in the beginning of SF Compute, we looked very similar to pretty much every other GPU cloud, not on purpose, but sort of accidentally. And I know that the correct pitch to give to an investor was we will look like a traditional CPU cloud with high margins and we'll sell to everyone. And that is a bad business model because your customers are price sensitive. And so what happens is if you. Sell at high prices, which is the price that you would need to sell it in order to de-risk your loss on the depreciation curve, and specifically what I mean by that is like, let's say you're selling it like $5 an hour and you're paying $1.50 an hour for the GPU under the hood. It's a little bit different than that, but you know, nice numbers, $5 an hour, $1.50 an hour. Great. Excellent. Well, you're charging a really high price per GPU hour because over time the price will go down and you'll get competed out. And what you need is to make sure that you never go under, or if you do go under your underlying cost. You've made so much money in the first part of it that the later end of it, like doesn't matter because from the whole structure of the deal, you've made money. The problem is that just, you think that you're going to be able to retain your customers with software. And actually what happens is your customers are super price sensitive and push you down and push you down and push you down and push you down, um, that they don't care about your software at all. And then the other problem that you have is you have, um, really big players like the hyperscalers who are looking to win the market and they have way more money than you, and they can push down on margin. Much better than you can. And so if they have to, and they don't, they don't necessarily all the time, um, I think they actually keep pride of higher margin, but if they needed to, they could totally just like wreck your margin at any point, um, and push you down, which meant that that quadrant over there where you're charging a high price, um, and just to make up for the risk completely got destroyed, like did not work at all for many places because of the price sensitivity, because people could just shove you down instead that pushed everybody up to the top right-hand corner of that, which is selling short-term. Contracts for low prices paid over time, which is the worst place to be in, um, the worst financial place to be in because it has the highest interest rate, um, which means that your, um, your costs go up at the same time, your, uh, your incoming cash goes down and squeezes your margins and squeezes your margins. The nice thing for like a core weave is that most of their business is over on the, on the other sides of those quadrants that the ones that survive. The only remaining question I have with core weave, and I promise I get to ask if I can compute, and I promise this is relevant to SOF Compute in general, because the framework is important, right? Sure. To understand the company. So why didn't NVIDIA or Microsoft, both of which have more money than core weave, do core weave, right? Why didn't they do core weave? Why have this middleman when either NVIDIA or Microsoft have more money than God, and they could have done an internal core weave, which is effectively like a self-funding vehicle, like a financial instrument. Why does there have to be a third party? Your question is like... Why didn't Microsoft, or why didn't NVIDIA just do core weave? Why didn't they just set up their own cloud provider? I think, and I don't know, and so correct me if I'm wrong, and lots of people will have different opinions here, or I mean, not opinions, they'll have actual facts that differ from my facts. Those aren't opinions. Those are actually indeed differences of reality, is that NVIDIA doesn't want to compete with their customers. They make a large amount of money by selling to existing clouds. If they launched their own core weave, then it would be a lot more money. It'd make it much harder for them to sell to the hyperscalers, and so they have a complex relationship with there. So not great for them. Second is that, at least for a while, I think they were dealing with antitrust concerns or fears that if they're going through, if they own too much layers of the stack, I could imagine that could be a problem for them. I don't know if that's actually true, but that's where my mind would go, I guess. Mostly, I think it's the first one. It's that they would be competing directly with their primary customers. Then Microsoft could have done it, right? That's the other question. Yeah, so Microsoft didn't do it. And my guess is that... NVIDIA doesn't want Microsoft to do it, and so they would limit the capacity because from NVIDIA's perspective, both they don't want to necessarily launch their own cloud provider because it's competing with their customers, but also they don't want only one customer or only a few customers. It's really bad for NVIDIA if you have customer concentration, and Microsoft and Google and Amazon, like Oracle, to buy up your entire supply, and then you have four or five customers or so who pretty much get to set prices. Monopsony. Yeah, monopsony. And so the optimal thing for you is a diverse set of customers who all are willing to pay at whatever price, because if you don't, somebody else will. And so it's really optimal for NVIDIA to have lots of other customers who are all competing against each other. Great. Just wanted to establish that. It's unintuitive for people who have never thought about it, and you think about it all day long. Yeah. Swyx: The last thing I'll call out from the talk, which is kind of cool, and then I promise we'll get to SF Compute, is why will DigitalOcean and Together lose money on their clusters? Why will DigitalOcean and Together lose money on their clusters?Evan [00:16:33]: I'm going to start by clarifying that all of these businesses are excellent and fantastic. That Together and DigitalOcean and Lambda, I think, are wonderful businesses who build excellent products. But my general intuition is that if you try to couple the software and the hardware together, you're going to lose money. That if you go out and you buy a long-term contract from someone and then you layer on services, or you buy the hardware yourself and you spin it up and you get a bunch of debt, you're going to run into the same problem that everybody else did, the same problem we did, same problem the hyperscalers did. And that's exactly what the hyperscalers are doing, which is you cannot add software and make high margins like a cloud provider can. You can pitch that into investors and it will totally make sense, and it's like the correct play in CPUs, but there isn't software you could make to make this occur. If you're spending a billion dollars on hardware, you need to make a billion dollars of software. There isn't a billion dollars of software that you can realistically make, and if you do, you're going to look like SAP. And that's not a knock on SAP. SAP makes a f**k ton of money, right? Right. Right. Right. Right. There aren't that many pieces of software that you could make, that you can realistically sell, like a billion dollars of software, and you're probably not going to do it to price-sensitive customers who are spending their entire budget already on compute. They don't have any more money to give you. It's a very hard proposition to do. And so many parties have been trying to do this, like, buy their own compute, because that's what a traditional cloud does. It doesn't really work for them. You know that meme where there's, like, the Grim Reaper? And he's, like, knocking on the door, and then he keeps knocking on the next door? We have just seen door after door after door of the Grim Reeker comes by, and the economic realities of the compute market come knocking. And so the thing we encourage folks to do is if you are thinking about buying a big GPU cluster and you are going to layer on software on top, don't. There are so many dead bodies in the wake there. We would recommend not doing that. And we, as SF Compute, our entire business is structured to help you not do that. It's helped disintegrate these. The GPU clouds are fantastic real estate businesses. If you treat them like real estate businesses, you will make a lot of money. The cloud services you can make on that, all the software you want to make on that, you can do that fantastically. If you don't own the underlying hardware, if you mix these businesses together, you get shot in the head. But if you combine, if you split them, and that's what the market does, it helps you split them, it allows you to buy, like, layer on services, but just buy from the market, you can make lots of money. So companies like Modal, who don't own the underlying compute, like they don't own it, lots of money, fantastic product. And then companies like Corbeave, who are functionally like really, really good real estate businesses, lots of money, fantastic product. But if you combine them, you die. That's the economic reality of compute. I think it also splits into trading versus inference, which are different kinds of workloads. Yeah. And then, yeah, one comment about the price sensitivity thing before we leave this. This topic, I want to credit Martin Casado for coining or naming this thing, which is like, you know, you said, you said this thing about like, you don't have room for a 10% margin on GPUs for software. Yep. And Martin actually played it out further. It's his first one I ever saw doing this at large enough runs. So let's say GPT-4 and O1 both had a total trading cost of like a $500 billion is the rough estimate. When you get the $5 billion runs, when you get the $50 billion runs, it is actually makes sense to build your own. You're going to have to get into chips, like for OpenEI to get into chip design, which is so funny. I would make an ASIC for this run. Yeah, maybe. I think a caveat of that that is not super well thought about is that only works if you're really confident. It only works if you really know which chip you're going to do. If you don't, then it's a little harder. So it makes in my head, it makes more sense for inference where you've already established it. But for training there's so much like experimentation. Any generality, yeah. Yeah. The generality is much more useful. Yeah. In some sense, you know, Google's like six generations into the CPUs. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, cool. Maybe we should go into SF Compute now. Sure. Yeah.Alessio [00:20:37]: Yeah. So you kind of talked about the different providers. Why did you decide to go with this approach and maybe talk a bit about how the market dynamics have evolved since you started a company?Evan [00:20:47]: So originally we were not doing this at all. We were definitely like forced into this to some extent. And SF Compute started because we wanted to go train models for music and audio in general. We were going to do a sort of generic audio model at some points, and then we were going to do a music model at some points. It was an early company. We didn't really spec down on a particular thing. But yeah, we were going to do a music model and audio model. First thing that you do when you start any AI lab is you go out and you buy a big cluster. The thing we had seen everybody else do was they went out and they raised a really big round and then they would get stuck. Because if you raise the amount of money that you need to train a model initially, like, you know, the $50 million pre-seed, pre-revenue, your valuation is so high or you get diluted so much that you can't raise the next round. And that's a very big ask to make. And also, I don't know, I felt like we just felt like we couldn't do it. We probably could have in retrospect, but I think one, we didn't really feel like we could do it. Two, it felt like if we did, we would have been stuck later on. We didn't want to raise the big round. And so instead, we thought, surely by now, we would be able to just go out. To any provider and buy like a traditional CPU cloud would sell offer you and just buy like on demand or buy like a month or so on. And this worked for like small incremental things. And I think this is where we were basing it off. We just like assumed we could go to like Lambda or something and like buy thousands of at the time A100s. And this just like was not at all the case. So we started doing all the sales calls with people and we said, OK, well, can we just get like month to month? Can we get like one month of compute or so on? Everyone told us at the time, no. You need to have a year long contract or longer or you're out of luck. Sorry. And at the time, we were just like pissed off. Like, why won't nobody sell us a month at a time? Nowadays, we totally understand why, because it's the same economic reason. Because if you if they had sold us the month to month or so on and we canceled or so on, they would have massive risk on that. And so the optimal thing to do was to only to just completely abandon the section of the market. We didn't like that. So our plan was we were going to buy a year long contract anyway. We would use a month. And then we would. At least the other 11 months. And we were locked in for a year, but we only had to pay on every individual month. And so we did this. But then immediately we said, oh, s**t, now we have a cloud provider, not a like training models company, not an AI lab, because every 30 days we owed about five hundred thousand dollars or so and we had about five hundred thousand dollars in the bank. So that meant that every single month, if we did not sell out our cluster, we would just go bankrupt. So that's what we did for the first year of the company. And when you're in that position. You try to think how in the world you get out of that position, what that transition to is, OK, well, we tend to be pretty good at like selling this cluster every month because we haven't died yet. And so what we should do is we should go basically be like this broker for other people and we will be more like a GPU real estate or like a GPU realtor. And so we started doing that for a while where we would go to other people who had who was trying to sell like a year long contract with somebody and we'd go to another person who like maybe this person wanted six months and somebody else on six months or something and we'd like combine all these people. Together to make the deal happen and we'd organize these like one off bespoke deals that looked like basically it ended up with us taking a bunch of customers, us signing with a vendor, taking some cut and then us operating the cluster for people typically with bare metal. And so we were doing this, but this was definitely like a oh, s**t, oh, s**t, oh, s**t. How do we get out of our current situation and less of a like a strategic plan of any sort? But while we were doing this, since like the beginning of the company, we had been thinking about how to buy GPU clusters, how to sell them effectively, because we'd seen every part of it. And what we ended up with was like a book of everybody who's trying to buy and everyone is trying to sell because we were these like GPU brokers. And so that turned into what is today SF Compute, which is a compute market, which we think we are the functionally the most liquid GPU market of any capacity. Honestly, I think we're the only thing that actually is like a real market that there's like bids and asks and there's like a like a trading engine that combines everything. And so. I think we're the only place where you can do things that a market should be able to do. Like you can go on SF Compute today and you get thousands of H100s for an hour if you want. And that's because there is a price for thousands of GPUs for an hour. That is like not a thing you can reasonably do on kind of any other cloud provider because nobody should realistically sell you thousands of GPUs for an hour. They should sell it to you for a year or so on. But one of the nice things about a market is that you can buy the year on SF Compute. But then if you need to sell. Back, you can sell back as well. And that opens up all these little pockets of liquidity where somebody who's just trying to buy for a little bit of time, some burst capacity. So people don't normally buy for an hour. That's not like actually a realistic thing, but it's like the range somebody who wants, who is like us, who needed to buy for a month can actually buy for a month. They can like place the order and there is actually a price for that. And it typically comes from somebody else who's selling back. Somebody who bought a longer term contract and is like they bought for some period of time, their code doesn't work, and now they need to like sell off a little bit.Alessio [00:25:49]: What are the utilization rates at which a market? What are the utilization rates at which a market? Like this works, what do you see the usual GPU utilization rate and like at what point does the market get saturated?Evan [00:26:00]: Assuming there are not like hardware problems or software problems, the utilization rate is like near 100 percent because the price dips until the utilization is 100 percent. So the price actually has to dip quite a lot in order for the utilization not to be. That's not always the case because you just have logistical problems like you get a cluster and parts of the InfiniBand fabric are broken. And there's like some issue with some switch somewhere and so you have to take some portion of the cluster offline or, you know, stuff like this, like there's just underlying physical realities of the clusters, but nominally we have better utilization than basically anybody because, but that's on utilization of the cluster, like that doesn't necessarily translate into, I mean, I actually do think we have much better overall money made for our underlying vendors than kind of anybody else. We work with the other GPU clouds and the basic pitch to the other GPU clouds is one. So we can sell your broker so we can we can find you the long term contracts that are at the prices that you want, but meanwhile, your cluster is idle and for that we can increase your utilization and get you more money because we can sell that idle cluster for you and then the moment we find the longer, the bigger customer and they come on, you can kick off those people and then go to the other ones. You get kind of the mix of like sell your cluster at whatever price you can get on the market and then sell your cluster at the big price that you want to do for long term contract, which is your ideal business model. And then the benefit of the whole thing being on the market. Is you can pitch your customer that they can cancel their long term contract, which is not a thing that you can reasonably do if you are just the GPU cloud, if you're just the GPU cloud, you can never cancel your contract, because that introduces so much risk that you would otherwise, like not get your cheap cost of capital or whatever. But if you're selling it through the market, or you're selling it with us, then you can say, hey, look, you can cancel for a fee. And that fee is the difference between the price of the market and then the price that they paid at, which means that they canceled and you have the ability to offer that flexibility. But you don't. You don't have to take the risk of it. The money's already there and like you got paid, but it's just being sold to somebody else. One of our top pieces from last year was talking about the H100 glut from all the long term contracts that were not being fully utilized and being put under the market. You have on here dollar a dollar per hour contracts as well as it goes up to two. Actually, I think you were involved. You were obliquely quoted in that article. I think you remember. I remember because this was hidden. Well, we hid your name, but then you were like, yeah, it's us. Yeah. Could you talk about the supply and demand of H100s? Was that just a normal cycle? Was that like a super cycle because of all the VC funding that went in in 2003? What was that like? GPU prices have come down. Yeah, GPU prices have come down. And there's some part that has normal depreciation cycle. Some part of that is just there were a lot of startups that bought GPUs and never used them. And now they're lending it out and therefore you exist. There's a lot of like various theories as to why. This happened. I dislike all of them because they're all kind of like they're often said with really high confidence. And I think just the market's much more complicated than that. Of course. And so everything I'm going to say is like very hedged. But there was a series of like places where a bunch of the orders were placed and people were pitching to their customers and their investors and just the broader market that they would arrive on time. And that is not how the world works. And because there was such a really quick build out of things, you would end up with bottlenecks in the supply chain somewhere that has nothing to do with necessarily the chip. It's like the InfiniBand cables or the NICs or like whatever. Or you need a bunch of like generators or you don't have data center space or like there's always some bottleneck somewhere else. And so a lot of the clusters didn't come online within the period of time. But then all the bottlenecks got sorted out and then they all came online all at the same time. So I think you saw a short. There was a shortage because supply chain hard. And then you saw a increase or like a glut because supply chain eventually figure itself out. And specifically people overordered in order to get the allocation that they wanted. Then they got the allocations and then they went under. Yeah, whatever. Right. There was just a lot of shenanigans. A caveat of this is every time you see somebody like overordered, there is this assumption that the problem was like the demand went down. I don't think that's the case at all. And so I want to clarify that. It definitely seems like a shortage. Like there's more demand for GPUs than there ever was. It's just that there was also more supply. So at the moment, I think there is still functionally a glut. But the difference that I think is happening is mostly the test time inference stuff that you just need way more chips for that than you did before. And so whenever you make a statement about the current market, people sort of take your words and then they assume that you're making a statement about the future market. And so if you say there's a glut now, people will continue to think there's a glut. But I think what is happening at the moment. My general prediction is that like by the winter, we will be back towards shortage. But then also, this very much depends on the rollout of future chips. And that comes with its own. I think I'm trying to give you like a good here's Evan's forecast. Okay. But I don't know if my forecast is right. You don't have to. Nobody is going to hold you to it. But like I think people want to know what's true and what's not. And there's a lot of vague speculations from people who are not that close to the market actually. And you are. I think I'm a closer. Close to the market, but also a vague speculator. Like I think there are a lot of really highly confident speculators and I am indeed a vague speculator. I think I have more information than a lot of other people. And this makes me more vague of a spectator because I feel less certain or less confident than I think a lot of other people do. The thing I do feel reasonably confident about saying is that the test time inference is probably going to quite significantly expand the amount of compute that was used for inference. So a caveat. This is like pretty much all the inference demand is in a few companies. A good example is like lots of bio and pharma was using H100s training sort of the bio models of sorts. And they would come along and they would buy, you know, thousands of H100s for training and then just like not a lot of stuff for inference. Not in any, not relative to like an opening iron anthropic or something because they like don't have a consumer product. Their inference event, if they can do it right. There's really like only one inference event that matters. And obviously I think they're going to run into it. And Batch and they're not going to literally just run one inference event. But like the one that produces the drug is the important one. Right. And I'm dumb and I don't know anything about biology, so I could be completely wrong here. But my understanding is that's kind of the gist. I can check that for you. You can check that for me. Check that for me. But my understanding is like the one that produces the sequence that is the drug that, you know, cures cancer or whatever. That's the important deal. But like a lot of models look like this where they're sort of more enterprising use cases or they're so prior to something that looks like test time inference. You got lots and lots of demand for training and then pretty much entirely fell off for inference. And I think like we looked at like Open Router, for example, the entirety of Open Router that was not anthropic or like Gemini or OpenAI or something. It was like 10 H100 nodes or something like that. It's just like not that much. It's like not that many GPUs actually to service that entire demand. But that's like a really sizable portion of the sort of open source market. But the actual amount of compute needed for it was not that much. But if you imagine like what an OpenAI needs for like GPT-4, it's like tremendously big. But that's because it's a consumer product that has almost all the inference demand. Yeah, that's a message we've had. Roughly open source AI compared to closed AI is like 5%. Yeah, it's like super small. Super small. It's super small. Super small. But test time inference changes that quite significantly. So I will... I will expect that to increase our overall demand. But my question on whether or not that actually affects your compute price is entirely based on how quickly do we roll out the next chips. The way that you burst is different for test time.Alessio [00:34:01]: Any thoughts on the third part of the market, which is the more peer-to-peer distributed, some are like crypto-enabled, like Hyperbolic, Prime Intellect, and all of that. Where do those fit? Like, do you see a lot of people will want to participate in a peer-to-peer market? Or just because of the capital requirements at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter?Evan [00:34:20]: I'm like wildly skeptical of these, to be frankly. The dream is like steady at home, right? I got this $15.90. Nobody has $15.90. $14.90 sitting at home. I can rent it out. Yeah. Like, I just don't really think this is going to ever be more efficient than a fully interconnected cluster with InfiniBand or, you know, whatever the sort of next spec might be. Like, I could be completely wrong. But speaking of... I mean, like, SpeedoLite is really hard to beat. And regardless of whatever you're using, you just like can't get around that physical limitation. And so you could like imagine a decentralized market that still has a lot of places where there's like co-location. But then you would get something that looks like SF Compute. And so that's what we do. That's why we take our general take is like on SF Compute, you're not buying from like random people. You're buying from the other GPU clouds, functionally. You're buying from data centers that are the same genre of people that you would work with already. And you can specify, oh, I want all these nodes to be co-located. And I don't think you're really going to get around that. And I think I buy crypto for the purposes of like transferring money. Like the financial system is like quite painful and so on. I can understand the uses of it to sort of incentivize an initial market or try to get around the cold start problem. We've been able to get around the cold start problem just fine. So it didn't actually need that at all. What I do think is totally possible is you could launch a token and then you could like subsidize the crypto. You could compute prices for a bit, but like maybe that will help you. I think that's what Nuus is doing. Yeah, I think there's lots of people who are trying to do things like this, but at some point that runs out. So I would, I think generally agree. I think the only thread in that model is very fine grained mixture of experts that can be like algorithms can shift to adapt to hardware realities. And the hardware reality is like, okay, it's annoying to do large co-located clusters. Then we'll just redesign attention or whatever in our architecture to distribute it more. There was a little bit buzz of block attention last year that Strong Compute made a big push on. But I think like, you know, in a world where we have 200 experts in MOE model, it starts to be a little bit better. Like, I don't disagree with this. I can imagine the world in which you have like, in which you've redesigned it to be more parallelizable, like across space.Evan [00:36:43]: But assuming without that, your hardware limitation is your speed of light limitation. And that's a very hard one to get around.Alessio [00:36:50]: Any customers or like stories that you want to shout out of like maybe things that wouldn't have been economically viable like others? I know there's some sensitivity on that.Evan [00:37:00]: My favorites are grad students, are folks who are trying to do things that would normally otherwise require the scale of a big lab. And the grad students are like the worst pilots. They're like the worst possible customer for the traditional GPU clouds because they will immediately turn if you sell them a thing because they're going to graduate and they're not going to go anywhere. They're not going to like, that project isn't continuing to spend lots of money. Like sometimes it does, but not if you're like working with the university or you're working with the lab of some sort. But a lot of times it's just like the ability for us to offer like big burst capacity, I think is lovely and wonderful. And it's like one of my favorite things to do because all those folks look like we did. And I have a special place in my heart for that. I have a special place in my heart for young hackers and young grad students and researchers who are trying to do the same genre of thing that we are doing. For the same reason, I have a special place in my heart for like the startups, the people who are just actively trying to compete on the same scale, but can't afford it time-wise, but can afford it spike-wise. Yeah, I liked your example of like, I have a grant of 100K and it's expiring. I got to spend it on that. That's really beautiful. Yeah. Interesting. Has there been interesting work coming out of that? Anything you want to mention? Yeah. So from like a startup perspective, like Standard Intelligence and Find, P-H-I-N-D. We've had them on the pod.Swyx [00:38:23]: Yeah. Yeah.Evan [00:38:23]: That was great. And then from grad students' perspective, we worked a lot with like the Schmidt Futures grantees of various sorts. My fear is if I talk about their research, I will be completely wrong to a sort of almost insulting degree because I am very dumb. But yeah. I think one thing that's maybe also relevant startups and GPUs-wise. Yeah. Is there was a brief moment where it kind of made sense that VCs provided GPU clusters. And obviously you worked at AI Grants, which set up Andromeda, which is supposedly a $100 million cluster. Yeah. I can explain why that's the case or why anybody would think that would be smart. Because I remember before any of that happened, we were asking for it to happen. Yeah. And the general reason is credit risk. Again, it's a bank. Yeah. I have lower risk than you due to credit transformation. I take your risk onto my balance sheet. Correct. Exactly. If you wanted to go for a while, if you wanted to go set up a GPU cluster, you had to be the one that actually bought the hardware and racked it and stacked it, like co-located it somewhere with someone. Functionally, it was like on your balance sheet, which means you had to get a loan. And you cannot get a loan for like $50 million as a startup. Like not really. You can get like venture debt and stuff, but like it's like very, very difficult to get a loan of any serious price for that. But it's like not that difficult to get a loan for $50 million. If you already have a fund or you already have like a million dollars under your assets somewhere or like you personally can like do a personal guarantee for it or something like this. If you have a lot of money, it is way easier for you to get a loan than if you don't have a lot of money. And so the hack of a VC or some capital partner offering equity for compute is always some arbitrage on the credit risk. That's amazing. Yeah. That's a hack. You should do that. I don't think people should do it right now. I think the market has like, I think it made sense at the time and it was helpful and useful for the people who did it at the time. But I think it was a one-time arbitrage because now there are lots of other sources that can do it. And also I think like it made sense when no one else was doing it and you were the only person who was doing it. But now it's like it's an arbitrage that gets competed down. Sure. So it's like super effective. I wouldn't totally recommend it. Like it's great that Andromeda did it. But the marginal increase of somebody else doing it is like not super helpful. I don't think that many people have followed in their footsteps. I think maybe Andreessen did it. Yeah. That's it. I think just because pretty much all the value like flows through Andromeda. What? That cannot be true. How many companies are in the air, Grant? Like 50? My understanding of Andromeda is it works with all the NFTG companies or like several of the NFTG companies. But I might be wrong about that. Again, you know, something something. Nat, don't kill me. I could be completely wrong. But the but you know, I think Andromeda was like an excellent idea to do at the right time in which it occurred. Perfect. His timing is impeccable. Timing. Yeah. Nat and Daniel are like, I mean, there's lots of people who are like... Sears? Yeah. Sears. Like S-E-E-R. Oh, Sears. Like Sears of the Valley. Yeah. They for years and years before any of the like ChatGPT moment or anything, they had fully understood what was going to happen. Like way, way before. Like. AI Grant is like, like five years old, six years old or something like that. Seven years old. When I, when it like first launched or something. Depends where you start. The nonprofit version. Yeah. The nonprofit version was like, like happening for a while, I think. It's going on for quite a bit of time. And then like Nat and Daniel are like the early investors in a lot of the sort of early AI labs of various sorts. They've been doing this for a bit.Alessio [00:41:58]: I was looking at your pricing yesterday. We're kind of talking about it before. And there's this weird thing where one week is more expensive of both one day and one month. Yeah. What are like some of the market pricing dynamics? What are things that like this to somebody that is not in the business? This looks really weird. But I'm curious, like if you have an explanation for it, if that looks normal to you. Yeah.Evan [00:42:18]: So the simple answer is preemptible pricing is cheaper than non-preemptible pricing. And the same economic principle is the reason why that's the case right now. That's not entirely true on SF Compute. SF Compute doesn't really have the concept of preemptible. Instead, what it has is very short reservations. So, you know, you go to a traditional cloud provider and you can say, hey, I want to reserve contract for a year. We will let you do a reserve contract for one hour, which is the part of SFC. But what you can do is you can just buy every single hour continuously. And you're reserving just for that hour. And then the next hour you reserve just for that next hour. And this is obviously like a built in. This is like an automation that you can do. But what you're seeing when you see the cheap price is you're seeing somebody who's buying the next hour, but maybe not necessarily buying an hour after that. So if the price goes up. Up too much. They might not get that next hour. And the underlying part of this of where that's coming from the market is you can imagine like day old milk or like milk that's about to be old. It might drop its price until it's expired because nobody wants to buy the milk that's in the past. Or maybe you can't legally sell it. Compute is the same way. No, you can't sell a block of compute that is not that is in the past. And so what you should do in the market and what people do do is they take. They take a block. A block of compute. And then they drop it and drop it and drop it and drop into a floor price right before it's about to expire. And they keep dropping it until it clears. And so anything that is idle drops until some point. So if you go and use on the website and you set that that chart to like a week from now, what you'll see is much more normal looking sort of curves. But if you say, oh, I want to start right now, that immediate instant, here's the compute that I want right now is the is functionally the preemptible price. It's where most people are getting the best compute or like the best compute prices from. The caveat of that is you can do really fun stuff on SFC if you want. So because it's not actually preemptible, it's it's reserved, but only reserved for an hour, which means that the optimal way to use as of compute is to just buy on the market price, but set a limit price that is much higher. So you can set a limit price for like four dollars and say, oh, if the market ever happens to spike up to four dollars, then don't buy. I don't want to buy that at that price for that price. I don't want to buy that at that price for that price for an hour. But otherwise, just buy at the cheapest price. And if you're comfortable with that of the volatility of it, you're actually going to get like really good prices, like close to a dollar an hour or so on, sometimes down to like 80 cents or whatever. You said four, though. Yeah. So that's the thing. You want to lower the limit. So four is your max price. Four is like where you basically want to like pull the plug and say don't do it because the actual average price is not or like the, you know, the preemptible price doesn't actually look like that. So what you're doing when you're saying four is always, always, always give me this compute. Like continue to buy every hour. Don't preempt me. Don't kick me off. And I want this compute and just buy at the preemptible price, but never kick me off. The only times in which you get kicked off is if there is a big price spike. And, you know, let's say one day out of the year, there's like a four dollar an hour price because of some weird fluke or something. If there are other periods of time, you're actually getting a much lower price than you. It makes sense. Your your average cost that you're actually paying is way better. And your trade off here is you don't literally know what price you're going to get. So it's volatile. But your actual average historically has been like everyone who's done this has gotten wildly better prices. And this is like one of the clever things you can do with the market. If you're willing to make those trade offs, you can get a lot of really good prices. You can also do other things like you can only buy at night, for example. So the price goes down at night. And so you can say, oh, I want to only buy, you know, if the price is lower than 90 cents. And so if you have some long running job, you can make it only run on 90 cents and then you recover back and so on. Yeah. So what you can kind of create as like a spot inst is what other the CPU world has. Yes. But you've created a system where you can kind of manufacture the exact profile that you want. Exactly. That is not just whatever the hyperscalers offer you, which is usually just one thing. Correct. SF Compute is like the power tool. The underlying primitives of like hourly compute is there. Correct. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. I've often asked OpenAI. So like, you know, all these guys. Cloud as well. They do batch APIs. So it's half off of whatever your thing is. Yeah. And the only contract is we'll return in 24 hours. Sure. Right. And I was like, 24 hours is good. But sometimes I want one hour. I want four hours. I want something. And so based off of SF Compute's system, you can actually kind of create that kind of guarantee. Totally. That would be like, you know, not 24, but within eight hours, within four hours, like the work half of a workday. Yes. I can return your results to you. And then I can return it to you. And if your latency requirements are like that low, actually it's fine. Yes. Correct. Yeah. You can carve out that. You can financially engineer that on SFC. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think to me that unlocks a lot of agent use cases that I want, which is like, yeah, I worked in a background, but I don't want you to take a day. Yeah. Correct. Take a couple hours or something. Yeah. This touches a lot of my like background because I used to be a derivatives trader. Yeah. And this is a forward market. Yeah. A futures forward market, whatever you call it. Not a future. Very explicitly not a future. Not yet a futures. Yes. But I don't know if you have any other points to talk about. So you recognize that you are a, you know, a marketplace and you've hired, I met Alex Epstein at your launch event and you're like, you're, you're building out the financialization of GPUs. Yeah. So part of that's legal. Mm-hmm. Totally. Part of that is like listing on an exchange. Yep. Maybe you're the exchange. I don't know how that works, but just like, talk to me about that. Like from the legal, the standardization, the like, where is this all headed? You know, is this like a full listed on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange or whatever? What we're trying to do is create an underlying spot market that gives you an index price that you can use. And then with that index price, you can create a cash settled future. And with a cash settled future, you can go back to the data centers and you can say, lock in your price now and de-risk your entire position, which lets you get cheaper cost of capital and so on. And that we think will improve the entire industry because the marginal cost of compute is the risk. It's risk as shown by that graph and basically every part of this conversation. It's risk that causes the price to be all sorts of funky. And we think a future is the correct solution to this. So that's the eventual goal. Right now you have to make the underlying spot market in order to make this occur. And then to make the spot market work, you actually have to solve a lot of technology problems. You really cannot make a spot market work if you don't run the clusters, if you don't have control over them, if you don't know how to audit them, because these are super computers, not soybeans. They have to work. In a way that like, it's just a lot simpler to deliver a soybean than it is to deliver it. I don't know. Talk to the soybean guys. Sure. You know? Yeah. But you have to have a delivery mechanism. Your delivery mechanism, like somebody somewhere has to actually get the compute at some point and it actually has to work. And it is really complicated. And so that is the other part of our business that we go and we build a bare metal infrastructure stack that goes. And then also we do auditing of all the clusters. You sort of de-risk the technical perspective and that allows you to eventually de-risk the financial perspective. And that is kind of the pitch of SF Compute. Yeah. I'll double click on the auditing on the clusters. This is something I've had conversations with Vitae on. He started Rika and I think he had a blog post which kind of shone the light a little bit on how unreliable some clusters are versus others. Correct. Yeah. And sometimes you kind of have to season them and age them a little bit to find the bad cards. You have to burn them in. Yeah. So what do you do to audit them? There's like a burn-in process, a suite of tests, and then active checking and passive checking. Burn-in process is where you typically run LINPACK. LINPACK is this thing that like a bunch of linear algebra equations that you're stress testing the GPUs. This is a proprietary thing that you wrote? No, no, no. LINPACK is like the most common form of burn-in. If you just type in burn-in, typically when people say burn-in, they literally just mean LINPACK. It's like an NVIDIA reference version of this. Again, NVIDIA could run this before they ship, but now the customers have to do it. It's annoying. You're not just checking for the GPU itself. You're checking like the whole component, all the hardware. And it's a lot of work. It's an integration test. It's an integration test. Yeah. So what you're doing when you're running LINPACK or burn-in in general is you're stress testing the GPUs for some period of time, 48 hours, for example, maybe seven days or so on. And you're just trying to kill all the dead GPUs or any components in the system that are broken. And we've had experiences where we ran LINPACK on a cluster and it rounds out, sort of comes offline when you run LINPACK. This is a pretty good sign that maybe there is a problem with this cluster. Yeah. So LINPACK is like the most common sort of standard test. But then beyond that, what you do is we have like a series of performance tests that replicate a much more realistic environment as well that we run just assuming if LINPACK works at all, then you run the next set of tests. And then while the GPUs are in operation, you're also going through and you're doing active tests and passive tests. Passive tests are things that are running in the background while somebody else is running, while like some other workload is running. And active tests are during like idle periods. You're running some sort of check that would otherwise sort of interrupt something. And then the active tests will take something offline, basically. Or a passive check might mark it to get taken offline later and so on. And then the thing that we are working on that we have working partially but not entirely is automated refunds, which is basically like, is the case that the hardware breaks so much. And there's only so much that we can do and it is the effect of pretty much the entire industry. So a pretty common thing that I think happens to kind of everybody in the space is a customer comes online, they experience your cluster, and your cluster has the same problem that like any cluster has, or it's I mean, a different problem every time, but they experience one of the problems of HPC. And then their experience is bad. And you have to like negotiate a refund or some other thing like this. It's always case by case. And like, yeah, a lot of people just eat the cost. Correct. So one of the nice things about a market that we can do as we get bigger and have been doing as we can bigger is we can immediately give you something else. And then also we can automatically refund you. And you're still gonna experience it like the hardware problems aren't going away until the underlying vendors fix things. But honestly, I don't think that's likely because you're always pushing the limits of HPC. This is the case of trying to build a supercomputer. that's one of the nice things that we can do is we can switch you out for somebody else somewhere, and then automatically refund you or prorate or whatever the correct move is. One of the things that you say in this conversation with me was like, you know, you know, a provider is good when they guarantee automatic refunds. Which doesn't happen. But yeah, that's, that's in our contact with all the underlying cloud providers. You built it in already. Yeah. So we have a quite strict SLA that we pass on to you. The reason why

The Argument
How Democrats Drove Silicon Valley Into Trump's Arms

The Argument

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 6, 2025 62:39


The tech investor Marc Andreessen and his fellow Silicon Valley giant Elon Musk weren't always the Donald Trump supporters they are today. In this episode, Ross asks Andreessen, a founder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, about what led to Silicon Valley's rightward shift and the new agenda of the tech-right faction. Editors' note: This episode originally aired on the “Matter of Opinion” podcast on Jan. 17, 2025.(A full transcript of this episode is available on the Times website.) Thoughts? Email us at interestingtimes@nytimes.com. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Tech Path Podcast
Ethereum Joins Polkadot TikTok Bid vs Hedera & XRP!

Tech Path Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 4, 2025 18:05


President Donald Trump on Friday said that he will extend the deadline for TikTok's owner to find a non-Chinese buyer by 75 days, averting what could have been another disruption of the app. Ethereum has now joined Project Liberty (Polkadot) to bid on TikTok. Meanwhile OnlyFans & Hedera are also now bidders.~This Episode is Sponsored By Coinbase~ Buy $50 & Get $50 for getting started on Coinbase➜ https://bit.ly/CBARRON00:00 intro00:19 Sponsor: Coinbase00:43 Trump on TikTok Deal & Tariffs01:21 Ethereum Joins Project Liberty01:53 Bidders List02:53 Oracle + Andreessen Horowitz03:59 Andreessen & Project Liberty04:45 Trump Loves ETH05:07 China has leverage05:49 Art of The Deal?06:20 Bytedance cannot control anything07:16 Social Media Lawsuits Won't Stop07:53 Hedera & XRP Join Bid?08:33 No chance for Hedera bid09:01 Josh Hawley Grills TikTok CEO10:49 Bipartisan11:11 Vitalik vs Mark Zuckerberg11:52 Vitalik on Government KYC12:32 Lens Chain Launches on ETH13:01 ETH x Polkadot Soon13:20 Airdrops Coming To TikTok13:53 MeWe Incentives14:29 Avalanche x Polkadot14:52 Apple & Google screwed15:19 Death of the App Store?16:15 Ethereum has already gone mainstream16:52 Polymarket growth speed17:41 outro#Ethereum #XRP #TikTok~Ethereum Joins Polkadot TikTok Bid vs Hedera & XRP!

The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan
Nick Denton: Our New Chinese Overlords

The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 28, 2025 52:02


This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.comNick is an entrepreneur and journalist. He was the founder of Gawker Media, the publisher of Gizmodo, and the editor of Valleywag. He began his career as a journalist with the Financial Times — as a derivatives and tech correspondent — and later founded a Silicon Valley news aggregator called Moreover Technologies. He's now working on Maze.com, which hosts a network map of near-future timelines.For two clips of our convo — on the growing global dominance of China, and the Chinese outcompeting Elon Musk — pop over to our YouTube page.Other topics: raised in Hampstead in the lower-middle class; a Jewish mom who fled the Communists in Hungary; growing up on sci-fi; Asimov's Foundation; attending Oxford like his father; game theory; being a young reporter in London, Hungary, Romania, and Singapore; pioneering the internet in the ‘90s; Foundation parallels with Singapore; Lee Kuan Yew; Chinese pragmatism; Taiwan; EVs in China; Musk's companies; tech theft between the US and China; DOGE and Trump reigning in Musk; Peter Thiel; Andy Grove; Uber's Travis Kalanick; Kara Swisher; Oculus' Palmer Luckey; how Silicon Valley is PR obsessed; Zuckerberg; David Sacks and crypto; Andreessen; drones; Ukraine; Thatcher; housing crisis in the UK; Orbán; the German Greens; Russian expansionism; the Poles and nukes; Trump's tariffs; Tucker's interview with Putin; the growing US-Europe rift; Greenland; AI and DeepSeek; and Nick's predictions as a futurist.Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Douglas Murray on Israel and Gaza, Evan Wolfson on the history of marriage equality, Francis Collins on faith and science and Covid, Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee on Covid's fallout, and Paul Elie on his book The Last Supper: Art, Faith, Sex, and Controversy in the 1980s. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

This Week in Startups
11x in Trouble and China's AI Acceleration | E2103

This Week in Startups

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 27, 2025 74:04


OpenPhone - Streamline and scale your customer communications with OpenPhone. Get 20% off your first 6 months at www.openphone.com/twistLinkedIn Ads - To redeem a $100 LinkedIn ad credit and launch your first campaign, go to linkedin.com/thisweekinstartupsBrex - the financial stack founders can bank on. Get the business account trusted by 1 in 3 US startups at brex.com/banking-solutions.Today's show: Jason, Alex, and Lon dig into the controversy around 11x, the Andreessen-backed startup accused of misrepresenting revenue and using fake logos, and what that says about early-stage accountability. Then we break down China's dual-front blitz in AI and EVs: DeepSeek's open-source model rivals GPT-4, and Xiaomi's $30K SU7 is a straight-up Porsche clone shaking the EV market. Finally, we unpack the “4-persona framework” that helped Wiz rocket to $100M+ ARR faster than anyone — a must-know concept for any founder looking to build, sell, and scale like a beast.Timestamps:(0:00) Episode Teaser(1:27) Introduction of co-hosts Lon Harris and Alex Wilhelm(3:23) New set design and color analysis(5:43) Announcement of "Twist OT" and potential Patreon model(8:09) Gamestop's Bitcoin strategy and Michael Saylor's influence(10:15) OpenPhone - Streamline and scale your customer communications with OpenPhone. Get 20% off your first 6 months at www.openphone.com/twist(14:26) MSTR and their shift to Bitcoin(17:01) Michael Saylor's conflict of interest(20:40) LinkedIn Ads - Get a $100 LinkedIn ad credit at http://www.linkedin.com/thisweekinstartups(23:09) Investment strategies for company treasuries(25:10) Allegations against Eleven x startup(30:35) Brex - the financial stack founders can bank on. Get the business account trusted by 1 in 3 US startups at brex.com/banking-solutions.(32:56) The importance of transparency and accountability in startups(42:31) Chinese advancements in AI technology and ChatGPT features(55:09) Insight from Israeli VC Gilly Ranan on successful startups(1:04:26) Founder Friday March Pitch Madness bracket competition(1:10:26) How to start a Founder Friday chapter and community(1:11:21) Bracket competition and Launch Accelerator's 34th cohortSubscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.comCheck out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.comSubscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcpFollow Alex:X: https://x.com/alexLinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelmFollow Lon:X: https://x.com/LonsLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lonharrisFollow Jason:X: https://twitter.com/JasonLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanisThank you to our partners:(10:15) OpenPhone - Streamline and scale your customer communications with OpenPhone. Get 20% off your first 6 months at www.openphone.com/twist(20:40) LinkedIn Ads - Get a $100 LinkedIn ad credit at http://www.linkedin.com/thisweekinstartups(30:35) Brex - Get the business account trusted by 1 in 3 US startups at https://www.brex.com/banking-solutionsCheck out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanisFollow TWiST:Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartupsYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekinInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartupsTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartupsSubstack: https://twistartups.substack.comSubscribe to the Founder University Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@founderuniversity1916

This Week in Google (MP3)
IM 811: Flippin' the Bird - Anthony Aguirre, AI Safety, Hollywood vs. AI

This Week in Google (MP3)

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 20, 2025 178:35


Interview with Anthony Aguirre The NIST's new directive to AI Safety Institute partners scrubs mentions of "AI safety" and "AI fairness" and prioritizes "reducing ideological bias" in models Jensen Huang GTC Keynote in 16 minutes Nvidia and Yum! Brands team up to expand AI ordering Google Is Officially Replacing Assistant With Gemini - Slashdot Google's Gemini AI is really good at watermark removal Hollywood warns about AI industry's push to change copyright law Hear what Horizon Zero Dawn actor Ashly Burch thinks about AI taking her job Guardian agrees with Leo The Daily Wire announces new advertising partnership with Perplexity and The Ben Shapiro Show Elon Musk's Grok to merge with Perplexity AI? Perplexity dunks on Google's 'glue on pizza' AI fail in new ad Google announces new health-care AI updates for Search Google plans to release new 'open' AI models for drug discovery EFF: California's A.B. 412: A Bill That Could Crush Startups and Cement A Big Tech AI Monopoly Italian newspaper says it has published world's first AI-generated edition AI ring tracks spelled words in American Sign Language Kevin Roose joins the AGI cult: Why I'm Feeling the A.G.I. I Hitched a Ride in San Francisco's Newest Robotaxi Elon Musk's X obtains $44bn valuation in sharp turnaround The 560-pound Twitter logo from its San Francisco headquarters is up for auction Andreessen wants to shut down all higher education in America FSF's Memorabilia Silent Auction Begins Today - Slashdot Bluesky made more money selling T-shirts mocking Zuckerberg than custom domains Google acquires cybersecurity firm Wiz for $32 billion Alphabet spins off Starlink competitor Taara Oh Mary! TechCrunch Founder-Turned-Crypto Investor Pays $60 Million for Miami Beach Home Hosts: Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis, and Paris Martineau Guest: Anthony Aguirre Download or subscribe to Intelligent Machines at https://twit.tv/shows/intelligent-machines. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free shows, a members-only Discord, and behind-the-scenes access. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: uscloud.com zscaler.com/security

All TWiT.tv Shows (MP3)
Intelligent Machines 811: Flippin' the Bird

All TWiT.tv Shows (MP3)

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 20, 2025 178:35


Interview with Anthony Aguirre The NIST's new directive to AI Safety Institute partners scrubs mentions of "AI safety" and "AI fairness" and prioritizes "reducing ideological bias" in models Jensen Huang GTC Keynote in 16 minutes Nvidia and Yum! Brands team up to expand AI ordering Google Is Officially Replacing Assistant With Gemini - Slashdot Google's Gemini AI is really good at watermark removal Hollywood warns about AI industry's push to change copyright law Hear what Horizon Zero Dawn actor Ashly Burch thinks about AI taking her job Guardian agrees with Leo The Daily Wire announces new advertising partnership with Perplexity and The Ben Shapiro Show Elon Musk's Grok to merge with Perplexity AI? Perplexity dunks on Google's 'glue on pizza' AI fail in new ad Google announces new health-care AI updates for Search Google plans to release new 'open' AI models for drug discovery EFF: California's A.B. 412: A Bill That Could Crush Startups and Cement A Big Tech AI Monopoly Italian newspaper says it has published world's first AI-generated edition AI ring tracks spelled words in American Sign Language Kevin Roose joins the AGI cult: Why I'm Feeling the A.G.I. I Hitched a Ride in San Francisco's Newest Robotaxi Elon Musk's X obtains $44bn valuation in sharp turnaround The 560-pound Twitter logo from its San Francisco headquarters is up for auction Andreessen wants to shut down all higher education in America FSF's Memorabilia Silent Auction Begins Today - Slashdot Bluesky made more money selling T-shirts mocking Zuckerberg than custom domains Google acquires cybersecurity firm Wiz for $32 billion Alphabet spins off Starlink competitor Taara Oh Mary! TechCrunch Founder-Turned-Crypto Investor Pays $60 Million for Miami Beach Home Hosts: Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis, and Paris Martineau Guest: Anthony Aguirre Download or subscribe to Intelligent Machines at https://twit.tv/shows/intelligent-machines. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free shows, a members-only Discord, and behind-the-scenes access. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: uscloud.com zscaler.com/security

Radio Leo (Audio)
Intelligent Machines 811: Flippin' the Bird

Radio Leo (Audio)

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 20, 2025 178:35


Interview with Anthony Aguirre The NIST's new directive to AI Safety Institute partners scrubs mentions of "AI safety" and "AI fairness" and prioritizes "reducing ideological bias" in models Jensen Huang GTC Keynote in 16 minutes Nvidia and Yum! Brands team up to expand AI ordering Google Is Officially Replacing Assistant With Gemini - Slashdot Google's Gemini AI is really good at watermark removal Hollywood warns about AI industry's push to change copyright law Hear what Horizon Zero Dawn actor Ashly Burch thinks about AI taking her job Guardian agrees with Leo The Daily Wire announces new advertising partnership with Perplexity and The Ben Shapiro Show Elon Musk's Grok to merge with Perplexity AI? Perplexity dunks on Google's 'glue on pizza' AI fail in new ad Google announces new health-care AI updates for Search Google plans to release new 'open' AI models for drug discovery EFF: California's A.B. 412: A Bill That Could Crush Startups and Cement A Big Tech AI Monopoly Italian newspaper says it has published world's first AI-generated edition AI ring tracks spelled words in American Sign Language Kevin Roose joins the AGI cult: Why I'm Feeling the A.G.I. I Hitched a Ride in San Francisco's Newest Robotaxi Elon Musk's X obtains $44bn valuation in sharp turnaround The 560-pound Twitter logo from its San Francisco headquarters is up for auction Andreessen wants to shut down all higher education in America FSF's Memorabilia Silent Auction Begins Today - Slashdot Bluesky made more money selling T-shirts mocking Zuckerberg than custom domains Google acquires cybersecurity firm Wiz for $32 billion Alphabet spins off Starlink competitor Taara Oh Mary! TechCrunch Founder-Turned-Crypto Investor Pays $60 Million for Miami Beach Home Hosts: Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis, and Paris Martineau Guest: Anthony Aguirre Download or subscribe to Intelligent Machines at https://twit.tv/shows/intelligent-machines. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free shows, a members-only Discord, and behind-the-scenes access. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: uscloud.com zscaler.com/security

This Week in Google (Video HI)
IM 811: Flippin' the Bird - Anthony Aguirre, AI Safety, Hollywood vs. AI

This Week in Google (Video HI)

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 20, 2025 178:35


Interview with Anthony Aguirre The NIST's new directive to AI Safety Institute partners scrubs mentions of "AI safety" and "AI fairness" and prioritizes "reducing ideological bias" in models Jensen Huang GTC Keynote in 16 minutes Nvidia and Yum! Brands team up to expand AI ordering Google Is Officially Replacing Assistant With Gemini - Slashdot Google's Gemini AI is really good at watermark removal Hollywood warns about AI industry's push to change copyright law Hear what Horizon Zero Dawn actor Ashly Burch thinks about AI taking her job Guardian agrees with Leo The Daily Wire announces new advertising partnership with Perplexity and The Ben Shapiro Show Elon Musk's Grok to merge with Perplexity AI? Perplexity dunks on Google's 'glue on pizza' AI fail in new ad Google announces new health-care AI updates for Search Google plans to release new 'open' AI models for drug discovery EFF: California's A.B. 412: A Bill That Could Crush Startups and Cement A Big Tech AI Monopoly Italian newspaper says it has published world's first AI-generated edition AI ring tracks spelled words in American Sign Language Kevin Roose joins the AGI cult: Why I'm Feeling the A.G.I. I Hitched a Ride in San Francisco's Newest Robotaxi Elon Musk's X obtains $44bn valuation in sharp turnaround The 560-pound Twitter logo from its San Francisco headquarters is up for auction Andreessen wants to shut down all higher education in America FSF's Memorabilia Silent Auction Begins Today - Slashdot Bluesky made more money selling T-shirts mocking Zuckerberg than custom domains Google acquires cybersecurity firm Wiz for $32 billion Alphabet spins off Starlink competitor Taara Oh Mary! TechCrunch Founder-Turned-Crypto Investor Pays $60 Million for Miami Beach Home Hosts: Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis, and Paris Martineau Guest: Anthony Aguirre Download or subscribe to Intelligent Machines at https://twit.tv/shows/intelligent-machines. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free shows, a members-only Discord, and behind-the-scenes access. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: uscloud.com zscaler.com/security

All TWiT.tv Shows (Video LO)
Intelligent Machines 811: Flippin' the Bird

All TWiT.tv Shows (Video LO)

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 20, 2025 178:35


Interview with Anthony Aguirre The NIST's new directive to AI Safety Institute partners scrubs mentions of "AI safety" and "AI fairness" and prioritizes "reducing ideological bias" in models Jensen Huang GTC Keynote in 16 minutes Nvidia and Yum! Brands team up to expand AI ordering Google Is Officially Replacing Assistant With Gemini - Slashdot Google's Gemini AI is really good at watermark removal Hollywood warns about AI industry's push to change copyright law Hear what Horizon Zero Dawn actor Ashly Burch thinks about AI taking her job Guardian agrees with Leo The Daily Wire announces new advertising partnership with Perplexity and The Ben Shapiro Show Elon Musk's Grok to merge with Perplexity AI? Perplexity dunks on Google's 'glue on pizza' AI fail in new ad Google announces new health-care AI updates for Search Google plans to release new 'open' AI models for drug discovery EFF: California's A.B. 412: A Bill That Could Crush Startups and Cement A Big Tech AI Monopoly Italian newspaper says it has published world's first AI-generated edition AI ring tracks spelled words in American Sign Language Kevin Roose joins the AGI cult: Why I'm Feeling the A.G.I. I Hitched a Ride in San Francisco's Newest Robotaxi Elon Musk's X obtains $44bn valuation in sharp turnaround The 560-pound Twitter logo from its San Francisco headquarters is up for auction Andreessen wants to shut down all higher education in America FSF's Memorabilia Silent Auction Begins Today - Slashdot Bluesky made more money selling T-shirts mocking Zuckerberg than custom domains Google acquires cybersecurity firm Wiz for $32 billion Alphabet spins off Starlink competitor Taara Oh Mary! TechCrunch Founder-Turned-Crypto Investor Pays $60 Million for Miami Beach Home Hosts: Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis, and Paris Martineau Guest: Anthony Aguirre Download or subscribe to Intelligent Machines at https://twit.tv/shows/intelligent-machines. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free shows, a members-only Discord, and behind-the-scenes access. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: uscloud.com zscaler.com/security

The Majority Report with Sam Seder
2436 - Elon Musk's Unhinged Social Security Lies; Can Crypto Crash Our Economy? w/ Molly White

The Majority Report with Sam Seder

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 18, 2025 70:53


It's News Day Tuesday! Emma speaks with Molly White, crypto & tech researcher & critic, author at the websites Citation Needed & Web3 Is Going Great, to discuss her recent writing on the Trump administration and its relationship to the crypto industry. First, Emma dives into Elon Musk and Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt lying about social security and the supposed tens of millions of dead people receiving benefits, debunking those outlandish claims. Then Emma speaks with Molly and they discuss the Trump administration and its associates' connections to the crypto industry, in particular their animosity towards regulatory agencies like the FDIC & CFPB. Molly explains how crypto stakeholders, folks like Marc Andreessen and other members of the "PayPal Mafia", have, under the guise of the specter of "de-banking", lobbied and pushed for traditional finance to embrace the crypto industry, in ways such as integrating crypto into exchange traded funds or ETF's, so there are other avenues for people to interface with Bitcoin and crypto without having to actually go through all of the hoops it takes to do so (converting funds into BitCoins, storing them in BitCoin wallets, etc.) Molly dives further into how the crypto industry lobbies traditional financial institutions and banks to get what they want, and explains further what people like Andreessen really want out of defanging regulatory institutions like the FDIC and CFPB. And in the Fun Half, Emma & the MR Crew take a look at Trump border czar Tom Homan's recent obsession with AOC, as well as the underreported fact that a significant number of deportees since the beginning of the Trump administration have been-you guessed it!-people without a criminal record. They then take a look at some of the heartbreaking anecdotes surrounding the Trump administration's federal worker layoffs, as well as some words of warning from a retired air traffic controller as to what may happen after so many probationary employees leave the federal workforce. Plus, your calls & IM's! Find out more about the "Save Our Services Day Of Action" here: https://actionnetwork.org/event_campaigns/save-our-services-day-of-action Donate to friend of the show Annie Fitzgerald's GoFundMe if you can: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-annie-fitzgerald-afford-lifesaving-treatment Check out Emma's appearance on the "Crimson Misery" podcast here!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7eZ4KWDmho&ab_channel=CrimsonMiseryPod Follow Molly on Twitter here: https://x.com/molly0xFFF Check out Citation Needed here: https://www.citationneeded.news/ Check out Web3 Is Going Great here: https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com/ Become a member at JoinTheMajorityReport.com: https://fans.fm/majority/join Follow us on TikTok here!: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here!: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here!: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here!: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the ESVN YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/esvnshow Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase! Check out today's sponsors: Factor: Eat smart with Factor. Get started at https://FactorMeals.com/FACTORPODCAST and use code FACTORPODCAST to get 50% off your first box plus free shipping. That's code FACTORPODCAST at https://FactorMeals.com/FACTORPODCAST to get 50% off plus free shipping on your first box. Nutrafol: Start your hair growth journey with Nutrafol. For a limited time, Nutrafol is offering our listeners ten dollars off your first month's subscription and free shipping when you go to https://Nutrafol.com and enter the promo code TMR. Find out why over 4,500 healthcare professionals and stylists recommend Nutrafol for healthier hair. That's https://Nutrafol.com, promo code TMR. Sunset Lake CBD: Head on over to https://SunsetLakeCBD.com and use code NewFlower to save 30% on all CBD smokables. This sale ends February 23rd at midnight. See their site for additional terms and conditions. Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech @BradKAlsop Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on Youtube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com/ The Majority Report with Sam Seder - https://majorityreportradio.com/

The Majority Report with Sam Seder
2431 - The AI Coup & Trump's CEO-Dictator Playbook w/ Gil Duran

The Majority Report with Sam Seder

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 11, 2025 92:58


It's News Day Tuesday! Sam and Emma speak with Gil Duran, journalist based in California, proprietor of the website The Nerd Reich, co-writer of the FrameLab newsletter, to discuss his recent piece in The Nerd Reich entitled "'Reboot' Revealed: Elon Musk's CEO-Dictator Playbook." First, Sam and Emma run through updates on Trump/Elon's abject refusal to follow court orders, the release of the White House Ethics Czar, the repeal of a ban on bribing foreign officials, the DOJ dropping its case against Eric Adams in an open case of blackmail, Trump's gutting of the CFPB, Oregon Nurses' ongoing labor battle, IRS and ICE, Mike Johnson's Budget, and Hegseth's revival of Fort Bragg, before diving a little deeper into the open insanity of the ongoing collusion between Eric Adams and the Trump Regime. Gil Duran then joins, diving right into the concept of the Network State – an idea advanced by Big Tech's thought leader Curtis Yarvin and his billionaire buddies (Thiel, Andreessen, Musk, etc) that Tech CEOs should take advantage of the collapse of Nation States and democracy in favor of establishing corporate, CEO-run dictatorship, either by gutting and replacing existing governments or purchasing sovereign territories – as Duran unpacks his first introduction to this ideology with Silicon Valley's attempt to hijack San Francisco's political institutions, before parsing a little deeper through the recent, much more public discussions of this theory advanced by the likes of Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and Curtis Yarvin. After expanding on how we are already seeing the blueprint for a Network State in action, with Trump serving as a figurehead to a Tech CEO's gutting of our administrative and democratic institutions in favor of sycophants and centralized power, Duran looks to how this came to be the active ideology of the GOP so quickly, unpacking how the collapse of the Biden campaign and naming of JD Vance as Trump's VP opened up an opportunity for the Big Tech to step in, starting with Elon's massive public $300m investment and culminating in Yarvin's Reboot conference in San Francisco last September, exploring the obvious parallels between Big Tech's dictator obsession and the GOP's white nationalism and parsing through their unified scapegoating of “woke” and “DEI” in the leadup to the election to the point of completely dominating both mainstream and social media (bolstered by the financial leverage and ownership Big Tech has over those institutions). Next, Gil, Sam, and Emma unpack the major challenges facing the Trump-Musk regime, as Trump is on his last legs with no other favorable alternative in sight while any failure to maintain control over both political and media institutions potentially meaning a complete upending of their “progress,” not to mention the obvious lack of preparedness (or ability) for this institution to deal with any real public or institutional opposition – the latter of which seems to be particularly hopeless among Democratic leadership – wrapping up by emphasizing the genuine insecurity this regime faces in the face of public scrutiny and touching on the potential danger of Big Tech's goal of replacing the US Dollar with Bitcoin. And in the Fun Half: Sam and Emma watch Rep. Gerry Connolly – aka Pelosi's pick to take over AOC's bid for Oversight chair –  embody the Democrats' impotence amid an ongoing threat to US Democracy, parse through some highlights from a “Hands off our CFPB” rally, and unpack Hakeem Jeffries' claim (and thus failure to address) that access to healthcare is an established right. They also touch on the ongoing GOP push to gut your Medicaid/Medicare and Social Security, before basking in the hilarity of Milo Yiannopoulos questioning Tim Pool's failure to background check the millions he was getting from Russia, plus, your IMs!   It's News Day Tuesday! Sam and Emma speak with Gil Duran, journalist based in California, proprietor of the website The Nerd Reich, co-writer of the FrameLab newsletter, to discuss his recent piece in The Nerd Reich entitled "'Reboot' Revealed: Elon Musk's CEO-Dictator Playbook." Follow Gil on Twitter here: https://x.com/gilduran76 Check out The Nerd Reich here: https://www.thenerdreich.com/ Check out FrameLab here: https://www.theframelab.org/ Become a member at JoinTheMajorityReport.com: https://fans.fm/majority/join Follow us on TikTok here!: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here!: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here!: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here!: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the ESVN YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/esvnshow Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase! Check out today's sponsors: Express VPN: Secure your online data TODAY by visiting https://ExpressVPN.com/majority. That's https://ExpressVPN.com/majority and you can get an extra four months FREE. Blueland Cleaning Products:  Blueland has a special offer for listeners. Right now, get 15% off your first order by going to https://blueland.com/majority. You won't want to miss this! That's https://blueland.com/majority to get 15% off. Beautiful Day Granola: Beautiful Day is offering Free Shipping for all Majority Report listeners when you go to https://www.beautifuldayri.org and USE code MAJORITY (all caps) at Checkout until March 7. Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech @BradKAlsop Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on Youtube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com/ The Majority Report with Sam Seder - https://majorityreportradio.com/

The Argument
How Democrats Drove Silicon Valley Into Trump's Arms

The Argument

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 17, 2025 61:16


The tech investor Marc Andreessen and his fellow Silicon Valley giant Elon Musk weren't always the Donald Trump supporters they are today. In this episode, Ross asks Andreessen, a founder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, about what led to Silicon Valley's rightward shift and the new agenda of the tech-right faction.(A full transcript of this episode is available on the Times website.) Thoughts about the show? Email us at matterofopinion@nytimes.com or leave a voicemail at (212) 556-7440. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Uncommon Knowledge
Marc Andreessen: It's Morning Again In America

Uncommon Knowledge

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 14, 2025 74:11 Transcription Available


Marc Andreessen is a prominent Silicon Valley entrepreneur, investor, and technologist and the cofounder and general partner at Andreessen Horowitz. This discussion covers Andreessen's journey from his upbringing in rural Wisconsin, through his founding Netscape and the development of one of the first commercial internet browsers in his twenties, to his pivotal role in shaping Silicon Valley and now national politics. The interview also delves into the technological and political evolution of Silicon Valley and Andreessen's own shifting political affiliations from left to right, along with his vision for leveraging technology to drive societal progress, the role of innovation in addressing energy challenges, border security, and national defense. Andreessen also discusses DOGE, a policy initiative focused on government efficiency (and the strategy DOGE may use to accomplish its goals), his “Techno-Optimist Manifesto,” and the imperative for revitalizing the US military's technological capabilities to maintain global competitiveness.  Recorded on January 9, 2024.

The Bulwark Podcast
Tom Nichols: Don't Descend into Darkness

The Bulwark Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 17, 2024 58:09


The existential dread has a strong pull, especially since Trump has made a lot of Americans worse people, but we've had other bad, immoral, and creepy presidents who've sullied the office. Meanwhile, Vance is basically the invisible man while Elon lives in Trump's bedroom, and Andreessen is loading up a pile of BS to justify his vote. Plus, a Tim v Tom Christmas playlist. Tom Nichols joins Tim Miller. show notes: Tom's audiobook version of "The Death of Expertise" Tim's Christmas playlist John Ganz book Tom and Tim referenced