Platformer

Casey Newton
  • 4.6 (13)
  • Tech News

Weekly audio updates at the intersection of tech and democracy. From Casey Newton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  1. 6h ago

    Town's CEO on the self-organizing company

    Last week on the Platformer podcast, Replit's Amjad Masad predicted that within three years, we'll be using fewer apps and more agents — with the agents using apps on our behalf. For the fifth episode of our miniseries on productivity in the AI era, I talked to someone building one of those agents. Jean-Denis Greze is the co-founder and CEO of Town — though his actual title there is mayor. Town's signature bet is that you will not have a relationship with a piece of software so much as with a character. Your assistant — Town calls it a townie — gets a name, a personality, and an animal avatar; Greze's is a silver fox named Ivy, a nod to his prematurely gray hair. (Mine is a cheerful finch named Rufus.) Within about 90 seconds of connecting my email and calendar, it had produced a scary-good dossier about who I am, who I know, and what I'm working on; over the first two weeks, it builds a private wiki about your life that Greze told me costs the company about $100 per user to generate. Plus, Platformer fellow Ella Markianos joins at the top of the show to discuss this week's news about AI and jobs. Sponsored by Atlassian Jira | Try Today. Jira.dev Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  2. Aug 7

    Replit's CEO: "You Don't Need to Code Anymore"

    Last week on the Platformer podcast, Granola's Chris Pedregal told me we are only 5 percent into the AI transformation of work. For the fourth episode of our miniseries on productivity in the AI era, we talk to someone who is trying to speed up the process — building an AI tool for writing software, and a company that can increasingly run itself. Amjad Masad is the co-founder and CEO of Replit, which he started in 2016 with his wife, the designer Haya Odeh. Last month, Replit published a claim that caught my attention: that its engineers nearly tripled the amount of code each person ships in just six months, while preserving the quality of its code, thanks to the rollout of agents throughout the company. After spending 15 years making coding easier to learn, he now tells people not to bother learning it at all. "As an entrepreneur, you have to be honest with yourself," he told me. "Otherwise the company would die." Plus, Platformer fellow Ella Markianos joins at the top of the show to discuss this week's news about AI and jobs. Sponsored by Atlassian Jira | Try Today. Jira.dev Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  3. Aug 6

    How much of my boss's job can AI do?

    Six months after trying to automate myself, I gave Claude Fable 5 a bigger job: replacing Casey. Read the newsletter here: https://www.platformer.news/replacing-casey-with-claude/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  4. Jul 31

    This AI notetaker won't sell surveillance to your boss

    Last week on the Platformer podcast, Thomas Paul Mann predicted that within a few years, as much as half of the software on your Mac could be software you made yourself. For the third episode of our miniseries on keeping your advantage at work in the AI era, we take a look at the tool that may already know more about your job than any other: the AI notetaker that listens to every meeting you take. And there's no better person to discuss it with than Chris Pedregal. Chris is the co-founder and CEO of Granola, and if you've met with a startup founder or a venture capitalist over the past two years, there's a good chance Granola was running quietly on their laptop — and a good chance you never noticed.Granola's invisibility is also its controversy: unlike the bots that announce themselves in your meetings, out of the box nobody knows it's running. Chris made some news on the show, too: Granola never stores audio, and it is now researching whether to automatically delete verbatim transcripts after a period of time, compressing what it keeps. Plus, Platformer fellow Ella Markianos joins at the top of the show to discuss this week's news about AI and jobs. Sponsored by Atlassian Jira | Try Today. Jira.dev Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  5. Jul 28

    A big week for AI denialism

    In the wake of OpenAI’s cyberattack against Hugging Face, few seem ready to acknowledge the implications. Read the newsletter here: https://www.platformer.news/a-big-week-for-ai-denialism/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  6. Jul 22

    The case for making your own apps

    In the second episode of our second season of the Platformer Podcast, Raycast co-founder and CEO Thomas Mann offers a clear-eyed critique of commercial software. In his telling, most software is a compromise: companies chasing growth pile features onto their products until they turn generic. His answer is hyper-personalized software: apps built for a market of exactly one person, then remixed and shared from there. He predicts that within three years, 30 to 50 percent of the software on your Mac could be software you made yourself. Thomas also broke some news on the show for Glaze Pro subscribers. And he offered a bracing counterpoint to the star-athletes-only hiring wisdom taking hold across the industry. The engineers who benefit most from AI, he argues, are the most junior and the most senior, while the person in the middle is in "a bit of a weird spot." Plus, Platformer fellow Ella Markianos joins at the top of the show to discuss this week's news about AI and jobs. Sponsored by Atlassian Jira | Try Today. Jira.dev Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  7. Jul 15

    He tried 200 to-do apps so you don't have to

    Last season on the Platformer podcast, we explored what AI means for jobs — including the risk that huge numbers of them might soon go away. This season, we're asking a more practical question: what can you actually do about it? In the first episode of our second season of the Platformer Podcast, The Verge Editor-at-Large David Pierce joins us to talk about his obsession with productivity. David tests every productivity tool in the world so that the rest of us don't have to. He estimates that he has personally installed, used, and abandoned some 200 to-do apps — a number limited, he told me, "by the number of them that exist, not by the number of them that I'm willing to try." He switched notes apps the day we recorded our conversation. Plus, Platformer fellow Ella Markianos joins at the top of the show to discuss this week's news about AI and jobs. Sponsored by Atlassian Rovo | Become an AI-native team with Rovo. https://www.atlassian.com/rovo Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  8. Jul 8

    Vibe coding has escaped the terminal

    Adventures with Raycast’s new app-making app, Glaze. Read the newsletter here: https://www.platformer.news/glaze-app-raycast-vibe-coding-review/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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4.6
out of 5
13 Ratings

About

Weekly audio updates at the intersection of tech and democracy. From Casey Newton. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Information

  • Creator
    Casey Newton
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    34
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Casey Newton
  • Show Website
    Platformer

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