Author: Keith Anthony

Andrew Tulloch has once again reminded Silicon Valley that purpose can trump pay. According to the Wall Street Journal, Meta dangled a package worth up to $1.5 billion over six years. Tulloch, a former Facebook engineer who now co-leads Mira Murati’s startup Thinking Machines Lab, politely declined. Rival Labs Push Back Tulloch’s rebuff comes amid an aggressive, and only partially successful, hiring blitz. Since early June, Meta has messaged well over a hundred OpenAI employees, luring just ten. The boldest catch so far is Shengjia Zhao, a Chinese researcher who spent three years at OpenAI and was appointed to run…

As venture capital floods into artificial intelligence, a controversial trend is re-emerging in Silicon Valley: the glorification of overwork. Multiple U.S.-based AI startups are now adopting working hours reminiscent of China’s notorious “996” culture: 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. Some are pushing it even further. Rilla, a U.S.-based AI startup, expects nearly all of its 80 employees to work under this model. According to Wired, the company provides office meals every day of the week, and its job listings are upfront about the hours. Will Gao, Rilla’s head of growth, explained the philosophy in Wired: “There’s…

Texas has long been defined by oil, heat, and huge infrastructure projects. Now, it’s also at the center of a growing environmental debate. Microsoft’s Stargate campus in Abilene is leading a data center boom that is drawing concern over water use, right in the middle of a prolonged drought. According to a July 2025 investigation by The Austin Chronicle, data centers across Central Texas are consuming millions of gallons of water every day. This comes as many residents are being asked to reduce their usage due to dwindling supplies. The problem is not limited to one city. In San Antonio,…

Senegal has pulled the plug on Akon City, reclaiming almost all of the 55-hectare seaside concession after seven years of missed deadlines, fading crypto fortunes and a single half-finished welcome centre that now shares its lot with grazing goats. The $6 billion “real-life Wakanda” once promised luxury towers and flying-car parking is now the most expensive visitor kiosk on the continent. Ambitious Beginnings Announced with Marvel-level fanfare in 2018, Akon called it a “real-life Wakanda” inspired by Black Panther -the plan promised soaring hotels, a 5,000-bed hospital and streets that ran on renewable energy and Akoin. The project aimed to…

When people hear Michael Saylor’s name today, they picture Bitcoin debates, massive balance‐sheet BTC acquisitions, and fiery social-media rants. What most don’t realize is that, long before he became a Bitcoin evangelist, Saylor was quietly scooping up domain names. The Early Days of Domain Hunting In the mid-to-late 1990s, as the internet’s popularity soared, MicroStrategy began acquiring one-word .com domains – simple, generic names such as Alert.com, Courage.com, and Usher.com. Domain names were the hottest new commodity, and Michael Saylor saw that owning a short, memorable .com was akin to owning a Times Square billboard – except there was no…

Nikita Bier has twice turned a simple, feel-good polling idea into chart-topping apps that sold to giant buyers. His playbook relied on hyper-targeted launches, guerrilla social tactics, ruthless iteration, and a “no-budget” marketing philosophy that let the product itself do the work. Below is a closer look at the exact moves that took tbh and Gas from zero to millions and what Bier is building next. 1. Build for One Tight Audience First 1.1 Pick a “seed” school Bier chose a single Georgia high school that started its semester earlier than the rest of the country so he could test…

In July 2023, Sam Altman stood behind Worldcoin as one of the boldest bets in crypto. It was pitched as a new identity layer for the internet, a way to verify that someone is human in an age of deepfakes and AI bots. To participate, users would simply have to let a silver “Orb” scan their irises in exchange for World ID and some WLD tokens. The pitch was simple. The implications, enormous. Two years later, the excitement is evaporating. A Quiet Descent Worldcoin’s token (WLD) debuted with a wave of enthusiasm and big-name backers. Since peaking at $11.74 in…

The crypto industry was supposed to reshape the global financial system. Instead, it may have trapped itself in a loop of speculative hype and recycled ideas. For all the talk of disruption, the space’s most enduring product so far might just be… a digital version of the US dollar. Stablecoins are the Industry’s Crown Jewel? Let’s be honest: stablecoins are the most widely adopted crypto innovation to date. It works. Tether, USDC and others move billions daily, enabling fast settlements, cross-border transfers, and on-chain liquidity. But strip back the technical wrapper and it’s just a dollar on a blockchain. A…

Friends is an iconic sitcom, the NBC series aired from 1994 to 2004, revolving around the lives of six friends in their 20’s living in New York. Although it finished over 20 years ago, the show still airs globally. Each cast member receives 2% of that figure ($20 million annually). Cast Salaries & Negotiations Season 1 (1994–95): Each actor earned $22 500 per episode. Seasons 9–10 (2002–04): Through collective bargaining, the six leads compelled producers to raise their fees to $1 million per episode each. Reportedly, Matthew Perry’s initial holdout forced the studio’s hand- he refused to show up to…

On an ordinary spring morning in 2015, a Facebook accounts-payable clerk keyed in a seven-figure wire to what looked like a trusted hardware supplier. No alarms rang, no red flags popped. The money left California, landed in Latvia and vanished. It was one of dozens of payments that ultimately siphoned $122 million from the coffers of Facebook and Google over a three-year stretch. All orchestrated by a single Lithuanian man armed only with forged stationery and nerve. The perfect cover A shell company built to fool In 2013, Evaldas Rimasauskas registered Quanta Computer LLC in Latvia, a name chosen to…