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by by Filip Molcan
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- 1 weeks ago9 min
The People Who Got AI Right – And the Rest of Us Who Didn't Believe Them
This week I read two texts that sent me out for a walk afterwards. I do that fairly often anyway, but this time I went even though the sun was blazing outside and all my Greek neighbors were asleep, saving their energy for the evening. The first piece is from the AI Futures Project team, which works on predicting when humans will stop programming. The second is by journalist Dylan Matthews, who – eleven years on – is apologizing to people he once dismissed as cranks. I’ll summarize them here, somewhat mercilessly. Anyone already afraid of the future is probably better off deleting this email now.The conference where weirdos stood at the lecternIn August 2015, the Effective Altruists organized a conference called EA Global. Among the speakers were Nick Bostrom (author of Superintelligence), Stuart Russell (a legend of computer science), Nate Soares (today the author of If Anyone Builds It Everyone Dies), and a still-fairly-reasonable Elon Musk. The topic: how artificial intelligence will sweep us all away.Among the attendees was Dylan Matthews, a journalist for Vox. He spoke there with a young engineer from Google named Chris Olah. With a philosophy PhD student named Amanda Askell. And with a programmer from PayPal named Buck Shlegeris.Dylan left the conference convinced that a promising movement, one that could be saving lives in Africa and chickens in cages, was about to destroy itself over a speculative fear of a technology that didn’t yet exist. He then wrote a rather tough article in Vox, framing that fear as proof that the movement was running away from real problems.This was August 2015. The Transformer had not yet been invented (and let me just note that one of the people involved in that breakthrough was our own Tomáš Mikolov), and OpenAI had not yet been founded. Nothing in the world resembled today’s ChatGPT.Eleven years later, Dylan writes: I should have looked more carefully.Chris Olah, in the meantime, helped lay the foundation of our present, named the entire field of mechanistic interpretability, and co-founded Anthropic. Amanda Askell works at the same company and is directly responsible for Claude’s personality. Buck Shlegeris runs Redwood Research, one of the most serious technical AI safety labs outside the walls of the big firms.Three people Dylan once treated as oddballs are today holding a piece of the global technological future in their hands.They missed the markAnd here is where it starts to get fun. Fun in the dark sense of the word.Dylan in his article mentions Leopold Aschenbrenner, a former OpenAI researcher who in 2024 wrote a series of essays under the title Situational Awareness. In them he predicted that by 2026, $520 billion would flow into AI infrastructure. Everyone tapped their head and called him crazy. Real-world investment is now estimated at $650 to $700 billion.We undershot it again. The reality is wilder than the wild prediction.Similarly, Ajeya Cotra and Peter Wildeford predicted at the end of 2024 what would happen to AI in 2025. Dylan writes: they were very accurate – and where they were wrong, they were wrong in underestimating the revenues of AI companies. Meaning, they didn’t err in expecting AI to grow more slowly. They erred in failing to dare to predict how fast it would actually grow.Anthropic? Annual revenue running at the $10 billion level. Tenfold growth every year. Claude Code, their programming tool, hit $2.5 billion in annualized revenue nine months after its launch. A product that isn’t even a year old.Revision to 2028The AI Futures Project team (Daniel Kokotajlo, Eli Lifland, Brendan Halstead) published a quarterly revision of its predictions. Daniel Kokotajlo is co-author of the famous AI 2027 scenario. Eli Lifland is a professional forecaster. These people predict the future for a living, not by crystal ball.What did they revise?They moved a moment they call the Automated Coder – AC. The point at which an AGI company would rather lay off all of its human software engineers than stop using AI for programming.Read that definition again. Slowly.It’s not about AI becoming better than programmers. It’s about companies preferring
- Apr 12, 202618 min
News from the Woods #136 🥾
Hey everyone, this is Filip and welcome to another episode of News from the Forest! Episode 136, and it’s a packed one. We’ll talk about how AI is reshaping schools — from typewriters at Cornell to a school with zero teachers in Chicago. How Anthropic just overtook OpenAI in revenue. We’ll discover a brand-new island near Antarctica and find out how the war in Ukraine is devastating nature on a massive scale. And at the end, you’ll try doing absolutely nothing for two minutes. Let’s go.What do you tell your kid when you know the technology you’re building will rewrite the rules for an entire generation? The Wall Street Journal asked exactly this question to the heads of the biggest AI companies — Daniela Amodei from Anthropic, Jaime Teevan from Microsoft, Ethan Mollick from Wharton. And you know what’s fascinating about their answers? Not a single one said: learn to code.That Wall Street Journal piece really got to me. Because if I asked you — what should kids study to thrive in a world full of artificial intelligence — most of us would say: STEM, coding, data science. Makes sense, right? Except the people who are actually building AI are saying something completely different.Daniela Amodei, co-founder of Anthropic — the company behind Claude, the AI model that, full disclosure, also helps me produce this podcast — says, and I’m paraphrasing: “What won’t be replaceable is how you treat other people, how well you communicate with them, how kind you are.” This isn’t some motivational platitude. This is coming from someone whose company just surpassed OpenAI in revenue.Ethan Mollick from Wharton, who wrote the brilliant book Co-Intelligence, advises his teenagers to avoid hyper-specialization entirely. His logic is straightforward: if your job consists of repeating one specific cognitive task, AI will eventually do it faster, cheaper, and without complaining. The future, he says, belongs to people who bundle three or four distinct skills — communication, judgment, creativity, accountability.And that word — accountability — is key. AI can analyze data, write reports, propose solutions. But it can’t be held responsible. A human does that. And the ability to say “I own this” is, according to these people, the most valuable currency of the future.So here’s the paradox: the people building AI are telling their children — be as human as possible. Learn how to learn, be flexible, communicate, take responsibility. And above all — don’t be a narrow specialist, be a generalist.This theme — the tension between technology and humanity — runs like a red thread through today’s entire episode. Let’s start with how it’s playing out in schools.I’ve got three stories about education that seem to come from three different universes. And yet they’re all happening right now.Story one: Typewriters at CornellAt Cornell University, one of America’s most prestigious schools, a German language instructor named Grit Matthias Phelps does something once a semester that completely blows her students’ minds: instead of laptops, they find manual typewriters on their desks. No screens, no online dictionaries, no spellcheck, no Delete key.She started doing this in 2023 because she noticed students were submitting grammatically perfect German essays — thanks to AI and online translation tools. As she puts it: “What’s the point of me reading it if it’s already correct anyway, and you didn’t write it yourself?”And the students? Catherine Mong, a 19-year-old freshman, said: “I was so confused. I’d seen typewriters in movies, but they don’t tell you how a typewriter works.” One student was puzzled by the key labeled “Return” — and then realized you physically have to return the carriage to the beginning of the line. “Oh, that’s why it’s called Return!”But the most interesting observation came from computer science major Ratchaphon Lertdamrongwong. He said: “The difference with typing on a typewriter is not just how you interact with the typewriter, but how you interact with the world around you.” Without screens, no notifications. Without Google, he had to ask classmates for help. Suddenly, they were actually talking to each other. As he put it: “That was probably normal back then. But it’s drastically different from how we interact in the classroom in modern times.”This analog wave is spreading. It’s part of a broader national trend — back to handwritten tests, oral exams, pen-and-paper assignments. Because schools are looking for ways to verify that students are actually thinking.Story two: Sweden goes back to booksNow one at the national level. Sweden — a country that was a pioneer of digital education for twenty years. Every student had a tablet or laptop, textbooks were replaced with digital content. And now? A complete 180.The Swedish government is investing over 100 million euros to bring
- Jan 3, 202625 min
Startups and Brands You Didn't Know Were European 🇪🇺
The internet runs on European inventions. MySQL powers Facebook, Linux runs 96% of supercomputers, Bluetooth connects your headphones, and MP3 changed the music industry – all created in Sweden, Finland, and Germany. Yet when people hear “tech innovation,” most picture Silicon Valley, not Stockholm or Tallinn.This view overlooks a remarkable reality: Europe has created over 600 unicorns (startups valued above one billion dollars) and is behind technologies that form the foundation of modern IT, while continuing to produce some of the world’s fastest-growing companies.The narrative “Europe only regulates but doesn’t innovate” is misplaced. Yes, European venture capital represents just 5% of global VC (compared to 52% in the US). But this statistic masks extraordinary concentration of success. Sweden produces more tech startups per capita than anywhere except Silicon Valley. Estonia has more unicorns per capita than any other country in the world. And in 2024, the UK attracted $14 billion in startup funding – a year-over-year increase of 22% that defied the global downturn.True, not everything is rosy – especially in the AI era, we remain on the sidelines of the great US-China showdown. But I also don’t believe Europe is doomed to fade away or that nothing interesting is being created here. Let’s look at what interesting things could carry the “Designed in Europe” label...Foundational Technologies You Might Not Have Known Were EuropeanThe most surprising discovery isn’t about startups – but about the building blocks of modern technology.Tim Berners-Lee, a British computer scientist at CERN in Switzerland, invented the World Wide Web in 1989. Linus Torvalds, a twenty-one-year-old Finnish student, released Linux in 1991 with the comment that it was “just a hobby, won’t be big and professional.” Today Linux powers virtually all servers, Android phones, and cloud infrastructure.MySQL, the database under the hood of much of the internet (including Wikipedia, Facebook, and every WordPress site), was created by two Swedes and one Finn in 1995. Bluetooth was invented at Ericsson in Lund, Sweden – they named it after a 10th-century Danish king who unified warring tribes, and the logo combines his runic initials. MP3 came from Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute, where researchers persisted despite Sony and Panasonic rejecting the technology because “CDs work fine.”These are technologies that enabled the digital age – all invented by Europeans who are largely forgotten today.Classic European Tech GiantsSpotify – SwedenSpotify transformed music consumption from a Swedish apartment in Stockholm. Founded in 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon, it now serves 713 million monthly active users and 281 million paying subscribers. In 2024, Spotify reported its first annual profit ever: €1.138 billion. Ek’s personal fortune of $8.7 billion makes him wealthier than any musician in history – an irony not lost on the industry he disrupted.Skype – EstoniaSkype represents perhaps the most influential European tech story. While Swedish and Danish entrepreneurs provided business direction, the software itself was created exclusively by Estonian developers – Ahti Heinla, Priit Kasesalu, and Jaan Tallinn – in a former Soviet research complex in Tallinn where the USSR assembled its first computer. Microsoft bought Skype for $8.5 billion in 2011.The “Skype mafia” that emerged transformed Estonia into a tech powerhouse. Roughly $150 million stayed in the country from various exits and funded over 30 tech entrepreneurs. Taavet Hinrikus, Skype’s first employee, co-founded Wise (formerly TransferWise), which now processes over $6 billion in monthly transfers.ARM – United KingdomARM, spun off from Acorn Computers in Cambridge in 1990, designs chip architecture found in 99% of smartphone processors. Over 300 billion ARM chips have been shipped. Every iPhone, every Android, every smartwatch uses ARM technology – designed in Britain.Fintech Unicorns Rewriting Global BankingRevolut – United KingdomRevolut, founded in London in 2015, reached a valuation of $75 billion in November 2025 – surpassing the market cap of NatWest, Lloyds, and Barclays. With 65 million customers in 48 countries and $1.5 billion net profit in 2024, Revolut has become Europe’s most valuable private company.CEO Nik Storonsky, born in Russia and trained as a physicist, conceived the multi-currency card when frustrated by exchange fees while traveling. His co-founder Vlad Yatsenko, a Brit of Ukrainian origin, previously worked at Deutsche Bank. Storonsky renounced his Russian citizenship in 2022 following the invasion of Ukraine.
- Nov 29, 202522 min
Why tech giants sacrifice children for growth
From Roblox’s CEO calling child predators an “opportunity” to Meta’s internal research showing Instagram harms teen girls, a pattern emerges across every major platform: companies know their products damage children and choose profits anyway. This report examines the evidence across Roblox, Meta, TikTok, and AI companies, revealing why self-regulation has failed and what parents need to understand about the forces shaping their children’s digital lives.The timing is critical. In November 2025, Roblox CEO David Baszucki’s disastrous interview exposed the mindset driving Silicon Valley’s approach to child safety. But Baszucki isn’t an outlier—he’s representative of an industry that has systematically prioritized growth metrics over children’s wellbeing for over a decade.The Roblox case reveals an industry-wide patternWhen New York Times journalists Casey Newton and Kevin Roose asked Roblox CEO David Baszucki about “the problem of predators” on his platform—used by 150 million daily active users, most of them children—his response shocked listeners: “We think of it not necessarily just as a problem, but an opportunity as well.”The interview, published November 21, 2025, became what the hosts called “the craziest interview we’ve ever done.” Baszucki grew increasingly combative, dismissing questions about child safety, interrupting hosts with sarcastic “high-fives,” and suggesting he wanted to discuss “fun stuff” instead. He even floated adding prediction markets—essentially gambling—to Roblox for children, calling it “a brilliant idea if it can be done legally.”This tone-deaf performance came as Roblox faces nearly 60 lawsuits alleging the platform facilitated child sexual exploitation. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s lawsuit accused Roblox of “putting pixel pedophiles and profits over the safety of Texas children.” Louisiana, Kentucky, and Florida have filed similar suits, while the SEC and FTC have opened undisclosed investigations.The Hindenburg Research report from October 2024 provided the most damning evidence. The short-seller’s in-game investigation found what they called “an X-rated pedophile hellscape, exposing children to grooming, pornography, violent content and extremely abusive speech.” Key findings include:* 38 groups openly trading child pornography on the platform* Games accessible to under-13 accounts titled “Escape to Epstein Island” and “Diddy Party”* Robux (virtual currency) used by predators as a bargaining tool to exploit children* Safety moderation outsourced to Asian call centers paying workers $12 per day* Over 13,000 reported instances of child exploitation in a single yearRoblox dismissed the report, noting Hindenburg was a short-seller (the firm has since shut down). But the company’s response—relying on vague AI promises while cutting trust and safety spending—exemplifies the industry’s playbook: acknowledge problems exist, claim technology will fix them, and resist any accountability.Meta knew Instagram harmed teens and chose growth anywayMeta’s internal research, leaked by whistleblower Frances Haugen in 2021, revealed the company knew its products damaged children—and prioritized engagement metrics regardless.The most damning finding came from Meta’s own slides: “We make body image issues worse for 1 in 3 teenage girls.”Internal surveys found 32% of teen girls said when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse. 13.5% of UK teen girls said Instagram worsened their suicidal thoughts. Meta’s own researchers compared their product to a drug, writing internally: “IG is a drug... we’re basically pushers.”Despite this knowledge, Meta assigned a “lifetime value” of $270 to each 13-year-old user and identified tweens as “a valuable but untapped market.” When employees proposed safety features—like making teen accounts private by default or hiding like counts—ideas were scrapped because they would “likely smash engagement” or be “pretty negative to FB
- Nov 9, 202517 min
Special: The Man Who Predicted the 2008 Crash, Now Warns About Nvidia and Palantir. And Maybe He's Right.
Imagine this: You’re sitting in an office, studying numbers that nobody cares about, and gradually discovering that the entire world is going to hell. Everyone around you is making millions, celebrating, buying their third house. And you think the whole system is one massive fraud that’s about to collapse.But you have to decide: Either stay quiet and go with the flow, or bet everything on being right. And then for two years, everyone tells you you’re an idiot. By the way, if you haven’t seen “The Big Short,” I recommend it.This was Michael Burry’s life in 2006. And now, in November 2025, the entire story is repeating itself. Except this time he’s not shorting mortgages. He’s shorting artificial intelligence.One-Eyed Genius Who Saw the FutureMichael Burry isn’t a normal investor. He was born with one eye (the other was removed at age two due to cancer), studied medicine at the prestigious Vanderbilt University, and was preparing to save lives as a neurologist. Instead, he started writing a blog about stocks that caught the attention of a legendary Wall Street investor, and in 2000 he founded a hedge fund with money from his mother and brothers.Interesting start. But this would just be another story of a successful investor, if 2005 hadn’t arrived.Burry then began reading mortgage contracts. Not the normal ones – the crazy subprime mortgages that banks were handing out like promotional flyers at “Alberta.” He saw things that would terrify any normal person: People with no income getting loans for millions. Zero down payments. Interest rates that doubled after two years. And half the people taking these mortgages had credit so bad you wouldn’t lend them money for ice cream.“This can’t work,” he said to himself. “When these interest rates reset, everything will fall.”And he invested his entire fund in a bet against the mortgage market.The problem? Absolutely nobody believed him. Actually, worse – they thought he’d gone crazy. His investors were screaming at him. One accused him of “wasting capital.” In 2006, when the entire market was rising and everyone was making money, Burry’s fund dropped 18 percent. Because he was paying millions of dollars monthly for insurance against mortgages that nobody wanted.The film “The Big Short” (2015, Christian Bale plays him fantastically) captures the scene where Burry sits in his office basement and unwinds by drumming to heavy metal. In reality, it was even worse. Investors threatened him with lawsuits. Some wanted their money back. And Wall Street laughed in his face.Then came 2007.The mortgage market began to fall. Exactly as he predicted. Bear Stearns went bankrupt. Lehman Brothers collapsed. AIG nearly dragged the entire financial system into the abyss. And Burry’s “crazy” bets suddenly started paying out massive money.By the end of 2008, his investors had made $700 million. He himself made over $100 million. And the entire world had to admit: That one-eyed former doctor was right.And Now? Now He’s Shorting AIThis past October 2025, Michael Burry returned to Twitter after two years of silence. He wrote one sentence: “Sometimes, we see bubbles. Sometimes, there is something to do about it. Sometimes, the only winning move is not to play.” He added a photo of Christian Bale from his film.Wall Street immediately froze.In early November came an SEC filing that revealed what he’s doing. Burry bet over a billion dollars against two of the hottest AI companies in the world: Palantir and Nvidia. Put options on 5 million Palantir shares worth $912 million. Put options on a million Nvidia shares worth $187 million.The Nasdaq dropped two percent. Palantir fell 16 percent in a few days, even though it had just announced great results. And Palantir CEO Alex Karp exploded on CNBC: “He’s shorting two companies that are making all the money! The idea of shorting chips and AI is insanely crazy! I’ll dance with joy when he’s proven wrong!”So the question is: Is Burry right? Or is this like with Tesla, when he shorted it in 2021, called it “ridiculous,” and then had to admit “I was wrong”?Let’s look at the numbers. But this time without financial jargon.Numbers That Simply Don’t WorkPalantir is a company that makes software for data analysis. The CIA, military, and big corporations use it. Cool products, no doubt. But now comes the fun part.Palantir has annual revenue of $2.87 billion. That’s a decent number. But the market values the company at $490 billion. That means the market is saying: “For every dollar Palantir earns, we’ll pay $170.”If this were a bar, it would mean: The bar has annual revenue of $100,000. And someone pays $17 million for it. Because “it has a future.”For comparison: Even at the peak of the dot-com bubble in 2000, when everyone was going crazy and buying companies with names ending in “.co
- Nov 2, 202521 min
Bytes & Backpacks #125 🦌
I ordered a robot to take care of us at home. Does it still sound like science fiction? It can collect laundry, do the washing, empty the dishwasher, tend the garden, fetch beer from the fridge... Pre-orders for its humanoid robot Neo have started – you can get one for $500 a month (with delivery in the US sometime next year), which is a very attractive price tag. Will it be a revolution? Or is it just hype?So far, it looks like most of the robot’s activities are controlled remotely from a monitoring center. This will certainly be the standard for all such solutions at the beginning. The important thing is whether it will be possible to automate most activities once, or whether you will always have a robot controlled by someone from a control center. Remote control of robots is nothing new, as Elon demonstrated at his event with Optimus, and incidentally, we at M2C see this as a huge opportunity, because we have just such a control center in Europe. But we all kind of wish it would go further...The American style of “Fake it until you make it” is starting to get a little out of hand in the age of AI and robotics, but what kind of early adopter would I be if I didn’t click “Order now”?!Business & Technology 👨💻* By the way, there is an interesting story about a developer who discovered that his home mop sends data about his house to its manufacturer 24/7. When he blocked the data transmission, the vacuum cleaner stopped working. Could someone be vacuuming remotely?* Speaking of security, a unique startup is being created in Czechia, backed by Ondřej Vlček from Avast and Standa Fort, among others. I think this is going to be big. 🤞* Large companies are already counting the benefits of using AI, but small companies are not doing so well yet.* Google has managed to create a new algorithm that brings us a little closer to the real-world use of quantum computers. * Is the use of AI really such an energy nightmare? You should be more concerned about Netflix...Travel 🧳* She completed the Appalachian Trail (over 3,000 kilometers) in her 80s.* A new museum has opened in Egypt after many, many years. The view of the pyramids is included in the price.* The Acropolis in Athens is also worth a visit now that it is free of scaffolding for the first time in 200 years. * Or choose one of the most beautiful trails in the world according to Timeout.* Do you like ghost towns? Well, there are said to be more of them in Nevada than there are living ones...Do you like Bytes & Backpacks? A lot? You can buy me a coffee! ☕️Nature ⛰️* A bear came to the zoo... to see the bears.* About 500 reindeer swam in the sea between the fjords in Norway. Wow.* Great photos of animals from the Wildlife Comedy, Baby Animals, and Nikon’s Small World competitions.* And finally, a mushroom playing the keyboard... (Thanks, Aleš!)Unclassifiable 🧠* In Finland, schools are starting to teach about AI and recognizing fake content. When will we follow suit?* Ikea has introduced a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.tomsguide.com/home/ikea-just-made-a-tiny-bed-for-your-smartphone-and-its-here-to-help-you-power-do
- Jul 19, 202514 min
Special Issue: What could the AI assistant of the future look like? 🤖
I spent a long time thinking about how to share with you what a future wearable device might look like—a pendant, glasses, connected to your phone and other personal gadgets—powered by artificial intelligence and granted access to most of your personal information. Something similar to what OpenAI is working on right now. What would it be like to have a personal assistant with access to all the data you own—and more, collected through wearable electronics?Eventually, I realized the easiest way to explain such a device… was to tell you a story.Welcome to the near future.AuraThe alarm never rang. It didn’t need to. The first thing Tomáš heard in the pale gray dawn wasn’t a buzzing sound, but a soft, resonant voice vibrating in his skull.“Good morning, Tomáš. You slept for 6 hours and 19 minutes. Sleep quality was 72 percent. Your wife Eva is already awake. Her cortisol levels are elevated. Today is October 14th. Your anniversary.”S**t.That feeling—a cold stone sinking into his stomach. The same one he got every time he failed. And he failed often. Eva stirred next to him.“You’re not sleeping again?” she mumbled into the pillow.“I am, I just… work,” he lied. Lying was easier with Aura. Smoother.Aura was a small titanium pendant around his neck. Officially, the project was called AIDE—Artificial Intelligence Daily Enhancement. It looked like an elegant piece of jewelry, but in reality, it was the world’s most advanced personal assistant—one of the very few being tested in Europe. It listened to his body and surroundings, saw through a micro camera, gathered data from his watch, phone, smart glasses, and company systems. It analyzed. It advised. Increasingly, it decided.He got up and went to the kitchen. The coffee machine was already humming softly. Aura had long since synced with the smart home.“I analyzed the situation at 05:30,” continued the voice only he could hear. “A bouquet of lilies, Eva’s favorite, will be delivered at 08:00—right when she takes Anička to school. Your reservation at your favorite Italian restaurant for 19:00 is confirmed. I’ve added a calendar reminder with a suggestion for a personal message.”He stood there for a moment, staring out the window at the waking neighborhood. It was the perfect solution. And at the same time, completely hollow.“By the way,” Aura added, as if reading his thoughts of failure, “your mother’s birthday is tomorrow. She’ll be 67. You last bought her flowers eight months ago. I’ve ordered white orchids for delivery tomorrow morning—her favorite.”“Wait, without my consent?” he whispered.“Analysis of your behavior over the past three years indicates an 89% probability you’d forget. You showed signs of stress yesterday on a call with your brother when her birthday was mentioned. I decided to act preemptively.”Preemptively. The word echoed in his mind. Aura was his safeguard. A safeguard against his own inadequacy.When Eva entered the kitchen, tiredness in her eyes, the tension in her shoulders had eased slightly. He smiled at her. “Happy anniversary, love.”She smiled back, slightly surprised. “I thought you…”“I’d never forget,” he said, feeling Aura subtly adjust his voice to the perfect tone. He felt like a fraud. And like the perfect husband. Both at once.At work, he was in his element. His world. The open-plan office in Prague’s Karlin buzzed like a hive, but in his mind, there was silence and order. Aura quietly fed him information.“Petra from marketing is lying about completing the campaign. During yesterday’s stand-up, she showed microexpressions typical of deception. David, the guy next to you, is having trouble at home. He’s worn the same shirt for three days. His average response time to messages has increased by 340%.”At ten, he had a presentation for a key client. His boss, Radek, was visibly tense.“Tomáš, we can’t screw this up,” he said as they walked into the meeting room.“Radek is in a bad mood,” Aura noted. “His walking pace is 20% faster than usual. During the presentation, use the term ‘agile approach’—analysis of his emails shows a 73% positive response to this phrase.”The presentation was a masterpiece. Tomáš was merely the puppet; Aura pulled the strings. Guided his gaze. Slowed his speech. Suggested answers before the client even finished asking questions.“Mr. Novák,” he said at one point, as Aura detected a moment of doubt. “I sense you may have concerns about implementation complexity. Would you like to look at it in more detail?”The client looked stunned. He had hit the concern dead on. After the presentation, his boss shook his hand with bright enthusiasm. “Great job. You’re like a new man.”On the way back to his desk, Tomáš felt a rush of power. He used it to help David.“Boss,” he stopped Radek. “I’ve noticed David’s going throug
- Jul 6, 202512 min
Special Issue: Digital drugs in our children's pockets 💊
Do you know what cigarette companies in the 1950s, Las Vegas casinos, and your favorite mobile game or social network have in common? They all use the same psychological tricks to keep you hooked. The only difference? You’d hardly sell cigarettes to kids today, while we happily put digital dopamine dealers into their pockets—with a smile.Sean Parker, former president of Facebook, put it bluntly:“We knew exactly what we were doing. We were exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.”And as it turns out, he wasn’t alone.How Digital Heroin WorksImagine you’re playing a slot machine. You pull the lever and… sometimes nothing, sometimes a little win, and once in a while—JACKPOT!This “variable ratio reinforcement” is the most addictive mechanism psychology knows. It’s exactly how scrolling on social media works.You open the app, and you never know what you’ll find. A boring post from your aunt? Skip. A funny video? Small dopamine hit. A photo where someone tagged you? BINGO!Your brain floods with happiness. And because you never know when the next “hit” will come, you keep scrolling… and scrolling…In 2021, Frances Haugen, a Facebook whistleblower, leaked internal documents:32% of teenage girls reported that Instagram made them feel worse about their bodies. Meta knew. They did nothing.TikTok: Cocaine in App FormIf Instagram is marijuana, TikTok is pure cocaine. Its For You Page algorithm is the most refined dopamine delivery system humanity has created so far.Average video length? 15–60 seconds—just long enough for a dopamine spike, but too short to feel full.The algorithm tracks everything:* How long you watch a video* Whether you finish it* Where you look on the screen* How fast you scroll awayIn just minutes, it knows more about your preferences than your closest friends. And then it feeds you content designed to glue you to the screen.Research shows concentration loss is key to TikTok addiction—you lose track of time, of reality, of your surroundings.Dr. Anna Lembke from Stanford calls it dopamine overload. Your brain responds by reducing sensitivity—you need more and more stimulation for the same satisfaction.Ordinary activities become boring. A book? Dull. A walk? Pointless. Conversation? I’d rather scroll.Snapchat and Digital BlackmailSnapchat Streaks are a genius form of digital blackmail. You send snaps with a friend for 50 days in a row? Great—you have a streak. Miss one day? It’s all gone.We’ve seen kids who:* Gave friends their passwords to keep streaks going during vacation* Woke up at night to send a snap* Had panic attacks when their internet went outThat’s not friendship. It’s digital slavery disguised as fun.Loot Boxes: Teaching Kids to GambleThe worst manipulation happens in games. Loot boxes—those cute little chests with random content—are pure gambling.Instead of chips or cash, you’re betting… well, money too. It’s just less visible.FIFA (now EA FC) has its Ultimate Team packs. Want Messi? Maybe he’s in your first pack for $2. Or in the hundredth for $200. Or never.It’s a lottery. With no age limit.Belgium and the Netherlands banned loot boxes as illegal gambling.In the Czech Republic? Silence. The average Czech child spends about 2,000 CZK ($85) on microtransactions per year.The “high rollers”? Tens of thousands.MicrotransactionsModern mobile and online games run on a free-to-play model—the game is free, but constantly tempts you to pay small amounts (aka microtransactions) for extra advantages: boosters, gear, game currency, new content.These are often priced at $1–$5 per purchase, so parents don’t always notice. But small purchases can snowball into shocking sums.Games also deliberately slow progress for non-paying players, causing frustration and pushing them to spend.And now it’s easier than ever:Your card is saved, the purchase happens with one tap, and the money feels invisible.Daily RewardsMany games use daily rewards to hook players. You log in once every 24 hours, and you get a bonus. Miss a day? You feel loss.Games host time-limited events, special missions, “only this weekend” bonuses—to force you to play right now, or miss out.Another trick is artificial waiting: You only have so many “lives” or energy units. When you run out, you either wait hours, pay, or watch an ad.When your energy is back, the game notifies you—and pulls you in again.These features create routines and pressure to return regularly.Combined with loot boxes, it creates a loop: play daily for
About News from the Woods
Exclusively upbeat news from the world’s forests, hills and meadows, with a sprinkling of digital minimalism, AI & startups. newsfromthewoods.substack.com
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is Podzilla's News from the Woods daily summary?
It's a free AI-powered email that summarizes new episodes of News from the Woods as soon as they're published. You get the key takeaways, notable quotes, and links & mentions — all in a quick read.
How does the News from the Woods podcast summary work?
When a new episode drops, our AI transcribes and analyzes it, then generates a personalized summary tailored to your interests and profession. It's delivered to your inbox every morning.
Is this an official News from the Woods product?
No. Podzilla is an independent service that summarizes publicly available podcast content. We're not affiliated with or endorsed by by Filip Molcan.
Can I get summaries of other podcasts too?
Absolutely! The free plan covers up to 3 podcasts. Upgrade to Pro for 15, or Premium for 50. Browse our full catalog at /podcasts.
How often does News from the Woods release new episodes?
News from the Woods publishes biweekly. Our AI generates a summary within hours of each new episode.
What topics does News from the Woods cover?
News from the Woods covers topics including Technology, Culture, Society & Culture, Travel, Places & Travel. Our AI identifies the specific themes in each episode and highlights what matters most to you.
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Free forever for up to 3 podcasts. No credit card required.
Free forever for up to 3 podcasts. No credit card required.