This week in tech

Big Tech is pouring hundreds of billions into AI, but with rising signs of an industry bubble and some real-world fallout, this week's episode digs into who actually wins, who stands to lose, and whether Apple's patient strategy may outsmart the hype.

• Big Tech firms beat earnings expectations amid AI spending questions
• RIP the $599 Mac Mini, you were too beautiful for this world
• Microsoft lifts 2026 AI spend by $25 billion to cover component price rises
• Microsoft speeds up in Big Tech's data center spend-off
• Crosswording the Situation
• Meta's historic loss in court could cost a lot more than $375 million
• Utah first state to hold websites liable for users who mask their location with VPNs — law goes into effect, designed to prevent bypassing age checks
• Australia unveils a 2.25% levy on Meta, Google, and TikTok
• Meta found in breach of EU law for failing to keep children off Facebook and Instagram
• Meta inks deal for solar power at night, beamed from space
• Musk v. Altman week 1: Elon Musk says he was duped, warns AI could kill us all, and admits that xAI distills OpenAI's models
• OpenAI-backed 1X opens California factory targeting 10,000 home humanoid robots in year one
• Sam Altman asked GPT-5.5 to plan its own launch party. Its requests were 'beautiful' but 'strange.'
• Sam Altman says Elon Musk can come to his GPT 5.5 party: 'World needs more love'
• The US Senate unanimously passed a rule barring senators from trading on prediction markets like
• Kalshi and Polymarket, amid rising concern over insider trading
• 'We Know You Live Right Here': No Secrets in America's New Surveillance Dragnet
• California to begin ticketing driverless cars that violate traffic laws
• China Suspends New Autonomous Driving Permits After Baidu Outage
• China has decided that firing a worker because an AI can do their job is illegal. No Western country has done the same.
• Maryland Is First to Ban A.I.-Driven Price Increases in Grocery Stores
• The most severe Linux threat to surface in years catches the world flat-footed
• Hackers are actively exploiting a bug in cPanel, used by millions of websites
• The Hottest Anti-AI Gadget Is a Cyberdeck
• Jack Dorsey-backed Vine reboot Divine launches to the public
• GameStop eyes eBay takeover in audacious $46 billion bet on Ryan Cohen's e-commerce vision
• AI-generated actors and scripts are now ineligible for Oscars
• Ukraine says it's training drone pilots in 'Grand Theft Auto V'
• This free website is like Wikipedia meets the CIA
• Light Phone III Is a Delightfully Minimalist Smartphone Alternative
• Valve Steam Controller is here, it's a gamepad in search of a console
• Bluetooth Connected - The Voices Behind the Connection
• Spirit Airlines shuts down after Trump's war on Iran doubled jet fuel prices
• Ask.com has shut down, marking the official farewell to the Internet's favorite butler
• Pioneering geneticist and decoder of the human genome J. Craig Venter dies at age 79

Host: Leo Laporte

Guests: Nicholas De Leon, Devindra Hardawar, and Mikah Sargent

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Tim Cook's surprise departure shakes Apple just as AI and product strategy take center stage, sending big questions through Silicon Valley about what comes next. From Toyota's camera-filled Woven City to questionable US police tracking and a Signal privacy gap, this episode digs into how quietly surveillance tech is encroaching on daily life.

• Toyota Woven City
• Tim Cook to become Apple Executive Chairman; John Ternus to become Apple CEO
• Continuous glucose monitoring made me continuously crazy
• Meta will lay off 10% of its workforce, the company told staff today
• Meta projected $16 billion in scam ad revenue. Now the lawsuits are piling up.
  In another wild turn for AI chips, Meta signs deal for millions of Amazon AI CPUs
  Google is investing up to $40 billion in a company that is beating Gemini. That is the point.
• OpenAI Releases 'Spud' GPT-5.5 Model
• China's DeepSeek previews new AI model a year after jolting US rivals
  Now we know who paid $100,000 to unlock a Sam Altman podcast interview
• Scoop: NSA using Anthropic's Mythos despite Defense Department blacklist
• Anthropic: No "kill switch" for AI in classified settings
• Mozilla Used Anthropic's Mythos to Find and Fix 271 Bugs in Firefox
• Unauthorized group has gained access to Anthropic's exclusive cyber tool Mythos, report claims
• What smart people are saying about SpaceX's $60 billion deal with Cursor: 'The Hunger Games have just begun'
• Australia's Teen Social Media Ban Isn't Working. Half Their Teens Still Have Access, Survey Finds
• Apple fixes bug that cops used to extract deleted chat messages from iPhones
• Nevada Police Can Now Track Cellphones Without a Warrant
• Brussels launched an age checking app. Hackers took 2 minutes to break it
• 'Scattered Spider' Member 'Tylerb' Pleads Guilty
• Iran claims US used backdoors in networking equipment
• The Onion has agreed to a new deal to take over Infowars
• 'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win $34,000 bet
• To buy this Bay Area home, you'll need Anthropic equity | TechCrunch
• This Alberta Startup Sells No-Tech Tractors for Half Price
• The Hottest Phone for Kids Right Now Is a $100 Landline
• This pasta sauce wants to record your family

Host: Leo Laporte

Guests: Sam Abuelsamid, Victoria Song, and Stacey Higginbotham

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As Anthropic, OpenAI, and industry giants race to outpace each other, data centers and supply chains are straining, while job markets and open-source communities feel the heat. Listen in for a roundtable on whether AI is fueling innovation, burnout, or just the next tech bubble.

• Anthropic releases Claude Opus 4.7, concedes it trails unreleased Mythos
• Nobody knows how many CVEs Anthropic's Project Glasswing has actually found
• You're About to See a Lot of Critical Software Updates. Don't Ignore Them.
• Cal.com Is Going Closed Source Because of AI
• AI anxiety is turning volatile
• Humanoid robots race past humans in Beijing half-marathon, showing rapid advances
• Snap Is Laying Off 16% of Full-Time Staff as It Embraces A.I.
• Musk v. Altman Is a Battle for OpenAI's Soul
• The Little Probe That Could: Why Voyager 1 Matters, and Why NASA Just Switched Part of It Off
• Sam Altman's project World looks to scale its human verification empire. First stop: Tinder.
• Meta Must Face Youth Addiction Lawsuit by Massachusetts, Court Rules
• Section 230 Is Dying By A Thousand Workarounds, And Massachusetts Just Added Another One
• Live Nation and Ticketmaster lose monopoly case
• Anna's Archive told to pay Spotify and record labels $322 million over unprecedented music scraping
• Roblox agrees to a $12 million settlement with Nevada
• Judge sides with creators of banned ICE trackers who allege DHS and DOJ violated their First Amendment rights
• What's the point of the App Store, if it can't protect users?
• TotalRecall Reloaded tool finds a side entrance to Windows 11's Recall database
• Google, Microsoft, Meta All Tracking You Even When You Opt Out, According to an Independent Audit
• It Is Time to Ban the Sale of Precise Geolocation
• Google Broke Its Promise to Me. Now ICE Has My Data. | Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Billionaire Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings is leaving the company
• Venture capitalist Ron Conway says he is starting treatment for a 'rare' cancer

Host: Leo Laporte

Guests: Louis Maresca, Wesley Faulkner, and Glenn Fleishman

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Anthropic has built an AI model so sharp it's being withheld from the public, sparking debate over who gets access to world-changing tech and who's left behind. Hear how this "too dangerous" AI could tip the balance for the world's most powerful players. This episode unpacks the fresh moral minefields created when cutting-edge tech collides with politics, security, and human lives.

• Anthropic says its most powerful AI cyber model is too dangerous to release publicly — so it built Project Glasswing
• Sam Altman Fire Bombing Response
• OpenAI Backs Bill That Would Limit Liability for AI-Enabled Mass Deaths or Financial Disasters
• Samsung flags eightfold jump in quarterly profit as AI chip demand pumps prices
• SpaceX Posted Nearly $5 Billion Loss Last Year from AI Spending
• Trump administration plans to cut cybersecurity agency's budget by $700 million
• CPUID hijacked to serve malware as HWMonitor downloads
• GTA 6 Developer Rockstar Reportedly Hacked, Data Being Ransomed
• FBI used iPhone notification data to retrieve deleted Signal messages - 9to5Mac
• ICE acknowledges it is using powerful spyware
• Helium Is Hard to Replace
• John Deere to Pay $99 Million in Monumental Right-to-Repair Settlement
• France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, calling US tech dependence a strategic risk
• The disturbing white paper Red Hat is trying to erase from the internet
• DOJ Top Antitrust Litigators Exit After Ticketmaster Settlement
• My Quest to Solve Bitcoin's Great Mystery
• Bitcoin miners are losing $19,000 on every BTC produced as difficulty drops 7.8%
• 'Abhorrent': the inside story of the Polymarket gamblers betting millions on war

Host: Leo Laporte

Guests: Doc Rock, Jason Hiner, and Mike Elgan

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