About five years ago, the comedian Ryan Long posted a video in which a woke progressive and an old-fashioned racist meet and, much to their astonishment, discover that rather than being bitterly opposed, they agree on pretty much everything.

There was a strong echo of that convergence in last week's White House tete-a-tete between Republican President Donald Trump and New York's new socialist Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. Anticipated to be a grudge match, it instead turned into something of a lovefest. Well, of course it did. As fans of horseshoe theory accurately point out, control freaks from the political extremes might differ on details, but they have more in common with each other than they do with people who respect each other's liberty.

Trump and Mamdani in 'a Place of Shared Admiration and Love'

In reporting on the meeting, The Hill noted, "Trump and Mamdani answered questions from reporters, both striking a remarkably cordial tone, with the president indicating he agreed with many of the mayor-elect's ideas."

According to Mamdani, "It was a productive meeting focused on a place of shared admiration and love."

Trump added that Mamdani would be "hopefully a really great mayor." He also commented, "There's no difference in party. There's no difference in anything."

So, how did two politicians who entered the meeting slinging epithets at each other like "communist" and "fascist" exit with the makings of a mutual admiration society? There's a hint in a question a BBC reporter posed to the new mayor at the White House when he commented "you're both populist" and asked, "to what extent the president's campaign…inspired any part of your campaign?"

Mamdani eagerly brought up cost-of-living and economic concerns while Trump nodded and then chimed in with agreement about concerns over the price of energy.

That's the key to this meeting of the minds. Trump and Mamdani are strongly focused on economic issues. They also share a taste for addressing those concerns with government direction.

Two Paths to Socialism

Mamdani boasts of his open socialism. He's gone so far as to call for "seizing the means of production." He won office with a campaign that promised city-run grocery stores, a rent freeze, and free buses, child care, and other services funded by higher taxes on whoever can be interpreted as "wealthy." That should be interesting since he wants to tax the extremely wealthy out of existence.

In an exercise of what can be called "Republican socialism," Trump actually did seize a portion of the means of production when his administration leaned on U.S. Steel for a "golden share" of the company. Under his leadership, the federal government has also taken ownership positions in firms including Intel, Lithium Americas, and Trilogy Metals. Trump's protectionism is crafted to enable the state to push firms to revive domestic manufacturing—or else.

Mamdani believes in government control of the economy for the sake of achieving socialism. Trump endorses government control of the economy to accomplish his nationalist goals. But whatever they call their views, both men think political leaders should be directing economic activity.

What brought Mamdani to socialism is probably best left as a question for his shrink, his parents, and his college professors. But Trump's path to state control of the economy almost certainly lies in his nationalist impulses. He came to office on the slogan "Make America Great Again" and has enthusiastically used the power of the federal government to enact what he believes that means, often replacing individual choice with politicians' preferences.

As the economist Friedrich Hayek wrote in his 1960 book, The Constitution of Liberty, "It is this nationalistic bias which frequently provides the bridge from conservatism to collectivism. To think in terms of 'our' industry or resource is only a short step away from demanding that these national assets be directed in the national interest."

Hayek differentiated nationalism from patriotism, which he considered pride in your origins as opposed to nationalism's collectivism and xenophobia. The shared collectivism of socialism and nationalism, he added, is why "we frequently find the conservatives joining hands with the socialists against the liberals."

Inevitably Shared Authoritarianism

Whether collectivist economic impulses are exercised by nationalists or by socialists, Hayek observed that the result is inevitably authoritarian. When the state controls economic activity, it can deny permits, withhold resources, cut off finance, impose punitive taxes, and otherwise make existence independent of the state almost impossible.

"Economic control is not merely control of a sector of human life which can be separated from the rest; it is the control of the means for all our ends," Hayek warned in his 1944 book, The Road to Serfdom. "And whoever has sole control of the means must also determine which ends are to be served, which values are to be rated higher and which lower, in short, what men should believe and strive for."

From different directions, Trump and Mamdani have arrived at agreement that economic activity should be directed by government officials over the objections of those who want to make their own decisions about their property, their businesses, and their money. They got along so well together at the White House because, like Ryan Long's fictional wokester and racist, they were delighted to discover the similarities in their desires for a society controlled from the top.

Yes, Mamdani is back to calling Trump a "fascist," but there's a quality of rote recital to it. He's giving his supporters what they expect. Trump will probably call him a communist again. But they're not bitter enemies; the two men are rivals peddling similar products and vying for market share.

Holding Onto Individualism

In opposition to both these representatives of neighboring arms of the ideological horseshoe are Hayek-style classical liberals, libertarians, and other individualists. Advocates of liberty oppose collectivism and state control whether it's called socialism, nationalism, or some other name. We see society as a cooperative endeavor among free individuals, not as a collective to be commanded from above.

Unfortunately, Mamdani and Trump represent political movements that are consuming their respective political parties. If they're successful in displacing the remaining relatively individualistic voices, the political choices offered in the future by the major parties will be nothing more than competing brands of collectivism. Of course, collectivists favor a world in which choices are made for us.

The post Zohran Mamdani and Donald Trump Prove That There Are Two Paths Toward Socialism appeared first on Reason.com.

We’ve documented in detail how the whole AT&T–>Time Warner–>Warner Brothers Discovery merger process has been a pointless mess, resulting in no limits of layoffs and damage to the underlying brands. What was supposed to be a gambit by these companies to dominate streaming TV, wound up being a very expensive act of seppuku by over-compensated executives clearly out of their depths.

The merger disaster was particularly hard on HBO, once the pinnacle of prestige television. AT&T executives were obsessed with distancing themselves from the popular brand, and their decisions (like demanding Game Of Thrones be shot in short-form verticality so it would be easier to watch on phones) showed they really didn’t understand what made HBO popular in the first place.

So they engaged in a long series of pointless name changes, they eliminated a lot of the programming people liked, they threatened new restrictions on password sharing, they generally lowered overall quality in the mindless pursuit of scale, and they began hiking streaming video prices three times in the last three years. This, unsurprisingly drove subscribers to the exits.

HBO Max CEO Casey Bloys seems to have realized that all of that pointless deal-making by the extraction class wasn’t great for the brand or for quality television. Being everything to everyone in a bid to obtain impossible scale (by producing a lot of low quality mass market appeal bullshit) wasn’t what HBO was all about:

“The result was that HBO, the most premium of premium TV companies, became absorbed into something that was meant to be a Netflix-killer.

As HBO Max CEO Casey Bloys told reporters Nov. 20 in the company’s Hudson Yards offices, that ended up being a fool’s errand: “To Netflix’s credit, as the first mover, they have become a utility for consumers,” Bloys said. “In retrospect, we can all see that the streaming industry’s race for volume, years ago, found many brands losing their identity.”

So HBO is hoping to focus on being the kind of company that made it originally popular in the first place, nine years after AT&T originally signaled its intention to acquire Time Warner. Nine years for these guys to figure out that they should stick to what they’re good at: quality television.

Unfortunately, there’s some bad news for Bloys.

Warner Brothers is about to be purchased by the Ellisons, who are on a massive acquisition spree (TikTok, CBS, the exclusive rights to MMA). All of these deals are going to saddle HBO’s new parent company with mountains of debt. And just like AT&T, Time Warner, and Discovery, that’s going to result in an entirely new wave of layoffs, quality erosion, and price hikes to recoup the investment.

And this is all going to happen before the damage from all the past pointless consolidation deals (including ongoing layoffs from Paramount’s acquisition of CBS) have even fully formed.

It’s also going to result in an entirely new wave of trust fund brats, out of their depths and obsessed with scale, trying to “tweak” the HBO formula so they can obtain impossible scale by being everything to everyone. They’re going to look at the hard lessons HBO experienced over the last nine years and… completely ignore them and repeat all the same mistakes. Write it down.

When four people were arrested and charged with a conspiracy to illegally export Nvidia chips to China, there was an interesting side note. One of the arrestees, Alabama resident Brian Raymond, was the chief technology officer of an AI company called Corvex.

Or was he? Corvex certainly seemed to think that Raymond was its CTO in the days before his indictment. Corvex named Raymond as its CTO in a press release and filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which detailed plans for a merger with Movano Health.

But once Raymond was arrested, Corvex told media outlets that it had never completed the process of hiring him as an employee. While someone could technically be a CTO as a contractor and not a regular employee, a company spokesperson subsequently claimed to Ars that Raymond had never been the CTO.

The company spokesperson asked Ars for a “correction” to our story, which accurately reported that Corvex itself described Raymond as its CTO and as part of its leadership team.

“Raymond was not CTO of Corvex—so the statement above is inaccurate,” Corvex spokesperson Christopher Buscombe, who is apparently with a third-party firm doing media relations for Corvex, told Ars Monday in an email seeking a correction. “The headline is also misleading as a result, as taken together it suggests Ramyond [sic] was CTO of Corvex. Raymond was CEO of Bitworks, a completely different company.”

Our article quoted both Corvex’s press release describing Raymond as the CTO and Corvex’s subsequent statement saying that he had never been hired. Buscombe asked for a correction to our article, saying it “has caused quite a lot of confusion,” though it seems more likely that any confusion was caused by Corvex’s conflicting statements about Raymond’s position at the company.

Meanwhile, the Corvex press release and SEC filings haven’t been changed or corrected. They still say Raymond was already the Corvex CTO and will continue to serve in that role after the merger. The documents make no mention of Bitworks.

Pre-indictment press release

On November 10, Corvex and Movano Health issued their joint press release announcing the merger. Corvex is a private company and Movano a public one, so the transaction requires approval of Movano shareholders. If the merger is completed, the combined company will be public and go by the name Corvex.

The press release says, “Corvex is an AI cloud computing company specializing in GPU-accelerated infrastructure for AI workloads. Corvex is based in Arlington, Virginia, and is led by Seth Demsey and Jay Crystal, Co-Chief Executive Officers and Co-Founders, and Brian Raymond, Chief Technology Officer.” It goes on to say that after the merger, the combined company will be led by Demsey, Crystal, Raymond, “and other members of the Corvex management team.”

The “is led by” phrase in the press release clearly indicates that Raymond was already the CTO, while the additional statement about the post-merger company indicated he would continue as CTO after the merger’s completion. At the same time, Raymond announced on LinkedIn that he had “formally joined Corvex as the CTO, driving AI at scale for customers around the world.”

The Corvex/Movano joint press release naming Raymond as CTO was submitted to the SEC as an exhibit to a Movano filing about the Corvex/Movano merger. A merger agreement submitted to the SEC by Corvex and Movano includes another exhibit listing three “post-closing officers,” specifically Demsey, Crystal, and Raymond.

The timing of Corvex’s statements about Raymond being its CTO could hardly have been worse. Raymond was indicted in a federal court on November 13 and the indictment was unsealed last week. The US Justice Department alleged that Raymond operated an Alabama-based electronics company through which he supplied Nvidia GPUs to his alleged conspirators “for illegal export to the PRC [People’s Republic of China] as part of the conspiracy.”

Raymond, 46, of Huntsville, Alabama, faces two charges for illegal exports, one charge of smuggling, a charge of conspiracy to commit money laundering, and seven counts of money laundering. There are maximum prison sentences of 20 years for each export violation and each money laundering count, and 10 years for the smuggling charge. Raymond was reportedly released on bond after his arrest.

Raymond “was transitioning into an employee role”

With media outlets reporting on the charges, Corvex answered queries from reporters with a statement saying, “Corvex had no part in the activities cited in the Department of Justice’s indictment. The person in question is not an employee of Corvex. Previously a consultant to the company, he was transitioning into an employee role but that offer has been rescinded.”

Law professors with expertise in corporate governance and securities regulations told Ars that someone can legally be an officer of a company without being an employee. But Corvex may still have misled investors with its statements about Raymond’s status.

“It could be the case that this person was the chief technology officer but was not an employee of the company, was an independent contractor instead,” Andrew Jennings, an Emory University law professor, told Ars. But even if one interprets Corvex telling the press that it never hired Raymond in the most charitable way, the distinction is “splitting hairs… because one doesn’t need to be an employee to be an officer of the company,” Jennings said.

Corvex went further in asking at least one news outlet for a correction and claiming that Raymond was never the CTO. “I suspect that what they are saying to the press that this person was never CTO, is probably not correct,” Jennings said. The merging companies are “represented by serious law firms” and aren’t likely to have been lying about Raymond being the CTO, Jennings said.

“I can’t imagine that there would be a press release and a merger agreement that lists him as an officer and specifically as the chief technology officer if it weren’t the case,” he said. “I think they would have some more explaining to do if they really wanted to argue that it’s incorrect to refer to him as the CTO or the former CTO.”

Ars sent an email with several questions to the listed contact for Corvex, co-CEO Jay Crystal, yesterday but received no response. We instead received another email from Buscombe, who offered to provide information on background that “would respond to the questions you have put to Corvex.”

Buscombe said the background information he was offering “cannot be quoted directly” and cannot be “attributable to anyone.” We declined this offer and offered to publish any on-the-record statements that Corvex would provide, but we haven’t received anything further.

A spokesperson for the SEC declined to comment when contacted by Ars. We contacted Movano and Raymond with several questions yesterday and will update this article if we receive any responses.

False statements can lead to litigation or SEC charges

If Raymond really wasn’t the CTO, that probably would be a material misstatement because of the nature of the company, Jennings said. For an AI firm or any kind of tech company, the chief technology officer is an important position. The fact that Raymond was one of just three listed officers adds to the likelihood that it could be a material misstatement, if he really was never the CTO.

“Knowing what sort of technical leadership the company has could be something of import to a reasonable investor” who is voting on a merger, Jennings said.

A false statement about who is the CTO could be used in private litigation brought by investors against the company or in enforcement actions by the SEC. “The SEC could bring an enforcement action under a number of statutes for that sort of false statement, if it were in fact a false statement,” Jennings said.

Robert Miller, a law professor at George Mason University, told Ars “that it’s not absolutely impossible to have someone in a role like CTO or even CEO when the person is not an employee, legally speaking.” But even “if that was the case, it would very likely be misleading for the company to say, without qualification or explanation, that ‘Raymond is the CTO of the company.’ That would reasonably be understood to mean that Raymond was an employee.”

Not explaining a company officer’s employment status could be a “material omission” in violation of Rule 10b-5, an anti-fraud regulation, he said.

“A 10b-5 violation could result in enforcement action by the SEC,” Miller told Ars. “It could also result in private lawsuits from shareholders, but such shareholders would also have to show damages—e.g., a stock drop when the truth came out. In this case, given that Raymond was likely more liability than asset, there may be no damages to the shareholders from the omission.”

Companies can face liability for false statements to investors, even if they’re not made in SEC filings. An SEC filing “creates potential additional avenues for liability,” Jennings said. “Certainly the securities statutes will apply to communications made by a public company in really any channel, including just putting out a press release, and so that could spark private litigation or it could spark SEC enforcement. It’s also illegal to knowingly make a false statement to a government agency, whether that’s the FBI or the SEC or a committee of Congress, etc. And so the act of filing could create additional avenues of liability, but those would be sort of stacked on top of each other.”

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If you’re a parent of a teenager, there’s a decent chance you’ve heard the phrase “Can I get a Sur Ron?” sometime in the last year. Before you panic‑Google it or head to Amazon to see what one of these bikes costs, there are some important things you should know about this class of electric two-wheelers that have become all the rage with teenagers these days.

Plex is starting to enforce its new rules, which prevent users from remotely accessing a personal media server without a subscription fee.

Previously, people outside of a server owner’s network could access the owner’s media library through Plex for free. Under the new rules announced in March, a server owner needs to have a Plex Pass subscription, which starts at $7 per month, to grant users remote access to their server. Alternatively, someone can remotely access another person’s Plex server by buying their own Plex Pass or a Remote Watch Pass, which is a subscription with fewer features than a Plex Pass and that Plex started selling in April for a $2/month starting price.

Plex’s new rules took effect on April 29. According to a recent Plex forums post by a Plex employee that How-To Geek spotted today, the changes are rolling out this week, with a subscription being required for people using Plex’s Roku OS app for remote access. The Plex employee added:

This requirement change for remote streaming will come to all other Plex TV apps (Fire TV, Apple TV, Android TV, etc.) and any third-party clients using the API to offer remote streaming in 2026.

Plex started as a Mac port of the Xbox Media Center project in 2009 before evolving into a media server company and, more recently, a streaming service provider. Its new remote access rules will be a test for the company, which has been challenging long-time users with numerous changes over the past year, including a Plex Pass price hike, a foray into renting out officially licensed movies, and the introduction of social features and a mobile app redesign.

Plex has previously emphasized its need to keep up with “rising costs,” which include providing support for many different devices and codecs. It has also said that it needs money to implement new features, including an integration with Common Sense Media, a new “bespoke server management app” for managing server users, and “an open and documented API for server integrations,” including custom metadata agents,” per a March blog post.

In January 2024, TechCrunch reported that Plex was nearing profitability and raised $40 million in funding (Plex raised a $50 million growth equity round in 2021). Theoretically, the new remote access rules can also increase subscription revenue and help Plex’s backers see returns on their investments.

However, Plex’s evolution could isolate long-time users who have relied on Plex as a media server for years and those who aren’t interested in subscriptions, FAST (free ad-supported streaming TV) channels, or renting movies. Plex is unlikely to give up on its streaming business, though. In 2023, Scott Hancock, Plex’s then-VP of marketing, said that Plex had more people using its online streaming service than using its media server features since 2022. For people seeking software packages more squarely focused on media hosting, Plex alternatives, like Jellyfin, increasingly look attractive.

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The popularity of GLP-1 weight-loss medications continues to soar—and their uptake is helping to push down obesity rates on a national scale—but a safe, evidence-based way off the drugs isn’t yet in clear view.

An analysis published this week in JAMA Internal Medicine found that most participants in a clinical trial who were assigned to stop taking tirzepatide (Zepbound from Eli Lilly) not only regained significant amounts of the weight they had lost on the drug, but they also saw their cardiovascular and metabolic improvements slip away. Their blood pressure went back up, as did their cholesterol, hemoglobin A_1c (used to assess glucose control levels), and fasting insulin.

In an accompanying editorial, two medical experts at the University of Pittsburgh, Elizabeth Oczypok and Timothy Anderson, suggest that this new class of drugs should be rebranded from “weight loss” drugs to “weight management” drugs, which people may need to take indefinitely.

Some studies have found that about half of people who start taking a GLP-1 drug for weight loss stop taking it within a year—for various reasons—and many people think they can stop taking anti-obesity drugs once they’ve reached a desired weight, Oczypok and Anderson write. But that’s not in line with the data.

“It may be helpful to compare them to other chronic disease medications; patients do not stop their anti-hypertensive medications when their blood pressure is at goal,” they write.

In the trial, researchers—led by Eli Lilly scientists—followed 670 participants with obesity or overweight (but without diabetes) who were treated with tirzepatide for 36 weeks. Then the participants were split into either continuing with the drug for another 52 weeks (88 weeks total) or getting a placebo for that period of time. Both groups were told to continue a reduced-calorie diet and an exercise plan.

In all, 335 participants were randomized to switch to a placebo, and the researchers monitored changes in their weight and cardiovascular health metrics after the switch. Not everyone in the first phase of the trial lost significant amounts of weight on the drug. So, the researchers only closely tracked the 308 of the 335 who lost at least 10 percent of their body weight on the drug.

Of the 308 who benefited from tirzepatide, 254 (82 percent) regained at least 25 percent of the weight they had lost on the drug by week 88. Further, 177 (57 percent) regained at least 50 percent, and 74 (24 percent) regained at least 75 percent. Generally, the more weight people regained, the more their cardiovascular and metabolic health improvements reversed.

Data gaps and potential off-ramps

On the other hand, there were 54 participants of the 308 (17.5 percent) that didn’t regain a significant amount of weight (less than 25 percent.) This group saw some of their health metrics worsen on withdrawal of the drug, but not all— blood pressure increased a bit, but cholesterol didn’t go up significantly overall. About a dozen participants (4 percent of the 308) continued to lose weight after stopping the drug.

The researchers couldn’t figure out why these 54 participants fared so well; there were “no apparent differences” in demographic or clinical characteristics, they reported. It’s clear the topic requires further study.

But, overall, the study offers a gloomy outlook for patients hoping to avoid needing to take anti-obesity drugs for the foreseeable future.

Oczypok and Anderson highlight that the study involved an abrupt withdrawal from the drug. In contrast, many patients may be interested in slowly weaning off the drugs, stepping down dosage levels over time. So far, data on this strategy and the protocols to pull it off have little data behind them. It also might not be an option for patients who abruptly lose access or insurance coverage of the drugs. Other strategies for weaning off the drugs could involve ramping up physical activity or calorie restriction in anticipation of dropping the drugs, the experts note.

In addition to more data on potential GLP-1 off-ramps, the pair calls for more data on the effects of weight fluctuations from people going on and off the treatment. At least one study has found that the regained weight after intentional weight loss may end up being proportionally higher in fat mass, which could be harmful.

For now, Oczypok and Anderson say doctors should be cautious about talking with patients about these drugs and what the future could hold. “These results add to the body of evidence that clinicians and patients should approach starting [anti-obesity medications] as long-term therapies, just as they would medications for other chronic diseases.”

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