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.
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
Substack reports mass data leak: ‘This sucks. I’m sorry’
The popular newsletter platform was breached in October 2025
Manic Monday: Even AI turns to crabs eventually
Plus, the Billionaires March, a blind item for female founders, and more madness from the tech world to start your week
Time to Rho
As its San Francisco team swells, the fintech startup Rho is moving to greener pastures
What, exactly, is OpenAI in 2026?
A new rumor that OpenAI will release earbuds hints at internal anxieties over revenue and the future of the company
Gap falls into crypto
Why has Sam Altman’s crypto project installed a biometric data-collection tool inside, of all places, the Marina Gap store?









