Surveillance Log 006 - Noteworthy links for 2025-11-07
Hello! Welcome to this week’s list of five (or less!) interesting links. If you want to revisit earlier weeks, all previous issues are available here.
☙
Bending Spoons Cofounders Become Billionaires After Italian Startup Raises At $11 Billion Valuation — In the early smartphone era, there were some trailblazing companies that built up a big following and even bigger mindshare, and then were largely forgotten. In recent years, many popped up in the news again, usually to say they had been acquired. One of the recurring names in these stories is Bending Spoons, who specifically focus on buying companies with significant revenue but no growth. Their portfolio of acquisitions reads like a blast from the past: AOL, Evernote, Meetup... And their business model seems to be working. (Forbes)
The new hot job in AI: forward-deployed engineers — Am I the only one feeling uneasy about AI companies repackaging roles that have existed forever—like presales engineers—as a new idea, and doing so with increasingly militaristic language? (FT $)
Meet the real screen addicts: the elderly — The conversation about screen time usually focuses on children and adolescents, but what if we should worry more about the effects on the elderly instead? (The Economist $)
☙