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Elizabeth Lopatto

Elizabeth Lopatto

Senior Reporter

Elizabeth Lopatto is a senior writer at The Verge, where she covers how the internet is changing how we think about money: cryptocurrency, business, fintech and Elon Musk for some reason.

She joined the site in 2014, as science editor, then deputy editor running science, transportation and social media, before she got tired of being an authority figure and went back to blogging.

The Will Lewis scandal at the Washington Post has reached Jeff Bezos.

Lewis, the Post’s publisher and a former Murdoch henchman, forced out Sally Buzbee, the executive editor. As a result, a longstanding UK scandal around journalistic ethics resurfaced, as Lewis has allegedly attempted to suppress stories about it.

There’s now enough blood in the water that Bezos, WaPo’s owner, is involved. He’s supporting his British import.


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“The 2024 elections will be the most consequential in crypto’s history.”

I’m pretty skeptical that the “crypto voter” exists — there are plenty of other issues that weigh higher in people’s minds — but there’s a lot of spending happening. That said, Sam Bankman-Fried spent a great deal and got nothing, so...


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Another look at child influencers on Instagram.

Following on the reporting earlier this year from The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal profiles a teen influencer — whose mom is aware the account’s biggest fans are adult men.

Illinois has passed a law to protect child influencers, and more legislation is almost certainly forthcoming.


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“That’s it. We’re getting an encyclopedia.”

A remarkable essay on how an AI-generated video on kung fu led one family to order actual, physical encyclopedias.

Knowledge is not a market commodity. Moreover, “justified true belief” does not result from an optimization function. Knowledge may be refined through questioning or falsification, but it does not improve from competition with purposeful nonknowledge. If anything, in the face of nonknowledge, knowledge loses.


Whatever Elon wants, Tesla gets

Financial nihilism comes to corporate governance

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Inside yet another AI chop shop junking up the internet.

Inaccurate AI-generated stories were an important part of the BNN business model — “churning out hundreds, even thousands, of stories a day.” Some of BNN’s stories were republished by MSN.com or linked by reputable outlets.


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Antitrust enforcer has his eyes on AI, chips.

In a new interview with The Financial Times, Jonathan Kanter says regulators may need to act urgently to keep AI from being controlled by already-dominant tech companies. Kanter has been leading the antitrust charge against tech intermediaries that are “more powerful than the products and services or the entities they intermediate.”


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An overview of Apple’s Siri development efforts.

The Wall Street Journal has published a retrospective of how Apple’s caution in working on its devices has “hobbled its early efforts in the AI arena.” Part of the problem, according to the WSJ, was a group that adopted Google’s loose approach to deadlines.