Elizabeth Lopatto

Friend of The Verge Casey Newton has some thoughts on the Amazon v. Perplexity web browser battle about AI agents: Perplexity wants to encourage people to use their agents in order to build its own business, but this screws basically every business that runs on web pages, including Amazon. (Humans can look at ads, sign up for newsletters, engage in curiosity-oriented browsing, etc.) Perplexity is a known bad actor. I hope Jeff Bezos eats them alive.

Remember how Salesforce billionaire Marc Benioff suddenly looooved Donald Trump? It turns out Salesforce is trying to sell an AI product to ICE. Two things: 1. This is how the gangster tech era works. 2. If I were a betting woman, I’d put money down that Agentforce is floundering. Certainly it’s been expensive marketing it.

Hey Marc, is that big bet on AI not working out? And now you need a contract from Uncle Sam because there’s no other way out of this mess you got yourself into? Is that what’s going on here, babe? Just asking, because it sure seems like this is you trying to grovel your way into the gangster tech ring.

Judge Jeannette A. Vargas dismissed Drake’s defamation claim against Kendrick Lamar for “Not Like Us,” a song that “contains lyrics explicitly accusing Drake of being a pedophile, set to a catchy beat and propulsive bassline,” she writes in her opinion. Not only does no one think of rap beefs as being strictly truth-telling, Drake explicitly asked Lamar to do it in “Taylor Made Freestyle,” Vargas notes. I recommend reading the whole thing — Vargas clearly had a good time writing it, especially that footnote about Millie Bobby Brown.

To support their suits against OPM and DOGE, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is selling a retro-looking ringer t-shirt, and honestly it’s kind of a banger. I think I am going to buy one, hem it into a crop top and wear it when I go rock climbing. At $25 it’s a steal.

In unsealed testimony, SpaceX investor Iqbaljit Kahlon says that some Chinese investors are “directly on the cap table.” This may raise some national security concerns, depending on how much information about SpaceX — which is deeply involved with the US defense department — gives to its investors.