Todd Bishop

One document references a $30,000 payment. The allegations were never proven. I would absolutely listen to a podcast about this, if someone were to report it out and make one. Would also be a great magazine article.

This led to an internal CIA investigation into the possibility that the agency itself was paying Hunt to write these novels, apparently as part of some attempt to influence public opinion about the agency and U.S. intelligence.

Back in the 1960s, a specialist in U.S. intelligence literature, Walter Pforzheimer, did some sleuthing to figure out that future Watergate figure E. Howard Hunt was writing spy novels under a pseudonym, David St. John. The novels featured "America's most ingenious spy, playboy Peter Ward."

1/ For an evening diversion, I couldn't help but start putting the newly released JFK files into Google's NotebookLM, in batches, to see what turned up. I'll leave the real reporting to the experts in the field. But here's a fascinating story that the AI turned up, unrelated to the assassination.

"We are a science-driven institute... What we're doing for 2025 and beyond is we're trying to understand - what does it mean to fill in the gap from an AI model to a solution? We're after impact - making the world a better place with AI technologies." Ali Farhadi, CEO of Ai2

Ali Farhadi joined the @geekwire.com podcast with @toddbishop.bsky.social to talk about:
🧠 The state of AI industry post-DeepSeek
📈 The building momentum around truly open AI
📲 Why on-device AI was a priority with OLMoE
💡 How we will use AI to solve real problems in 2025

Listen: buff.ly/41kjuoR

Interesting, can you remember which podcast the ads are on? Would be fun to hear.

GeekWire Breaking News in Technology & Business

‘Open source will win’: Allen Institute for AI CEO Ali Farhadi on the new era of artificial intelligence https://www.geekwire.com/2025/open-source-will-win-allen-institute-for-ai-ceo-ali-farhadi-on-the-new-era-of-artificial-intelligence/

GeekWire Breaking News in Technology & Business

Researchers led by University of Washington Nobel winner achieve a scientific breakthrough https://www.geekwire.com/2025/researchers-led-by-university-of-washington-nobel-winner-achieve-a-scientific-breakthrough/

Podcast: Amazon, AI, and the cloud — a reality check, with Corey Quinn of ‘Last Week in AWS’ As cloud giants Amazon, Microsoft, and Google spend record sums to build out their capacity for artificial intelligence models and services, the current realities of customer behavior underscore the r...

"The big things, the valuable things, the things that drive the world, in a computing sense, are also blessedly the boring things." — Corey Quinn (@quinnypig.com), offering a reality check on the AI hype as our guest on this week's @geekwire.bsky.social podcast. www.geekwire.com/2025/podcast...

Amazon’s quarterly profits soar to a record $20 billion, but cloud growth comes up short Amazon's beat Wall Street's overall expectations with $187.8 billion in net sales, up 10%, and came in well ahead on the bottom line, with earnings of $1.86 per share, vs. expectations of $1.48 for th...

The earnings call is under way now. Our full story is here: www.geekwire.com/2025/amazons...

4/ The company reported 1,556,000 full- and part-time employees as of Dec. 31, up 2% year-over-year. (This number does not include contractors or temporary personnel hired for seasonal work.) This chart always fascinates me for the story it tells over time.

3/ Sales by major segment:
Online Stores = $75.5B, up 7.1%.
Third-party seller services = $47.5B, up 9%.
Advertising = $17.3B, up 18%.
Subscriptions, including Prime = $11.5B, up 9.7%.
Physical stores = $5.6B, up 8%.

2/ AWS growth was slightly lower than expected, with sales of $28.8 billion, up 19%, vs. expectations of 19.3%. Although AWS sales ($28.8B) were ~15% of Amazon's total sales ($187.8B), operating profits ($10.6B) were >50% of Amazon's overall op. profits of $21.2B for the quarter.

1/ Amazon beat expectations with $187.8B in net sales, up 10%, and came in well ahead on the bottom line, with earnings of $1.86 per share, vs. expectations of $1.48. Quarterly profits surpassed $20 billion for the first time, up more than 88% from a year ago.

Trying something new here: Amazon's quarterly results for the three months ended Dec. 31 2024, in four charts.

Microsoft’s free 365 Copilot Chat will let business users access AI agents in bid to expand adoption Microsoft is looking to boost usage of its Copilot AI tools for businesses. (GeekWire File Photo / Todd Bishop) Microsoft is adding a new wrinkle to

Here is Microsoft's new bid to boost enterprise AI adoption: A new Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat experience, announced Wednesday morning, will give business users free access to basic AI features, and to AI agents on a pay-as-you-go basis, without paying $30/user/month. www.geekwire.com/2025/microso...

Thanks for thinking of me.

‘From impossible to merely difficult’: AI meets a vintage 1980s musical gadget What happens when you mix modern AI with a piece of vintage technology and the musical stylings of a very amateur guitarist?

Here's the backstory and a podcast episode with more: www.geekwire.com/2025/from-im...

Here is the Dr. Rhythm.

Dr. Rhythm meets AI: I had fun over the holiday break blending a vintage 1980s drum synthesizer from my youth (a Boss DR-110, circa 1983) with my own plunking and strumming on guitar, and an AI music generator.

Can anyone explain the reason for the everpresent hard-rock music bed that plays during the highlights on @espn.com SportsCenter?

Hi Kathy! It's Proposal #9 (p. 87) in case you want more info.
www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Arch...

In case anyone is wondering, it's common for Satya Nadella to get in the range of 94% approval, less than other board members. My hypothesis is that it's due to a subset investors who want more separation between board and management.

Bitcoin gets almost no support from Microsoft shareholders, as AI data scrutiny tops voting Microsoft released the results of shareholder votes on Tuesday. (GeekWire File Photo / Todd Bishop) None of the six outside shareholder proposals at

I broke down the results in more detail here: www.geekwire.com/2024/bitcoin...

Microsoft released the results of shareholder voting today, from its annual meeting. None of the shareholder proposals was approved, but it's interesting to look at the numbers. Almost no support for investing in Bitcoin, whereas a call for scrutiny of AI data sources received the most votes (36%).

Hey Rob!

Will do, thank you.

It would be a great use of AI! We end up shooting so many photos at these events, and only use a fraction of them in the live coverage. I end up going through manually afterward looking for additional shots for our library. Takes a while. Would be nice to automate, to some degree.

I use OneDrive, Google Photos, etc. I have access to Photoshop if I make the effort but I'm not a regular user of it.

Looking for a good AI tool to easily and quickly identify the best/clearest photos from a large set like this. Any advice?