Europe, popping collars, and Oil & Gas are back
ChatGPT is fooling scientists, and athletes are still bad investors
Hello again.
It’s been too long. I’ve missed you all, and hope to make this newsletter a more regular thing in 2023.
But before we dive in, a special announcement: My friends Michael Girdley, Alex Cohen, and I turned this newsletter format into a podcast. You can listen here. The pilot came out this morning, and if you have 30 minutes, I’d love for you to give us a listen and send me feedback.
As a reminder, I’m Chris Bakke, a Twitterer, and the CEO of Laskie - the best hiring platform for tech talent. I write about hiring, careers, investing, finance, web5, and tech.
Let’s dive into the good, the bad, and the ugly from the past few days. As always, we’ll flip it so we don’t end the newsletter on a bad note.
The ugly:
Coinbase, Scale AI, Amazon, Salesforce, and dozens of other tech companies continued with more layoffs this week, affecting tens of thousands of employees. I thought we were in the clear for a big 2023 now that the day-in-the-life product manager Tik Toks have slowed, but it seems we’re in for another sad year.
European Stocks Are Outshining U.S. Peers. Germany’s DAX index and France’s CAC 40 have each risen 18% or more in the past three months, more than double the 8% gain for the S&P 500. No. Absolutely not. These people don’t even have iced coffees. They take naps in the middle of the day. They have 70 public holidays each year. We can not stand for this. Team USA: back to work.
The bad:
In the least surprising news of 2023, people are using ChatGPT to write fake scientific abstracts, which are fooling scientists. Always Sunny has been reporting on this problem for years. Science is a liar, sometimes.
News is coming out about the major investors who lost billions in the FTX scam/ponzi scheme. Tom Brady, Gisele, Robert Kraft, Dan Och, and Paul Tudor Jones are all major investors ensnared in the collapse. 2023 continues to be a rough patch for professional athletes, models, and elderly billionaires who thought about making it big in crypto.
The good:
Amazon is expanding its Buy with Prime service to US-based merchants by the end of the month. This allows third-parties to offer Prime benefits like free shipping and returns on their own apps. This means I’ll be able to continue my annual tradition of ordering a custom quilt with the Forbes 30 Under 30’s names on it from Etsy and get free next day delivery.
Oil and Gas are back. If this means more dangerous oil field Instagram Reels, watching the next housing boom unfold in the Permian Basin, and that my 7 shares of Ford stock will increase in value because these guys continue to lease F250s for $1,660/mo then drill, baby, drill.
Microsoft plans to invest $10B in OpenAI. 2023 is proving to be an incredible year for polo shirt wearers.
Satya Nadella (CEO, Microsoft) on left, and Sam Altman (CEO, OpenAI) on right
Okay, that’s all.
If you’re enjoying this newsletter, share it on Twitter. Share it on Reddit. Share it on Linkedin. Text your landlord (parents) about it. Text your ex about it. Get into a big fight with your ex about how you were a bad partner and they can’t believe you’re texting them for the first time in 6 years about a tech newsletter.
See you soon.
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PS - Perhaps you missed that bolded special announcement above.
Sometimes, when writing, it’s helpful to put announcements in a couple different formats, just in case you’re more of an italics guy/gal.
We turned this newsletter format into a podcast.
You can listen here. The pilot came out this morning, and if you have 30 minutes, I’d love for you to give us a listen and send me feedback.