Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

Warren Buffett will step down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO
Legendary investor Warren Buffett announced today that he will ask the Berkshire Hathaway board to have Greg Abel replace him as CEO at the end of 2025. “I think the time has arrived where Greg should become the chief executive officer of the company at year end,” Buffett said at the end of the company’s…

Temu stops shipping products from China to the U.S.
Chinese retailer Temu has shifted strategy in the face of U.S. tariffs. Through executive order, President Donald Trump has ended the so-called de minimis rule, which allowed goods worth $800 or less to enter the country without tariffs. He’s also increasing tariffs on Chinese goods by more than 100%, forcing both Chinese companies like Shein…

Week in Review: Apple won’t raise prices — yet
Welcome back to Week in Review! We’ve got lots of news for you today: Amazon earnings, Apple earnings, ChatGPT sycophancy, Alibaba’s AI models, and much more. Let’s get to it! Well? During Apple’s earnings call yesterday, Tim Cook revealed that the company paid $900 million in tariffs last quarter. But despite this, the CEO didn’t…

eBay and Etsy are relatively confident despite tariff pressures
Like virtually every sector in the business world, the secondhand industry is grappling with the ramifications of President Donald Trump’s tariffs. However, based on the comments made by eBay and Etsy earlier this week, both don’t appear to be overly concerned. The companies recently reported Q1 2025 earnings results, both addressing the pressing topic of…

TechCrunch Mobility: Aurora launches its driverless commercial trucking service, and a surprise bidder joins Canoo’s bankruptcy case
Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! Your usual host Kirsten has passed the reins to me, Rebecca Bellan, for the day, and I want to talk about Aurora Innovation and its last-minute save. …

AI chatbots are ‘juicing engagement’ instead of being useful, Instagram co-founder warns
Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom says AI companies are trying too hard to “juice engagement” by pestering their users with follow-up questions, instead of providing actually useful insights. Systrom said the tactics represent “a force that’s hurting us,” comparing them to those used by social media companies to expand aggressively. “You can see some of these…

Uber’s latest autonomous vehicle partner? Chinese startup Momenta
Uber announced Friday yet another autonomous vehicle partnership as it leverages its dominant ride-hail and delivery position while relying on partners to supply the self-driving tech it isn’t building in-house. Today, the lucky startup is Chinese self-driving firm Momenta. The tie-up comes a day after Uber added Ann Arbor-based May Mobility to its roster of…

OpenAI pledges to make changes to prevent future ChatGPT sycophancy
OpenAI says it’ll make changes to the way it updates the AI models that power ChatGPT, following an incident that caused the platform to become overly sycophantic for many users. Last weekend, after OpenAI rolled out a tweaked GPT-4o — the default model powering ChatGPT — users on social media noted that ChatGPT began responding in…

Reddit’s AI play is for the Google crowd, not just the community scrollers
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman says there are two kinds of people who come to the social media platform: Scrollers and seekers. Scrollers are the ones who come to Reddit’s core product, which is community conversation and engaging about topics they’re passionate about, from r/sourdough to r/popculturechat. Then there are the Seekers; the people who might…

Amazon CEO says 100,000 users now have Alexa+
Amazon’s upgraded digital assistant powered by generative AI, Alexa+, has rolled out to over 100,000 users, CEO Andy Jassy said on the company’s earnings call Thursday. While that’s a far cry from the 600 million Alexa devices out there, the company is making some progress on the rollout of Alexa+, which was first unveiled in…
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