noahpinion.blog

AI vs. the railroads

When they paid in cash, hyperscalers were safe — if AI revenue disappointed, their stock prices would go down, but their businesses would just keep going and they'd eventually recover their profitability. But the more hyperscalers borrow, the more revenue they'll need just to stay solvent; if the revenue doesn't arrive, they might have to default on their debt.

stratechery.com

2026.41: It’s Not You, It’s Me

The future of consumer technology is likely completely custom on one hand, and completely integrated on the other.

ai-supremacy.com

AI Frontier: Google Gemini-4 Argon

OpenAI's frontier model was only seemingly frontier for 19 days, before Opus 5.5 was announced.

platformer.news

OpenAI connects the Dots

Meta already operates at a significant trust deficit with its user base, and OpenAI is in the midst of a seemingly never-ending series of disclosures about various ways its agents misbehaved during testing. (The company announced yesterday that it had scrapped GPT-6.1 Astra because, among other things, it regularly deceived users about what it had and had not done.)

stratechery.com

Apps, Agents, and Aggregation

The key thing to understand about agents is that they are not just AI: they are an AI that has access to a computer. It was clear very early on in the ChatGPT era that AI would not replace computers, but rather operate them.

stratechery.com

2026.39: Begun, the Aggregator Wars Have

Amazon predictably blocked Muse, but there is room for a deal based on the reality that Amazon's physical world investments are an AI moat.

platformer.news

Can Muse make us forget the metaverse?

It wasn't long ago that Zuckerberg had deployed the metaverse in developer-conference keynotes the way he did with Muse this week: as a bright spot to rally the company around amid never-ending litigation and social backlash related to the company's core products, which went all but unmentioned on Wednesday. It wasn't long ago that Zuckerberg told us that the metaverse would be where billions of people were spending their time. And so, when he says that — never mind — it's actually Muse where everyone will be spending their time, there's more than a little reason to doubt him.

noahpinion.blog

Two missing pieces in the AI safety discussion

A coordinated slowdown in AI progress would be bad for these companies' bottom line, because it would allow upstart competitors to catch up. So the fact that they're still calling for a slowdown, in defiance of their own financial interests, is a clear sign that their worry about human extinction is sincere.

stratechery.com

2026.37: Duo Threats

While OpenAI's tactics may in fact chill research in advanced mathematics, what Meta has assembled is free (to consumers) hardware and software that dramatically reduces the barrier to entry for ordinary people looking to harness the power of agents, making the AI upside a lot more accessible to the masses who don't want to buy a Mac Mini.

stratechery.com

The iPhone Duo, The Intelligent Personal Hub, Apple Watch Audio Intelligence

Apple once again demonstrated the power of integrating hardware and software, but it's biggest AI blindspot might be its belief in the primacy of apps.

stratechery.com

OpenAI Does Math, Reward-Hacking, Meta Launches Personal Agent

OpenAI solving one of the most famous math problems is extremely impressive, and of little impact to most people's lives; Meta's Muse agent launch has the potential to be the exact opposite.

wired.com

The Fairphone (Gen 6+) Review: Finally in the US

With affordable replacement parts, a five-year warranty, and updates through 2033, the Fairphone proves sustainability doesn't mean major compromise.

honest-broker.com

Wendell Berry’s Nine Rules

What makes this especially revealing is the fact the public intensely dislikes AI— surveys make this absolutely clear. So tech companies are destroying the environment solely to increase their dominance and control—not to please you and me.

stratechery.com

2026.34: App Snore

I thought the most remarkable aspect of Ben's coverage on Wednesday was how incidental and boring it all seems in the shadow of the possibilities and concerns that exist everywhere else in tech right now.

honest-broker.com

Mark Zuckerberg's Empire Is Now Crumbling

Zuckerberg used the occasion to publish a bizarre opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal—proclaiming himself as a champion of human potential and an opponent of centralized power. This is the same guy who laid off 8,000 employees a few days ago, and is building a data center as large as Manhattan. By the way, Zuckerberg himself can't be fired—because he limits the voting rights of most shareholders.

wired.com

OpenAI Has New AI Models. Here’s Why You Can’t Use Them

The White House asked OpenAI to delay the rollout of its GPT-5.6 AI models, two weeks after Anthropic had to take its most advanced AI models offline.

stratechery.com

2026.25: The Stuff of Myth(os)

the power and problem of Anthropic is the same: the company's safety superpower is that every action it takes looks, from the outside, to be self-serving, even as the company becomes ever more convinced its motivations are pure.

stratechery.com

The State of Fable, The Jailbreak Problem, SpaceX Acquires Cursor

The administration is very likely wrong about Fable, but that is ultimately Anthropic's responsibility.

stratechery.com

Amazon Buys Globalstar, Delta to Add Leo, The Apple Angle

Amazon's Globalstar acquisition is being framed as Amazon versus SpaceX, but I think the real story is about Apple.

upstartsmedia.com

Anthropic Is Warning About Future Cyber Risks. Researchers Says Claude Code Is Already Dangerous.

We're not kicking the dog because it's down. We're kicking it because this is the gold right now, and Anthropic are the only ones truly capable of this [kind of attack].