nitasha tiku

One of the highlights of my career has been reporting on China & working closely with @zeyiyang.bsky.social. So I’m really excited to share that we’re launching a new newsletter together for @wired.com. It's called "Made in China."

You can sign up for it here: www.wired.com/newsletter/e...

Zach Khan, a high school journalist, has a new investigation he's hoping you'll all read.

thx for listening, james!

and then saying “the media won’t tell you this”

done. ty for your work

Sydette consistently has some of the sharpest takes on technology and society and should be getting paid more tbh. If you have money to spare her gfm is still going: gofund.me/998a1b6b

With PBS funding cut, will the next generation be raised by ‘Skibidi Toilet’? Cuts to PBS funding could change kids’ media forever, as families opt for short-form video and online series optimized for attention.

Generation Slop. new from @tatumhunter.bsky.social
www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

Inside the Silicon Valley push to breed super-babies Investors say genetic prediction services for embryos, used by Elon Musk and others, are a trust fund for future children. Many scientists are skeptical.

"For its vastly smaller samples, Orchid uses a process called amplification, which creates copies of the DNA retrieved from the embryo. That process, Yatsenko said, can introduce major inaccuracies." must-read story from Lizza Dwoskin
www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

Tech billionaire Trump adviser Marc Andreessen says universities will ‘pay the price’ for DEI Tech investor and Trump adviser Marc Andreessen in a private group chat attacked colleges for promoting diversity, saying they had discriminated against “native born kids.”

Rather infuriating that this otherwise solid article on Andreeseen's nefarious comments + doings DOES NOT mention:
- his Mosaic work at NCSA
- funded by NSF

www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

cc @nitasha.bsky.social @washingtonpost.com

In case you're wondering why Google lobbyists are cool with HR 4

Trump is putting crucial school funding at risk by dismantling the Department of Education: See how much federal funding your school district could lose Last month, President Trump ordered Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to move forward with plans to close the Department of Education (ED). While this move is illegal and has been met with litigati...

And EPI has this primer

www.epi.org/blog/trump-i...

Tech billionaire Trump adviser Marc Andreessen says universities will ‘pay the price’ for DEI Tech investor and Trump adviser Marc Andreessen in a private group chat attacked colleges for promoting diversity, saying they had discriminated against “native born kids.”

gift link to the article wapo.st/4kEBRvh

Andreessen sent his messages to a WhatsApp group used by Trump officials to discuss artificial intelligence policy with dozens of tech figures and academics, according to screenshots of the chat from May and June reviewed by The Post. The group, whose members have varied political views, predates the current Trump administration. It was established in 2023 to connect investors and others with a shared interest in open development of AI.

In recent months the group has argued over Trump administration budget cuts at the NSF, and whether the government should place export restrictions on Chinese AI company DeepSeek, the two members told The Post. In January U.S. tech stocks crashed after the company claimed it could achieve similar results to American rivals with fewer resources.

re: Meta and open source AI, the private chat group where Andreessen (a Meta board member) said universities must "pay the price" was originally set up to discuss this topic. i keep wondering about OS people committed to the cause who may have been left out of the policy debate

Tech billionaire Trump adviser Marc Andreessen says universities will ‘pay the price’ for DEI Tech investor and Trump adviser Marc Andreessen in a private group chat attacked colleges for promoting diversity, saying they had discriminated against “native born kids.”

But hey let’s spend more time calling these dudes crazy

Meanwhile they have already told you they want to go full on slavery and segregation

And the universities you keep centering are already caving while folks argue it needs to be a white convo

www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

Tech billionaire Trump adviser Marc Andreessen says universities will ‘pay the price’ for DEI Tech investor and Trump adviser Marc Andreessen in a private group chat attacked colleges for promoting diversity, saying they had discriminated against “native born kids.”

If Andreessen was truly concerned about STEM opportunities for Trump's voter base, he'd advise the administration to invest in STEM in red states.

Instead, he's pushed to destroy scientific institutions & research. That's telling. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

Tech billionaire Trump adviser Marc Andreessen says universities will ‘pay the price’ for DEI Tech investor and Trump adviser Marc Andreessen in a private group chat attacked colleges for promoting diversity, saying they had discriminated against “native born kids.”

There have been so many prophesies of exodus from SF or CA because of progressive policies or a light dusting of taxes, and Silicon Valley is still Silicon Valley. I mean they've created satellites around the West, but they're still here. I mean Marc Andreessen clearly belongs somewhere else...

This is exactly the type of lifesaving resource that sex workers in the US lost after SESTA/FOSTA

PTSD is not something that can be detected from facial images/videos. this is simply scientifically bogus and a clear case of physiognomy

Urgh. In which @ariezra.bsky.social and I make the case for youth privacy as distinguished from parental privacy papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Tech billionaire Trump adviser Marc Andreesen says universities will ‘pay the price’ for DEI Tech investor and Trump adviser Marc Andreessen in a private group chat attacked colleges for promoting diversity, saying they had discriminated against “native born kids.”

New from me. Hope you’ll give it a read www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

After my participation in the AI Senate forum, Andreesen went out of his way to find me on X and block me (I had never interacted w him).

Just a terrifyingly hateful person. I remain deeply unsettled the more I learn about how deep his prejudice actually goes.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin calls U.N. ‘transparently antisemitic’ after report on tech firms and Gaza Google co-founder Sergey Brin called the United Nations “transparently antisemitic” in a message on a company forum, after a U.N. report alleged Google profited from Israel’s war in Gaza.

❝With all due respect, throwing around the term genocide in relation to Gaza is deeply offensive to many Jewish people who have suffered actual genocides. I would also be careful citing transparently antisemitic organizations like the UN in relation to
these issues

Reported by @nitasha.bsky.social

Two Shrecker bangers in a day; now a historical tour across the higher ed and its dynamic social compact: "Decimating research funding ... and shrinking or eliminating student grants and loans will make higher education both less productive and less accessible" www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

“The combination of DEI and immigration is politically lethal,” Andreessen wrote. “When these two forms of discrimination combine, as they have for the last 60 years and on hyperdrive for the last decade…”

60 years ago was the civil rights movement, in case anyone was confused about his message.

💕🫡

This was a great scoop by @nitasha.bsky.social

It can't be overstated how powerful Andreessen's late father-in-law, John Arrillaga, was at Stanford. He built so much of the campus and donated more than a quarter of a billion dollars to the school.

Moreover,Silicon Valley VCs specifically only do *a specific subset* of last mile work, quite frankly nowhere near the most important, never mind the most innovative (that's a laugh!)

Silicon Valley VCs sit atop a system where federal and state governments spent more on basic research of all kinds than most other countries in the world combined, and then take the ideas that come out of that and take it the last mile. An important function, but they disproportionately benefit.

Funny, this is how I view Andreessen-Horowitz and their peers

The important thing to understand about the current state of affairs is that Andreessen hired a partner at the most influential VC firm in the tech industry solely on the basis that the man strangled a Black man to death in my neighborhood.