Adi Robertson
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thedextriarchy.bsky.social
Adi Robertson
@thedextriarchy.bsky.social
Senior Editor, Tech & Policy, The Verge
Reposted by Adi Robertson
Sometimes you just have to let @lopatto.bsky.social say it out loud www.theverge.com/policy/85990...
Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai are cowards
Once you’ve traded your principles for proximity to power, do you even run your own company?
www.theverge.com
January 9, 2026 at 9:29 PM
Reposted by Adi Robertson
You may have seen reports swimming around claiming that X finally restricted the Grok deepfake/undressing features behind a paid subscription.

That simply isn't true. Not even close. www.theverge.com/news/859309/...
No, Grok hasn’t paywalled its deepfake image feature
X’s sexual deepfake machine is still running, despite Grok saying otherwise.
www.theverge.com
January 9, 2026 at 1:17 PM
Reposted by Adi Robertson
By "confidently claiming that one blurry clip shows evidence of domestic terrorism, the Trump administration is asking the public to disbelieve their own eyes... Who needs AI manipulations when your preferred angle will do the job well enough?" — @miasato.bsky.social
www.theverge.com/tech/858710/...
MAGA wants you to believe there’s only one angle
The clip of the shooting MAGA wants you to see
www.theverge.com
January 8, 2026 at 6:04 PM
Reposted by Adi Robertson
Genuinely, if you were surprised how much classified info people would leak just for clout on War Thunder forums, brace yourself because now there’s a profit motive
January 6, 2026 at 11:14 PM
leave aside any awkward questions about LLMs and whatnot, how do you make a "put a fictional character in a lava lamp" desk toy this boring
January 6, 2026 at 2:32 PM
Besides the obvious (System Shocks 1/2, Half-Life, Planescape: Torment, Fallout, Marathon), the first fun ones that come to mind are all adventure games: A Mind Forever Voyaging, Sanitarium, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, Beneath A Steel Sky
What’s your favorite video game that’s at least 27 years old (so 1999 or earlier)? Let’s get a list of classics going.
January 5, 2026 at 9:40 PM
Reposted by Adi Robertson
January 2, 2026 at 4:23 AM
when you get isekai'd into somebody's first half-life 2 mod
Y’all ever walk into a public restroom and immediately whisper “Jesus Christ”
December 29, 2025 at 5:35 PM
If you're still probing the Steam sales, I'm having a lot of fun right now with Unavowed from @wadjeteyegames.bsky.social. Point-and-click adventure with pretty chill gameplay, entertaining party dynamic, and Hellblazer-esque urban fantasy in sort of a retro-present-day NYC.
Save 70% on Unavowed on Steam
A demon has possessed you and used your body to tear a swath of bloodshed through New York. You are now free, but life as you knew it is over. Your only path forward is joining the Unavowed - an ancie...
store.steampowered.com
December 29, 2025 at 3:44 PM
Has anybody guessed what video game the J6 bomber allegedly used to figure out the ingredients for making black powder for (ultimately nonfunctional) pipe bombs? storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
December 29, 2025 at 3:04 PM
Reposted by Adi Robertson
Putting an LLM up against Komar & Melamid’s Most Unwanted Song “John Henry Style”, and while I do not think this is actually possible in any known audio format, I do grudgingly admire the intentless gusto
December 25, 2025 at 11:48 PM
Reposted by Adi Robertson
"This story doesn't need a sandworm"

This is almost always wrong. Arguably, EVERY story benefits from adding a huge subterranean worm with quasi-mystical or semi-supernatural powers, or equivalent (similar to Moby Dick).

Obviously the bigger the worm, the more literary quality it adds.
what is your least favorite piece of writing advice and why? 👀
December 23, 2025 at 6:28 PM
Reposted by Adi Robertson
“We’ve recreated the torment wallpaper from the classic novel, ‘Don’t Create the Torment Wallpaper.’”
December 22, 2025 at 7:05 PM
crisis averted -- we asked chatgpt and grok and now have both sides of the story, direct from the chips. have learned mechahitler is involved
December 22, 2025 at 4:17 PM
what happens when you let @reckless.bsky.social write heds www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...
December 22, 2025 at 4:06 PM
not to sound like an old person, but contra this headline it seems like a significant fail state for society if people eschew *actually providing information to authorities on an at-large murderer* for making posts on social media about it
A Reddit Post Led to a Breakthrough in the Brown Shooting Investigation
www.nytimes.com
December 19, 2025 at 2:52 PM
Reposted by Adi Robertson
first big longform feature at the verge is live!

an honor to work with @joshdzieza.bsky.social as always. thanks to our editor, the profoundly brilliant @knguyen.bsky.social. art by the wonderful @kristenradtke.bsky.social. www.theverge.com/cs/features/...
Who’s making the most money in AI? It’s not who you think
The fastest growing companies in the world aren’t AI companies, but the startups that supply them with warm bodies.
www.theverge.com
December 15, 2025 at 4:47 PM
I read this @miasato.bsky.social piece and spent the entire time second-guessing whether I had, without realizing it, been Influenced. Jury still out.
Confessions of the influenced
Behind every influencer is an army of the people mired in debt and mass-produced clutter.
www.theverge.com
December 9, 2025 at 7:49 PM
Amid a concerted reactionary push to control culture it is still very interesting to me that there's so little critical feminist analysis of one of the most wildly popular forms of women's media.
"It's feminist to be horny for fascists. The more fascist the man, the more feminist it is. You just have to make sure to say 'I WILL CURE HIM WITH MY WOMB' and bear him children, because no man with children has ever been a bad person. Telling me not to do this is basically 1984." -- Mary Morgan
REAL FEMINIST QUOTES

"Feminism is when you judge other women. The more harshly you judge a woman, the more feminist it is." -- Simone Butler
December 8, 2025 at 3:28 PM
Reposted by Adi Robertson
Big @tinanguyen.bsky.social scoop - the Trump MAGA / tech coalition continues to fracture as the hard right pushes back against David Sacks and his attempt to preempt state AI laws. Caught in the middle: Vance. www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...
The far right is mobilizing against Trump AI czar David Sacks
A controversial executive order dictating America’s AI policy has MAGA scrambling against the White House and its Special Advisor on AI and Crypto.
www.theverge.com
December 5, 2025 at 1:28 PM
Reposted by Adi Robertson
Last week @theverge.com published my essay exploring the limitations of large-language models. This week, that same essay is cited by a federal judge in Michigan to distinguish the process of human reasoning from what these models do. Very, very gratifying.
h/t @robertfreundlaw.bsky.social

holy shit, an accurate legal critique of LLMs. LLMs don't reason because they're just stitching together plausible-looking sentences indifferent to the content
December 3, 2025 at 9:04 PM
I watched The Jockey of Death recently because of a Movies Silently review and it was an excellent reminder that there is no age cutoff date or speaking requirement for a movie to be great silly fun
December 2, 2025 at 8:46 PM
Reposted by Adi Robertson
While KOSA has taken up much of the attention in kids online safety discussions, a bill mandating app stores conduct age verification has been sweeping states and Congress. It will be discussed at tomorrow's House hearing, and just picked up Pinterest as a supporter www.theverge.com/policy/83087...
A nationwide internet age verification plan is sweeping Congress
The bill takes aim at Apple and Google’s app stores.
www.theverge.com
December 1, 2025 at 3:45 PM
there's a novelty "AI dating cafe" pop-up launching in NYC and I decided to try making a bot from the service, only to find it offers male and female options but doesn't personalize any of the flavor copy so all chatbots including the burly old dudes are "AI girls"
November 20, 2025 at 8:19 PM
sean duffy freaking out when he learns the female crash test dummies don't produce large gametes
Leave it to Sean Duffy to make a critical safety milestone — the introduction of a female crash test dummy — grossly transphobic and weird
November 20, 2025 at 7:58 PM