Reading List

The most recent articles from a list of feeds I subscribe to.

Denise Dresser, Slack CEO since 2023, is stepping down to join OpenAI as the company's chief revenue officer (Wired)

Wired:
Denise Dresser, Slack CEO since 2023, is stepping down to join OpenAI as the company's chief revenue officer  —  A memo obtained by WIRED confirms Denise Dresser's departure from Slack.  She is now headed to OpenAI.  —  Slack CEO Denise Dresser is leaving the company and joining OpenAI …

Paramount Skydance Makes Hostile Takeover Bid for Warner Bros. Discovery

The Wall Street Journal yesterday:

Paramount launched a $77.9 billion hostile takeover offer for Warner Bros. Discovery Monday, taking its case for acquiring the storied entertainment company directly to shareholders just days after Warner agreed to a deal with Netflix.

Paramount, run by David Ellison, is arguing that its all-cash $30-a-share offer for all of Warner, owner of networks such as CNN, TBS and HGTV as well as the HBO Max streaming service, is a better deal for shareholders and more likely to pass regulatory muster.

“We’re really here to finish what we started,” Ellison said on CNBC Monday morning.

The “more likely to pass regulatory muster” bit is a euphemism for the Ellisons (David, and the real player here, his $250+-billion-dollar-net-worth father Larry) being on the inside of the Trump administration oligarchy. It’s so transparent that Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner is part of the hostile bid, along with sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, and Qatar.

That said, while the Executive Branch is influential in such regulatory approvals, it’s not completely under their control. The U.S. court system, while under duress from this administration, remains independent, and with admittedly notable exceptions, remains largely on the up-and-up.

And CNN’s Brian Stelter reports that Netflix was prepared for this:

“Today’s move was entirely expected,” Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said on stage at a UBS conference just now, waving off Paramount’s hostile play for WBD. “We have a deal done, and we are incredibly happy with the deal... We’re super confident we’re going to get it across.”

Facebook’s redesign is making it more like Instagram

Continuing CEO Mark Zuckerberg's plan to make Facebook "way more culturally influential than it is today," Meta is announcing a bunch of new updates to help you "cut through the clutter" and make content in the app. The changes include tweaks to how you see and interact with photos in your feed that could make […]

Australia boots kids under 16 off social media: how platforms are responding

Australia is joining a wave of governments around the globe in regulating how kids spend their time online. On December 10th, most major social media platforms will boot children in the country under 16 from their services. Under the law, social platforms will also need to implement a "reasonable" age verification method there - while […]

RAM price hikes: the latest on the global memory shortage

Random access memory, or RAM, is in just about every piece of technology we use. But it’s also the technology that AI companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta are using to power the servers in their massive data centers. Now, the world’s biggest memory makers — Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron — are taking […]