Editor-in-Chief
When Nilay Patel was four years old, he drove a Chrysler into a small pond because he was trying to learn how the gearshift worked. Years later, he became a technology journalist. He has thus far remained dry.
Nilay was a co-founder of The Verge and the site's first Managing Editor before taking over as Editor-in-Chief. He also was the acting Managing Editor for the launch of Vox.com. Before that, he spent four years as Managing Editor of Engadget, where he drew upon his background as a lawyer to report and explain complex legal situations in everyday terminology — a niche that led to SAY Media naming Nilay one of 10 "voices that matter" in technology journalism.
Nilay co-hosts the Webby Award-winning Vergecast podcast, and has appeared on CNN, CNN International, NPR, Fox News, MSNBC, Sky News, NHK, G4TV, TWiT, and many others. Nilay received an AB in Political Science from the University of Chicago in 2003 and his J.D. from the University of Wisconsin Law School in 2006.
Federation is the future of social media, says Bluesky CEO Jay Graber
The head of Threads and Mastodon competitor Bluesky on why she thinks decentralization is the way forward in a post-Twitter internet.
The Justice Department just announced a long-awaited, massive antitrust suit against Apple. Those antitrust suits — big but slow-moving — are the primary way the US is challenging big tech.
But across the Atlantic, the European Union has been hard at work enforcing what’s known as the Digital Markets Act, a sweeping regulation that went into effect earlier this month that’s aimed at leveling the playing field between big tech and smaller competitors. Apple, in particular, has been engaging in what we can only describe as “malicious compliance.”
Verge reporter Jon Porter, who’s been covering EU regulation for years, joined me on Decoder to break down which companies qualify as “gatekeepers,” what new rules they have to follow, and what this means for the future.
No further comment.
Minute Media, which operates an even less dangerous version of Medium for pro athletes called The Players’ Tribune, is picking up the contract to run Sports Illustrated after the previous operators published AI-written content, fired the CEO, laid off the entire staff, and said it would close the print magazine. This all really happened!
Anyway, Minute Media specializes in “short form sports content creation,” and its CEO Asaf Peled says tells the New York Times that SI will somehow continue to do in-depth journalism even though it is “an exception to our core strategy.” Sure.
[The New York Times]
Why Figma CEO Dylan Field is optimistic about AI and the future of design
The leader of design toolmaker Figma on life after the failed Adobe deal and what comes next in a live interview from SXSW.
If we’re going to start banning software, let’s start banning software.
We’ve heard so much about the dangers of TikTok from both sides of the aisle, and even had Trump flip-flop his position ostensibly over the political calculations of banning an app 170 million Americans use. But what exactly did the House select committee see in its secure briefing that led them to vote 50-0 in favor of the bill that would ban the app? If this thing is going to move forward in the Senate it seems like we should at least know the basics.
The Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern has a deep look at Sora, OpenAI’s new text-to-video generator — and with it, an interview with CTO Mira Murati, who steadfastly refuses to clarify what data was used to train the system. No wonder, since the explosion of copyright lawsuits against AI companies is quickly becoming an existential risk to them all. 4:25 in the video below:
How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka
The author of Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture discusses how we might be able to cultivate our own tastes once more.