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Jacob Kastrenakes

Jacob Kastrenakes

Executive Editor

Jacob Kastrenakes is The Verge's executive editor. He has been with the publication since 2012 as a reporter, editor, and very occasional video host.

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Twitter
Jeff Bezos congratulates Trump on an “extraordinary” win.

Bezos, who killed The Washington Post’s endorsement of Harris and also owns a space company with billions in government contracts, was among the first major US tech leaders to chime in this morning. He is certainly aware that one of his biggest rivals in aerospace is run by a close confidant of the president-elect.


Bitcoin prices are spiking.

As the vote count increasingly points toward Trump, who courted the crypto industry throughout his campaign, the price of Bitcoin has hit a new all-time high of over $74,000.


The chart shows one Bitcoin currently being worth $74,329.88.
The Bitcoin price tracker on Google.
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External Link
“Automattic is completely out of line, and the potential damage to the open source world extends far beyond WordPress,”

writes David Heinemeier Hansson, the CTO at 37signals and creator of the open-source framework Ruby on Rails.

DHH says it “occasionally irks” him to see companies failing to contribute to Ruby on Rails, but that’s the rules:

None of the major licenses, however, say anything close to “it’s free but only until the project owners deem you too successful and then you’ll have to pay 8% of your revenues to support the project”. That’s a completely bonkers and arbitrary standard based in the rule of spite, not law.


The latest volley in the WordPress beef:

WordPress.org’s contributor login page now requires users to certify that they are “not affiliated with WP Engine in any way, financially or otherwise.” 404 Media spotted the new checkbox.


A screenshot of WordPress.org’s login page with a checkbox stating, “I am not affiliated with WP Engine in any way, financially or otherwise.”
Read more: The messy WordPress drama, explained.
Screenshot: The Verge
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External Link
The new Caribou album is filled with AI vocal effects.

Some turned out great, but others highlight just how messy this technology is, according to Pitchfork. From Shaad D’Souza’s review:

AI is simply another tool that will sometimes be used badly and sometimes be used well, and on Honey I think it’s used well—to complicate and expand the abilities of an artist well into his career, whose creative impulses can no longer be entirely satiated through the means previously available to him. There is one exception: The rap verse on “Campfire” is also Snaith, and it edges toward racial ambiguity in a way that feels queasy. At best, it’s a misguided experiment; at worst, outright minstrelsy.


Caribou: Honey

[Pitchfork]

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External Link
Polygonathon is about to kick off.

Our friends at Polygon are running their annual 24-hour live stream charity fundraiser today — I’ve been promised Minecraft builds, a late night horror block, and “lots of shenanigans.” Tune in, have fun, and help them raise some money for a good cause. You can watch on Twitch or over at Polygon’s site.


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External Link
Can AI bots predict election results?

Semafor writes about a startup that’s training AI agents to be just as chaotic as human beings, then polling them to see who they’ll vote for:

In one survey, the company noticed that one of the AI agents said it was going to vote for Mickey Mouse in the upcoming presidential election. Fearing one of their bots had gone off the rails, the Aaru team investigated. It turned out the bot had an explanation. “The agent’s response was ‘I hate Kamala and I hate Trump. I’m writing in and voting for Mickey Mouse,’” Fink said.


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Youtube
Can you believe this thing still uses Micro USB?

Alright, maybe it’s unreasonable for me to be upset that a Super 8 camera doesn’t have the latest and greatest USB connector. Either way: it’s very cool that a new Super 8 camera just came out.

Jordan Drake at PetaPixel shot a few rolls to test out the $5,495 camera: