Chaos & Amazement #2516 OpenAI’s Social Media Platform, Thronglets, and Death to Nickels
This week’s edition has a little bit of everything: AI breakthroughs, digital oddities, and a surprising new entry into the social media ring.
Tech news
OpenAI is building a social media platform. This is probably partially motivated by the Elon feud, but the main long term benefit is data. Elon and Zuck have a constant source of training data from social media, if this succeeds OpenAI will as well. https://www.theverge.com/openai/648130/openai-social-network-x-competitor
UK's Synthesia reaches $100M ARR milestone and secures Adobe investment. The AI video company plans to expand into the AI agent market in coming months. Within GenAI, Synthesia stands out with lifelike AI avatars in 140+ languages. https://tech.eu/2025/04/15/synthesia-scores-adobe-investment-as-hits-100m-in-arr/
How people are really using Gen AI in 2025: to find purpose and improve ourselves. Therapy and Companionship is now the #1 use case. https://hbr.org/2025/04/how-people-are-really-using-gen-ai-in-2025
Fresh AI
"If Snapchat existed back then" is my new favorite genre of AI video.
From my blog
My favorite episode of the new Black Mirror season on Netflix is still the sequel to the Star Trek parody “USS Callister”, but I couldn’t resist trying out Thronglets after watching "Plaything." It’s wild that the retro virtual pet game from the episode is now real—you just need a Netflix account to download and play it. Raising those quirky Thronglets felt like stepping right into Black Mirror’s twisted universe. And apparently I’m a ruthless capitalist.
Weird and wonderful
A Music Scrapbook. These 241 songs meant something to someone.
A few improvements to the ultra high efficiency dishwasher pt. 3 https://youtube.com/shorts/j3ci2Ai6GHg?si=TCuWxtw5yEHtSv4u
Sound advice: Don't Buy Stuff from Old AI People
Colossal Squid, 1st Live Observation in its natural habitat. This type of squid is the world's heaviest invertebrate, growing up to 7 meters (!) long and 500 kg. The one in this video, though, is about 30 cm long. It's a baby.
I found the stupidest morning routine video by far. After seeing this video I went straight back to bed.
Tesla Regret Syndrome PSA
Unitree Iron Fist King: Awakening! This is why you shouldn’t forget to say “thank you”
First, the penny. Now, the nickel. CCP Grey’s Death to Nickels.
thanks for this always very catchy newsletter (everytime I learn something !)
:-)