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Neo’s Good, Bad, and Ugly Sides

At least for a few days two weeks ago, robotics start-up 1X captured hearts and minds with a humanoid robot called Neo. In a 10-minute keynote that went viral on…

Who Is OpenAI’s Competition?

For the past few years, consensus has landed on Google being the company that needs to be most concerned about OpenAI. On paper, the corresponding narrative isn’t too complicated. As…

The Race for Our Eyes


Following Mark Zuckerberg’s Connect 2025 keynote, online reactions to Ray-Ban Meta Display were surprisingly upbeat. Most gadget reviewers seemed to say just enough in their initial impressions videos and articles…

The Opendoor Craze

As someone who has spent nearly two decades following equity markets, we are seeing a new kind of craziness with little historical precedent. Individual investors on social media are seemingly…

Content’s Long Tail Is Being Weaponized

Boomboxes offering nothing more than a cassette player and AM/FM radio have grabbed my interest. While on a short vacation recently, in lieu of screens, my children turned to a…

Elon Musk Should Step Down as Tesla CEO

Two weeks ago, Tesla unveiled a fast-food diner and drive-in theater complete with Superchargers in Hollywood. Seemingly out of nowhere, a wave of Tesla influencers descended upon the eatery to…

Ten Uncomfortable Truths in Tech


We will try something a little bit different this week: Ten uncomfortable truths that are currently found in tech. Each one of these can be turned into their own Inside…

It’s Time to Double Down on Digital Mapping


A short vacation last month showed me first-hand the limitations found with today’s digital mapping solutions. While things have come a long way over the past decade, we are now…

The Next AI Phase Is Taking Shape

We are a full two-and-a-half years into current AI mania, and signs point to us entering a new stage. There is a greater focus on product and competition as the…

OpenAI Will Need Screens


We are in a weird phase of consumer gadgetry as the more Silicon Valley tries to move us beyond our smartphones, the less promising such prospects look. This subject was…

Slate Made People Dream Again


Last month, the auto start-up Slate came on the scene in grand fashion with an unveiling that took social media by storm. It was the biggest one-day shock in the…

CoComelon for Adults


The rise of algorithm-driven short-form video has ushered in a concerning trend. Billions of adults are being fed a never-ending stream of stimulation via 15-second video snippets consumed on smartphones…

DeepSeek Broke Wall Street’s AI Mania Fever


When kicking off the brainstorming session for this essay, my intention was to talk about tariffs. Wall Street had one of its worst two-day performances in history this past Thursday and Friday. The level of fear and unknown in the market rivals the early days of the pandemic. However, something else had been nagging me. Big Tech stocks had been acting strangely prior to the significant market cap losses experienced last week…

The WSJ Was Right to Fire Its Tech Newsroom


Earlier this month, the WSJ announced significant changes to its tech newsroom. A dozen tech reporters and long-serving editors were fired in a restructuring that amounted to a rethink of how it covers the tech industry. Those let go included beat reporters for Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, AI, semiconductors, and video games. The new team, based in New York and overseen by Sarah Krouse who was most recently in charge of WSJ’s entertainment…

A Voice Head Fake


As we move into the second half of the 2020s and what still feels like AI mania, we seem to be on the inevitable path of relitigating the voice computing debate from the late 2010s. The thinking is that the proliferation of LLMs has in some way addressed friction points that previously hamstringed digital voice assistants. This not only is a misreading of what occurred in the 2010s, but also lacks visionary…

Apple News Is Winning


A few weeks ago, my local newspaper sold its operations to Hearst. The transaction was widely viewed by the community as a death sentence for the family-run operation with a 120-year history. As a sign of the times, the transaction meant my local paper would now be available in Apple News+ given Hearst’s existing arrangement with Apple. While it may feel like there aren’t many surprises left to uncover in the news…

Nike Needs Its Next Michael Jordan


In the seven months since I last wrote about Nike, the company has undergone some changes. Elliot Hill, a long-time Nike executive, came out of retirement to replace John Donahoe as CEO. After a 60-day observation period, which involved talking with Nike’s various stakeholders, Hill’s diagnosis was that Nike had lost its “obsession with sport.” In addition to revised marketing, more sales-focused endeavors will include reinvesting in its existing brands to create…

Getting Consumers to Pay in Tech Is Underrated


Last week, Netflix announced its latest round of subscription price increases. As usual, the hikes didn’t go over well on social media with the most common responses being either “I cancelled a few months ago” or something related to turning to piracy. I think both reactions underestimate what remains a legitimately impressive feat by Netflix: Getting more than 300 million people to pay for video content. Taking a step back, several Big…