Reading List
The most recent articles from a list of feeds I subscribe to.
‘A CEO, Captured’
Om Malik:
Cook is not stupid. He is not evil. He is trapped. The iron clasp of market expectations has turned him into what he never meant to be: a man who goes to parties at the White House while nurses die.
In Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Roy Bland captures a cynical, post-ideological, corrupt English society: “You scratch my conscience; I’ll drive your Jag.” You could say the same of today’s Silicon Valley. It used to believe it could change the world. Now it just hopes the world won’t change its stock price.
If I ever meet Tim Cook I’m going to ask him if Mike Tyson enjoyed the movie.
‘Aside From That, Mr. Cook, What Did You Think of the Movie?’
MG Siegler:
Tim Cook is captured. There is simply no other explanation for his actions over the past year or so. But it perhaps culminated this weekend when Cook went to a special private showing of the documentary Melania at the White House. Yes, that Melania. That in and of itself would have probably been fine. I mean, it’s potentially problematic for a host of reasons that I’ll get to, but such is our world right now. Then one shot — a gunshot — turned attending that movie screening into a statement...
While Cook was enjoying his popcorn and champagne with the likes of Mike Tyson, Tony Robbins, and other “VIPs”, it was complete and utter chaos on the streets of Minnesota. Just hours earlier, Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, was shot and killed by ICE agents. Maybe, just maybe, postpone the movie premiere?
‘Whatever’
Ben Terris, writing for New York Magazine:
Fred Trump died in 1999 at age 93. He had, Trump said, a “heart that couldn’t be stopped” with almost no health conditions to speak of throughout his long life. “He had one problem,” Trump said. “At a certain age, about 86, 87, he started getting, what do they call it?” He pointed to his forehead and looked to his press secretary for the word that escaped him.
“Alzheimer’s,” Leavitt said.
“Like an Alzheimer’s thing,” Trump said. “Well, I don’t have it.”
“Is it something you think about at all?” I asked.
“No, I don’t think about it at all. You know why?” he said. “Because whatever it is, my attitude is whatever.”
Clawdbot Is Now Moltbot
From the footer on the project’s website:
Moltbot was formerly known as Clawdbot. Independent project, not affiliated with Anthropic.
Makes sense, to be honest, that Anthropic would object to naming it a homonym for Claude.
One additional followup to my post the other day. In his terrific introduction to ClawdMoltbot, Federico Viticci wrote:
I’ve been playing around with Clawdbot so much, I’ve burned through 180 million tokens on the Anthropic API (yikes), and I’ve had fewer and fewer conversations with the “regular” Claude and ChatGPT apps in the process.
Those tokens aren’t free. I asked Viticci just how much “yikes” cost, and he said around US$560 — using way more input than output tokens.