Podcasts about Anthropic

Are we here by design, chance, or selection bias? The Anthropic Principle, fine-tuning, doomsday math, and Boltzmann brains.Get Nebula using my link for 50% off an annual subscription: https://go.nebula.tv/isaacarthurCheck out Joe Scott's Oldest & Newest: https://nebula.tv/videos/joescott-oldest-and-newest-places-on-earth?ref=isaacarthurWatch my exclusive video Chronoengineering: https://nebula.tv/videos/isaacarthur-chronoengineering-manipulating-time-as-technology

This Week In Startups is made possible by:Hubspot - http://clickhubspot.com/twist1Circle.so - http://circle.so/twistSentry - http://sentry.io/twistToday's show: On the last TWiST episode before Jason goes to Japan and Alex begins on paternity leave, the hosts break down the blockbuster tech news that is kicking off 2026.Discord AND Strava both eyeing billion dollar IPOs, two massive social media apps with millions of daily active users. Jason unpacks Discord's the growth story, from a gaming-first product launch in 2015, to a community/work platform and social media for all. Jason explains why Strava proves that data is the MOAT for consumer apps.PLUS Jason and Alex are joined by Producer Oliver to rank the top CES products. Jason gave his thoughts on the different robots, self driving cars, and multi-fold phones on display.Would you buy a triple-fold phone?Timestamps:(00:00) Discord looks to go public at $7 Billion!(10:05) Hubspot: Check out the guide “How to Get Your First 100 Customers.” Download it for free at http://clickhubspot.com/twist1(13:37) Strava going public and why data IS the moat for consumer software(19:28) Circle.so: the easiest way to build a home for your community, events, and courses — all under your own brand.(22:25) Anthropic's $350B valuation and why it makes sense(31:59) Sentry: New users get 3 months free of the Business plan (covers 150k errors). Go to http://sentry.io/twist and use code TWIST(33:05) Why is China upset about META's Manus acquisition — and why Jason is hopeful for the US-China relationship(37:24) Jason's favorite part of CES: The rise of open source AI!(40:59) Why Jason LOVES his self driving Tesla — why public companies need to be safe and not push too quickly(44:24) Producer Oliver's Top CES Tech products(54:46) Jason's Major Takeway from CES(59:43) How many times can you fold a phone?(1:04:04) New interfaces for smartphones*Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com/Check out the TWIST500: https://twist500.comSubscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp*Follow Lon:X: https://x.com/lons*Follow Alex:X: https://x.com/alexLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm/*Follow Jason:X: https://twitter.com/JasonLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis/*Thank you to our partners:(10:05) Hubspot: Check out the guide “How to Get Your First 100 Customers.” Download it for free at http://clickhubspot.com/twist1(19:28) Circle.so: the easiest way to build a home for your community, events, and courses — all under your own brand.(31:59) Sentry: New users get 3 months free of the Business plan (covers 150k errors). Go to http://sentry.io/twist and use code TWISTGreat TWIST interviews: Will Guidarahttps://youtu.be/pvJa2pzuXWQEoghan McCabehttps://youtu.be/9dHN4YFkgv4Steve Huffmanhttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-on-mod-revolt-building-a/id315114957?i=1000617333424Brian Cheskyhttps://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/airbnb-ceo-brian-chesky-on-early-rejection-customer/id315114957?i=1000611761112Bob Moestahttps://youtu.be/y2UMzSqX94QAaron Leviehttps://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/box-ceo-aaron-levie-breaks-down-box-ai-and-generative/id315114957?i=1000612384545Sophia Amorusohttps://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/sophia-amoruso-on-branding-raising-a-fund-portfolio/id315114957?i=1000601352978Reid Hoffmanhttps://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/reid-hoffman-on-ais-crescendo-moment-regulation-and/id315114957?i=1000612548498Frank Slootmanhttps://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/snowflake-ceo-frank-slootman-on-moving-the-needle-win/id315114957?i=1000602560622

BONUS: Saving Democracy—How AI Is Transforming the Battlefield for Our Minds In this very special BONUS episode, we speak with Anthony Vinci, former CTO and Associate Director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and author of The Fourth Intelligence Revolution. Anthony has been at the frontlines of modernizing the intelligence community for the age of AI, and in this episode, he lays out a stark warning: we are entering an era where machines don't just augment intelligence—they transform it. But the real battlefield isn't just digital; it's cognitive, economic, and societal. From Startup Founder to Intelligence Modernizer "When I started my career, it was kind of the last dot-com boom... then I went into intelligence and became a case officer who goes out and recruits sources. I went to Iraq and places like this."   Anthony's career has uniquely zigzagged between the tech industry and the intelligence community. Starting in a New York startup during the 2000 dot-com era, he later became a case officer before returning to the startup world. When NGA needed someone to bring AI and modern technology into the agency, Anthony's rare combination of intelligence experience and tech entrepreneurship made him the ideal candidate. At NGA, he led the effort to implement computer vision and machine learning into workflows that were historically manual—where analysts would literally print satellite imagery and examine it with magnifying glasses. Nine years later, NGA now produces intelligence reports with "no human hands" involved. The Automation Arms Race "I believe where we're entering now is where the machine, the AI, has to do the analysis itself. Period. And it never comes to a person."   The volume of data has surpassed what humans can process, regardless of how sophisticated our tools become. Anthony points to a recent Anthropic report showing Chinese actors used Claude to automate 80-90% of a cyber espionage campaign. He believes we're approaching a world where 100% of cyber operations—both offensive and defensive—will be automated. The parallel he draws is striking: just as quantitative hedge funds trade in microseconds without human intervention because competitors do the same, cyber warfare and eventually physical drone warfare will follow this pattern. The only way to defend against automated attacks is to automate your defense. How Social Media Already Threatens Democracy "The longer a user was on TikTok, the more they used it, the more benevolent view of human rights in China that user had. So it's actually working, and it's so subtle, you can't even see it unless you do these big statistical studies."   The threat isn't theoretical—it's measurable. Researchers at Rutgers demonstrated that TikTok doesn't just censor content about the Uyghurs or Tiananmen Square; prolonged use of the platform actually shifts users' views on Chinese human rights. And that's just one piece of evidence, there are more! Unlike the 2016 election interference where the Russian Internet Research Agency placed targeted ads, modern influence operations work through algorithmic content selection. The platform doesn't need to show you propaganda; it simply needs to decide what you don't see. AI Will Hack Our Minds "AI is a dialogue. AI becomes this arbiter of information... This is really, really different when it comes to information operations. It's more like what I used to do as a case officer, where I'm trying to convince you of something."   Recent studies in Science and Nature demonstrate that AI systems trained for political persuasion are dramatically more effective than traditional advertising—not through persuasive rhetoric, but by overwhelming users with an abundance of "facts" (which aren't always factual). Anthony warns that the 2026 and 2028 elections will see widespread use of these tools. More alarming: Anthropic research shows that just 250 documents can poison a large language model. Foreign adversaries don't need millions of data points to corrupt the AI systems we increasingly rely on for information. The Fourth Intelligence Revolution: What Must Change "The first thing that we need to do is to compete in intelligence in those fields as well... economics, science, technology. And doing that requires intelligence to work with private companies, with the public."   Anthony outlines a three-part solution:   Expand intelligence scope: Move beyond traditional political and military focus to include economic, scientific, and technological competition with China and other adversaries through a whole-of-society approach Automate everything: Embrace AI across all intelligence functions—it's the only way to compete against adversaries who are already automating Democratize resilience: Since everyone is now a target of foreign information operations, we can't rely solely on government protection. Citizens must learn to think like intelligence officers Think Like an Intelligence Officer "No matter how trusted the source, they're always going to look at another source. If you read the New York Times, go read Newsmax, or vice versa. And if they both say the same thing, that probably means it's true, or more true."   Anthony offers practical advice for personal information resilience. First, acknowledge you are personally being targeted—this isn't paranoia, it's the new reality. Second, triangulate information like an analyst: never trust a single source, and deliberately seek out opposing viewpoints. Third, think like a technology officer: before adopting any new app or platform, research who made it and assess the risks. This doesn't mean avoiding risky technologies entirely—it means using them with awareness and mitigation strategies like VPNs, limiting shared information, or using multiple accounts. Name the Threat "One thing is to think about the threat and to think that there may be someone who's targeting you... not just generally—me as an individual."   The core message is clear: the threat to democracy is the capability of adversaries to influence our views to go against our own interests. Whether it's voting behavior, economic decisions, or social cohesion, foreign actors now have the tools to target individuals at scale with personalized influence campaigns. The first step in defense is naming this threat openly. The book The Fourth Intelligence Revolution provides both the warning and a framework for response.   About Anthony Vinci   Anthony Vinci is the former CTO and Associate Director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) in the USA, and author of The Fourth Intelligence Revolution. He has flip-flopped between the tech industry and intelligence throughout his career—starting in a New York startup during the dot-com boom, becoming a case officer who served in Iraq, founding and exiting a tech startup, and then returning to government to modernize NGA for the age of AI. He is now CEO of Vico, a startup building AI for intelligence analysis.   You can link with Anthony Vinci on his website and subscribe to his Substack, 3 Kinds of Intelligence.

Think AI will free you from ‘mundane bookkeeping' so you can do advisory? Blake and David say it's the opposite. Hear how owners already use AI as a de facto CFO, why drafting narratives—not matching bank feeds—is the real win, what the ‘AI premium' means in a billable-hour world, and the two numbers firm owners should track in 2026: monthly recurring revenue and bottom-line profit.SponsorsUNC - http://accountingpodcast.promo/uncOnPay - http://accountingpodcast.promo/onpayTaxBandits - http://accountingpodcast.promo/taxbanditsChapters(01:35) - News Highlights and Sponsor Acknowledgements (03:56) - AI in Small Business Accounting (07:04) - AI's Impact on Accounting Tasks (10:01) - Thought Leader Survey on AI in Accounting (19:56) - AI Premium and Job Automation (25:27) - Survey Answers from Accounting Thought Leaders (25:54) - AI's Role in Strategy and Decision Making (28:24) - Impact of AI on Competitive Landscape (30:50) - AI's Effect on Costs in Accounting Firms (31:54) - AI Replacing Staff Accountants (33:24) - Personal Job Security and AI (41:05) - AI Influencers and Future Experiments (49:24) - Conclusion and CPE Information  Show NotesThese Small-Business Owners Are Putting AI to Good Use https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/small-business-ai-chatgpt-prompts-0c9a95c4 AI Thought Leaders Survey 2026: Process Predictions https://www.accountingtoday.com/list/ai-thought-leaders-survey-2026-process-predictions Tech Spending Outpacing People Spending as Firms Adopt AI https://www.accountingtoday.com/list/tech-spending-outpacing-people-spending-as-firms-adopt-ai How Much is the 'AI Premium?' https://www.accountingtoday.com/list/how-much-is-the-ai-premium AI Can't Replace Accountants. When Could It? https://www.accountingtoday.com/list/ai-cant-replace-accountants-when-could-it Accounting in 2026: The Year Ahead in Numbers https://www.accountingtoday.com/list/accounting-in-2026-the-year-ahead-in-numbers AI Vending Machine Lost $1,000 to Social Engineering https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/anthropic-ai-claude-vending-machine-c7baef6f Anthropic's Project Vend Phase 2 https://www.anthropic.com/research/project-vend-2 Trump Commutes Sentence of Private Equity CEO Convicted of Fraud https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/01/politics/david-gentile-trump-pardon Trump Commutes 7-Year Prison Sentence of Former Private Equity CEO David Gentile https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-commutes-7-year-prison-sentence-former-private-equity-ceo-david-rcna246744 California's Controversial Wealth Tax Proposal Leaves Billionaires With Little Way Out https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/08/california-wealth-tax-proposal-leaves-billionaires-with-little-way-out.html California Could Impose a Billionaire Tax. Here's How It Would Work https://www.cbsnews.com/news/california-billionaire-tax-ballot-initiative-how-it-works/ New Tax on the Wealth of Billionaires https://lao.ca.gov/BallotAnalysis/Initiative/2025-024Need CPE?Get CPE for listening to podcasts with Earmark: https://earmarkcpe.comSubscribe to the Earmark Podcast: https://podcast.earmarkcpe.comGet in TouchThanks for listening and the great reviews! We appreciate you! Follow and tweet @BlakeTOliver and @DavidLeary. Find us on Facebook and Instagram. If you like what you hear, please do us a favor and write a review on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser. Call us and leave a voicemail; maybe we'll play it on the show. DIAL (202) 695-1040.SponsorshipsAre you interested in sponsoring The Accounting Podcast? For details, read the prospectus.Need Accounting Conference Info? Check out our new website - accountingconferences.comLimited edition shirts, stickers, and other necessitiesTeePublic Store: http://cloudacctpod.link/merchSubscribeApple Podcasts: http://cloudacctpod.link/ApplePodcastsYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAccountingPodcastSpotify: http://cloudacctpod.link/SpotifyPodchaser: http://cloudacctpod.link/podchaserStitcher: http://cloudacctpod.link/StitcherOvercast: http://cloudacctpod.link/OvercastWant to get the word out about your newsletter, webinar, party, Facebook group, podcast, e-book, job posting, or that fancy Excel macro you just created? Let the listeners of The Accounting Podcast know by running a classified ad. Go here to create your classified ad: https://cloudacctpod.link/RunClassifiedAdTranscriptsThe full transcript for this episode is available by clicking on the Transcript tab at the top of this page

Plus: Character.AI and Google settle lawsuits over teen suicides. And Eli Lilly nears deal for biotech Ventyx Biosciences. Julie Chang hosts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest today is Reed Hastings, the co-founder and former longtime CEO of Netflix. Netflix is an example of two ideas that everyone talks about, but are extremely hard to do in practice. The first is finding a simple idea and taking it extraordinarily seriously. Reed talks about how even the DVD business was nothing more than a stepping stone toward streaming, which they envisioned from the company's inception in 1997. The second is talent density, and what it actually takes to set and sustain an exceptionally high bar over decades as a company grows.  We talk about how those ideas shaped Netflix's culture and strategy, what Reed learned from mistakes like Qwikster, and why Netflix treated content like a venture portfolio. We also discuss Reed's work today. He shares how he's thinking about AI, what he's learned from serving on the boards of Microsoft, Meta, Anthropic, and Bloomberg, and what excites him about Powder Mountain, the ski resort he acquired after Netflix. Please enjoy my conversation with Reed Hastings. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ----- This episode is brought to you by⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠Ramp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Ramp's mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Go to⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠ramp.com/invest⁠ to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus. ----- This episode is brought to you by⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Vanta. Trusted by thousands of businesses, Vanta continuously monitors your security posture and streamlines audits so you can win enterprise deals and build customer trust without the traditional overhead. Visit vanta.com/invest.  ----- This episode is brought to you by Rogo. Rogo is an AI-powered platform that automates accounts payable workflows, enabling finance teams to process invoices faster and with greater accuracy. Learn more at Rogo.ai/invest. ----- This episode is brought to you by ⁠WorkOS⁠. WorkOS is a developer platform that enables SaaS companies to quickly add enterprise features to their applications. Visit ⁠WorkOS.com⁠ to transform your application into an enterprise-ready solution in minutes, not months. ----- This episode is brought to you by⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Ridgeline⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Ridgeline has built a complete, real-time, modern operating system for investment managers. It handles trading, portfolio management, compliance, customer reporting, and much more through an all-in-one real-time cloud platform. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ridgelineapps.com. ----- Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://thepodcastconsultant.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠). Timestamps (00:00:00) Sponsors (00:03:33) Welcome to Invest Like The Best (00:04:29) Intro (00:05:43) Sponsors (00:07:16) The Concept of Talent Density (00:11:19) Evaluating Talent (00:13:47) Managing on the Edge of Chaos (00:14:51) Why Netflix Gave Large Severance Packages (00:16:37) The Keeper's Test (00:17:07) The Qwikster Mistake (00:19:15) The Informed Captain (00:20:39) How to Come Up with Good Ideas (00:22:32) Transitioning to Streaming (00:23:05) Being on the Board of Facebook, Microsoft, Anthropic & Bloomberg (00:26:25) The Role of a Board Member (00:29:37) Sponsors (00:30:15) Why Netflix Had Open Compensation (00:32:04) Netflix's Content Strategy (00:37:52) Competing with YouTube and Traditional TV (00:39:23) Creating Hit Content (00:40:02) Impact of AI on Netflix (00:41:24) Innovations in Show Formats (00:43:23) Sponsors (00:43:44) Netflix's Technology Backbone (00:45:29) Expanding into Gaming (00:46:06) Lessons from Failed Projects (00:47:30) Financial Strategy and Capital Allocation (00:50:27) Stepping Down as CEO (00:50:52) Powder Mountain (00:56:08) Focus on Education and AI (00:59:00) Risks and Benefits of AI (01:00:56) The Kindest Thing (01:02:56) Sponsors

You still using AI to..... write emails?

Sam Partee started out his love for tech/engineering by working on cars. After many y ears of working on cars, and even starting his own car stereo installation business, he decided that cards were finite and moved onto computers. He fell in love with the space, and the rest is history, filled with super computers, AI, distributed training, Redis and the lot. Outside of tech, he loves to take long hikes with his snowy husky.Sam and his team built a prior solution, an agent to solve bugs for you. They ran into a litany of problems, but eventually figured out that there was a dire need for an authorization for the activities that agents wanted to do on your behalf. Fast forward, and they are working with Anthropic to define these auth protocols.This is the creation story of Arcade.SponsorsIncogniNordProtectVentionCodeCrafters helps you become a better engineer by building real-world, production-grade projects. Learn hands-on by creating your own Git, Redis, HTTP server, SQLite, or DNS server from scratch. Sign up for free today using this link and enjoy 40% off.Full ScalePaddle.comSema SoftwarePropelAuthPostmanMeilisearchLinkshttps://www.arcade.dev/https://www.linkedin.com/in/sampartee/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Happy New Year! NVIDIA just spent $20 billion to hollow out an AI company for its brains, while Meta and Google scramble to scoop up fresh talent before AI gets "too weird to manage." Who's winning, who's left behind, and what do these backroom deals mean for the future of artificial intelligence? Andrej Karpathy admits programmers cannot keep pace with AI advances Economic uncertainty in AI despite massive stock market influence Google, Anthropic, and Microsoft drive AI productization for business and consumers OpenAI, Claude, and Gemini battle for consumer AI dominance Journalism struggles to keep up with AI realities and misinformation tools Concerns mount over AI energy, water, and environmental impact narratives Meta buys Manus, expands AI agent ambitions with Llama model OpenAI posts high-stress "Head of Preparedness" job worth $555K+ Training breakthroughs: DeepSeek's mHC and comparisons to Action Park U.S. lawmakers push broad, controversial internet censorship bills Age verification and bans spark state laws, VPN workaround explosion U.S. drone ban labeled protectionist as industry faces tech shortages FCC security initiatives falter; Cyber Trust Mark program scrapped Waymo robotaxis stall in blackouts, raising AV urban planning issues School cellphone bans expose kids' struggle with analog clocks MetroCard era ends in NYC as tap-to-pay takes over subway access RAM, VRAM, and GPU prices soar as AI and gaming squeeze supply CES preview: Samsung QD-OLED TV, Sony AFEELA car, gadget show hype Remembering Stewart Cheifet and Computer Chronicles' legacy Host: Leo Laporte Guests: Dan Patterson and Joey de Villa Download or subscribe to This Week in Tech at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: zscaler.com/security canary.tools/twit - use code: TWIT monarch.com with code TWIT Melissa.com/twit redis.io

Coming to you live from Las Vegas with the first of the CES madness. More signs that insider betting on prediction markets is going to become something we're going to have to live with. Is Reddit bigger than TikTok now, at least by one measure? And how Reels became bigger than YouTube by maybe the most important measure. Exclusive: Samsung to double AI mobile devices to 800 million units this year (Reuters) Voice control opening and closing comes to Samsung's Family Hub smart fridges (The Verge) Someone made a ton of money betting on Maduro's capture (The Verge) SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic prepare to launch landmark IPOs (Financial Times) Reddit overtakes TikTok in UK thanks to search algorithms and gen Z (The Guardian) How Meta's Reels Became a $50 Billion Business (WSJ) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Meta just made a multi-billion acquisition for AI agents.

What does 2026 hold for indie authors and the publishing industry? I give my thoughts on trends and predictions for the year ahead. In the intro, Quitting the right stuff; how to edit your author business in 2026; Is SubStack Good for Indie Authors?; Business for Authors webinars. If you'd like to join my community and support the show every month, you'll get access to my growing list of Patron videos and audio on all aspects of the author business — for the price of a black coffee (or two) a month. Join us at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn. Joanna Penn writes non-fiction for authors and is an award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling thriller author as J.F. Penn. She's also an award-winning podcaster, creative entrepreneur, and international professional speaker. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. (1) More indie authors will sell direct through Shopify, Kickstarter, and local in-person events (2) AI-powered search will start to shift elements of book discoverability (3) The start of Agentic Commerce (4) AI-assisted audiobook narration will go mainstream (5) AI-assisted translation will start to take off beyond the early adopters (6) AI video becomes ubiquitous. ‘Live selling' becomes the next trend in social sales. (7) AI will create, run, and optimise ads without the need for human intervention (8) 1000 True Fans becomes more important than ever You can find all my books as J.F. Penn and Joanna Penn on your favourite online store in all the usual formats, or order from your local library or bookstore. You can also buy direct from me at CreativePennBooks.com and JFPennBooks.com. I'm not really active on social media, but you can always see my photos at Instagram @jfpennauthor. 2026 Trends and Predictions for Indie Authors and Book Publishing (1) More indie authors will sell direct through Shopify, Kickstarter, and local in-person events — and more companies like BookVault will offer even more beautiful physical books and products to support this. This trend will not be a surprise to most of you! Selling direct has been a trend for the last few years, but in 2026, it will continue to grow as a way that independent authors become even more independent. The recent Written Word Media survey from Dec 2025 noted that 30% of authors surveyed are selling direct already and 30% say they plan to start in 2026. Among authors earning over $10,000 per month, roughly half sell direct. In my opinion, selling direct is an advanced author strategy, meaning that you have multiple books and you understand book marketing and have an email list already or some guaranteed way to reach readers. In fact, Kindlepreneur reports that 66% of authors selling direct have more than 5 books, and 46% have more than 10 books. Of course, you can start with the something small, like a table at a local event with a limited number of books for sale, but if you want to consistently sell direct for years to come, you need to consider all the business aspects. Selling direct is not a silver bullet. It's much harder work to sell direct than it is to just upload an ebook to Amazon, whether you choose a Kickstarter campaign, or Shopify/Payhip or other online stores, or regular in-person sales at events/conferences/fairs. You need a business mindset and business practices, for example, you need to pay upfront for setup as well as ongoing management, and bulk printing in some cases. You need to manage taxes and cashflow. You need to be a lot more proactive about marketing, as you won't sell anything if you don't bring readers to your books/products. But selling direct also brings advantages. It sets you apart from the bulk of digital only authors who still only upload ebooks to Amazon, or maybe add a print on demand book, and in an era of AI rapid creation, that number is growing all the time. If you sell direct, you get your customer data and you can reach those customers next time, through your email list. If you don't know who bought your books and don't have a guaranteed way to reach them, you will more easily be disrupted when things change — and they always change eventually. Kindlepreneur notes that “45% of the successful direct selling authors had over 1,000 subscribers on their email lists,” with “a clear, positive correlation between email list size and monthly direct sales income — with authors having an email list of over 15,000 subscribers earning 20X more than authors with email lists under 100 subscribers.” Selling direct means faster money, sometimes the same day or the same week in many cases, or a few weeks after a campaign finishes, as with Kickstarter. And remember, you don't have to sell all your formats directly. You can keep your ebooks in KU, do whatever you like with audiobooks, and just have premium print products direct, or start with a very basic Kickstarter campaign, or a table at a local fair. Lots more tips for Shopify and Kickstarter at https://www.thecreativepenn.com/selldirectresources/ I also recommend the Novel Marketing Podcast on The Shopify Trap: Why authors keep losing money as it is a great counterpoint to my positive endorsement of selling direct on Shopify! Among other things, Thomas notes that a fixed monthly fee for a store doesn't match how most authors make money from books which is more in spikes, the complexity and hassle eats time and can cost more money if you pay for help, and it can reduce sales on Amazon and weaken your ranking. Basically, if you haven't figured out marketing direct to your store, it can hurt you.All true for some authors, for some genres, and for some people's lifestyle. But for authors who don't want to be on the hamster wheel of the Amazon algorithm and who want more diversity and control in income, as well as the incredible creative benefits of what you can do selling direct, then I would say, consider your options in 2025, even if that is trying out a low-financial-goal Kickstarter campaign, or selling some print books at a local fair. Interestingly, traditional publishers are also experimenting with direct sales. Kate Elton, the new CEO of Harper Collins notes in The Bookseller's 2026 trend article, “we are seeing global success with responsive, reader-driven publishing, subscription boxes and TikTok Shop and – crucially – developing strategies that are founded on a comprehensive understanding of the reader.” She also notes, “AI enables us to dramatically change the way we interact with and grow audiences. The opportunities are genuinely exciting – finding new ways to help readers discover books they will love, innovating in the ways we market and reach audiences, building new channels and adapting to new methods of consuming content.” (2) AI-powered search will start to shift elements of book discoverability From LinkedIn's 2026 Big Ideas: “Generative engine optimization (GEO) is set to replace search engine optimization (SEO) as the way brands get discovered in the year ahead. As consumers turn to AI chatbots, agentic workflows and answer engines, appearing prominently in generative outputs will matter more than ranking in search engines.” Google has been rolling out AI Mode with its AI Overviews and is beginning to push it within Google.com itself in some countries, which means the start of a fundamental change in how people discover content online. I first posted about GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) and AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) in 2023, and it's going to change how readers find books. For years, we've talked about the long tail of search. Now, with AI-powered search, that tail is getting even longer and more nuanced. AI can understand complex, conversational queries that traditional search engines struggled with. Someone might ask, “What's a good thriller set in a small town with a female protagonist who's a journalist investigating a cold case?” and get highly specific recommendations. This means your book metadata, your website content, and your online presence need to be more detailed and conversational. AI search engines understand context in ways that go far beyond simple keywords. The authors who win in this new landscape will be those who create rich, authentic content about their books and themselves, not just promotional copy. As economist Tyler Cowen has said, “Consider the AIs as part of your audience. Because they are already reading your words and listening to your voice.” We're in the ‘organic' traffic phase right now, where these AI engines are surfacing content for ‘free,' but paid ads are inevitably on the way, and even rumoured to be coming this year to ChatGPT. By the end of 2026, I expect some authors and publishers to be paying for AI traffic, rather than blocking and protesting them. For now, I recommend checking that your author name/s and your books are surfaced when you search on ChatGPT.com as well as Google.com AI Mode (powered by Gemini). You want to make sure your work comes up in some way. I found that Joanna Penn and J.F. Penn searches brought up my Shopify stores, my website, podcast, Instagram, LinkedIn, and even my Patreon page, but did not bring up links to Amazon. If you only have an author presence on Amazon, does it appear in AI search at all? Do you need to improve anything about what the AI search brings up? Traditional publishers are also looking at this, with PublishersWeekly doing webinars on various aspects of AI in early 2026, including sessions on GEO and how book sales are changing, AI agents, and book marketing. In a 2026 predictions article on The Bookseller, the CEO of Bloomsbury Publishing noted, “The boundaries of artificial intelligence will become clearer, enabling publishers to harness its benefits while seeking to safeguard the intellectual property rights of authors, illustrators and publishers.” “AI will be deeply embedded in our workflows, automating tasks such as metadata tagging, freeing teams to focus on creativity and strategy. Challenges will persist. Generative AI threatens traditional web traffic and ad revenue models, making metadata optimisation and SEO critical for visibility as we adjust to this new reality online.” (3) The start of Agentic Commerce AI researches what you want to buy and may even buy on your behalf. Plus, I predict that Amazon does a commerce deal with OpenAI for shopping within ChatGPT by the end of 2026. In September 2025, ChatGPT launched Instant Checkout and the Agentic Commerce Protocol, which will enable bots to buy on websites in the background if authorised by the human with the credit card. VISA is getting on board with this, so is PayPal, with no doubt more payment options to come. In the USA, ChatGPT Plus, Pro, and Free users can now buy directly from US Etsy sellers inside the chat interface, with over a million Shopify merchants coming soon. Shopify and OpenAI have also announced a partnership to bring commerce to ChatGPT. I am insanely excited about this as it could represent the first time we have been able to more easily find and surface books in a much more nuanced way than the 7 keywords and 3 categories we have relied on for so long! I've been using ChatGPT for at least the last year to find fiction and non-fiction books as I find the Amazon interface is ‘polluted' by ads. I've discovered fascinating books from authors I've never heard of, most in very long tail areas. For example, Slashed Beauties by A. Rushby, recommended by ChatGPT as I am interested in medical anatomy and anatomical Venuses, and The Macabre by Kosoko Jackson, recommended as I like art history and the supernatural. I don't think I would have found either of these within a nuanced discussion with ChatGPT. Even without these direct purchase integrations, ChatGPT now has Shopping Research, which I have found links directly to my Shopify store when I search for my books specifically. Walmart has partnered with OpenAI to create AI-first shopping experiences, and you have to wonder what Amazon might be doing? In Nov 2025, Amazon signed a “strategic partnership” with OpenAI, and even though it's focused on the technical side of AI, those two companies in a room together might also be working on other plans … I'm calling it for 2026. I think Amazon will sign a commerce agreement with OpenAI sometime before the end of the year. This will enable at least recommendation and shopping links into Amazon stores (presumably using an OpenAI affiliate link), or perhaps even Instant Checkout with ChatGPT for Amazon. It will also enable a new marketing angle, especially if paid ads arrive in ChatGPT, perhaps even integrating with Amazon Ads in some way as part of any possible agreement, since ads are such a good revenue stream for Amazon anyway. The line between discovery, engagement, and purchase is collapsing. Someone could be having a conversation with an AI about what to read next, and within that same conversation, purchase a bookwithout ever leaving the chat interface. This already happens within TikTok and social commerce clearly works for many authors. It's possible that the next development for book discoverability and sales might be within AI chats. This will likely stratify the already fragmented book eco-system even more. Some readers will continue to live only within the Amazon ecosystem and (maybe) use their Rufus chatbot to buy, and others will be much wider in their exploration of how to find and discover books (and other products and services). If you haven't tried it yet, try ChatGPT.com Shopping Research for a book. You can do this on the free tier. Use the drop down in the main chat box and select Shopping Research. It doesn't have to be for your book. It can be any book or product, for example, our microwave died just before Christmas so I used it to find a new one. But do a really nuanced search with multiple requirements. Go far beyond what you would search for on Amazon. In the results, notice that (at the time of writing) it does not generally link to Amazon, but to independent sites and stores. As above, I think this will change by the end of 2026, as some kind of commerce deal with Amazon seems inevitable. (4) AI-assisted audiobook narration will go mainstream I've been talking about AI narration of audiobooks since 2019, and over the years, I've tried various different options. In 2025, the technology reached a level of emotional nuance that made it much easier to create satisfying fiction audio as well as non-fiction. It also super-charges accessibility, making audio available in more languages and more accents than ever before. Of course, human narration remains the gold standard, but the cost makes it prohibitive for many authors, and indeed many small traditional publishers, for all books. If it costs $2000 – $10,000 to create an audiobook, you have to sell a lot to make a profit, and the dominance of subscription models have made it harder to recoup the costs. Famous narrators and voice artists who have an audience may still be worth investing in, as well as premium production, but require an even higher upfront cost and therefore higher sales and streams in return. AI voice/audio models are continuing to improve, and even as this goes out, there are rumours on TechCrunch that OpenAI's new device, designed by Jony Ive who designed the iPhone, will be audio first and OpenAI are improving their voice models even more in preparation for that launch. In 2026, I think AI-narrated audio will go mainstream with far-reaching adoption across publishing and the indie author world in many different languages and accents. This will mean a further stratification of audiobooks, with high quality, high production, high cost human narrated audio for a small percentage of books, and then mass market, affordable AI-narrated audio for the rest. AI-narrated audiobooks will make audio ubiquitous, and just as (almost) every print book has an ebook format, in 2026, they will also have an audio format. I straddle both these worlds, as I am still a human audiobook narrator for my own work. I human-narrated Successful Self-Publishing Fourth Edition (free audiobook) and The Buried and the Drowned, my short story collection. I also use AI narration for some books. ElevenLabs remains my preferred service and in 2025, I used my J.F. Penn voice clone for Death Valley and also Blood Vintage, while using a male voice for Catacomb. I clearly label my AI-narration in the sales description and also on the cover, which I think is important, although it is not always required by the various services. You can distribute ElevenLabs narrated audiobooks on Spotify, Kobo Writing Life, YouTube, ElevenReader, and of course your own store if you use Shopify with Bookfunnel. There are many other services springing up all the time, so make sure you check the rights you have over the finished audio, as well as where you can sell and distribute the final files. If they are just using ElevenLabs models in the back-end, then why not just do that directly? (Most services will be using someone's model in the back-end, since most companies do not train their own models.) Of course, you can use Amazon's own narration. While Amazon originally launched Audible audiobooks with Virtual Voice (AVV) in November 2023, it was rolled out to more authors and territories in 2025. If your book is eligible, the option to create an audiobook will appear on your KDP dashboard. With just a few clicks, you can create an audiobook from a range of voices and accents, and publish it on Amazon and Audible. However, the files are not yours. They are exclusive to Amazon and you cannot use them on other platforms or sell them direct yourself. But they are also free, so of course, many authors, especially those in KU, will use this option. I have done some for my mum's sweet romance books as Penny Appleton and I will likely use them for my books in translation when the option becomes available. Traditional publishers are experimenting with AI-assisted audiobook narration as well. MacMillan is selling digital audiobooks read by AI directly on their store. PublishersWeekly reports that PRH Audio “has experimented with artificial voice in specific instances, such as entrepreneur Ely Callaway's posthumous memoir The Unconquerable Game,” when an “authorized voice replica” was created for the audiobook. The article also notes that PRH Audio “embrace artificial intelligence across business operations—my entire department [PRH Audio] is using AI for business applications.” And while indie authors can't use AI voices on ACX right now, Audible have over 100 voices available to selected publishing partnerships, as reported by The Guardian with “two options for publishers wishing to make use of the technology: “Audible-managed” production, or “self-service” whereby publishers produce their own audiobooks with the help of Audible's AI technology.” In 2026, it's likely that more traditional publishers — as well as indie authors — will get their backlist into audio with AI narration. (5) AI-assisted translation will start to take off beyond the early adopters Over the years, I've done translation deals with traditional publishers in different languages (German, French, Spanish, Korean, Italian) for some fiction and non-fiction books. But of course, to get these kinds of deals, you have to be proactive about pitching, or work with an agent for foreign rights only, and those are few and far between! There are also lots of languages and territories worldwide, and most deals are for the bigger markets, leaving a LOT of blue water for books in translation, even if you have licensed some of the bigger markets. I did my first partially AI-translated books in 2019 when I used Deepl.com for the first draft and then worked with a German editor to do 3 non-fiction books in German. While the first draft was cheap, the editing was pretty expensive, so I stopped after only doing a couple. I have made the money back now, but it took years. In 2025, AI Translation began to take off with ScribeShadow, GlobeScribe.ai, and more recently, in November 2025, Kindle Translate boosting the number of translated books available. Kindle Translate is (currently) only available to US authors for English into Spanish and also German into English, but in 2026, this will likely roll out to more languages and more authors, making it easier than ever to produce translations for free. Of course, once again, the gold standard is human translation, or at least human-edited translations, but the cost is prohibitive even just for proof-reading, and if there is a cheap or even free option, like Kindle Translate, then of course, authors are going to try it. If the translation gets bad reviews, they can just un-publish. There are many anecdotal stories of indie success in 2025 with AI-translated genre fiction sales (in series) in under-served markets like Italian, French, and Spanish, as well as more mainstream adoption in German. I was around in the Kindle gold-rush days of 2009-2012 and the AI-translation energy right now feels like that. There are hardly any Kindle ebooks in many of these languages compared to how many there are in English, so inevitably, the rush is on to fill the void, especially in genres that are under-served by traditional publishers in those markets. Yes, some of these AI translated books will be ‘AI-slop,' but readers are not stupid. Those books will get bad reviews and thus will sink to the bottom of the store, never to be seen again. The AI translation models are also improving rapidly, and Amazon's Kindle Translate may improve faster than most, for books specifically, since they will be able to get feedback in terms of page reads. Amazon is also a major investor in Anthropic, which makes Claude.ai, widely considered the best quality for creative writing and translation, so it's likely that is used somewhere in the mix. Some traditional publishers are also experimenting with AI-assisted translation, with Harlequin France reportedly using AI translation and human proofreaders, as reported by the European Council of Literary Translators' Associations in December 2025. Academic publisher Taylor and Francis is also using AI for book translation, noting: “Following a program of rigorous testing, Taylor & Francis has announced plans to use AI translation tools to publish books that would otherwise be unavailable to English-language readers, bringing the latest knowledge to a vastly expanded readership.” “Until now, the time and resources required to translate books has meant that the majority remained accessible only to those who could read them in the original language. Books that were translated often only became available after a significant delay. Today, with the development of sophisticated AI translation tools, it has become possible to make these important texts available to a broad readership at speed, without compromising on accuracy.” (6) AI video becomes ubiquitous. ‘Live selling' becomes the next trend in social sales. In 2025, short form AI-generated video became very high quality. OpenAI released Sora 2, and YouTube announced new Shorts creation tools with Veo 3, which you can also use directly within Gemini. There are tons of different AI video apps now, including those within the social media sites themselves. There is more video than ever and it's much easier to create. I am not a fan of short form video! I don't make it and I don't consume it, but I do love making book trailers for my Kickstarter campaigns and for adding to my book pages and using on social media. I made a trailer for The Buried and the Drowned using Midjourney for images and then animation of those images, and Canva to put them together along with ElevenLabs to generate the music. But despite the AI tools getting so much easier to use, you still have to prompt them with exactly what you want. I can't just upload my book and say, “Make a book trailer,” or “Make a short film.” This may change with generative video ads, which are likely to become more common in 2026, as video turns specifically commercial. Video ads may even be generated specifically for the user, with an audience of one, maybe even holding your book in their hands (using something like Cameos on Sora), in the same way that some AI-powered clothing stores do virtual try-ons. This might also up-end the way we discover and buy things, as the AI for eCommerce and Amazon Sellers newsletter says about OpenAI's Sora app, “OpenAI isn't just trying to build a TikTok competitor. They're building a complete reimagining of how we discover and buy things …” “The combination of ChatGPT's research capabilities and Sora's potential for emotional manipulation—I mean, “engagement”—could create something we've never seen before: an AI ecosystem that might eventually guide you through every type of purchase, from the most considered to the most impulsive.” In 2026, there will be A LOT more AI-generated video, but that also leads to the human trend of more live video. While you can use an AI avatar that looks and sounds like you using tools like HeyGen or Synthesia, live video has all the imperfect human elements that make it stand-out, plus the scarcity element which leads to the purchase decision within a countdown period. Live video is nothing new in terms of brand building and content in general, but it seems that live events primarily for direct sales might be a thing in 2026. Kim Kardashian hosted Kimsmas Live in December 2025 with a 45 minute live shopping event with special guests, described as entertainment but designed to be a sales extravaganza. Indie authors are doing a similar thing on TikTok with their books, so this is a trend to watch in 2026, especially if you feel that live selling might fit with your personality and author business goals. It's certainly not for everyone, but I suspect it will suit a different kind of creator to those who prefer ‘no face' video, or no video at all! On other aspects of the human side of social media, Adam Mosseri the CEO of Instagram put a post on Threads called Authenticity after Abundance. He said, “Everything that made creators matter—the ability to be real, to connect, to have a voice that couldn't be faked—is now suddenly accessible to anyone with the right tools.” “Deepfakes are getting better and better. AI is generating photographs and videos indistinguishable from captured media. The feeds are starting to fill up with synthetic everything. And in that world, here's what I think happens.Creators matter more.” It's a long article so just to pick a few things from it: “We like to talk about “AI slop,” but there is a lot of amazing AI content … we are going to start to see more and more realistic AI content.” I've talked to my Patreon Community about this ‘tsunami of excellence' as these tools are just getting better and better and the word ‘slop' can also be applied to purely human output, too. If you think that AI content is ‘worse' than wholly human content, in 2026, you are wrong. It is now very very good, especially in the hands of people who can drive the AI tools. Back to Adam's post: “Authenticity is fast becoming a scarce resource, …The creators who succeed will be those who figure out how to maintain their authenticity [even when it can be simulated] …” “The bar is going to shift from “can you create?” to “can you make something that only you could create?” He talks about how the personal content on Instagram now is: “unpolished; it's blurry photos and shaky videos of people's daily experiences … flattering imagery is cheap to produce and boring to consume. People want content that feels real… Savvy creators are going to lean into explicitly unproduced and unflattering images of themselves. In a world where everything can be perfected, imperfection becomes a signal. Rawness isn't just aesthetic preference anymore—it's proof. It's defensive. A way of saying: this is real because it's imperfect.” While I partially love this, and I really hope it's true, as in I hope we don't need to look good for the camera anymore I would also challenge Adam on this, because pretty much every woman I know on social media has been sent sexual messages, and/or told they are ugly and/or fat when posting anything unflattering. I've certainly had both even for the same content, but I don't expect Adam has been the target for such posting! But I get his point. He goes on:“Labeling content as authentic or AI-generated is only part of the solution though. We, as an industry, are going to need to surface much more context about not only the media on our platforms, but the accounts that are sharing it in order for people to be able to make informed decisions about what to believe. Where is the account? When was it created? What else have they posted?” This is exactly what I've been saying for a while under my double down on being human focus. I use my Instagram @jfpennauthor as evidence of humanity, not as a sales channel. You can do both of course, but increasingly, you need to make sure your accounts at places have longevity and trust, even by the platforms themselves. Adam finishes: “In a world of infinite abundance and infinite doubt, the creators who can maintain trust and signal authenticity—by being real, transparent, and consistent—will stand out.” For other marketing trends for 2026, I recommend publicist Kathleen Schmidt's SubStack which is mostly focused on traditional publishing but still interesting for indies. In her 2026 article, she notes: “We have reached a social media saturation point where going viral can be meaningless and should not be the goal; authenticity and creativity should. She also says, “In-person events are important again,” and, “Social media marketing takes a nosedive… we have reached a saturation point … What publishers must figure out is how to make their social media campaigns stand out. If they remain somewhat uninspired, the money spent on social ads won't convert into book sales.” I think this is part of the rise of live selling as above, which can stand out above more ‘produced' videos. Kathleen also talks about AI usage. “AI can help lighten the burden of publicity and marketing.” “A lot of AI tools are coming to market to lessen the load: they can write pitches, create media lists for you, send pitches for you, and more. I know the industry is grappling with all things AI, but some of these tools are huge time savers and may help a book more than hurt it.” On that note … (7) AI will create, run, and optimise ads without the need for human intervention Many authors will be very happy about this as marketing is often the bane of our author business lives! As I noted in my 2026 goals, I would love to outsource more marketing tasks to AI. I want an “AI book marketing assistant” where I can upload a book and specify a budget and say, ‘Go market this,' then the AI will action the marketing, without me having to cobble together workflows between systems. Of course, it will present plans for me to approve but it will do the work itself on the various platforms and monitor and optimize things for me. I really hope 2026 is the year this becomes possible, because we are on the edge of it already in some areas. Amazon Ads launched a new agentic AI tool in September 2025 that creates professional-quality ads. I've also been working with Claude in Chrome browser to help me analyse my Amazon Ad data and suggest which keywords/products to turn off and what to put more budget into. I'll do a Patreon video on that soon. Meta announced it will enable AI ad creation by the end of 2026 for Facebook and Instagram. For authors who find ad creation overwhelming or time-consuming, this could be a game-changer. Of course, you will still need a budget! (8) 1000 True Fans becomes more important than ever Lots of authors and publishers are moaning about the difficulty of reaching readers in an era of ‘AI slop' but there is no shortage of excellent content created by humans, or humans using AI tools. As ever, our competition is less about other authors, or even authors using AI-assisted creation, we're competing against everything else that jostles for people's attention, and the volume of that is also growing exponentially. I've never been a fan of rapid release, and have said for years that you can't keep up with the pace of the machines. So play a different game. As Kevin Kelly wrote in 2008, If you have 1000 true fans, (also known as super fans), “you can make a living — if you are content to make a living but not a fortune.” [Kevin Kelly was on this show in 2023 talking about Excellent Advice for Living.] Many authors and the publishing industry are stuck in the old model of aiming to sell huge volumes of books at a low profit margin to a massive number of readers, many of them releasing ever faster to try and keep the algorithms moving. But the maths can work for the smaller audience of more invested readers and fans. If you only make $2 profit on an ebook, you need to sell 500 ebooks to make $1000, and then do it again next month. Or you can have a small community like my patreon.com/thecreativepenn where people pay $2 (or more) a month, so even a small revenue per person results in a better outcome over the year, as it is consistent monthly income with no advertising. But what if you could make $20 profit per book? That is entirely possible if you're producing high quality hardbacks on Kickstarter, or bundle deals of audiobooks, or whole series of ebooks. You would only need to sell to 50 people to make $1000. What about $100 profit per sale, which you can do with a small course or live event? You only need 10 people to make $1000, and this in-person focus also amplifies trust and fosters human connection. I've found the intimacy of my live Patreon Office Hours and also my webinars have been rewarding personally, but also financially, and are far more memorable — and potentially transformative — than a pre-recorded video or even another book. From the LinkedIn 2026 Big Ideas article: “In an AI-optimized world, intentional human connection will become the ultimate luxury.” The 1000 True Fans model is about serving a smaller, more personal audience with higher value products (and maybe services if that's your thing). As ever, its about niche and where you fit in the long long long long long tail. It's also about trust. Because there is definitely a shortage of that in so many areas, and as Adam Mosseri of Instagram has said, trust will be increasingly important. Trust takes time to build, but if you focus on serving your audience consistently, and delivering a high quality, and being authentic, this emerges as part of being human. In an echo of what happened when online commerce first took off, we are back to talking about trust. Back in 2010, I read Trust Agents: by Julien Smith and Chris Brogan, which clearly needs a comeback. There was a 10th anniversary edition published in 2020, so that's worth a read/listen. Chris Brogan was also on this show in 2017 when we talked about finding and serving your niche for the long term. That interview is still relevant, here's a quick excerpt, where I have (lightly edited) his response to my question on this topic back in 2017: Jo: The principle of know, like, and trust, why is that still important or perhaps even more important these days? Chris: There are a few things that at play there, Joanna. One is that the same tools that make it so easy for any of us to start and run a business also allow certain elements to decide whether or not they want to do something dubious. And with all new technologies that come, you know, there's nothing unique about these new technologies. In the 1800s, anyone could put anything in a bottle and sell it to you and say, this is gonna cure everything. Cancer — gone. And the bottle could have nothing in. You know, it could be Kool-Aid. And so, the idea of trying to understand what's behind the business though, one beautiful thing that's come is that we can see in much more dimensions who we're dealing with. We can understand better who's the face behind the brand. I really want people to try their best to be a lot clearer on what they stand for or what they say. And I don't really mean a tagline. I mean, humans don't really talk like that. They don't throw some sentence out as often as they can that you remember them for that phrase. But I would say that, we have so many media available to us — the plural of mediums — where we can be more of ourselves. And I think that there's a great opportunity to share the ‘you' behind the scenes, and some people get immediately terrified about this, ‘Ah, the last thing I want is for people to know more about me,' but I think we have such an opportunity. We have such an opportunity to voice our thoughts on something, to talk about the story that goes behind the product. We were all raised on overly produced material, but I think we don't want that anymore. We really want clarity, brevity, simplicity. We want the ability for what we feel is connection and then access. And so I think it's vital that we connect and show people our accessibility, not so that they can pester us with strange questions, but more so that you can say, this person stands with their product and their service and this person believes these things, and I feel something when I hear them and I wanna be part of that.” That's from Chris Brogan's interview here in 2017, and he is still blogging and speaking at writing at ChrisBrogan.com and I'm going to re-listen to the audiobook of Trust Agents again myself as I think it's more relevant than ever. The original quote comes from Bob Burg in his 1994 book, Endless Referrals, “All things being equal, people will do business with, and refer business to, those people they know, like and trust.” That still applies, and absolutely fits with the 1000 True Fans model of aiming to serve a smaller audience. As Kevin Kelly says in 1000 True Fans, “Instead of trying to reach the narrow and unlikely peaks of platinum bestseller hits, blockbusters, and celebrity status, you can aim for direct connection with a thousand true fans.” “On your way, no matter how many fans you actually succeed in gaining, you'll be surrounded not by faddish infatuation, but by genuine and true appreciation. It's a much saner destiny to hope for. And you are much more likely to actually arrive there.” In 2026, I hope that more authors (including me!) let go of ego goals and vanity metrics like ranking, gross sales (income before you take away costs), subscribers, followers, and likes, and consider important business numbers like profit (which is the money you have after costs like marketing are taken out), as well as number of true fans — and also lifestyle elements like number of weekends off, or days spent enjoying life and not just working! OK, that's my list of trends and predictions for 2026. Let me know what you think in the comments. Do you agree? Am I wrong? What have I missed? The post 2026 Trends And Predictions For Indie Authors And The Book Publishing Industry with Joanna Penn first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Happy New Year! NVIDIA just spent $20 billion to hollow out an AI company for its brains, while Meta and Google scramble to scoop up fresh talent before AI gets "too weird to manage." Who's winning, who's left behind, and what do these backroom deals mean for the future of artificial intelligence? Andrej Karpathy admits programmers cannot keep pace with AI advances Economic uncertainty in AI despite massive stock market influence Google, Anthropic, and Microsoft drive AI productization for business and consumers OpenAI, Claude, and Gemini battle for consumer AI dominance Journalism struggles to keep up with AI realities and misinformation tools Concerns mount over AI energy, water, and environmental impact narratives Meta buys Manus, expands AI agent ambitions with Llama model OpenAI posts high-stress "Head of Preparedness" job worth $555K+ Training breakthroughs: DeepSeek's mHC and comparisons to Action Park U.S. lawmakers push broad, controversial internet censorship bills Age verification and bans spark state laws, VPN workaround explosion U.S. drone ban labeled protectionist as industry faces tech shortages FCC security initiatives falter; Cyber Trust Mark program scrapped Waymo robotaxis stall in blackouts, raising AV urban planning issues School cellphone bans expose kids' struggle with analog clocks MetroCard era ends in NYC as tap-to-pay takes over subway access RAM, VRAM, and GPU prices soar as AI and gaming squeeze supply CES preview: Samsung QD-OLED TV, Sony AFEELA car, gadget show hype Remembering Stewart Cheifet and Computer Chronicles' legacy Host: Leo Laporte Guests: Dan Patterson and Joey de Villa Download or subscribe to This Week in Tech at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: zscaler.com/security canary.tools/twit - use code: TWIT monarch.com with code TWIT Melissa.com/twit redis.io

Happy New Year! NVIDIA just spent $20 billion to hollow out an AI company for its brains, while Meta and Google scramble to scoop up fresh talent before AI gets "too weird to manage." Who's winning, who's left behind, and what do these backroom deals mean for the future of artificial intelligence? Andrej Karpathy admits programmers cannot keep pace with AI advances Economic uncertainty in AI despite massive stock market influence Google, Anthropic, and Microsoft drive AI productization for business and consumers OpenAI, Claude, and Gemini battle for consumer AI dominance Journalism struggles to keep up with AI realities and misinformation tools Concerns mount over AI energy, water, and environmental impact narratives Meta buys Manus, expands AI agent ambitions with Llama model OpenAI posts high-stress "Head of Preparedness" job worth $555K+ Training breakthroughs: DeepSeek's mHC and comparisons to Action Park U.S. lawmakers push broad, controversial internet censorship bills Age verification and bans spark state laws, VPN workaround explosion U.S. drone ban labeled protectionist as industry faces tech shortages FCC security initiatives falter; Cyber Trust Mark program scrapped Waymo robotaxis stall in blackouts, raising AV urban planning issues School cellphone bans expose kids' struggle with analog clocks MetroCard era ends in NYC as tap-to-pay takes over subway access RAM, VRAM, and GPU prices soar as AI and gaming squeeze supply CES preview: Samsung QD-OLED TV, Sony AFEELA car, gadget show hype Remembering Stewart Cheifet and Computer Chronicles' legacy Host: Leo Laporte Guests: Dan Patterson and Joey de Villa Download or subscribe to This Week in Tech at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: zscaler.com/security canary.tools/twit - use code: TWIT monarch.com with code TWIT Melissa.com/twit redis.io

Happy New Year! NVIDIA just spent $20 billion to hollow out an AI company for its brains, while Meta and Google scramble to scoop up fresh talent before AI gets "too weird to manage." Who's winning, who's left behind, and what do these backroom deals mean for the future of artificial intelligence? Andrej Karpathy admits programmers cannot keep pace with AI advances Economic uncertainty in AI despite massive stock market influence Google, Anthropic, and Microsoft drive AI productization for business and consumers OpenAI, Claude, and Gemini battle for consumer AI dominance Journalism struggles to keep up with AI realities and misinformation tools Concerns mount over AI energy, water, and environmental impact narratives Meta buys Manus, expands AI agent ambitions with Llama model OpenAI posts high-stress "Head of Preparedness" job worth $555K+ Training breakthroughs: DeepSeek's mHC and comparisons to Action Park U.S. lawmakers push broad, controversial internet censorship bills Age verification and bans spark state laws, VPN workaround explosion U.S. drone ban labeled protectionist as industry faces tech shortages FCC security initiatives falter; Cyber Trust Mark program scrapped Waymo robotaxis stall in blackouts, raising AV urban planning issues School cellphone bans expose kids' struggle with analog clocks MetroCard era ends in NYC as tap-to-pay takes over subway access RAM, VRAM, and GPU prices soar as AI and gaming squeeze supply CES preview: Samsung QD-OLED TV, Sony AFEELA car, gadget show hype Remembering Stewart Cheifet and Computer Chronicles' legacy Host: Leo Laporte Guests: Dan Patterson and Joey de Villa Download or subscribe to This Week in Tech at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: zscaler.com/security canary.tools/twit - use code: TWIT monarch.com with code TWIT Melissa.com/twit redis.io

У свіжому дайджесті DOU News говоримо про рекордні показники ІТ-експорту України і плани Мінфіну щодо спрощення сплати ПДВ. А ще — про можливе призначення Михайла Федорова, запуск бюджетної підписки ChatGPT Go в Україні, гучну угоду Meta та інші теми українського ІТ та світового тек-сектору. Таймкоди 00:00 Інтро 00:23 ІТ-експорт за 11 місяців перевищив торішній показник 01:39 Як змінилися податки для ФОПів з 1 січня 03:00 Мінфін хоче спростити сплату ПДВ для ФОПів 05:01 Михайло Федоров може очолити Міноборони 08:28 DOU Day 2026: стартував Call for Papers 09:51 Скандал навколо Grok не вщухає 12:41 ChatGPT Go: нова бюджетна підписка в Україні 14:17 Meta купує Manus — гучна угода на ШІ-ринку 17:04 Instagram про майбутнє ШІ у соцмережах 20:41 GOG очолив співзасновник CD Projekt RED 24:12 Що цього тижня рекомендує Женя: Mole та академію від Anthropic

In this episode of Run the Numbers, CJ Gustafson sits down with Gordon Coyle, a 40-year commercial insurance veteran, to demystify one of the most anxiety-inducing topics for founders and CFOs: business insurance. Drawing on decades of experience with startups, scaleups, and regulated industries, Gordon breaks down what leaders need to know about D&O, E&O, cyber, and general liability, why investor pressure is rising, and where “cheap and easy” online policies fail when real risk hits. Through real-world examples, they explore how claims arise, how defense costs erode limits, why cyber insurance is as much about response as reimbursement, and how to balance budget, risk tolerance, and peer benchmarks—treating insurance as a critical layer of protection, not a box-checking exercise.—SPONSORS:Abacum is a modern FP&A platform built by former CFOs to replace slow, consultant-heavy planning tools. With self-service integrations and AI-powered workflows for forecasting, variance analysis, and scenario modeling, Abacum helps finance teams scale without becoming software admins. Trusted by teams at Strava, Replit, and JG Wentworth—learn more at https://www.abacum.aiBrex is an intelligent finance platform that combines corporate cards, built-in expense management, and AI agents to eliminate manual finance work. By automating expense reviews and reconciliations, Brex gives CFOs more time for the high-impact work that drives growth. Join 35,000+ companies like Anthropic, Coinbase, and DoorDash at https://www.brex.com/metricsMetronome is real-time billing built for modern software companies. Metronome turns raw usage events into accurate invoices, gives customers bills they actually understand, and keeps finance, product, and engineering perfectly in sync. That's why category-defining companies like OpenAI and Anthropic trust Metronome to power usage-based pricing and enterprise contracts at scale. Focus on your product — not your billing. Learn more and get started at https://www.metronome.comRightRev is an automated revenue recognition platform built for modern pricing models like usage-based pricing, bundles, and mid-cycle upgrades. RightRev lets companies scale monetization without slowing down close or compliance. For RevRec that keeps growth moving, visit https://www.rightrev.comRillet is an AI-native ERP built for modern finance teams that want to close faster without fighting legacy systems. Designed to support complex revenue recognition, multi-entity operations, and real-time reporting, Rillet helps teams achieve a true zero-day close—with some customers closing in hours, not days. If you're scaling on an ERP that wasn't built in the 90s, book a demo at https://www.rillet.com/cjTabs is an AI-native revenue platform that unifies billing, collections, and revenue recognition for companies running usage-based or complex contracts. By bringing together ERP, CRM, and real product usage data into a single system of record, Tabs eliminates manual reconciliations and speeds up close and cash collection. Companies like Cortex, Statsig, and Cursor trust Tabs to scale revenue efficiently. Learn more at https://www.tabs.com/run—LINKS:Gordon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gordoncoyle/The Coyle Group: https://thecoylegroup.com/CJ on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cj-gustafson-13140948/Mostly metrics: https://www.mostlymetrics.com—RELATED EPISODES:The Coyle Group - Business Insurancehttps://www.youtube.com/@TheCoyleGroupNY—TIMESTAMPS:00:00:00 Preview and Intro00:01:53 Sponsors — Abacum | Brex | Metronome00:05:39 Interview Begins with Gordon Coyle00:06:23 Gordon Coyle & The Coyle Group00:07:21 Explaining Insurance on YouTube00:08:40 Turning Education into Inbound Leads00:09:40 Content as a Pull Strategy00:10:53 Insurance Complexity for Tech Founders00:13:28 Why Investors Require D&O Insurance00:14:09 What D&O Covers and Why It Matters00:15:50 Sponsors — RightRev | Rillet | Tabs00:20:19 Who D&O Covers and Rising Investor Pressure00:22:37 D&O Limits and Cost Tradeoffs00:23:21 Panic Calls and Late D&O Purchases00:24:39 How Defense Costs Erode Coverage00:25:31 Common D&O Claims and Employment Risk00:27:08 D&O vs E&O Explained00:29:12 Cyber Insurance and Social Engineering00:31:59 AI's Impact on Cyber Risk00:33:50 Real-World Ransomware Stories00:34:17 Cyber Insurance as Money and Response00:35:29 Business Email Compromise Scams00:39:43 Why Tech Still Needs General Liability00:41:16 What a BOP Covers00:42:32 Convenience vs Proper Coverage00:44:29 Surprising General Liability Claims00:46:45 Insurance Costs for Startups00:47:36 Higher Costs in High-Risk Industries00:48:26 Balancing Budget, Risk, and Coverage00:50:39 PEOs, Workers' Comp, and EPLI00:54:39 Choosing the Right Insurance Partner00:56:42 End Credits#RunTheNumbersPodcast #StartupFinance #BusinessInsurance #RiskManagement #CyberRisk This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cjgustafson.substack.com

Happy New Year! NVIDIA just spent $20 billion to hollow out an AI company for its brains, while Meta and Google scramble to scoop up fresh talent before AI gets "too weird to manage." Who's winning, who's left behind, and what do these backroom deals mean for the future of artificial intelligence? Andrej Karpathy admits programmers cannot keep pace with AI advances Economic uncertainty in AI despite massive stock market influence Google, Anthropic, and Microsoft drive AI productization for business and consumers OpenAI, Claude, and Gemini battle for consumer AI dominance Journalism struggles to keep up with AI realities and misinformation tools Concerns mount over AI energy, water, and environmental impact narratives Meta buys Manus, expands AI agent ambitions with Llama model OpenAI posts high-stress "Head of Preparedness" job worth $555K+ Training breakthroughs: DeepSeek's mHC and comparisons to Action Park U.S. lawmakers push broad, controversial internet censorship bills Age verification and bans spark state laws, VPN workaround explosion U.S. drone ban labeled protectionist as industry faces tech shortages FCC security initiatives falter; Cyber Trust Mark program scrapped Waymo robotaxis stall in blackouts, raising AV urban planning issues School cellphone bans expose kids' struggle with analog clocks MetroCard era ends in NYC as tap-to-pay takes over subway access RAM, VRAM, and GPU prices soar as AI and gaming squeeze supply CES preview: Samsung QD-OLED TV, Sony AFEELA car, gadget show hype Remembering Stewart Cheifet and Computer Chronicles' legacy Host: Leo Laporte Guests: Dan Patterson and Joey de Villa Download or subscribe to This Week in Tech at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: zscaler.com/security canary.tools/twit - use code: TWIT monarch.com with code TWIT Melissa.com/twit redis.io

This Day in Legal History: Federal Court Strikes Down “Balanced Treatment” Law in ArkansasOn January 5, 1982, a federal district court in Arkansas issued a landmark ruling in McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education, striking down a state law that required public schools to give “balanced treatment” to both evolution and creation science. The law, known as Act 590, had been passed in 1981 and mandated that schools teach creationism—defined in the statute as a scientific model based on a literal interpretation of the Bible—alongside evolution. The law was immediately challenged by a coalition of clergy, educators, and scientists who argued that it violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.Judge William Overton ruled that Act 590 was unconstitutional because it advanced a particular religious viewpoint under the guise of science. In his decision, Overton provided a clear and influential definition of what constitutes science, stating that scientific theories must be guided by natural law, testable, and subject to falsification. He found that “creation science” failed all of these criteria and was therefore religious in nature, not scientific. The court also concluded that requiring its teaching in public schools constituted state endorsement of religion.The ruling marked one of the first major judicial rejections of efforts to include religious doctrine in public school science curricula following the U.S. Supreme Court's earlier decision in Epperson v. Arkansas (1968), which struck down laws banning the teaching of evolution altogether. McLean v. Arkansas would go on to shape the legal and educational landscape in future church-state separation cases, including the pivotal 1987 Supreme Court decision Edwards v. Aguillard, which similarly invalidated a Louisiana law promoting creationism in schools.Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro appeared in a New York court after a surprise U.S. military operation captured him in Caracas. The high-stakes raid, likened to the 1989 Panama invasion, involved U.S. Special Forces breaching Maduro's security and flying him to Manhattan, where he faces drug trafficking and narco-terrorism charges. His wife, Cilia Flores, was also captured. Maduro is accused of running a cocaine network in collaboration with major criminal groups like Mexico's Sinaloa cartel and Colombia's FARC.The capture sparked international outrage. Russia, China, Cuba, and other allies condemned the raid, while U.S. allies cautiously emphasized legality and diplomacy. The U.N. Security Council is set to review the operation's legality. Meanwhile, Venezuela's acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, shifted from initial outrage to signaling willingness for cooperation with the U.S., a notable pivot considering her past as a fiery Chavista loyalist.President Trump justified the move as a counter to drug smuggling, illegal immigration, and the past nationalization of U.S. oil assets. He also made clear his aim to reopen Venezuela's oil sector to U.S. companies. However, he has sidelined Venezuela's opposition leaders, disappointing figures like María Corina Machado. Despite Maduro's removal, his political allies remain in power, and the military's loyalty appears unchanged. Venezuelans at home are wary, bracing for possible unrest.Venezuela's Maduro due in court, loyalists send message to Trump | ReutersTrump's efforts to further reshape the federal judiciary in 2026 are facing a slowdown due to a shortage of vacancies. After returning to office in 2025, Trump secured the confirmation of 26 judicial nominees—more than in the first year of his initial term. However, only 30 new judicial seats have opened since then, compared to the 108 vacancies available when he first took office in 2017. This is largely due to aggressive judicial appointments by both Trump and former President Biden over the past decade, which filled many potential retirements with younger judges.Some judges eligible for senior status—a form of semi-retirement—have opted to remain active. Experts suggest this could be due to either personal preference or distrust among conservative judges about Trump's choices for replacements. The appellate court nominations have particularly slowed, with only three judges announcing retirements in 2025. Still, Trump managed to flip the balance of the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals and strengthen conservative influence in district courts across states like Missouri, Florida, and Mississippi.Despite the low number of available seats—currently 49—Trump still has opportunities to make appointments, especially in Republican-led states. However, 13 of those vacancies are in states with at least one Democratic senator, triggering the “blue slip” custom, which allows senators to block judicial nominees from their states. While this tradition doesn't apply to appellate courts, it still limits district court nominations. Senate Republicans remain divided on whether to uphold the blue slip norm.Trump's ability to further reshape judiciary in 2026 hindered by few vacancies | ReutersIn 2026, U.S. law schools are facing a mix of rising interest in legal education and mounting regulatory and financial pressures. A major shift comes from President Trump's 2025 budget, which capped federal loans for professional degrees at $50,000 annually and $200,000 total. With many law schools charging over $50,000 per year (excluding living costs), incoming students may need to seek private loans, which often come with higher interest rates and stricter credit requirements. In response, some schools—like Santa Clara University—are offering across-the-board scholarships to help bridge the gap.Law school accreditation is also in flux. The American Bar Association (ABA), traditionally the primary accreditor, is facing political attacks over its diversity standards and regulatory burden. Texas is planning to develop its own law school approval system for bar eligibility, and other states like Florida and Ohio are exploring similar options. The ABA is now working to streamline its standards amid this pressure.July 2026 will also see the debut of the “NextGen UBE,” a shorter, skills-focused national bar exam that replaces some memorization with practical assessment. Some states, however, are opting out or creating their own licensing alternatives.Meanwhile, artificial intelligence is gaining traction in legal education. A growing number of law schools are integrating AI training into their curricula, and platforms like Harvey are being adopted by faculty and students alike.Despite the looming challenges, interest in law school remains strong. Applicant numbers rose 20% over the previous year, building on an 18% increase in 2024, and first-year enrollment is also trending upward.US law schools face loan limits, oversight pressures in 2026 | ReutersU.S. courts are poised to play a decisive role in shaping how copyright law applies to generative AI this year, as lawsuits from major publishers, creators, and tech companies come to a head. At issue is whether AI developers like OpenAI, Google, Meta, and others can invoke the legal doctrine of fair use when training models on copyrighted materials, or whether they must pay license fees—potentially amounting to billions.The legal landscape shifted dramatically in 2025. A class action by authors against Anthropic resulted in a $1.5 billion settlement, the largest of its kind, while The New York Times, Disney, and other major rights holders filed fresh lawsuits. Judges began issuing preliminary rulings on whether AI training qualifies as transformative fair use, with conflicting outcomes. One judge called AI training “quintessentially transformative,” supporting tech companies' claims, while another warned that generative AI could harm creators by saturating the market with competing content.Several high-profile cases remain active in 2026, including those involving AI-generated music and visual art. Meanwhile, some copyright holders are choosing collaboration over litigation. Disney, for example, invested $1 billion in OpenAI and granted use of its characters, while Warner Music dropped lawsuits against AI firms to co-develop music tools. These deals hint at possible industry-wide licensing frameworks, though ongoing litigation could still dramatically reshape the economic and legal norms governing AI.AI copyright battles enter pivotal year as US courts weigh fair use | Reuters This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

Jaeden & Jamie discuss several AI companies that have raised significant funding, including Reflection AI, Turing, Shield AI, and Anthropic. They explore the potential and current projects of these companies, highlighting the trends in AI technology and investment. The conversation provides insights into the future of AI and its applications in various industries, including defense and coding.Our Skool Community: https://www.skool.com/aihustleGet the top 40+ AI Models for $20 at AI Box: ⁠⁠https://aibox.aiSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Cornerfest is back, baby! Join Mathas and Jesse as Alex takes them on a journey through the corners of the internet in this third part of the yearly series. CHILLUMINATI is a weekly comedy podcast hosted by Mike Martin, Jesse Cox and Alex Faciane. Hold on to your tin-foil hats and traverse the realms of the mysterious, supernatural, spooky and sometimes truly horrible - and your third eye will never be the same! Subscribe to our Patreon to support us and for extra content like full video episodes, weekly Minisodes, exclusive art, and more at http://patreon.com/CHILLUMINATIPOD Mike Martin - http://www.youtube.com/@themoleculemindset Jesse Cox - http://www.youtube.com/jessecox Alex Faciane - https://www.youtube.com/@StarWarsOldCanonBookClub/ Editor: DeanCutty Producer: Hilde @ https://bsky.app/profile/heksen.bsky.social Show Art: Studio Melectro @ http://www.instagram.com/studio_melectro Logo Design: Shawn JPB @ https://twitter.com/JetpackBraggin SHOW NOTES: NOBELITIS: https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/cclm-2013-0273/html  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Banting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Pauling  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmed_Zewail  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zewail_City_of_Science,_Technology_and_Innovation  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Nurse  SPIRALS: https://www.reddit.com/r/qualityrabbitholes/s/Y3jDKs0jnL  https://zenodo.org/records/15243898  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QJnd_kFqDw  https://www.reddit.com/r/Anthropic/s/qH8XfrgzwI  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recursive_self-improvement  https://www.reddit.com/r/HumanAIDiscourse/s/kibHCFuQxV https://youtube.com/shorts/JAVMEs5CG1Y?si=m6IC146mx8J73Wvu https://www.reddit.com/r/RSAI/ https://www.reddit.com/r/FlameBearers/  https://www.reddit.com/r/FractalLegion/  https://www.reddit.com/r/SovereignDrift/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ThePatternIsReal/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ChurchofLiminalMinds/ FINDING JOHN ZEGRUS: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/man-from-taured-parallel-universe/ https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-province/33905529/ https://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/jwv0qv/i_am_japanese_i_researched_an_old_newspaper_about/  THE DON JUAN PAPERS: https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/printout/0,8816,903890,00.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Castaneda  https://www.altaonline.com/dispatches/a60923618/carlos-castaneda-cult-geoffrey-gray/  https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-jun-19-mn-61519-story.html  RICKY ON MAPS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ukI98n-pe0  https://www.reddit.com/r/Gooseboose/s/JhhRgZy0Px

【欢迎订阅】每天早上5:30，准时更新。【阅读原文】标题：How Meta's Newest Acquisition Target Got Around Worries Over Its Ties to ChinaThe $2.5 billion deal could herald a new era for China-linked AI companies and U.S. investors正文：Workers at Butterfly Effect, an artificial-intelligence startup with Chinese roots, gathered in March to count down to the launch of a demo of a new AI-powered tool called Manus. Released in the shadow of DeepSeek, a China-built AI model that rocked the U.S. market in January owing to its advanced capabilities and low cost, Manus became an overnight hit. The product, which used models from Anthropic and others to produce detailed research reports and perform a host of other tasks, showcased the talents of China's entrepreneurs and startups in a burgeoning global battle for AI supremacy.知识点：gather v. /ˈɡæðər/to come together in one place. 聚集，集合e.g. The family gathers for a big dinner every Sunday. 这家人每周日都会聚在一起吃一顿丰盛的晚餐。获取外刊的完整原文以及精讲笔记，请关注微信公众号「早安英文」，回复“外刊”即可。更多有意思的英语干货等着你！【节目介绍】《早安英文-每日外刊精读》，带你精读最新外刊，了解国际最热事件：分析语法结构，拆解长难句，最接地气的翻译，还有重点词汇讲解。所有选题均来自于《经济学人》《纽约时报》《华尔街日报》《华盛顿邮报》《大西洋月刊》《科学杂志》《国家地理》等国际一线外刊。【适合谁听】1、关注时事热点新闻，想要学习最新最潮流英文表达的英文学习者2、任何想通过地道英文提高听、说、读、写能力的英文学习者3、想快速掌握表达，有出国学习和旅游计划的英语爱好者4、参加各类英语考试的应试者（如大学英语四六级、托福雅思、考研等）【你将获得】1、超过1000篇外刊精读课程，拓展丰富语言表达和文化背景2、逐词、逐句精确讲解，系统掌握英语词汇、听力、阅读和语法3、每期内附学习笔记，包含全文注释、长难句解析、疑难语法点等，帮助扫除阅读障碍。

In this episode of the Crazy Wisdom podcast, host Stewart Alsop interviews Marcin Dymczyk, CPO and co-founder of SevenSense Robotics, exploring the fascinating world of advanced robotics and AI. Their conversation covers the evolution from traditional "standard" robotics with predetermined pathways to advanced robotics that incorporates perception, reasoning, and adaptability - essentially the AGI of physical robotics. Dymczyk explains how his company builds "the eyes and brains of mobile robots" using camera-based autonomy algorithms, drawing parallels between robot sensing systems and human vision, inner ear balance, and proprioception. The discussion ranges from the technical challenges of sensor fusion and world models to broader topics including robotics regulation across different countries, the role of federalism in innovation, and how recent geopolitical changes are driving localized high-tech development, particularly in defense applications. They also touch on the democratization of robotics for small businesses and the philosophical implications of increasingly sophisticated AI systems operating in physical environments. To learn more about SevenSense, visit www.sevensense.ai.Check out this GPT we trained on the conversationTimestamps00:00 Introduction to Robotics and Personal Journey05:27 The Evolution of Robotics: From Standard to Advanced09:56 The Future of Robotics: AI and Automation12:09 The Role of Edge Computing in Robotics17:40 FPGA and AI: The Future of Robotics Processing21:54 Sensing the World: How Robots Perceive Their Environment29:01 Learning from the Physical World: Insights from Robotics33:21 The Intersection of Robotics and Manufacturing35:01 Journey into Robotics: Education and Passion36:41 Practical Robotics Projects for Beginners39:06 Understanding Particle Filters in Robotics40:37 World Models: The Future of AI and Robotics41:51 The Black Box Dilemma in AI and Robotics44:27 Safety and Interpretability in Autonomous Systems49:16 Regulatory Challenges in Robotics and AI51:19 Global Perspectives on Robotics Regulation54:43 The Future of Robotics in Emerging Markets57:38 The Role of Engineers in Modern WarfareKey Insights1. Advanced robotics transcends traditional programming through perception and intelligence. Dymczyk distinguishes between standard robotics that follows rigid, predefined pathways and advanced robotics that incorporates perception and reasoning. This evolution enables robots to make autonomous decisions about navigation and task execution, similar to how humans adapt to unexpected situations rather than following predetermined scripts.2. Camera-based sensing systems mirror human biological navigation. SevenSense Robotics builds "eyes and brains" for mobile robots using multiple cameras (up to eight), IMUs (accelerometers/gyroscopes), and wheel encoders that parallel human vision, inner ear balance, and proprioception. This redundant sensing approach allows robots to navigate even when one system fails, such as operating in dark environments where visual sensors are compromised.3. Edge computing dominates industrial robotics due to connectivity and security constraints. Many industrial applications operate in environments with poor connectivity (like underground grocery stores) or require on-premise solutions for confidentiality. This necessitates powerful local processing capabilities rather than cloud-dependent AI, particularly in automotive factories where data security about new models is paramount.4. Safety regulations create mandatory "kill switches" that bypass AI decision-making. European and US regulatory bodies require deterministic safety systems that can instantly stop robots regardless of AI reasoning. These systems operate like human reflexes, providing immediate responses to obstacles while the main AI brain handles complex navigation and planning tasks.5. Modern robotics development benefits from increasingly affordable optical sensors. The democratization of 3D cameras, laser range finders, and miniature range measurement chips (costing just a few dollars from distributors like DigiKey) enables rapid prototyping and innovation that was previously limited to well-funded research institutions.6. Geopolitical shifts are driving localized high-tech development, particularly in defense applications. The changing role of US global leadership and lessons from Ukraine's drone warfare are motivating countries like Poland to develop indigenous robotics capabilities. Small engineering teams can now create battlefield-effective technology using consumer drones equipped with advanced sensors.7. The future of robotics lies in natural language programming for non-experts. Dymczyk envisions a transformation where small business owners can instruct robots using conversational language rather than complex programming, similar to how AI coding assistants now enable non-programmers to build applications through natural language prompts.

Don't Let Anthropic Take YOU to the Cleaners. Links below. Join James Bartolemi and I here:https://www.duncanfirm.com/anthropic-copyright-settlement-options/OPT OUT BY JANUARY 15:https://www.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/Emails: scott@foxtopus.inkjames@duncanfirm.comGet Early Access on Substackhttps://sgcarney.substack.com/

Anthropic is one of the key AI players eyeing a potential 2026 IPO. MacKenzie Sigalos sat down exclusively with Anthropic President Daniela Amodei to talk about the company's plans to outmaneuver big-spending AI rivals. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

On this episode of the Self-Publishing with ALLi podcast, Dan Holloway opens 2026 by looking at newly released public domain works, including titles by Agatha Christie, T. S. Eliot, and other major crime and literary writers, and what authors should watch for when reusing characters and stories. He also reports on the launch of the Copy Might Coalition, a new effort to support indie authors in AI-related copyright disputes and collective licensing, and examines a fresh legal challenge to the Anthropic settlement that raises questions about how the value of books is judged in AI training cases. Sponsor Self-Publishing News is proudly sponsored by PublishMe—helping indie authors succeed globally with expert translation, tailored marketing, and publishing support. From first draft to international launch, PublishMe ensures your book reaches readers everywhere. Visit publishme.me. Find more author advice, tips, and tools at our Self-publishing Author Advice Center, with a huge archive of nearly 2,000 blog posts and a handy search box to find key info on the topic you need. And, if you haven't already, we invite you to join our organization and become a self-publishing ally. About the Host Dan Holloway is a novelist, poet, and spoken word artist. He is the MC of the performance arts show The New Libertines, He competed at the National Poetry Slam final at the Royal Albert Hall. His latest collection, The Transparency of Sutures, is available on Kindle.

In this panel episode, the crew discusses AI platform consolidation, open-source sustainability, and the future of web development. We break down Anthropic's acquisition of Bun, what it means for the JavaScript ecosystem, and whether open-source projects can remain independent as AI companies invest heavily in infrastructure. We also discuss Zig leaving GitHub, growing concerns around AI-first developer tools, npm security vulnerabilities, and supply-chain risk in modern software. The episode wraps with hot takes on AI infrastructure costs, developer productivity, and practical advice for engineers navigating today's rapidly changing tech landscape. Resources Anthropic acquires Bun as Claude Code hits $1B milestone: https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-acquires-bun-as-claude-code-reaches-usd1b-milestone Zig quits GitHub, says Microsoft's AI obsession ruined the service: https://ziglang.org/news/migrating-from-github-to-codeberg/ Shai-Hulud: 1K+ npm packages & 27K repos infected: https://helixguard.ai/blog/malicious-sha1hulud-2025-11-24 IBM CEO says AI data center spending “won't pay off” at current costs: https://www.businessinsider.com/ibm-ceo-big-tech-ai-capex-data-center-spending-2025-12 We want to hear from you! How did you find us? Did you see us on Twitter? In a newsletter? Or maybe we were recommended by a friend? Fill out our listener survey (https://t.co/oKVAEXipxu)! https://t.co/oKVAEXipxu Let us know by sending an email to our producer, Elizabeth, at elizabeth.becz@logrocket.com (mailto:elizabeth.becz@logrocket.com), or tweet at us at PodRocketPod (https://twitter.com/PodRocketpod). Check out our newsletter (https://blog.logrocket.com/the-replay-newsletter/)! https://blog.logrocket.com/the-replay-newsletter/ Follow us. Get free stickers. Follow us on Apple Podcasts, fill out this form (https://podrocket.logrocket.com/get-podrocket-stickers), and we'll send you free PodRocket stickers! What does LogRocket do? LogRocket provides AI-first session replay and analytics that surfaces the UX and technical issues impacting user experiences. Start understanding where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com. Try LogRocket for free today. (https://logrocket.com/signup/?pdr) Chapters 01:00 – Meet the Panel: Paige, Jack, and Paul 02:00 – Anthropic Acquires Bun: First Reactions 05:30 – What the Bun Acquisition Means for JavaScript Runtimes 09:00 – Open Source Funding, Independence, and New Exit Models 14:30 – Zig Leaves GitHub: AI-First Platforms and OSS Friction 20:30 – GitHub, Copilot, and Developer Experience Tradeoffs 24:30 – npm Security, Supply Chain Attacks, and Trust at Scale 31:00 – Are We Too Dependent on Big Tech Platforms? 36:30 – AI Infrastructure Costs and the Sustainability Question 43:00 – Small Models, Local AI, and the Future of Inference 50:30 – Hot Takes: Subscriptions, Burnout, and Developer Frustration 58:30 – Security Alerts, Tooling Wins, and Final Thoughts Special Guest: Jack Herrington.

Kristin, Molly, Andrea and Kate look back at the cookbook media landscape of 2025 and discuss the Anthropic settlement, their thoughts about AI in the food media sphere and share their inclinations about its usage. Each of the hosts share some wins they had this year with Kristin speaking about working on the Turtle Island book and Andrea joining in to share her thoughts on finding balance in collaboration projects. With a dash of astrology and numerology each host reveals what keeps them following this creative path and what they've let go of over the years along with the role persistence and perseverance plays in this journey. Finally they end the episode by sharing some of the books, people and ideas they are excited to follow into 2026. Hosts: Kate Leahy + Molly Stevens + Kristin Donnelly + Andrea NguyenEditor: Abby Cerquitella MentionsJoin The Local Palate Cookbook ClubAnthropic SettlementAI Duped My Cookbook and Made a Mess, by Adam EraceKristin Donnelly on Co-Writing One of the Year's Biggest Books from Cookbookery Collective Visit the Everything Cookbooks Bookshop to purchase a copy of the books mentioned in the showTurtle Island, by Sean Sherman. Kate Nelson & Kristin DonnellyHeart Shaped Tin, by Bee WilsonFeast on Your Life, by Tamar AdlerOn Eating, by Alicia KennedyThe Last Sweet Bite by Michael Shaikh 

From creating SWE-bench in a Princeton basement to shipping CodeClash, SWE-bench Multimodal, and SWE-bench Multilingual, John Yang has spent the last year and a half watching his benchmark become the de facto standard for evaluating AI coding agents—trusted by Cognition (Devin), OpenAI, Anthropic, and every major lab racing to solve software engineering at scale. We caught up with John live at NeurIPS 2025 to dig into the state of code evals heading into 2026: why SWE-bench went from ignored (October 2023) to the industry standard after Devin's launch (and how Walden emailed him two weeks before the big reveal), how the benchmark evolved from Django-heavy to nine languages across 40 repos (JavaScript, Rust, Java, C, Ruby), why unit tests as verification are limiting and long-running agent tournaments might be the future (CodeClash: agents maintain codebases, compete in arenas, and iterate over multiple rounds), the proliferation of SWE-bench variants (SWE-bench Pro, SWE-bench Live, SWE-Efficiency, AlgoTune, SciCode) and how benchmark authors are now justifying their splits with curation techniques instead of just "more repos," why Tau-bench's "impossible tasks" controversy is actually a feature not a bug (intentionally including impossible tasks flags cheating), the tension between long autonomy (5-hour runs) vs. interactivity (Cognition's emphasis on fast back-and-forth), how Terminal-bench unlocked creativity by letting PhD students and non-coders design environments beyond GitHub issues and PRs, the academic data problem (companies like Cognition and Cursor have rich user interaction data, academics need user simulators or compelling products like LMArena to get similar signal), and his vision for CodeClash as a testbed for human-AI collaboration—freeze model capability, vary the collaboration setup (solo agent, multi-agent, human+agent), and measure how interaction patterns change as models climb the ladder from code completion to full codebase reasoning. We discuss: John's path: Princeton → SWE-bench (October 2023) → Stanford PhD with Diyi Yang and the Iris Group, focusing on code evals, human-AI collaboration, and long-running agent benchmarks The SWE-bench origin story: released October 2023, mostly ignored until Cognition's Devin launch kicked off the arms race (Walden emailed John two weeks before: "we have a good number") SWE-bench Verified: the curated, high-quality split that became the standard for serious evals SWE-bench Multimodal and Multilingual: nine languages (JavaScript, Rust, Java, C, Ruby) across 40 repos, moving beyond the Django-heavy original distribution The SWE-bench Pro controversy: independent authors used the "SWE-bench" name without John's blessing, but he's okay with it ("congrats to them, it's a great benchmark") CodeClash: John's new benchmark for long-horizon development—agents maintain their own codebases, edit and improve them each round, then compete in arenas (programming games like Halite, economic tasks like GDP optimization) SWE-Efficiency (Jeffrey Maugh, John's high school classmate): optimize code for speed without changing behavior (parallelization, SIMD operations) AlgoTune, SciCode, Terminal-bench, Tau-bench, SecBench, SRE-bench: the Cambrian explosion of code evals, each diving into different domains (security, SRE, science, user simulation) The Tau-bench "impossible tasks" debate: some tasks are underspecified or impossible, but John thinks that's actually a feature (flags cheating if you score above 75%) Cognition's research focus: codebase understanding (retrieval++), helping humans understand their own codebases, and automatic context engineering for LLMs (research sub-agents) The vision: CodeClash as a testbed for human-AI collaboration—vary the setup (solo agent, multi-agent, human+agent), freeze model capability, and measure how interaction changes as models improve — John Yang SWE-bench: https://www.swebench.com X: https://x.com/jyangballin Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction: John Yang on SWE-bench and Code Evaluations 00:00:31 SWE-bench Origins and Devon's Impact on the Coding Agent Arms Race 00:01:09 SWE-bench Ecosystem: Verified, Pro, Multimodal, and Multilingual Variants 00:02:17 Moving Beyond Django: Diversifying Code Evaluation Repositories 00:03:08 Code Clash: Long-Horizon Development Through Programming Tournaments 00:04:41 From Halite to Economic Value: Designing Competitive Coding Arenas 00:06:04 Ofir's Lab: SWE-ficiency, AlgoTune, and SciCode for Scientific Computing 00:07:52 The Benchmark Landscape: TAU-bench, Terminal-bench, and User Simulation 00:09:20 The Impossible Task Debate: Refusals, Ambiguity, and Benchmark Integrity 00:12:32 The Future of Code Evals: Long Autonomy vs Human-AI Collaboration 00:14:37 Call to Action: User Interaction Data and Codebase Understanding Research

What do Sam Altman, Jensen Huang, Reid Hoffman, Marc Andreessen, and Elon Musk actually believe about the future of tech?In this episode of the Newcomer Podcast, we break down the quotes that defined tech in 2025. From OpenAI and Anthropic to venture capital, regulation, and Silicon Valley power, these are the moments where powerful people said the quiet part out loud.Rather than reacting to headlines, we look at the specific lines that revealed how AI companies think about compute and money, how venture capital is consolidating power, and why tech and politics are now inseparable.We cover:What Sam Altman and OpenAI revealed about scale and computeHow VC giants like Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed talk about power and accessWhy AI regulation looks very different in public than it does in privateThe quotes that mattered more than any keynote or earnings callThis is a year-in-review told through the words that shaped it.

终于进入《商业就是这样》“2025年终大盘点季”。这是连续三期特别节目中的第一期——2025失意大公司·国内篇。我们选取了五家公司，展开叙述它们过去一年来的失意。今年讨论的几家公司里，除了美团之外，剩下的四家公司的危机，其实都是由于长期影响、或者长期问题的集中爆发所导致的。这也是我们在每年筛选失意大公司的时候，经常会看到的现象。对于大公司而言，这种积重难返的困局，往往是最难跨越的。| 主播 |肖文杰、约小亚| 时间轴 |01:52 西贝：预制菜问题，还是预期问题？08:07 万科：不再有“大而不能倒”的房企14:22 百度：在AI浪潮中赶了大早、却做不好23:26 茅台：渠道改革带来的经销体系之痛31:09 美团：补贴大战中的判断失误| 延伸资料 |第一财经YiMagazine - 恢复排队、集中关店，西贝正在经历创业以来最大的一次压力测试第一财经YiMagazine - 西贝预计2026年上市Bloomberg-China's Last ‘Too-Big-to-Fail' Housing Giant Loses State Support联合早报-深铁再出手救万科但收紧贷款条件第一财经YiMagazine - 面对AI，大象们都开始跳舞第一财经YiMagazine - 百度大秀自研芯片，还说要扭转AI产业结构Business Insider - Meet Dario Amodei, Anthropic's outspoken CEO第一财经YiMagazine - 茅台的“平价”梦第一财经YiMagazine - 茅台降价，茅台价值就崩溃了？第一财经YiMagazine - 美团鏖战本地生活晚点LatePost-独家对话美团王莆中：我们不想卷，但不能不反击| 后期制作 |潘鑫| 声音设计 |刘三菜| 收听方式 |你可以通过小宇宙、苹果播客、Spotify、喜马拉雅、网易云音乐、QQ 音乐、荔枝、豆瓣等平台收听节目。| 认识我们 |微信公众号：第一财经 YiMagazine联系我们：thatisbiz@yicai.com

Dean Quiambao says the mega-IPOs next year will dominate investor focus, forcing smaller companies to get creative. “You've got to have strong growth, you've got to have path to profitability.” He thinks 2026 could be the “breakout” for IPOs after a 2025 “rebound.” Companies that could IPO in 2026 include OpenAI, SpaceX, Kraken, Anthropic, and more popular names.======== Schwab Network ========Empowering every investor and trader, every market day.Options involve risks and are not suitable for all investors. Before trading, read the Options Disclosure Document. http://bit.ly/2v9tH6DSubscribe to the Market Minute newsletter - https://schwabnetwork.com/subscribeDownload the iOS app - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/schwab-network/id1460719185Download the Amazon Fire Tv App - https://www.amazon.com/TD-Ameritrade-Network/dp/B07KRD76C7Watch on Sling - https://watch.sling.com/1/asset/191928615bd8d47686f94682aefaa007/watchWatch on Vizio - https://www.vizio.com/en/watchfreeplus-exploreWatch on DistroTV - https://www.distro.tv/live/schwab-network/Follow us on X – https://twitter.com/schwabnetworkFollow us on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/schwabnetworkFollow us on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/schwab-network/About Schwab Network - https://schwabnetwork.com/about

Another year ends, and once more, it's time to reflect on our creative goals. I hope you can take the time to review your goals and you're welcome to leave a comment below about how the year went. Did you achieve everything you wanted to? Let me know in the comments. It's always interesting looking back at my goals from a year ago, because I don't even look at them in the months between, so sometimes it's a real surprise how much they've changed! You can read my 2025 goals here and I go through how things went below. In the intro, Written Word Media 2025 Indie Author Survey Results, TikTok deal goes through [BBC]; 2025 review [Wish I'd Known Then; Two Authors], Kickstarter year in review; Plus, Anthropic settlement, the continued rise of AI-narrated audiobooks, and thinking/reasoning models (plus my 2019 AI disruption episode). My Bones of the Deep thriller, pics here, and Business for Authors webinars, coming soon. If you'd like to join my community and support the show every month, you'll get access to my growing list of Patron videos and audio on all aspects of the author business — for the price of a black coffee (or two) a month. Join us at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn. Joanna Penn writes non-fiction for authors and is an award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling thriller author as J.F. Penn. She's also an award-winning podcaster, creative entrepreneur, and international professional speaker. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. J.F. Penn books — Death Valley, The Buried and the Drowned, Blood Vintage Joanna Penn books — Successful Self-Publishing, 4th Edition The Creative Penn Podcast and my community on Patreon/thecreativepenn Unexpected addition: Masters in Death, Religion and Culture at the University of Winchester Book marketing. Not quite a fail but definitely lacklustre. Reflections on my 50th year Double down on being human. Travel and health. You can find all my books as J.F. Penn and Joanna Penn on your favourite online store in all the usual formats, or order from your local library or bookstore. You can also buy direct from me at CreativePennBooks.com and JFPennBooks.com. I'm not really active on social media, but you can always see my photos at Instagram @jfpennauthor. J.F. Penn — Death Valley. A Thriller. This was my ‘desert' book, partially inspired by visiting Death Valley, California in 2024. It's a stand-alone, high stakes survival thriller, with no supernatural elements, although there are ancient bones and a hidden crypt, as it wouldn't be me otherwise! The Kickstarter campaign in April had 231 Backers pledging £10,794 (~US$14,400) and the hardback is a gorgeous foiled edition with custom end papers and research photos as well as a ribbon. As an AI-Assisted Artisan Author, I used AI tools to help with the creative and business processes, including the background image of the cover design, the custom end papers, and the Death Valley book trailer, which I made with Midjourney and Runway ML. The audiobook is also narrated by my J.F. Penn voice clone, which took a while to get used to, but now I love it! You can listen to a sample here. I published Death Valley wide a few months later over the summer, so it is now out on all platforms. J.F. Penn — Blood Vintage. A Folk Horror Novel, and Catacomb audiobook I did a Kickstarter for the hardback edition of Blood Vintage in late 2024, and then in 2025, worked with a US agent to see if we could get a deal for it. That didn't happen, and although there were some nice rejections, mostly it was silence, and the waiting around really was a pain in the proverbial. So, after a year on submission, I published Blood Vintage wide, so it's available everywhere now. My voice clone narrated the audiobook, listen to a sample here. I also finally produced the audiobook for Catacomb, which is a stand-alone thriller inspired by the movie Taken and the legend of Beowulf set in the catacombs under Edinburgh. I used a male voice from ElevenLabs, and you can listen to a sample here. The book is also available everywhere in all formats. J.F. Penn — The Buried and the Drowned Short Story Collection One of my goals for 2025 was to get my existing short stories into print, mainly because they exist only as digital ebook and audiobook files, which in a way, feels like they almost don't exist! Plus, I wanted to write an extra two exclusive stories and launch the special edition collection on Kickstarter Collection and then publish wide. I wrote the two stories, The Black Church, inspired by my Iceland trip in March, and also Between Two Breaths, inspired by an experience scuba diving at the Poor Knights Islands in New Zealand almost two decades ago. There are personal author's notes accompanying every story, so it's part-short story fiction, part-memoir, and I human-narrated the audiobook. I achieved this goal with a Kickstarter in September, 2025, with 206 Backers pledging almost £8000 (~US$10,600) for the various editions. I also did my first patterned sprayed edges and I love the hardback. It has head and tail bands which make the hardback really strong, gorgeous paper, foiling, a ribbon, colour photos, and custom end papers. The Buried and the Drowned is now out everywhere in all editions. As ever, if you enjoy the stories, a review would be much appreciated! Joanna Penn Books for Authors Early in the year, How to Write Non-Fiction Second Edition launched wide as I only sold it through my store in 2024, so it's available everywhere in all formats including a special hardback and workbook at CreativePennBooks.com. While I didn't write it in 2025, I made the money on it this year, which is important! I also unexpectedly wrote the Fourth Edition of Successful Self-Publishing, mainly because I saw so much misinformation and hype around selling direct, and I also wanted to write about how many options there are for indie authors now. The ebook and audiobook (narrated by human me) are free on my store, CreativePennBooks.com and also available in print, in all the usual places. If you haven't revisited options for indie authors for a while, please have a read/listen, as the industry moves fast! All my fiction and non-fiction audiobooks are now on YouTube After an inspiring episode with Derek Slaton, I put all my audiobooks and short stories on YouTube. Firstly, my non-fiction channel is monetised so I get some income from that. It's not much, but it's something. More importantly, it's marketing for my books, and many audiobook listeners go on to buy other editions especially non-fiction listeners who will often buy print as well. I'm one of those listeners! It's also doubling down on being human, since I human narrate most of my audiobooks, including almost all of my non-fiction, as well as the memoir, and short stories. This helps bring people into my ecosystem and they may listen to the podcast as well and end up buying other books or joining the Patreon. Finally, in an age of generative AI assisted search recommendations, I want my books and content inside Gemini, which is Google's AI. I want my books surfaced in recommendations and YouTube is owned by Google, and their AI overviews often point to videos. Only you can decide what you want to do with your audiobooks, but if you want to listen to mine, they are on YouTube @thecreativepenn for non-fiction or YouTube @jfpennauthor for fiction and memoir. The Creative Penn Podcast and my Patreon Community It's been another full year of The Creative Penn Podcast and this is episode 842, which is kind of crazy. If you don't know the back story, I started podcasting in March 2009 on a sporadic schedule and then went to weekly about a decade ago in 2015 when I committed to making it a core part of my author business. Thanks to our wonderful corporate sponsors for the year, all services I personally use and recommend — ProWritingAid, Draft2Digital, Kobo Writing Life, Bookfunnel, Written Word Media, Publisher Rocket and Atticus. It's also been a fantastic year inside my Patreon Community at patreon.com/thecreativepenn so thanks to all Patrons! I love the community we have as I am able to share my unfiltered thoughts in a way that I have stopped doing in the wider community. Even a tiny paywall makes a big difference in keeping out the haters. I've done monthly audio Q&As which are extra solo shows answering patron questions. I've also done several live office hours on video, and shared content every week on AI tools, writing and author business tips. Patrons also get discounts on my webinars. I did two webinars on The AI-Assisted Artisan Author, which I am planning to run again sometime in 2026 as they were a lot of fun and so much continues to change. If you get value from the show and you want more, come on over and join us at patreon.com/thecreativepenn We have almost 1400 paying members now which is wonderful. Thanks for being part of the Community! Unexpected goal of the year: Masters in Death, Religion and Culture at the University of Winchester During the summer as I did my gothic research, I realised that I was feeling quite jaded about the publishing world and sick of the drama in the author community over AI. My top 5 Clifton Strengths are Learner, Intellection, Strategic, Input, and Futuristic — and I needed more Input and Learning. I usually get that from travel and book research, but I wasn't getting enough of that since Jonathan is busy finishing his MBA. So I decided to lean into the learning and asked ChatGPT to research some courses I could do that would suit me. It found the Masters in Death, Religion and Culture at the University of Winchester, which I could do full-time and online. It would be a year of reading quite different things, writing academic essays which is something I haven't done for decades, and hanging out with a new group of people who were just as fascinated with macabre topics as I am. I started in September and have now finished the first term, tackling topics around thanatology and death studies, hell and the afterlife in the Christian tradition, and the ethics of using human remains to inspire fiction, amongst other interesting things. It was a challenge to get back into the style of academic essay writing, but I'm enjoying the rigour of the research and the citations, which is something that the indie author community needs more of, a topic I will revisit in 2026. I have found the topics fascinating, and the degree is a great way to expand my mind in a new direction, and distract me from the dramas of the author community. I'll be back into it in mid-January and will finish in September 2026. Book marketing. Not quite a fail but definitely lacklustre. I said I would “Do a monthly book marketing plan and organise paid ad campaigns per month for revolving first books in series and my main earners.” I didn't do this! I also said I would organise my Shopify stores, CreativePennBooks.com and JFPennBooks.com into more collections to make it easier for readers to find things they might want to buy. While I did change the theme of CreativePennBooks.com over to Impulse to make it easier to find collections, I haven't done much to reorganise or add new pathways through the books. I'm rolling this part of the goal into 2026. I said I would reinvigorate my content marketing for JFPenn, and make more of BooksAndTravel.page with links back to my stores, and do fiction specific content marketing with the aim of surfacing more in the LLMs as generative search expands. I did a number of episodes on Books and Travel in 2025, but once I started the Masters, I had to leave that aside, and although I have started some extra content on JFPennBooks.com, I am not overly enthusiastic about it! I also said I would “Leverage AI tools to achieve more as a one-person business.” I use AI tools (mainly ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini) every day for different things but as ever, I am pretty scatter gun about what I do. I lean into intuition and I love research so I am more likely to ask the AI tools to do a deep research report on south Pacific merfolk mythology, or how gothic architecture impacted sacred music, or geology and deep time, rather than asking for marketing hooks. I intended to use more AI for book marketing, but as ever, I was too optimistic about the timeline of what might be possible. There's lots you can do with prompting, finessing things and then posting on various platforms, but I'm not interested in spending time doing that. My gold standard for an AI assistant is to feed it the finished book and then say, “Here's a budget. Go market this,” and not have to connect lots of things together into some Frankenstein-workflow. That's not available yet. Maybe in 2026 … Of course, I still do book marketing. I have to in order to sell any books and make money from book sales. We all have to do some kind of book marketing! I have my Kickstarter launches which I put effort into, as well as consistent backlist sales fed by the podcast, and my email newsletter (my combined list is around 60K). I have auto campaigns running on Amazon Ads, and I have used Written Word Media campaigns as well as BookBub throughout the year. This is basically the minimum, so as usual, must do better! I'm pretty sure I'm not the only author saying this! However, my business has multiple streams of income, and I have the podcast sponsorship revenue as well as the Patreon, plus sporadic webinars, which add to my bottom line and don't require paid advertising at all. Reflections on my 50th year I woke up on my 50th birthday in March in Iceland, by the Black Church of Budir out on the Skaefellsnes peninsula. As seals played in the sea and we walked in the snow over the ancient lava field under the gaze of the volcano that inspired Jules Verne Journey to the Centre of the Earth, and my short story, The Black Church, which you can find in my collection, The Buried and the Drowned. On that trip, we also saw the northern lights and had a memorable trip that marked a real shift for me. I've been told by lots of people that 50 is a ‘proper' birthday, as in one of those that makes you stop and reconsider things, and it has indeed been that, although I have also found the last few years of perimenopause to be a large part of the change as well. A big shift is around priorities and not caring so much what other people think, which is a relief in many ways. Also, I don't have the patience to do things that I don't think are worth doing for the longer term, and I am appreciating a quieter life. I'd rather lie in a sunbeam and read with Cashew and Noisette next to me then create marketing assets or spend time on social media. I'd rather go for a walk with Jonathan than go to a conference or networking event. In my Pilgrimage memoir, I quote an anonymous source, “Pilgrim, pass by that which you do not love.” It's a powerful message, and I take it to mean, stop listening to people who tell you what is important. Listen to yourself more and only pay attention to that which you feel drawn to explore. On pilgrimage, it might be turning away from the supposedly important shrine of a saint to go and sit in nature and feel closer to God that way. In our author lives, it might be turning away from the things that just feel wrong for us, and leaning into what is enjoyable, that which feels worthwhile, that which we want to keep doing for the long term. Let's face it, as always, that is the writing, the thinking, the imagination. As ever, I have this mantra on my wall: “Measure your life by what you create.” It's the creation side of things that we love and that's what we need to remember when everything else gets a little much. Many authors left social media in 2025, and while I haven't left it altogether, I don't use it much. I post pictures proving I am human on Instagram @jfpennauthor which automatically post to Facebook. I barely check my pages on Facebook though. I'm also still on X with a carefully curated feed that I mainly use to learn new cool AI things which I share with my Patreon Community. Double down on being human. Travel and health. Yes, I am a human author, and yes, I continue to age! When you've been publishing a while, you need to update your author photos periodically and I finally had a photoshoot I loved with Betty Bhandari Photography, which means I can add the new pics to my websites and the back of my books. Are you up to date with your author photos? (or at least within a decade of the last photoshoot?!) Here are a few of the pictures on Instagram @jfpennauthor. Healthwise, I gave up calisthenics as it was too much on top of the powerlifting and the amount of walking I do. I did another British Powerlifting competition in September in the M2 category (based on age) and 63kgs category (based on weight). Deadlift: 95kgs. Squat: 60kgs. BenchPress: 37.5kgs. While this is less overall than last year, I also weigh less, so I'm actually stronger based on lift to body weight percentage. I have also done a few pull-ups in the last week with no band, which I am thrilled with! On the travel side, Iceland was the big trip, and I also had a weekend in Berlin for the film festival, where I met up with a producer and a director around an adaptation of my Day of the Vikings thriller. That didn't pan out, as most of these things don't, but I certainly learned a lot about the industry — and why it doesn't suit me! Once again, I dipped my toe into screenwriting and then ran away, as has happened multiple times over the years. When will I learn? … Over the summer of 2025, I visited lots of gothic cathedrals including Lichfield, Rochester, Durham, York, and revisiting Canterbury, as part of my book research for the Gothic Cathedral book. I have tens of thousands of words on this project, but it isn't ready yet, so this is carried over into 2026 as it might happen then, depending on the Masters. I spoke at Author Nation in Las Vegas in November 2025, and before it started, I visited (Lower) Antelope Canyon, one of the places on my bucket list, and it did not disappoint. What a special place and no doubt it will appear in a story at some point! How did your 2025 go? I hope your 2025 had some wonderful times as well as no doubt some challenges — and that you have time for reflection as the year turns once more. Let me know in the comments whether you achieved your creative goals and any other reflections you'd like to share.The post Review Of My 2025 Creative And Business Goals With Joanna Penn first appeared on The Creative Penn.

As 2025 comes to a close, consumer AI is entering a new phase. A small number of products now dominate everyday use, multimodal models have unlocked entirely new creative workflows, and the big labs have pushed aggressively into consumer experiences. At the same time, it is becoming clearer which ideas actually changed user behavior and which ones did not.In this episode, a16z consumer investors Anish Acharya, Olivia Moore, Justine Moore, and Bryan Kim look back at the biggest product and model shifts of 2025 and then look ahead to what 2026 may bring. They discuss why consumer AI appears to be trending toward winner-take-most, how subtle product design choices can matter more than raw model quality, and why templates, multimodality, and distribution are shaping the next wave of consumer products.Where do startups still have room to win? How will the role of the big labs continue to change? And what will it actually take for consumer AI apps to break out at scale in 2026? Resources:Follow Anish: https://x.com/illscienceFollow Olivia: https://x.com/omooretweetsFollow Justine: https://x.com/venturetwinsFollow Bryan: https://x.com/kirbyman01 Stay Updated: If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, subscribe, and share with your friends!Find a16z on X: https://x.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/id842818711Follow our host: https://x.com/eriktorenbergPlease 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.

It's that magical time of year once again — highlightapalooza! Stick around for one top bit from each episode we recorded this year, including:Kyle Fish explaining how Anthropic's AI Claude descends into spiritual woo when left to talk to itselfIan Dunt on why the unelected House of Lords is by far the best part of the British governmentSam Bowman's strategy to get NIMBYs to love it when things get built next to their housesBuck Shlegeris on how to get an AI model that wants to seize control to accidentally help you foil its plans…as well as 18 other top observations and arguments from the past year of the show.Links to learn more, video, and full transcript: https://80k.info/best25It's been another year of living through history, whether we asked for it or not. Luisa and Rob will be back in 2026 to help you make sense of whatever comes next — as Earth continues its indifferent journey through the cosmos, now accompanied by AI systems that can summarise our meetings and generate adequate birthday messages for colleagues we barely know.Chapters:Cold open (00:00:00)Rob's intro (00:02:35)Helen Toner on whether we're racing China to build AGI (00:03:43)Hugh White on what he'd say to Americans (00:06:09)Buck Shlegeris on convincing AI models they've already escaped (00:12:09)Paul Scharre on a personal experience in Afghanistan that influenced his views on autonomous weapons (00:15:10)Ian Dunt on how unelected septuagenarians are the heroes of UK governance (00:19:06)Beth Barnes on AI companies being locally reasonable, but globally reckless (00:24:27)Tyler Whitmer on one thing the California and Delaware attorneys general forced on the OpenAI for-profit as part of their restructure (00:28:02)Toby Ord on whether rich people will get access to AGI first (00:30:13)Andrew Snyder-Beattie on how the worst biorisks are defence dominant (00:34:24)Eileen Yam on the most eye-watering gaps in opinions about AI between experts and the US public (00:39:41)Will MacAskill on what a century of history crammed into a decade might feel like (00:44:07)Kyle Fish on what happens when two instances of Claude are left to interact with each other (00:49:08)Sam Bowman on where the Not In My Back Yard movement actually has a point (00:56:29)Neel Nanda on how mechanistic interpretability is trying to be the biology of AI (01:03:12)Tom Davidson on the potential to install secret AI loyalties at a very early stage (01:07:19)Luisa and Rob discussing how medicine doesn't take the health burden of pregnancy seriously enough (01:10:53)Marius Hobbhahn on why scheming is a very natural path for AI models — and people (01:16:23)Holden Karnofsky on lessons for AI regulation drawn from successful farm animal welfare advocacy (01:21:29)Allan Dafoe on how AGI is an inescapable idea but one we have to define well (01:26:19)Ryan Greenblatt on the most likely ways for AI to take over (01:29:35)Updates Daniel Kokotajlo has made to his forecasts since writing and publishing the AI 2027 scenario (01:32:47)Dean Ball on why regulation invites path dependency, and that's a major problem (01:37:21)Video and audio editing: Dominic Armstrong, Milo McGuire, Luke Monsour, and Simon MonsourMusic: CORBITCoordination, transcripts, and web: Katy Moore

Anthropic's Tobias Harrison Noonan shares the enterprise AI playbook: why coding leads to broader AI adoption, practical tips for getting started, and why you shouldn't wait for perfection.Topics Include:Tobias from Anthropic's Applied AI team discusses enterprise AI adoption trends and insights.Anthropic founded four years ago balancing AI safety mission with world's most intelligent models.Remarkable velocity: Claude 3.7 and Claude Code both shipped just in 2025 alone.Three-layer partnership: foundation models, enterprise capabilities, and end-user platforms like Claude Code.Anthropic leads in agentic coding for eighteen months, now number one enterprise AI market share.Claude Opus 4.5 launched last week, again tops software engineering benchmark for complex tasks.Claude Code enables thirty-hour autonomous coding sessions, ships features five times faster than before.Next frontier expands beyond coding into data-heavy knowledge work like financial and legal analysis.AI adoption maturity curve: employee workflows, internal processes, core products, then AI-native products.Thomson Reuters started with Claude Code for development team doing code modernization and refactoring.They expanded to Claude.ai for sales, marketing, and finance teams after seeing tangible ROI.Built Claude into core products including co-counsel legal platform and fraud prevention systems strategically.Today Thomson Reuters has eight different product lines powered by Claude across their portfolio.AWS partnership offers safe, secure, scalable deployment from POC to production in existing environments.Don't wait for perfection: AI today is dumbest it'll ever be, start prototyping now.Participants:Tobias Harrison-Noonan: Member of Technical Staff, AnthropicSee how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/

One year ago, Anthropic launched the Model Context Protocol (MCP)—a simple, open standard to connect AI applications to the data and tools they need. Today, MCP has exploded from a local-only experiment into the de facto protocol for agentic systems, adopted by OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Block, and hundreds of enterprises building internal agents at scale. And now, MCP is joining the newly formed Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF) under the Linux Foundation, alongside Block's Goose coding agent, with founding members spanning the biggest names in AI and cloud infrastructure. We sat down with David Soria Parra (MCP lead, Anthropic), Nick Cooper (OpenAI), Brad Howes (Block / Goose), and Jim Zemlin (Linux Foundation CEO) to dig into the one-year journey of MCP—from Thanksgiving hacking sessions and the first remote authentication spec to long-running tasks, MCP Apps, and the rise of agent-to-agent communication—and the behind-the-scenes story of how three competitive AI labs came together to donate their protocols and agents to a neutral foundation, why enterprises are deploying MCP servers faster than anyone expected (most of it invisible, internal, and at massive scale), what it takes to design a protocol that works for both simple tool calls and complex multi-agent orchestration, how the foundation will balance taste-making (curating meaningful projects) with openness (avoiding vendor lock-in), and the 2025 vision: MCP as the communication layer for asynchronous, long-running agents that work while you sleep, discover and install their own tools, and unlock the next order of magnitude in AI productivity. We discuss: The one-year MCP journey: from local stdio servers to remote HTTP streaming, OAuth 2.1 authentication (and the enterprise lessons learned), long-running tasks, and MCP Apps (iframes for richer UI) Why MCP adoption is exploding internally at enterprises: invisible, internal servers connecting agents to Slack, Linear, proprietary data, and compliance-heavy workflows (financial services, healthcare) The authentication evolution: separating resource servers from identity providers, dynamic client registration, and why the March spec wasn't enterprise-ready (and how June fixed it) How Anthropic dogfoods MCP: internal gateway, custom servers for Slack summaries and employee surveys, and why MCP was born from "how do I scale dev tooling faster than the company grows?" Tasks: the new primitive for long-running, asynchronous agent operations—why tools aren't enough, how tasks enable deep research and agent-to-agent handoffs, and the design choice to make tasks a "container" (not just async tools) MCP Apps: why iframes, how to handle styles and branding, seat selection and shopping UIs as the killer use case, and the collaboration with OpenAI to build a common standard The registry problem: official registry vs. curated sub-registries (Smithery, GitHub), trust levels, model-driven discovery, and why MCP needs "npm for agents" (but with signatures and HIPAA/financial compliance) The founding story of AAIF: how Anthropic, OpenAI, and Block came together (spoiler: they didn't know each other were talking to Linux Foundation), why neutrality matters, and how Jim Zemlin has never seen this much day-one inbound interest in 22 years — David Soria Parra (Anthropic / MCP) MCP: https://modelcontextprotocol.io https://uk.linkedin.com/in/david-soria-parra-4a78b3a https://x.com/dsp_ Nick Cooper (OpenAI) X: https://x.com/nicoaicopr Brad Howes (Block / Goose) Goose: https://github.com/block/goose Jim Zemlin (Linux Foundation) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zemlin/ Agentic AI Foundation https://agenticai.foundation Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction: MCP's First Year and Foundation Launch 00:01:17 MCP's Journey: From Launch to Industry Standard 00:02:06 Protocol Evolution: Remote Servers and Authentication 00:08:52 Enterprise Authentication and Financial Services 00:11:42 Transport Layer Challenges: HTTP Streaming and Scalability 00:15:37 Standards Development: Collaboration with Tech Giants 00:34:27 Long-Running Tasks: The Future of Async Agents 00:30:41 Discovery and Registries: Building the MCP Ecosystem 00:30:54 MCP Apps and UI: Beyond Text Interfaces 00:26:55 Internal Adoption: How Anthropic Uses MCP 00:23:15 Skills vs MCP: Complementary Not Competing 00:36:16 Community Events and Enterprise Learnings 01:03:31 Foundation Formation: Why Now and Why Together 01:07:38 Linux Foundation Partnership: Structure and Governance 01:11:13 Goose as Reference Implementation 01:17:28 Principles Over Roadmaps: Composability and Quality 01:21:02 Foundation Value Proposition: Why Contribute 01:27:49 Practical Investments: Events, Tools, and Community 01:34:58 Looking Ahead: Async Agents and Real Impact

Mostly Growth on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MostlyGrowthMostly Growth on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mostly-growth/id1842238102Mostly Growth on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3KDtaLaXx1obFp5PUhZ6V3In this year-end episode of Mostly Growth, CJ Gustafson, Kyle Poyar, and Ben Hillman reflect on what it actually takes to build a modern media business around newsletters and podcasts. They unpack CJ's first year going full-time, comparing creative intuition versus metric-driven operating styles, and discuss what content truly drives growth. The conversation also covers distribution dynamics, the emotional reality of unsubscribes and burnout, and closes with a candid look at monetization, team building, and the tradeoffs between simplicity and scale.—SPONSORS:Pulley is the cap table management platform built for CFOs and finance leaders who need reliable, audit-ready data and intuitive workflows, without the hidden fees or unreliable support. Switch in as little as 5 days and get 25% off your first year: https://pulley.com/mostlymetricsMetronome is real-time billing built for modern software companies. Metronome turns raw usage events into accurate invoices, gives customers bills they actually understand, and keeps finance, product, and engineering perfectly in sync. That's why category-defining companies like OpenAI and Anthropic trust Metronome to power usage-based pricing and enterprise contracts at scale. Focus on your product — not your billing. Learn more and get started at https://www.metronome.com—LINKS:Mostly Metrics: https://www.mostlymetrics.comCJ on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cj-gustafson-13140948/Growth Unhinged: https://www.growthunhinged.com/Kyle on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyle-poyar/Slacker Stuff: https://www.slackerstuff.com/Ben on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/slackerstuff/https://www.growthunhinged.com/p/deep-research-for-gtmhttps://www.growthunhinged.com/p/2025-state-of-b2b-gtm-reporthttps://www.mostlymetrics.com/p/presenting-the-state-of-the-agentic-financial-stackhttps://www.mostlymetrics.com/p/the-great-ai-arr-illusionhttps://www.mostlymetrics.com/p/presenting-the-2025-tech-stack-reporthttps://www.mostlymetrics.com/p/download-the-annual-planning-biblehttps://www.growthunhinged.com/p/how-to-sell-annual-planshttps://www.growthunhinged.com/p/get-recommended-by-chatgpthttps://www.growthunhinged.com/p/gtm-vibecoding-ideashttps://www.growthunhinged.com/p/how-to-use-ai-agents-for-marketing—RELATED EPISODES:We get roasted for swag and drop some GTM goldhttps://youtu.be/uubf_8al95wDo vanity plates bring serious business?https://youtu.be/Cm1rubFb-kgPricing in the Real World: Babies, Bots, and Billinghttps://youtu.be/T1cjFSZR0k0—TIMESTAMPS:00:00:00 Preview and Intro00:01:52 Sponsors — Pulley | Metronome00:04:12 Action Figure Swag and Year-in-Review Setup00:05:47 Going Full-Time and the First-Year Reality Check00:07:24 Writing Schedules, Creative Work, and Time Optimization00:09:16 Writing Speed, Craft, and the Myth That Time Equals Quality00:10:51 Perfectionism vs. Throughput in Newsletter Writing00:13:03 Creator Burnout, Motivation, and Engagement Anxiety00:14:08 Playing the Long Game vs. Obsessing Over Metrics00:15:42 Best Work of the Year and High-Leverage Content Bets00:17:55 Big Research Reports as Career-Defining Projects00:19:19 When Memes Outperform Deep Work00:19:52 LinkedIn Algorithms vs. Content Quality00:20:51 Writing for the Feed vs. Writing to Think00:22:03 Optimizing LinkedIn Profiles for Credibility00:23:47 Subscriber Growth, Audience Quality, and Churn Reality00:27:20 Reports and Research as Growth Engines00:28:37 Tactical “How-To” Content That Actually Converts00:30:21 Tactical Value Beats Sounding Smart00:30:40 Building a Team and Scaling Beyond a Solopreneur00:32:05 Simplicity vs. Scale in Early Business Decisions00:35:37 Avoiding Boredom and Shiny Object Syndrome00:37:12 Balancing Writing, Consulting, and Energy00:37:54 Making the Leap Financially as a Creator00:39:01 Subscriptions vs. Advertising as the Real Business Model#MostlyGrowthPodcast #CreatorEconomy #IndependentCreator #NewsletterBusiness #YearInReview This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cjgustafson.substack.com

This week, Brian Gracely joins to dissect strategic choices made by Broadcom, Docker, Netflix and Intel. Plus: The AI Bifurcation—are models commodities or product pillars? Rundown Licensing in VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 (https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2025/06/24/licensing-in-vmware-cloud-foundation-9-0/) Hardened Images for Everyone (https://www.docker.com/blog/docker-hardened-images-for-every-developer/) Introducing Chainguard EmeritOSS (https://www.chainguard.dev/unchained/introducing-chainguard-emeritoss) Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros. (https://about.netflix.com/en/news/netflix-to-acquire-warner-bros) Anthropic reportedly preparing for one of the largest IPOs (https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/03/anthropic-claude-reportedly-preparing-ipo-race-openai-chatgpt-ft-wilson-sonsini-goodrich-rosati.html) Conferences cfgmgmtcamp 2026 (https://cfgmgmtcamp.org/ghent2026/), February 2nd to 4th, Ghent, BE. Coté speaking and doing live SDI (https://www.softwaredefinedinterviews.com) with John Willis. DevOpsDayLA at SCALE23x (https://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale/23x), March 6th, Pasadena, CA Use code: DEVOP for 50% off. Devnexus 2026 (https://devnexus.com), March 4th to 6th, Atlanta, GA. Whole bunch of VMUGs, mostly in the US. The CFPs are open (https://app.sessionboard.com/submit/vmug-call-for-content-2026/ae1c7013-8b85-427c-9c21-7d35f8701bbe?utm_campaign=5766542-VMUG%20Voice&utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_YREN7dr6p3KSQPYkFSN5K85A-pIVYZ03ZhKZOV0O3t3h0XHdDHethhx5O8gBFguyT5mZ3n3q-ZnPKvjllFXYfWV3thg&_hsmi=393690000&utm_content=393685389&utm_source=hs_email), go speak at them! Coté speaking in Amsterdam. Amsterdam (March 17-19, 2026), Minneapolis (April 7-9, 2026), Toronto (May 12-14, 2026), Dallas (June 9-11, 2026), Orlando (October 20-22, 2026) SDT News & Community Join our Slack community (https://softwaredefinedtalk.slack.com/join/shared_invite/zt-1hn55iv5d-UTfN7mVX1D9D5ExRt3ZJYQ#/shared-invite/email) Email the show: questions@softwaredefinedtalk.com (mailto:questions@softwaredefinedtalk.com) Free stickers: Email your address to stickers@softwaredefinedtalk.com (mailto:stickers@softwaredefinedtalk.com) Follow us on social media: Twitter (https://twitter.com/softwaredeftalk), Threads (https://www.threads.net/@softwaredefinedtalk), Mastodon (https://hachyderm.io/@softwaredefinedtalk), LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/software-defined-talk/), BlueSky (https://bsky.app/profile/softwaredefinedtalk.com) Watch us on: Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/sdtpodcast), YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi3OJPV6h9tp-hbsGBLGsDQ/featured), Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/softwaredefinedtalk/), TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@softwaredefinedtalk) Book offer: Use code SDT for $20 off "Digital WTF" by Coté (https://leanpub.com/digitalwtf/c/sdt) Sponsor the show (https://www.softwaredefinedtalk.com/ads): ads@softwaredefinedtalk.com (mailto:ads@softwaredefinedtalk.com) Photo Credits Header (https://unsplash.com/photos/university-of-alabama-football-game-tuscaloosa-alabama-YcVe7gL9A0s) Special Guest: Brian Gracely.

Note: Steve and Gene's talk on Vibe Coding and the post IDE world was one of the top talks of AIE CODE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Dtu2bilcFs&t=1019s&pp=0gcJCU0KAYcqIYzv From building legendary platforms at Google and Amazon to authoring one of the most influential essays on AI-powered development (Revenge of the Junior Developer, quoted by Dario Amodei himself), Steve Yegge has spent decades at the frontier of software engineering—and now he's leading the charge into what he calls the "factory farming" era of code. After stints at SourceGraph and building Beads (a purely vibe-coded issue tracker with tens of thousands of users), Steve co-authored The Vibe Coding Book and is now building VC (VibeCoder), an agent orchestration dashboard designed to move developers from writing code to managing fleets of AI agents that coordinate, parallelize, and ship features while you sleep. We sat down with Steve at AI Engineer Summit to dig into why Claude Code, Cursor, and the entire 2024 stack are already obsolete, what it actually takes to trust an agent after 2,000 hours of practice (hint: they will delete your production database if you anthropomorphize them), why the real skill is no longer writing code but orchestrating agents like a NASCAR pit crew, how merging has become the new wall that every 10x-productive team is hitting (and why one company's solution is literally "one engineer per repo"), the rise of multi-agent workflows where agents reserve files, message each other via MCP, and coordinate like a little village, why Steve believes if you're still using an IDE to write code by January 1st, you're a bad engineer, how the 12–15 year experience bracket is the most resistant demographic (and why their identity is tied to obsolete workflows), the hidden chaos inside OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google as they scale at breakneck speed, why rewriting from scratch is now faster than refactoring for a growing class of codebases, and his 2025 prediction: we're moving from subsistence agriculture to John Deere-scale factory farming of code, and the Luddite backlash is only just beginning. We discuss: Why Claude Code, Cursor, and agentic coding tools are already last year's tech—and what comes next: agent orchestration dashboards where you manage fleets, not write lines The 2,000-hour rule: why it takes a full year of daily use before you can predict what an LLM will do, and why trust = predictability, not capability Steve's hot take: if you're still using an IDE to develop code by January 1st, 2025, you're a bad engineer—because the abstraction layer has moved from models to full-stack agents The demographic most resistant to vibe coding: 12–15 years of experience, senior engineers whose identity is tied to the way they work today, and why they're about to become the interns Why anthropomorphizing LLMs is the biggest mistake: the "hot hand" fallacy, agent amnesia, and how Steve's agent once locked him out of prod by changing his password to "fix" a problem Should kids learn to code? Steve's take: learn to vibe code—understand functions, classes, architecture, and capabilities in a language-neutral way, but skip the syntax The 2025 vision: "factory farming of code" where orchestrators run Cloud Code, scrub output, plan-implement-review-test in loops, and unlock programming for non-programmers at scale — Steve Yegge X: https://x.com/steve_yegge Substack (Stevie's Tech Talks): https://steve-yegge.medium.com/ GitHub (VC / VibeCoder): https://github.com/yegge-labs Where to find Latent Space X: https://x.com/latentspacepod Substack: https://www.latent.space/ Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction: Steve Yegge on Vibe Coding and AI Engineering 00:00:59 The Backlash: Who Resists Vibe Coding and Why 00:04:26 The 2000 Hour Rule: Building Trust with AI Coding Tools 00:03:31 The January 1st Deadline: IDEs Are Becoming Obsolete 00:02:55 10X Productivity at OpenAI: The Performance Review Problem 00:07:49 The Hot Hand Fallacy: When AI Agents Betray Your Trust 00:11:12 Claude Code Isn't It: The Need for Agent Orchestration 00:15:20 The Orchestrator Revolution: From Cloud Code to Agent Villages 00:18:46 The Merge Wall: The Biggest Unsolved Problem in AI Coding 00:26:33 Never Rewrite Your Code - Until Now: Joel Spolsky Was Wrong 00:22:43 Factory Farming Code: The John Deere Era of Software 00:29:27 Google's Gemini Turnaround and the AI Lab Chaos 00:33:20 Should Your Kids Learn to Code? The New Answer 00:34:59 Code MCP and the Gossip Rate: Latest Vibe Coding Discoveries

On this episode of the Self-Publishing with ALLi podcast, Dan Holloway closes out 2025 by examining Amazon's new "Ask This Book" AI feature for Kindle and the backlash over its always-on use with no author opt-out. He reflects on a year shaped by AI controversies, including the Anthropic class action, contrasts Amazon's approach with Spotify's push for greater transparency, and looks at wider industry shifts, from romance's continued dominance to the rise of Bookshop.org as a meaningful alternative for both print and e-book sales. Sponsor Self-Publishing News is proudly sponsored by PublishMe—helping indie authors succeed globally with expert translation, tailored marketing, and publishing support. From first draft to international launch, PublishMe ensures your book reaches readers everywhere. Visit publishme.me. Find more author advice, tips, and tools at our Self-publishing Author Advice Center, with a huge archive of nearly 2,000 blog posts and a handy search box to find key info on the topic you need. And, if you haven't already, we invite you to join our organization and become a self-publishing ally. About the Host Dan Holloway is a novelist, poet, and spoken word artist. He is the MC of the performance arts show The New Libertines, He competed at the National Poetry Slam final at the Royal Albert Hall. His latest collection, The Transparency of Sutures, is available on Kindle.

Hey smarties! We're taking a short break for the holidays. So today, we're revisiting one of our favorite episodes from 2025. Enjoy!Today we're diving into the business of music. Trapital founder Dan Runcie joins Kimberly to explain what Anthropic's recent copyright settlement with authors could mean for record labels who've sued AI companies, the “fair use” debates dominating the music industry, and why even the biggest stars are struggling to create chart-toppers these days. Plus, we'll celebrate a win from one of our listeners.

Hey smarties! We're taking a short break for the holidays. So today, we're revisiting one of our favorite episodes from 2025. Enjoy!Today we're diving into the business of music. Trapital founder Dan Runcie joins Kimberly to explain what Anthropic's recent copyright settlement with authors could mean for record labels who've sued AI companies, the “fair use” debates dominating the music industry, and why even the biggest stars are struggling to create chart-toppers these days. Plus, we'll celebrate a win from one of our listeners.

In the biggest, most shameless holiday name-drop of the year, Katie and Danny bring you – in no particular order – insights from Sam Altman of OpenAI, AMD's Lisa Su, Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski, Satya Nadella from Microsoft, Matthew Prince of Cloudflare, Arthur Mensch of Mistral AI, Sir Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind, Marc Benioff from Salesforce, and Anthropic's Dario Amodei.A whole smattering of billionaires, with a Nobel laureate mixed in too. So, what have they all told us about the AI rollout and what it really means? This is the first of a two-part Christmas extravaganza, where we look back at the world of AI covered on the pod with more than a year's worth of big-tech leaders returning to help us distinguish the potential of AI from the reality. (Just don't mention the B-word!) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our 229th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!Recorded on 12/19/2025Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie HarrisFeel free to email us your questions and feedback at contact@lastweekinai.com and/or hello@gladstone.aiRead out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/In this episode:Notable releases include OpenAI's GPT-5.2 Codex for advanced coding and Google's Gemini Free Flash for competitive AI application performance. Nvidia's new open-source Trion-3 models also showcase impressive benchmarks.Funding updates highlight Lovable's $330M Series B, valuing the AI coding startup at $6.6B, and Faya's $140M Series D for AI model hosting, valued at $4.5B.China makes significant strides in semiconductor technology with advances in EUV lithography machines, led by Huawei and SMIC, potentially disrupting global chip manufacturing dominance.Key safety and policy updates include OpenAI's GPT-5.2 system card focusing on biosecurity and cybersecurity risks, while Google partners with the US military to power a new AI platform with Gemini models.Timestamps:(00:00:10) Intro / Banter(00:02:09) News PreviewTools & Apps(00:02:56) Google launches Gemini 3 Flash, makes it the default model in the Gemini app | TechCrunch(00:10:13) ChatGPT launches an app store, lets developers know it's open for business | TechCrunch(00:13:35) Introducing GPT-5.2-Codex | OpenAI(00:19:23) Story about OpenAI release - GPT image 1.5(00:22:27) Meta partners with ElevenLabs to power AI audio across Instagram, Horizon - The Economic TimesApplications & Business(00:23:16) OpenAI to End Equity Vesting Period for Employees, WSJ Says(00:28:20) How China built its ‘Manhattan Project' to rival the West in AI chips(00:36:47) China's Huawei, SMIC Make Progress With Chips, Report Finds(00:41:03) OpenAI in Talks to Raise At Least $10 Billion From Amazon and Use Its AI Chips(00:43:32) Amazon has a new leader for its ‘AGI' group as it plays catch-up on AI | The Verge(00:47:27) Broadcom reveals its mystery $10 billion customer is Anthropic(00:49:12) Vibe-coding startup Lovable raises $330M at a $6.6B valuation | TechCrunch(00:50:38) Fal nabs $140M in fresh funding led by Sequoia, tripling valuation to $4.5B | TechCrunchProjects & Open Source(00:51:10) Nvidia Becomes a Major Model Maker With Nemotron 3 | WIRED(00:59:24) Meta introduces new SAM AI able to isolate and edit audio • The Register(00:59:54) [2512.14856] T5Gemma 2: Seeing, Reading, and Understanding Longer(01:03:10) Anthropic makes agent Skills an open standard - SiliconANGLEResearch & Advancements(01:03:47) Budget-Aware Tool-Use Enables Effective Agent Scaling(01:08:21) Rethinking Thinking Tokens: LLMs as Improvement Operators(01:10:50) What if AI capabilities suddenly accelerated in 2027? How would the world know?Policy & Safety(01:12:58) Update to GPdfT-5 System Card: GPT-5.2(01:18:04) Neural Chameleons: Language Models Can Learn to Hide Their Thoughts from Unseen Activation Monitors(01:20:47) Async Control: Stress-testing Asynchronous Control Measures for LLM Agents(01:24:37) Google is powering a new US military AI platform | The VergeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Anthropic CPO and Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger joins the AI Daily Brief to talk about the rise of vibe coding, why coding agents quietly became the breakout AI use case of 2025, and how enterprises are beginning to move from chatbots to real workload-taking agents. The conversation explores how tools like Claude Code escaped the developer box, what it takes to design products for capabilities that don't fully exist yet, and why 2026 may be the year AI starts reliably taking work off people's plates inside large organizations at Anthropic. Brought to you by:KPMG – Discover how AI is transforming possibility into reality. Tune into the new KPMG 'You Can with AI' podcast and unlock insights that will inform smarter decisions inside your enterprise. Listen now and start shaping your future with every episode. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.kpmg.us/AIpodcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Blitzy.com - Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://blitzy.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to build enterprise software in days, not months Robots & Pencils - Cloud-native AI solutions that power results ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://robotsandpencils.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Agent Readiness Audit from Superintelligent - Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://besuper.ai/ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠to request your company's agent readiness score.The AI Daily Brief helps you understand the most important news and discussions in AI. Subscribe to the podcast version of The AI Daily Brief wherever you listen: https://pod.link/1680633614Interested in sponsoring the show? sponsors@aidailybrief.ai

Reed Albergotti is the technology editor at Semafor. Albergotti joins Big Technology Podcast to break down which companies are best positioned in the coming year. We cover Meta's superintelligence gamble, Google's Gemini push, OpenAI's model race, and the rise of AI companions. We also discuss Tesla's self-driving moment of truth, Nvidia's upside and risks, Microsoft's Copilot dilemma, big media and streaming shake-ups, Anthropic's IPO prospects, SPACs and private equity, quantum, and the strange new love stories people are forming with their bots. Hit play for a fast, prediction-packed tour through the year in tech—and a sharp, entertaining look at where the AI economy and Big Tech are headed next. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're winding down for the year?

In this edition of It's A Trenderful Life, Jack and Miles discuss Trump's very sweaty address to the nation, Joe Biden's photo in the Hall of Presidents, Anthropic's AI running a vending machine (into the ground), John Travolta's weird case (feat Riley Keough), Jimmy Stewart's new biopic and much more!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.