Decoder with Nilay Patel The Verge

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.  
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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
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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.  


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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.
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AWS is quite a story. It started as an experiment almost 20 years ago with Amazon trying to sell its excess server capacity. And people really doubted it. Why was the online bookstore trying to sell cloud services? But now, AWS is the largest cloud services provider in the world, and it’s the most profitable segment of Amazon, generating more than $22 billion in sales last quarter alone. By some estimates, AWS powers roughly one-third of the entire global internet. And on the rare occasion an AWS cluster goes down, an unfathomable number of platforms, websites, and services feel it, and so do hundreds of millions of users.

Adam Selipsky was there almost from the start: he joined in 2005 and became CEO of AWS in 2019 when former AWS CEO Andy Jassy took over for Jeff Bezos as CEO of Amazon. Even with big competitors such as Microsoft and Google gaining ground, he estimates that only 10 percent of his potential customers overall have made the jump to the cloud. 

That leaves lots of room to grow, and I wanted to know where he thinks that growth can come from — and importantly, what will keep AWS competitive as the word “cloud” starts to mean everything and nothing.

AWS is going big on AI, but it has some challenges. Adam and I got into all of it and into the weeds of what it means to be an AI provider at scale. It’s uncharted territory.

Links:
Big Three Dominate the Global Cloud Market
Amazon’s server outage broke fast food apps like McDonald’s and Taco Bell
Amazon names former exec Adam Selipsky as the new head of AWS
AWS is ready to power AI agents that can handle busywork instead of just chatting
Nvidia reveals H100 GPU for AI and teases ‘world’s fastest AI supercomputer’
Amazon plans to rework Alexa in the age of ChatGPT
Sarah Silverman is suing OpenAI and Meta for copyright infringement

Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/23824200/ai-cloud-amazon-aws-adam-selipsky
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