These plain-text websites will simplify your internet experience
Here’s the sad truth about sports score apps: Most of them aren’t all that interested in actually telling you the score. After all, where’s the money in providing straightforward…
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Microsoft and OpenAI's AGI Fight Is Bigger Than a Contract
I first learned about The Clause from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. During an interview with him in May 2023, I asked about the deal between Microsoft and OpenAI that granted his company…
What Big Tech's Band of Execs Will Do in the Army
When I read a tweet about four noted Silicon Valley executives being inducted into a special detachment of the United States Army Reserve, including Meta CTO Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, I…
Barry Diller Invented Prestige TV. Then He Conquered the Internet
Of all the egomaniacal lions who ruled Hollywood during the 20th century gatekeeper era, very few made a brilliant pivot to the internet. The exception is Barry Diller. After leading…
How the Loudest Voices in AI Went From ‘Regulate Us’ to ‘Unleash Us’
On May 16, 2023, Sam Altman appeared before a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary. The title of the hearing was “Oversight of AI.” The session was a lovefest, with both Altman and the…
Brendan Carr Is Turning the FCC Into MAGA’s Censoring Machine
The formal agenda of the Federal Communications Commission's open meeting this week seemed well in line with its normal wonky pursuits. There were items on satellite broadband, a licensing…
The Meta Trial Shows the Dangers of Selling Out
Meta has a lot at stake in the current FTC lawsuit against it. In theory a negative verdict could result in a company breakup. But CEO Mark Zuckerberg once faced an even bigger existential…
Google’s Taara Hopes to Usher in a New Era of Internet Powered by Light
Alphabet’s “moonshot factory,” known as X, has long cultivated craziness in its edgy projects. Perhaps the most outlandish was Loon, which aimed to deliver internet via hundreds of…
Roll Over Shakespeare: ChatGPT Is Here
Sitting in Lincoln Center awaiting the curtain for Ayad Akhtar’s McNeal—a much anticipated theater production starring Robert Downey Jr., with ChatGPT in a supporting role—I mused how…
The DOGE Squad Is Squandering a Once-in-a-Lifetime Opportunity
When news first broke about Elon Musk’s tech takeover of the United States government, a number of people who had spent years trying to transform federal IT practices were surprisingly…
2025: The Year of the AI App
What a great idea I had for the first Plaintext of 2025. After following the frantic competition between OpenAI, Google, Meta, and Anthropic to churn out brainier and deeper “frontier”…