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Paulina Borsook predicted the rise of tech fascism

Paulina Borsook predicted the rise of tech fascism

  Tech fascism didn’t rise in secret — it grew in plain sight. Why didn’t most journalists or politicians notice? In this episode of The Nerd Reich Podcast, host Gil Duran speaks with legendary tech critic Paulina Borsook, author of Cyberselfish, the prophetic book that warned about the rise of Silicon Valley authoritarianism and technofascism decades before Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and the far-right tech elite took power. We dive deep into how Silicon Valley’s toxic libertarianism evolved into a…

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Adventure capitalism on the precipice: Climate denying grifters go into fusion

Adventure capitalism on the precipice: Climate denying grifters go into fusion

Announcing the planned merger of Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) and fusion power company, TAE Technologies, Michael B. Schwab (son of Charles Schwab, who just launched “Trump Accounts”), who is expected to be the chairman of the new company said: With the infusion of TMTG’s significant capital, TAE is on the precipice of scaling its leading technology to usher in a new era of energy abundance. The world needs energy, and fusion is the clear answer. The New York…

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China is pouring vast resources into fusion research

China is pouring vast resources into fusion research

The New York Times reports: China’s government has made fusion a national priority, marshaling resources at daunting speed. Recently, a Shanghai start-up essentially matched an engineering breakthrough by America’s best-funded fusion company, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, in much less time. Over the summer, the Chinese government and private investors poured $2.1 billion into a new state-owned fusion company. That investment alone is two and a half times the U.S. Energy Department’s annual fusion budget. The two countries’ progress could soon be…

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Who would trust a 22-year-old AI billionaire with the global economy?

Who would trust a 22-year-old AI billionaire with the global economy?

Lila Shroff writes: Brendan Foody is 22 years old and runs a company worth billions. This August, I met the young CEO in a glass conference room overlooking the San Francisco Bay. While his peers are searching for their first jobs, Foody is pursuing a “master plan,” as he calls it, to upend the global labor market. His start-up, Mercor, offers an AI-powered hiring platform: Bots weed through résumés, and even conduct interviews. In the next five years, Foody told…

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People are getting their news from AI – and it’s altering their views

People are getting their news from AI – and it’s altering their views

When a bot brings you the news, who built it and how it presents the information matter. Zentangle/iStock via Getty Images By Adrian Kuenzler, University of Denver; University of Hong Kong Meta’s decision to end its professional fact-checking program sparked a wave of criticism in the tech and media world. Critics warned that dropping expert oversight could erode trust and reliability in the digital information landscape, especially when profit-driven platforms are mostly left to police themselves. What much of this…

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Andreessen Horowitz-backed startup hacked, exposing phone farm

Andreessen Horowitz-backed startup hacked, exposing phone farm

WebProNews reports: In the shadowy underbelly of social media’s content machine, a recent hack has pulled back the curtain on a sophisticated operation blending artificial intelligence, venture capital muscle, and old-school automation tactics. A hacker, operating under the pseudonym “Kira,” infiltrated the systems of Doublespeed, a startup backed by powerhouse investor Andreessen Horowitz, known as a16z. What they uncovered was a sprawling network of over 1,100 mobile phones housed in a nondescript warehouse, all programmed to churn out AI-generated influencer…

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Europe could burst Trump’s AI bubble

Europe could burst Trump’s AI bubble

Johnny Ryan writes: Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, has two cards to play that might pop the AI bubble. If she does so, Trump’s presidency will be thrown into crisis. First, Dutch company ASML commands a global monopoly on the microchip-etching machines that use light to carve patterns on silicon. These machines are essential for Nvidia, the AI microchip giant that is now the world’s most valuable company. ASML is one of Europe’s most valuable…

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CoreWeave’s staggering fall in value highlights AI bubble fears

CoreWeave’s staggering fall in value highlights AI bubble fears

The Wall Street Journal reports: CoreWeave, the largest of a new breed of companies driving the artificial-intelligence boom, has watched $33 billion of value vaporize in six weeks. The share-price plunge of 46% comes as investors worry about a possible AI bubble, the fallout from a failed merger and public criticism from high-profile short seller Jim Chanos, known for predicting the collapse of Enron. But some of the high-tech company’s biggest problems began with a very low-tech nuisance: unexpectedly turbulent…

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The goal of AI development is ownership of the means of thinking

The goal of AI development is ownership of the means of thinking

Matthew B. Crawford writes: As near as one can tell, the business rationale for artificial intelligence rests on the hope that it will substitute for human judgment and discretion. Given the role of big data in training AI systems, and the enormous concentrations of capital they require to develop, the AI revolution will extend the logic of oligopoly into cognition. What appears to be at stake, ultimately, is ownership of the means of thinking. This will have implications for class…

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Intoxicated by their wealth, power, and insularity, the billionaires are unprepared for a societal backlash

Intoxicated by their wealth, power, and insularity, the billionaires are unprepared for a societal backlash

Michael Hirschorn writes: An ever-more-stratified scale of luxury allows the staggeringly rich to avoid coming into contact with even the merely wealthy, let alone the rest of the world, “to glide through a rarefied realm unencumbered by the inconveniences of ordinary life,” as The Wall Street Journal reported. Chuck Collins, who gave away his family fortune and who now investigates inequality, describes it this way: “Wealth is a disconnection drug that keeps people apart from one another and from building…

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Wall Street sees AI bubble coming and is betting on what pops it

Wall Street sees AI bubble coming and is betting on what pops it

Bloomberg reports: It’s been three years since OpenAI set off euphoria over artificial intelligence with the release of ChatGPT. And while the money is still pouring in, so are the doubts about whether the good times can last. From a recent selloff in the shares of Nvidia Corp., to Oracle Corp.’s plunge after reporting mounting spending on AI, to souring sentiment around a network of companies exposed to OpenAI, signs of skepticism are increasing. Looking to 2026, the debate among…

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Oracle’s plunging stock shows the AI boom is running into two hard limits: physics and debt markets

Oracle’s plunging stock shows the AI boom is running into two hard limits: physics and debt markets

Fortune reports: Oracle’s rapid descent from market darling to market warning sign is revealing something deeper about the AI boom, experts say: no matter how euphoric investors became over the last two years, the industry can’t outrun the laws of physics—or the realities of debt financing. Shares of Oracle have plunged 45% from their September high and lost 14% this week after a messy earnings report revealed it spent $12 billion in quarterly capital expenditures, higher than the $8.25 billion…

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What’s at stake in Trump’s executive order aiming to curb state-level AI regulation

What’s at stake in Trump’s executive order aiming to curb state-level AI regulation

President Donald Trump displays his executive order countering state laws regulating AI. Alex Wong/Getty Images By Anjana Susarla, Michigan State University President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Dec. 11, 2025, that aims to supersede state-level artificial intelligence laws that the administration views as a hindrance to innovation in AI. State laws regulating AI are increasing in number, particularly in response to the rise of generative AI systems such as ChatGPT that produce text and images. Thirty-eight states enacted…

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Neanderthals 400,000 years ago were striking flints to make fires

Neanderthals 400,000 years ago were striking flints to make fires

Carl Zimmer reports: Some 400,000 years ago, in what is now eastern England, a group of Neanderthals used flint and pyrite to make fires by a watering hole — not just once, but time after time, over several generations. That is the conclusion of a study published on Wednesday in the journal Nature. Previously, the oldest known evidence of humans making fires dated back just 50,000 years. The new finding indicates that this critical step in human history occurred much…

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Something ominous — a reminder of the 2008 financial crisis — is happening in the AI economy

Something ominous — a reminder of the 2008 financial crisis — is happening in the AI economy

Rogé Karma writes: A company that most people have never heard of is among the year’s best-performing technology firms—and a symbol of the complex, interconnected, and potentially catastrophic ways in which AI companies do business these days. CoreWeave’s IPO in March was the largest of any tech start-up since 2021, and the company’s share price has subsequently more than doubled, outperforming even the “Magnificent Seven” tech stocks. On Wall Street, CoreWeave is regularly referred to as one of the most…

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Humans have an internal lunar clock. We are accidentally destroying it

Humans have an internal lunar clock. We are accidentally destroying it

PsyPost reports: Most animals, including humans, carry an internal lunar clock, tuned to the 29.5-day rhythm of the Moon. It guides sleep, reproduction and migration of many species. But in the age of artificial light, that ancient signal is fading – washed out by the glow of cities, screens and satellites. Just as the circadian rhythm keeps time with the 24-hour rotation of the Earth, many organisms also track the slower rhythm of the Moon. Both systems rely on light…

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