Weekly Reading – 29th March 2025

Business

The Scammer’s Manual: How to Launder Money and Get Away With It. Scary, yet fascinating.

Bubble Trouble. I tend to believe that we will benefit from the recent AI advances, but I don’t believe that venture capitalists will recoup their investments meaningfully. There is little visibility into how AI companies can monetize their crazy investments. The macro environment is full of uncertainty, due to the ambiguous trade policies of the Trump administration.

Warner Bros. Chief Vowed to Revive Its Film Studio. It’s Not Going Well. Just because someone is experienced and in a position of power does not mean that they will excel in a different field. David Zaslav is another example. He is among the most powerful people in the TV and movies industries. Yet, he has not delivered on his promise to revive the movie industry and Warner Bros.

Apple’s AI isn’t a letdown. AI is the letdown. Apple’s biggest mistakes, in my opinion, are that 1/ they felt compelled by Wall Street to promote AI features that are not yet available; 2/ they rolled out features that were not useful to a lot of users (Image Playground). I agree with the thesis of the article. Whenever people say Apple falls behind in the race of AI, what are the metrics?

The Newspaper Flourishing Without a Paywall. “The Guardian for the past eight years has asked readers to donate in support of its journalism, a “reader revenue” program that helps the paper exist without a paywall. But the appeals have gotten more strident — and more Trump-focused — since the Post and the L.A. Times withdrew expected endorsements for Kamala Harris last fall, and to great effect. The last week in February was the second-biggest week in U.S. reader-revenue history for The Guardian; the biggest was the week of the 2024 presidential election.“

Other Stuff I Find Interesting

Credit Score Impacts from Past Due Student Loan Payments. The student loan thing will have a massive impact on the financial industry as delinquent borrowers will see their FICO score and ability to borrow plummet. To make it even more confusing, the Trump administration plans to dismantle the Department of Education and hand over the task to collect student loans to the Department of Commerce. Whether Congress or the Constitution allows such a move remains to be seen.

Utah governor signs online child safety law requiring Apple, Google to verify user ages. The new law in Utah puts the burden of responsibility on operating system makers such as Apple or Google to provide blanket verification. I can see why these behemoths should take on this work, but on other hand, it may be seen as too intrusive to minors. The other side of the coin is to keep the status quo and let individual apps verify ages. That will give minors privacy, but also maybe too much freedom.

Turkey’s brain drain is taking its female coders with it. It is great for Turkish female coders to pave their own path and not let the sexism hold them back. For the country of Turkey, it’s detrimental to its future to have talent go overseas. The US, traditionally, should be the prime beneficiary of this trend, but I am not sure about that now because of the current administration’s hostility towards immigration.

The Town That Went Crazy for Crypto. Easy comes, easy goes. As default, I’d like to have regulations and oversight on everything, including crypto. Left with freedom to do anything, humans tend to wreck havoc and inflict harm on others. As a side note, be very careful of what you download to your phone that is NOT from the App Store or Google App Store.

De-Atomization is the Secret to Happiness. The author is spot-on.