Sierra CEO Bret Taylor on why the AI bubble feels like the dotcom boom
Welcome to Decoder. This is Alex Heath. For my final episode as your Thursday guest host, I recently sat down with Bret Taylor, the CEO of AI startup Sierra and the chairman of OpenAI, for a live event in San Francisco, California, hosted by Alix Partners. Very few people have seen the tech industry up […]
The Long Walk is a dystopian slog where brutality is the main point
When Stephen King's The Long Walk was first published in 1979, dystopian young adult fiction had not yet become a wildly popular genre. With all of its gore and brutality, King's novel wasn't really meant for children. But in the book's story about disillusioned youths being made to march through wastelands as a form of […]
Nothing’s Ear 3 earbuds have a microphone and ‘talk’ button on their charging case
Nothing shared the first full image of its next wireless earbuds today. The design of the new Ear 3 earbuds and their charging case appear very similar to the Ear 2 that debuted in 2023, but Nothing has revealed that the case is now partly made of 100 percent recycled anodized aluminum. For the first […]
Sega reportedly called police after mistakenly scrapping Nintendo dev kits
A UK-based video game reseller claims Sega was behind a police raid that seized a trove of Nintendo development kits from his home, according to a report from Time Extension. The seller, who reportedly purchased the collection from a scrapyard, accuses Sega of getting the police involved to recover the dev kits after mistakenly throwing […]
Microsoft 365 Copilot bundles sales, service, and finance Copilots in October
I exclusively reported last week that Microsoft was about to shake up its Microsoft 365 Copilot pricing, and now the company has officially revealed that its sales, service, and finance Copilots are being bundled into Microsoft 365 Copilot. Microsoft currently offers business Copilot access for $30 per user per month, and if you want the […]
Meet R1, a Chinese tech giant’s rival to Tesla’s Optimus robot
Chinese tech behemoth Ant Group, which owns payment platform Alipay, has been showing off its first humanoid robot at tech conferences this month. It joins a growing wave of companies carving out space along a fresh frontier in automation by combining artificial intelligence with physical tech. Videos and news reports show Robbyant’s R1 robot cooking […]
Borderlands 4 turns off your brain and turns on the fun
I love me a stupid-ass action movie. Something where the plot is thin while the muscles and accents on all the henchmen are thick as hell. Think Broken Arrow or Eraser - movies that were artistically and sometimes commercially terrible but nevertheless thrilling watches that you forgot about almost immediately after leaving the theater. Borderlands […]
David Zaslav thinks HBO Max is ‘way underpriced’
Everyone’s favorite CEO, Warner Bros. Discovery head David Zaslav, thinks HBO Max is ripe for a price hike. Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia and Technology Conference (doesn’t that sound like a fun time?) Zaslav argued that his company’s premium output can command a premium price. “The fact that this is quality — and that’s […]
How platforms are responding to the Charlie Kirk shooting
Horrifying videos of influencer and right-wing activist Charlie Kirk being fatally shot were widely available on social media platforms. We’ve reached out to some of the platforms to ask how they will be treating the videos and charged posts about the shooting. So far, we’re aware of responses from Bluesky, Meta, and YouTube. Bluesky: Meta: […]
OpenAI reportedly signs $300 billion Project Stargate cloud deal with Oracle
OpenAI and Oracle signed a deal “to purchase $300 billion in computing power over roughly five years,” one of the largest cloud computing deals ever, reports the Wall Street Journal. In July, the two companies revealed their partnership to build data centers worth 4.5 gigawatts of power as part of the broader Stargate project they […]