Decoder with Nilay Patel

Today I’m talking with Avishai Abrahami, the CEO of Wix. You might know Wix as a website builder. It’s a competitor to WordPress and Squarespace. Tons of sites across the web run on Wix. But the web is changing rapidly, and Wix’s business today is less about web publishing, and more about providing software to help business owners run their entire companies. It’s fascinating, and Avishai has built a fascinating structure inside of Wix to make all that happen. Wix is also an Israeli company. Avishai joined from the company’s headquarters in Tel Aviv. And I’ll just tell you right up front that we talked about Israel’s war with Hamas and its impact on the company. And that this conversation was not always comfortable. But the main theme of our conversation was, of course, the future of the web, especially a web that seems destined to be overrun by cheap AI-generated SEO spam. Links: Doom runs on Excel Wix will let you build an entire website using only AI prompts Wix.com Launches Wix ADI and Delivers the Future of website creation YouTube is going to start cracking down on AI clones of musicians The people who ruined the internet The restaurant nearest Google OpenAI can’t tell if something was written by AI after all AI is killing the old web, and the new web struggles to be born Squarespace CEO Anthony Casalena on why anyone makes a website in 2023 What will changing Section 230 mean for the internet? Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23742026 Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge and is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt. It was edited by Callie Wright. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What actually happened at OpenAI in the last three days? Decoder host and Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel talks with Verge editors Alex Heath and David Pierce to break it down and try to work out what's next. Further reading: Sam Altman fired as CEO of OpenAI OpenAI’s new CEO is Twitch co-founder Emmett Shear OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO Emmett Shear named new CEO of OpenAI by board Microsoft hires former OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Hundreds of OpenAI employees threaten to resign and join Microsoft Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO We’re doing a survey on how people use The Verge (and what they’d want from a Verge subscription). If you’re interested in helping us out, you can fill out the survey right here: http://theverge.com/survey Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge and is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Liam James, Kate Cox, and Nick Statt. It was edited by Andru Marino. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today, I’m talking to Jim Rowan, the CEO of Volvo Cars. Now, Jim’s only been at Volvo for a short time. He took over in 2022 after a decades-long career in the consumer electronics industry. Before Volvo, his two longest stints were at BlackBerry, whose QNX software is used in tons of cars, and then at Dyson, which once tried and failed to make an electric car. Jim and I talked a lot about how that unique experience has influenced how he thinks about the transformational changes happening in the world of cars. For Volvo, the stakes are high. The company has pledged to be all-electric by the end of the decade, and Jim is also making some very different bets on software and revenue than the rest of the car industry. Jim’s view is that automakers are undergoing three major shifts all at once: electrification, autonomy, and direct-to-consumer sales. With Volvo, Jim is trying to steer the ship through these changes and come out an EV-only carmaker on the other end. Links: Volvo plans to sell only electric cars by 2030 Volvo’s EX90 is a powerful computer that also happens to be an impeccably designed EV Can Polestar design a new kind of car company? The EV transition trips over its own cord Volvo’s upcoming EVs join the Tesla Supercharger bandwagon Future Volvo cars to run on Volvo operating system Audi and Volvo will use Android as the operating system in upcoming cars Volvo’s first EV will run native Android The rest of the auto industry still loves CarPlay and Android Auto The future of cars is a subscription nightmare Everybody hates GM’s decision to kill Apple CarPlay and Android Auto for its EVs Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23722862 Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge and is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt. It was edited by Callie Wright. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We’ve got a good one today. I’m talking to former President Barack Obama about AI, social networks, and how to think about democracy as both of those things collide. I sat down with Obama last week at his offices in Washington, DC, just hours after President Joe Biden signed a sweeping executive order about AI. You’ll hear Obama say he’s been talking to the Biden administration and leaders across the tech industry about AI and how best to regulate it. My idea here was to talk to Obama the constitutional law professor more than Obama the politician. So this one got wonky fast. You’ll also hear him say that he joined our show because he wanted to reach you, the Decoder audience, and get you all thinking about these problems. One of Obama’s worries is that the government needs insight and expertise to properly regulate AI, and you’ll hear him make a pitch for why people with that expertise should take a tour of duty in the government to make sure we get these things right. Links: Biden releases AI executive order directing agencies to develop safety guidelines Clarence Thomas really wants Congress to regulate Twitter moderation Google CEO Sundar Pichai compares impact of AI to electricity and fire Sam Altman sells superintelligent sunshine as protestors call for AGI pause The Skokie case: How I came to represent the free speech rights of Nazis Disinformation is a threat to our democracy World leaders are gathering at the U.K.'s AI Summit. Doom is on the agenda. George R.R. Martin and other authors sue OpenAI for copyright infringement A conversation with Bing’s chatbot left me deeply unsettled Introducing the AI Mirror Test, which very smart people keep failing Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23712912 Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge and is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt. It was edited by Callie Wright. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today I'm talking with Golnar Khosrowshahi, the founder and CEO of Reservoir Media, a newer record label that I think looks a lot like the future of the music industry. As Golnar explains, Reservoir thinks of individual songs as assets, and after acquiring them, the company sets about monetizing those assets in various ways. This is a copyright-based business in an age where copyright is under a lot of pressure — from TikTok, generative AI, and all of the now-familiar threats to the music business. If you're a Decoder listener, you know that I love thinking about the music industry. Whatever technology does to music, it does to everything else five years later. So paying attention to music is the best way I know to get ahead of the curve. I also just love music. Golnar is herself a musician. She obviously cares about music a lot, and she's clearly given a lot of thought to what happens next. So this was a great conversation. Links: Drake’s AI clone is here — and Drake might not be able to stop him Hipgnosis made mega deals for song catalogs. Its future Is unclear. Reservoir acquires iconic Tommy Boy Music for $100 million Ed Sheeran wins copyright case over Marvin Gaye’s ‘Let’s Get It On’ Spotify is reportedly making major changes to its royalty model Hipgnosis shareholders vote against continuation of UK-listed music investment trust AI can actually help protect creativity and copyrights Google and YouTube are trying to have it both ways with AI and copyright No Fakes Act wants to protect actors and singers from unauthorized AI replicas ‘Glocalisation’ of music streaming within and across Europe Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23702539 Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge and is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt. It was edited by Callie Wright. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today, I’m talking to internet policy legend Lawrence Lessig. He's been teaching law for more than 30 years, and is a defining expert on free speech and the internet — and something of a hero of mine, whose works I've been reading since college. You’ll hear us agree that the internet at this moment in time is absolutely flooded with disinformation, misinformation, and other really toxic stuff that’s harmful to us as individuals and, frankly, to our future as a functioning democracy. But you’ll also hear us disagree a fair amount about what to do about it. The First Amendment, AI, copyright law — there's a lot to unpack here. Links: https://asml.cyber.harvard.edu/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/10/17/1081194/how-to-fix-the-internet-online-discourse/ https://www.protocol.com/facebook-papers https://www.tiktok.com/@aocinthehouse/video/7214318917135830318?lang=en https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/sensitive-claims-bias-facebook-relaxed-misinformation-rules-conservative-pages-n1236182 https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/repetition-lie-truth-propaganda/ https://www.theverge.com/23883027/alvarez-stolen-valor-first-amendment-kosseff-liar-crowded-theater https://fortune.com/2023/05/30/sam-altman-ai-risk-of-extinction-pandemics-nuclear-warfare/ https://www.americanbar.org/groups/intellectual_property_law/publications/landslide/2019-20/september-october/into-fandomverse/ Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23693274 Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge and is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt. It was edited by Callie Wright. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today, I’m talking to Kashmir Hill, a New York Times reporter whose new book, Your Face Belongs to Us: A Secretive Startup’s Quest to End Privacy as We Know It, chronicles the story of Clearview AI, a company that’s built some of the most sophisticated facial recognition and search technology that’s ever existed. As Kashmir reports, you simply plug a photo of someone into Clearview’s app, and it will find every photo of that person that’s ever been posted on the internet. It’s breathtaking and scary. Kashmir was the journalist who broke the first story about Clearview’s existence, starting with a bombshell investigation report that blew the doors open on the company’s clandestine operations. Over the past few years, she’s been relentlessly reporting on Clearview’s growth, the privacy implications of facial recognition technology, and all of the cautionary tales that inevitably popped up, from wrongful arrests to billionaires using the technology for personal vendettas. The book is fantastic. If you’re a Decoder listener, you’re going to love it, and I highly recommend it. Links: The secretive company that may end privacy as we know it What we learned about Clearview AI and its secret ‘co-founder’ Clearview AI does well in another round of facial recognition accuracy tests hiQ and LinkedIn reach proposed settlement in landmark scraping case My chilling run-in with a secretive facial-recognition app Clearview’s facial recognition app Is identifying child victims of abuse ‘Thousands of dollars for something I didn’t do’ How we store and search 30 billion faces Clearview AI agrees to permanent ban on selling facial recognition to private companies Clearview fined again in France for failing to comply with privacy orders Privacy law prevents Illinoisans from using Google app’s selfie art feature Madison Square Garden uses facial recognition to ban its owner’s enemies Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23683175 Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge and is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt. It was edited by Callie Wright. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today we’re bringing you the last of our live-on-stage interviews from the 2023 Code Conference. Verge deputy editor Alex Heath sat down to chat with Roblox CEO David Baszucki. Roblox definitely started out as a kid thing, but the company has big plans to change all that, and Alex got to find out a bit about how that’s going. Roblox is determined to be a platform, even more than a product — something users can develop games and experiences on. And of course, David and Alex spoke about AI. David sees a lot of opportunity for generative AI to help content creators on the Roblox platform in the not-so-distant future. Links: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfYz8weQm4M https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/21/roblox-cuts-30-on-talent-acquisition-team-as-hiring-slows/ https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/8/23864858/roblox-ceo-prediction-adults-dating-experiences-rdc-2023 https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/27/23889307/meta-ray-ban-smart-glasses-wearables-connect https://www.theverge.com/23775268/roblox-ceo-david-baszucki-gaming-metaverse-robux-virtual-reality https://mashable.com/article/karlie-kloss-roblox-klossette https://www.theverge.com/23734209/parsons-roblox-design-class-metaverse-fashion Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23677085 Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and was edited by Amanda Rose Smith. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We’ve got another interview from the Code Conference today. My friend and co-host, CNBC’s Julia Boorstin, and I had a chance to talk with Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe. Rivian is a newer company — RJ started it in 2009, and it took more than 10 years to start shipping cars to consumers. But its first vehicle, the R1T pickup, made a big splash when it arrived in 2021, and the company has more back orders for both the R1T and its second vehicle, the R1S SUV, than it can handle. For now. We asked RJ about that production ramp and whether Rivian can meet demand, and whether it’s just early adopters buying EVs or if they’ve finally gone mainstream. The conversation also touched on Rivian’s deal with Amazon and the auto industry’s push toward subscription features. And, of course, I had to ask Scaringe about the Cybertruck. How could I resist?! Links: BMW starts selling heated seat subscriptions for $18 a month BMW drops plan to charge a monthly fee for heated seats U.A.W. expands strikes at automakers: Here’s what to know. Rivian boosts EV production target as supply problems ease Ford F-150 Lightning gets $10K price cut as ramping supply meets demand First look at Cybertruck’s comically large windshield wiper in action Amazon says it has ‘over a thousand’ Rivian electric vans making deliveries in the US Rivian to adopt Tesla's charging standard in EVs and chargers Rivian electric pickup caught fire while charging at Electrify America station Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23672708 Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and was edited by Callie Wright. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Last week, when I was co-hosting the Code Conference, I got to talk with Getty Images CEO Craig Peters. The generative AI boom is a direct threat to Getty in many ways. For example, the company is suing Stability AI for training the Stable Diffusion model on Getty content — sometimes clearly including AI-generated copies of the Getty watermark — without permission. Getty's answer? Its own proprietary, in-house AI tool, trained — with permission — on its own content, using a model where the original creators can get paid. Getty's put some pretty strict guardrails around it for now, but, as even Craig told us, there's still a lot of work to do. Links: https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/21/23364696/getty-images-ai-ban-generated-artwork-illustration-copyright https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/6/23587393/ai-art-copyright-lawsuit-getty-images-stable-diffusion https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/25/23884679/getty-ai-generative-image-platform-launch https://www.theverge.com/23900198/microsoft-kevin-scott-ai-art-bing-google-nvidia-decoder-interview https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/section-230-the-internet-law-politicians-love-to-hate-explained/ https://www.npr.org/2023/05/18/1176881182/supreme-court-sides-against-andy-warhol-foundation-in-copyright-infringement-cas https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/26/23808184/big-ai-really-wants-to-convince-us-that-theyre-cautious https://journal.everypixel.com/ai-image-statistics https://www.npr.org/2023/05/22/1177590231/fake-viral-images-of-an-explosion-at-the-pentagon-were-probably-created-by-ai Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23667741 Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and was edited by Amanda Rose Smith. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I co-hosted the Code Conference last week, and today’s episode is one of my favorite conversations from the show: Microsoft CTO and EVP of AI Kevin Scott. If you caught Kevin on Decoder a few months ago, you know that he and I love talking about technology together. I really appreciate that he thinks about the relationship between technology and culture as much as we do at The Verge, and it was great to add the energy from the live Code audience to that dynamic. Kevin and I talked about how things are going with Bing and Microsoft’s AI efforts, as well the company’s relationship with Nvidia and whether it's planning to develop its own AI chips. I also asked Kevin some pretty philosophical questions about AI: Why would you write a song or a book when AI is out there making custom content for other people? Well, it’s because Kevin thinks the AI is still “terrible” at it for now, as Kevin found out firsthand. But he also thinks that creating is just what people do, and AI will help more people become more creative. Links: Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott thinks Sydney might make a comeback Hands-on with the new Bing: Microsoft’s step beyond ChatGPT Microsoft Bing hits 100 million active users in bid to grab share from Google How Microsoft is trying to lessen Its addiction to OpenAI as AI costs soar AMD CEO Lisa Su on the AI revolution and competing with Nvidia Microsoft's tiny Phi-1 language model shows how important data quality is for AI training Microsoft says listing the Ottawa Food Bank as a tourist destination wasn’t the result of ‘unsupervised AI’ Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23664239 Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge and is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt. It was edited by Callie Wright. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We spent a lot of time here on Decoder talking about electric vehicles and the future of cars and we’re usually talking about passenger vehicles or maybe cargo vans. But there’s another huge industry that can also reap the benefits of electrified transportation: agriculture. I co-hosted the Code Conference this week where I had the opportunity to hangout onstage with Monarch Tractor CEO Praveen Penmetsa. Honestly, this was one of my favorite conversations of the entire event. We are utterly reliant on farming as a species, and farming is utterly reliant on tractors. If we don’t have tractors, we don’t have food. But electrifying farms is hard, and Praveen explained how he and Monarch are trying to tackle that challenge. The ambition is to compete in an open way with closed platforms like John Deere, and Praveen said his goal for the Monarch platform is to be the Android of agriculture. Links: Electric robot tractors powered by Nvidia AI chips are here John Deere turned tractors into computers — what’s next? John Deere commits to letting farmers repair their own tractors (kind of) Monarch Tractors to be manufactured by Foxconn Foxconn begins rolling first Monarch electric tractors off assembly lines in Lordstown A sneak peek into Monarch Tractor's vision-based AI technology CNH Industrial, Monarch Tractor agree electrification technologies deal Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23659941 Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge and is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt. It was edited by Callie Wright. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today, we’re bringing you something a little different. The Code Conference was this week, and we had a great time talking live onstage with all of our guests. We’ll be sharing a lot of these conversations here in the coming days, and the first one we’re sharing is my chat with Dr. Lisa Su, the CEO of AMD. Lisa and I spoke for half an hour, and we covered an incredible number of topics, especially about AI and the chip supply chain. The balance of supply and demand is overall in a pretty good place right now, Lisa told us, with the notable exception of these high-end GPUs powering all of the large AI models that everyone’s running. The hottest GPU in the game is Nvidia’s H100 chip. But AMD is working to compete with a new chip Lisa told us about called the MI300 that should be as fast as the H100. You’ll also hear Lisa talk about what companies are doing to increase manufacturing capacity. Finally, Lisa answered questions from the amazing Code audience and talked a lot about how much AMD is using AI inside the company right now. It’s more than you think, although Lisa did say AI is not going to be designing chips all by itself anytime soon. Okay, Dr. Lisa Su, CEO of AMD. Here we go. Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23658688 Links: AI startup Lamini bets future on AMD's Instinct GPUs Biden signs $280 billion CHIPS and Science Act Pat Gelsinger came back to turn Intel around — here’s how it’s going Huawei’s chip breakthrough poses new threat to Apple in China — and questions for Washington AMD expands AI product lineup with GPU-only Instinct MI300X Microsoft is reportedly helping AMD expand into AI chips US curbs AI chip exports from Nvidia and AMD to some Middle East countries Apple on the iPhone 15 Pro: 'It's Going to be the Best Game Console' Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and was edited by Callie Wright. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today, we have a special episode for you. The Code Conference wrapped up this week, and the finale included a rare interview from my Code co-host and CNBC correspondent Julia Boorstin with X CEO Linda Yaccarino. To say the sit-down with Elon Musk’s No. 2 was confrontational would be an understatement. Yaccarino appeared both unprepared to answer tough questions and very combative, especially when asked about comments from former trust and safety head Yoel Roth, who’s become an outspoken critic of the direction of the company since Elon took over. Roth spoke onstage at Code with Kara Swisher just an hour before, where he warned Yaccarino of the risks of the job and spoke about the extreme harassment he’s faced since leaving the company. Yaccarino also gave us some updated stats on X user metrics and claimed the company would turn a profit in 2024. And of course, there were some very terse exchanges concerning whether Elon really plans to start charging a subscription fee to use the platform, if he seriously plans to sue the Anti-Defamation League, and the company’s recent cuts to its election integrity team. It’s a jaw-dropping interview, and you really have to listen to the whole thing. Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge and is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt. It was edited by Callie Wright. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What motivates Mark Zuckerberg these days? It's a question Decoder guest host Alex Heath posed at the end of his interview last week, after he and Zuckerberg had spent an hour talking about Threads, Zuckerberg's vision for how generative AI will reshape Meta's apps, the Quest 3, and other news from the company's Connect conference, which kicked off today. After spending the past five years as a wartime CEO, Zuckerberg is getting back to basics, and he clearly feels good about it. "I think we've done a lot of good things," he said. "But for the next wave of my life and for the company — but also outside of the company with what I'm doing at CZI [Chan Zuckerberg Initiative] and some of my personal projects — I define my life at this point more in terms of getting to work on awesome things with great people who I like working with." For Zuckerberg, "awesome things" means figuring out how to combine his company's AR, VR, and AI ambitions into new products. This rare interview with the Meta CEO also includes details on his ongoing feud with Elon Musk and the quest to beat X/Twitter using Threads, his perspective on open source, and his vision for decentralized social media. Okay, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Here we go. Links: Mark Zuckerberg is ready to fight Elon Musk in a cage match The three reasons Twitter didn’t sell to Facebook Threads app usage plummets despite initial promise as refuge from Twitter Threads isn’t for news and politics, says Instagram’s boss You can now verify your Threads profile on Mastodon In show of force, Silicon Valley titans pledge ‘getting this right’ With AI Meta is putting AI chatbots everywhere A conversation with Bing’s chatbot left me deeply unsettled Custom AI chatbots are quietly becoming the next big thing in fandom Meta’s Smart Glasses can take calls, play music, and livestream from your face Meta’s $499.99 Quest 3 headset is all about mixed reality and video games The Meta Quest 3 is sharper, more powerful, and still trying to make mixed reality happen Here’s what Mark Zuckerberg thinks about Apple’s Vision Pro Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and was edited by Callie Wright. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TechCrunch is one of the most important trade publications in the world of tech and startups, and its annual Disrupt conference is where dozens of major companies have launched… and some have failed. Matt has been the editor-in-chief of TechCrunch for essentially a decade now, and he and I have been both friends and competitors the entire time. We’ve competed for scoops, traded criticisms, and asked each other for advice in running our publications and managing our teams. So when Matt announced last month that he’s stepping down from his role at TechCrunch it felt important to have him come on for what you might call an exit interview — a look back at the past decade running a media outlet at the center of the tech ecosystem, with all of the chaos that’s entailed. Links: Why We Sold TechCrunch To AOL, And Where We Go From Here | TechCrunch (2010) TechCrunch founder leaves AOL in a cloud of acrimony | CNN Money (2011) SB Nation Sacks AOL in Raid of Former Engadget Team for Competing New Tech Site, As AOL Zeroes in on New EiC | All Things D (2011) Why Every Company Needs A 'No Bozos' Policy | Forbes (2012) Artificial Intelligence Nonprofit OpenAI Launches With Backing From Elon Musk And Sam Altman | TechCrunch Just buy this Brother laser printer everyone has, it’s fine | The Verge Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Nick Statt and Kate Cox. It was edited by Callie Wright. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Six: The Untold Story of America's First Women Astronauts, from longtime space reporter and Verge alum Loren Grush, is out today. It’s been 40 years since Sally Ride became the first American woman in space — but she was far from the last. In the early 1980s six women — Sally Ride, Judy Resnick, Kathy Sullivan, Anna Fisher, Rhea Seddon, and Shannon Lucid — would get a chance to fly a mission on one of the space shuttles… including, unfortunately, the ill-fated 1986 Challenger launch. The story of the six may be history, but it’s far from ancient, and there’s a lot going on here that ties directly to today. And of course, what’s an astronaut story without some high-flying hijinks in it? Listen to the end for Loren’s favorite. Links: Nichelle Nichols - NASA Recruitment Film (1977) Top Black Woman Is Ousted By NASA | The New York Times (1973) The Space Truck | The Washington Post (1981) NASA Artemis Five former SpaceX employees speak out about harassment at the company | The Verge Why did Blue Origin leave so many female space reporters out of its big reveal? | The Verge ‘We better watch out’: NASA boss sounds alarm on Chinese moon ambitions | Politico Elon Musk’s Shadow Rule | The New Yorker US Takes First Step Toward Regulating Commercial Human Spaceflight | Bloomberg Apply to attend the Code Conference Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and was edited by Callie Wright. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Okta is a big company, a Wall Street SaaS darling. For most of us, it's the thing we have to log into 50 times a week just to get any work done. But from Okta's point of view, Jameeka Green Aaron told us, it's an identity company. I spoke with Jameeka about what "identity" really means — in the digital space, in your real life, and at work — in 2023, and how an identity-based approach might be more or less secure than other approaches. I’m also gearing up to host Code in September (apply to attend here), and I’m thinking a lot about AI — very much a challenge for the future of security, even in a biometric-based era. Links: Apple IDs now support passkeys — if you’re on the iOS 17 or macOS Sonoma betas How to use a passkey to sign in to your Google account Windows 11 tests letting you sign in to websites with a fingerprint or face Apple, Google, and Microsoft will soon implement passwordless sign-in on all major platforms Microsoft called out for ‘blatantly negligent’ cybersecurity practices Okta Faces Long Road Back At Okta, CTO and CISO collaborate by design Apply to attend the Code Conference Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and was edited by Callie Wright. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Perkins Miller is the CEO of Fandom, which both hosts thousands of wikis for everything from Disney to Grand Theft Auto and also runs several publications. Millions of people contribute millions of pieces of content to the platform, and Fandom surrounds all that content with ads and uses all that data to generate insights about how fans think about their favorite games, TV shows, and movies. While you might enjoy the content, a lot of people have complaints — especially about the sheer number of ads. We talked about what it means to host user-generated content in 2023; content moderation; and the general state of media, especially games media, which is pretty rocky right now. I’m also gearing up to host the Code Conference in September (apply to attend here), and I’ve been thinking a lot about AI, search, and the web — all very much big challenges on the horizon for Fandom. Links: Layoffs Hit GameSpot, Giant Bomb Just Months After Fandom Buys Them - Kotaku How Fandom's first-party data, FanDNA, is expanding to improve recommendations for advertisers and audiences - Digiday The AI feedback loop: Researchers warn of 'model collapse' as AI trains on AI-generated content - VentureBeat How Reddit crushed the biggest protest in its history - The Verge ‘Not for Machines to Harvest’: Data Revolts Break Out Against A.I. - The New York Times Someone keeps accusing fanfiction authors of writing their fic with AI, and nobody knows why - The Verge Massive Zelda Wiki Reclaims Independence Six Months Before Tears of the Kingdom - Kotaku Official Minecraft wiki editors so furious at Fandom's 'degraded' functionality and popups they're overwhelmingly voting to leave the site - PC Gamer Trials and Tribble-ations (episode) - Memory Alpha Apply to attend the Code Conference Transcript: Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and was edited by Callie Wright. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters, and our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We have a little surprise in the feed today: An episode of "Land of the Giants," which is all about Tesla this season. Former Verge transportation reporter Tamara Warren and former Jalopnik EIC Patrick George, who are both deeply sourced in the world of cars, host, and every episode has reporting and insight about Tesla that really hasn’t been shared before. It was ahead of the EV competition in basically every way for a long time. But the question Tamara and Patrick want to answer is: Is Tesla still winning by default? And where is the competition pulling ahead now that every carmaker is doing EVs? I joined them in this episode to discuss how modern cars, especially EVs, are being totally rethought as rolling computers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices