Peter Thiel spoke at last night's RNC, shortly before Donald Trump's frightening 75-minute nativist shoutfest. Thiel, the conservative Silicon Valley billionaire who wants to live forever and doesn't believe in democracy, kept things short and to the point. He enthusiastically endorsed Trump and called stuff like the anti-trans bathroom laws a "distraction" from real issues, like American economic decline. He also really, really doesn't like Hillary Clinton.
[Noah Kulwin | Recode]
Sirius XM parent company Liberty Media, the most logical candidate to buy the struggling Pandora, made a $3.4 billion offer that was rejected. The online radio service has already held talks about selling itself, and it's under pressure from activist investors to do so.
[Hannah Karp, Shalini Ramachandran and David Benoit | The Wall Street Journal]
Fox News chief Roger Ailes officially resigned yesterday, following several weeks of sustained pressure following a lawsuit from an ex-Fox anchor alleging that Ailes sexually harassed Fox News employees. The real story: The PR headache caused by the lawsuit simply gave his enemies at Fox — who are mostly concerned about the cable network's bottom line — enough ammunition to push out the powerful exec.
[Noah Kulwin | Recode]
On the new Too Embarrassed to Ask podcast, Lauren Goode and Mark Bergen visited Stanford University to test out cutting-edge virtual reality tools. They spoke with Virtual Human Interaction Lab director Jeremy Bailenson about the next stage of VR, and what his team's behavioral research shows.
[Eric Johnson | Recode]
Gawker Media will be sold next month at a bankruptcy auction, but founder and CEO Nick Denton says the company's business is doing great: Revenue is up 7 or 8 percent from last year, and the company has a "small operating profit" for the first half of 2016.
[Peter Kafka | Recode]
