I... uh... I think I wrote a manifesto.| whatwelost.substack.com
In the last week, we’ve had no less than three different pieces asking whether the massive proliferation of data centers is a massive bubble, and though they, at times, seem to take the default position of AI’s inevitable value, they’ve begun to sour on the idea that| Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
Hey! Before we go any further — if you want to support my work, please sign up for the premium version of Where’s Your Ed At, it’s a $7-a-month (or $70-a-year) paid product where every week you get a premium newsletter, all while supporting my free work too. Also,| Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
Remember when technology felt like magic? Long before the sleek, genius-staffed Apple Store, before soulless big-box electronics warehouses, before the in...| BEEW
Have you ever heard Sam Altman speak? I’m serious, have you ever heard this man say words from his mouth? Here is but one of the trenchant insights from Sam Altman in his agonizing 37-minute-long podcast conversation with his brother Jack Altman from last week: “I think there will| Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
Soundtrack: Queens of the Stone Age - Villains of Circumstance Listen to my podcast Better Offline if you haven't already. I want my fucking tech industry back. Maybe you think I sound insane, but technology means a lot to me. It’s the way that I speak to most of| Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
Fair warning: this is the longest thing I've written on this newsletter. I do apologize. Soundtrack: EL-P - $4 Vic Listen to my podcast Better Offline. We have merch. Last week, Bloomberg profiled Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, revealing that he's either a liar or a specific kind of idiot. The| Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
Like this newsletter? Why not listen to the podcast version on Better Offline? Part 1 is out now (here're other links), and Part 2 comes out Friday May 2nd! I'm sick and god-damn tired of this! I have written tens of thousands of words about this and still, to this| Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
A few months ago, Casey Newton of Platformer ran a piece called "The phony comforts of AI skepticism," framing those who would criticize generative AI as "having fun," damning them as "hyper-fixated on the things [AI] can't do." I am not going to focus too hard on this blog, in| Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
Soundtrack: Bad Religion — The Resist Stance A great deal of what I write feels like narrating the end of the world — watching as the growth-at-all-costs, hyper-financialized Rot Economy seemingly tarnishes every corner of our digital lives. My core frustration isn't just how shitty things have gotten, but how said shittiness| Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
Soundtrack: The Hives — Hate To Say I Told You So In the last week or so, but especially over the weekend, the entire generative AI industry has been thrown into chaos. This won’t be a lengthy, technical write-up — although there will be some inevitable technical complexities, just because the| Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
In the last week we've seen the emergence of the true Meta — and the true Mark Zuckerberg — as the company ended its fact-checking program, claiming that (and I quote) "fact checkers have been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they've created" on both Instagram and Facebook, the| Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
Two queer men are at their wits' end trying to find people to date and the apps are of no use. Where should they be looking for love?| Paging Dr. NerdLove
In the last year, I’ve spent about 200,000 words on a kind of personal journey where I’ve tried again and again to work out why everything digital feels so broken, and why it seems to keep getting worse, despite what tech’s “brightest” minds might promise. More| Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
Before we get going — please enjoy my speech from Web Summit, Why Are All Tech Products Now Shit? I didn’t write the title. What if what we're seeing today isn't a glimpse of the future, but the new terms of the present? What if artificial intelligence isn't actually capable| Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
Soundtrack: Post Pop Depression - Paraguay I haven't wanted to write much in the last week. Seemingly every single person on Earth with a blog has tried to drill down into what happened on November 5 — to find the people to blame, to somehow explain what could've been done differently,| Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
Buried in the 8000 words I wrote last week was a worrying story — that Microsoft considered drastic measures to free up capacity in its US-based servers for GPUs to power the AI boom. In an email shared with me by a source from earlier this year, Microsoft's senior leadership team| Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
Many people, save for perhaps artists, lack the transcendent in their lives, which is precisely the reason they're depressed, anxious and lack direction| www.hottakes.space
A few months ago, OpenAI showed off “Sora,” a product that can generate videos based on a short prompt, much like ChatGPT does for text or DALL-E does for images, and I asked myself a pretty simple question: "...how can someone actually make something useful out of this?" and "how| Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
As I wrote a year ago in The Rot Economy (and as I argued on the first episode of my podcast Better Offline), I believe that both public and private markets have become decoupled from the concept of "good business," ruled instead by a hunger for the eternal growth of| Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
Editor’s Note: Due to the length of this piece, you may need to click a button to read the whole thing in your email. Sorry! On Friday, Sam Altman was unceremoniously fired as CEO of OpenAI, with the board citing that he was “not consistently candid with his communications…hindering [the board’s] ability to exercise its responsibilities.” Greg Brockman, then-President and board member,| Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At