Latest posts
- Taking action against AI harmsFeb 24, 2026
In my last piece, I talked about the harms that AI is visiting on children through the irresponsible choices made by the platforms creating those products. While we dove a bit into the incentives and institutional pressures that cause those companies to make such wildly irresponsible decisions, what we haven’t yet reckoned with is how we hold these companies accountable. Often, people tell me they
- Talking through the tech reckoningFeb 26, 2026
Many of the topics that we’ve all been discussing about technology these days seem to matter so much more, and the stakes have never been higher. So, I’ve been trying to engage with more conversations out in the world, in hopes of communicating some of the ideas that might not get shared from more traditional voices in technology. These recent conversations have been pretty well received, and I ho
- A Cookie for Dario? — Anthropic and selling deathFeb 28, 2026
A big tech headline this week is Anthropic (makers of Claude, widely regarded as one of the best LLM platforms) resisting Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s calls to modify their platform in order to enable it to support his commission of war crimes. As has become clear this week, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has declined to do so. The administration couches the request as an attempt to use the tec
- Why Apple’s move to video could endanger podcasting's greatest powerFeb 28, 2026
TL;DR: Apple is adding support for video podcasts to their podcast app Podcasts are built on an open standard, which is why they aren’t controlled by a bad algorithm and don’t have ads that spy on you Apple’s new system for video podcasts breaks with the old podcast standard, and forces creators to host their video clips with a few selected companies The stakes are even higher because all the indi
- The Neo solves Apple’s embarrassmentMar 08, 2026
Last week, Apple released a parade of hardware announcements, and the one that captured the most attention across the industry was the $600 ($500 if you’re in education!) MacBook Neo, the brightly-colored low-end laptop that they launched to great fanfare. The conventional wisdom is that this product opens up Apple to the low end of the laptop market for the first time, radically changing the dyna
- What do coders do after AI?Mar 13, 2026
For the New York Times Magazine this Sunday, I talked to Clive Thompson about one of the conversations that I'm having most often these days: What happens to coders in this current moment of extraordinarily rapid evolution in AI? LLMs are now quickly advancing to where they can virtually become entire software factories, radically changing both the economics and the power dynamics of software crea
- Endgame for the Open WebMar 27, 2026
You must imagine Sam Altman holding a knife to Tim Berners-Lee's throat. It's not a pleasant image. Sir Tim is, rightly, revered as the genial father of the World Wide Web. But, all the signs are pointing to the fact that we might be in endgame for "open" as we've known it on the Internet over the last few decades. The open web is something extraordinary: anybody can use whatever tools they have,
- Defending Privacy, DailyMar 31, 2026
Yesterday, I had the chance to witness someone who's one of the most dedicated, competent advocates for privacy and digital rights bring that message to a whole new platform. It turns out, it's pretty delightful, especially in a moment when our civil liberties and rights online couldn't matter more! Cindy Cohn, the executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, has been a tireless fight
- On the Vergecast, On VideoApr 01, 2026
I finally got the chance to drop by one of my favorite podcasts, The Vergecast, where David Pierce had me on to talk about the recent conversation about Apple's moves around video podcasts, as well as the much broader big-picture considerations around keeping podcasts open. We started with grounding the conversation in the idea that "Wherever you get your podcasts" is a radical statement. The epis
- Actually, people love to work hardApr 07, 2026
One of the most infuriating tropes that I see repeated in media is executives (usually from boring old companies) insisting that their employees don’t want to work hard. Media outlets dutifully repeat this pernicious lie, despite there being no evidence to back it up, and then cultural commentators either credulously amplify it, or actively take part in advancing the narrative as part of their age
- When the crisis comesApr 08, 2026
These days, we’re all living in a constant state of crisis, foisted upon us by a world where those who are meant to keep things stable are the least stable factors in our lives. The chaos and stress of that reality makes it difficult to make any plans, let alone to make decisions if you have responsibilities for a team or organization that you’re meant to be leading. It’s easy to imagine there’s n
- Y2K 2.0: The AI security reckoningApr 10, 2026
In just the last few weeks, we’ve seen a series of software security vulnerabilities that, until recently, would each have been the biggest exploit of the year in which they were discovered. Now, they’ve become nearly routine. There’s a new one almost every day. The reason for this rising wave of massively-impactful software vulnerabilities is that LLMs are rapidly increasing in their ability to w