Cydney Hayes

Cydney Hayes is a business and tech reporter for Gazetteer SF. She has previously written about tech, culture, music, and media for The Drift, Architectural Digest, Baltimore, Entertainment Weekly, and elsewhere. She also writes a Substack newsletter called OPENWORLD. Subscribe at openw0rld.substack.com.
Finally, a defense of brainrot
It’s a modern virtue, so says an AI exec. Plus, send me tips about the gaming industry
San Francisco’s future spokespeople: Coyotes
A new city ad is rumored to be in the works, headed up by ‘Last Black Man in San Francisco’ director Joe Talbot
Soon Technology is tech-pilled and loving it
A Vice Media alum’s ‘new media’ company offers up friendly coverage to an increasingly controversial industry
Wars within wars
Anthropic’s loss is OpenAI’s gain. Plus, the mysterious “Dime” appears at Sightglass
Guerrilla outdoor campaign decrying ‘GROK CHILD PORN’ appears around the city
The mysterious marketing push comes amid public uproar and international investigations into sex abuse material generated by Elon Musk’s chatbot
Who (allegedly) runs tech?
Two magazines investigate. Plus, the people want a ‘Silicon Valley’ reboot
How the uncanny valley could kill the Valley
Porn performer Siri Dahl and others have started sounding the alarm about AI's impacts on privacy, free speech, and legal sex work
The high-fantasy cult of Anthropic
Plus, its fight with the Pentagon, OpenAI and Meta race to deploy AI agents to the masses, and tasteless AI people argue about taste
The New Liberals just want to enjoy their Tax Havens
At The Irish Bank, policy wonks debate the Billionaire’s March and Georgist land taxes









