This week in tech

From "gainfully employed robots" to AI that accidentally ruins lives, this week's conversation unpacks the real-world fallout of futuristic promises. Leo, JPT, Iain, and Richard tackle energy sources, social media effects, tech layoffs, and the algorithms quietly taking charge.

• Meta is planning sweeping layoffs as AI costs mount
• Meta Said to Push Back Launch of Avocado Model
• Social media addiction trial: the plaintiff, Meta, and YouTube make closing arguments; jurors begin deliberations Friday on liability for harm to children
• Trump administration will reportedly get $10 billion for brokering the TikTok deal
• Bluesky CEO Jay Graber will step aside
• Digg's open beta shuts down after just two months, blaming AI bot spam
• X says it suspended 800 million accounts in 2024 over spam and manipulation
• Fake AI Content About the Iran War Is All Over X
• Musk admits xAI 'not built right' — weeks after Tesla invested $2 billion
• Nvidia Is Planning to Launch an Open-Source AI Agent Platform
• Amazon Wins Court Order To Block Perplexity's AI Shopping Bots
• Social Security watchdog investigating claims that DOGE engineer copied its databases
• DOGE Deposition Videos Taken Down After Judge Order and Widespread Mockery
• U.S. State Bans on Lab-Grown Meats Challenged in Court
• Easy-to-use solar panels are coming, but utilities are trying to delay them
• EcoFlow brings its plug-in solar power plant to US homes (related to the plug-in solar story)
• TerraPower gets permit to build reactor
• Ex-Uber CEO Kalanick Debuts Plan for 'Gainfully Employed Robots'
• Tennessee grandmother jailed after AI facial recognition error links her to fraud
• Justice Department and Live Nation Reach Settlement Terms in Antitrust Case
• Palantir CEO Makes Shocking Confession on Disrupting Democratic Power
• Palantir's lethal AI weaponry deployed to find chairs for US government staff
• How Pokémon Go is giving delivery robots an inch-perfect view of the world
• 'Flying Cars' Will Take Off in American Skies This Summer
• YouTube surpasses Disney, Paramount, WBD in 2025 ad revenue
• Ig Nobel Prize flees US for Switzerland after 35 years over safety concerns
• Swiss e-voting can't count 2,048 ballots after USB keys fail to decrypt them
• Tony Hoare, Turing Award-Winning Computer Scientist Behind QuickSort, Dies At 92

Host: Leo Laporte

Guests: Iain Thomson, Richard Campbell, and Jennifer Pattison Tuohy

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Between copyright-free AI art, government blacklists, and data brokers run amok, this episode spotlights the fierce new battles for privacy, agency, and control in our digital lives. Plus, hear Cory Doctorow break down why the AI gold rush may be headed for a colossal crash.

• Pentagon Officially Tells Anthropic It Is a Supply Chain Risk
• Trump moves to blacklist Anthropic AI from all government work
• If AI is a weapon, why don't we regulate it like one?
• Sam Altman's greed and dishonesty are finally catching up to him
• ChatGPT user base surges 350% in 18 months as it nears 1 billion weekly active users
• AI-generated art can't be copyrighted after the Supreme Court declines to review the rule
• Chardet dispute shows how AI will kill software licensing, argues Bruce Perens
• Grammarly is using our identities without permission
• Alphabet Grants Sundar Pichai Stock Awards Worth Up to $686 Million
• Google vs Epic Games ends with Android app stores, lower fees
• Google Ends Its 30% App Store Fee, Welcomes Third-Party App Stores - Slashdot
• Xbox CEO confirms next-gen 'Project Helix' console will play PC games
• Motorola Partners With GrapheneOS - Slashdot
• Data Broker Breaches Fueled Nearly $21 Billion in Identity-Theft Losses
• CBP Tapped Into the Online Advertising Ecosystem To Track Peoples' Movements
• Proton Mail Helped FBI Unmask Anonymous 'Stop Cop City' Protester
• COPPA 2.0 passes the Senate again, unanimously this time
• South Korean Police Lose Seized Crypto By Posting Password Online
• Iranian drone strikes at Amazon sites raise alarms over protecting data centers
• Charter Gets FCC Permission To Buy Cox, Become Largest ISP In the US
• How Big Diaper absorbs billions of extra dollars from American parents
• Anne Wojcicki's Plan to Revive 23andMe: Rich Donors, Improved Tests—and Maybe Even MAHA
• Bundle of human neurons hooked to silicon learns to stumble through Doom
• 10% of Firefox crashes are caused by bitflips
• Seagate Just Unleashed 44TB Hard Drives

Host: Leo Laporte

Guests: Joey de Villa and Cory Doctorow

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Anthropic's clash with the Pentagon pits tech ethics against government demands, raising explosive questions about AI's role in surveillance and weaponry. If you care about who controls the future of artificial intelligence, this episode is a must-listen.

• Sam Altman says OpenAI shares Anthropic's red lines in Pentagon fight
• The whole thing was a scam
• OpenAI allows NSA to use GPT for surveilling Americans
• Anthropic's Claude hits No. 1 on Apple's top free apps list after Pentagon rejection
• Layoffs at Block
• Crypto exchange Gemini plans to lay off up to 200 staff, exit Europe, and Australia
• Netflix Backs Out of Bid for Warner Bros., Paving Way for Paramount Takeover
• An update on our model deprecation commitments for Claude Opus 3 \ Anthropic
• Keep Android Open
• Colorado moves age checks from websites to operating systems | Biometric Update
• Open source calculator firmware DB48X forbids CA/CO use due to age verification
• New Apple product launch starts Monday, Tim Cook confirms
• Everything announced at Samsung Unpacked: The Galaxy S26 Ultra, Galaxy Buds 4 and more
• Here's how the new Samsung Galaxy S26 compares with last year's S25
• Hacked Prayer App Sends 'Surrender' Messages to Iranians Amid Israeli and US Strikes
• The Big One: The cyberattack scenarios that keep officials up at night
• CISA replaces acting director after a bumbling year on the job
• New AirSnitch attack bypasses Wi-Fi encryption in homes, offices, and enterprises
• Victory! Tenth Circuit Finds Fourth Amendment Doesn't Support Broad Search of Protesters' Devices and Digital Data
• Enthusiasts used their home computers to search for ET—scientists are homing in on 100 signals they found
• Americans now listen to podcasts more often than talk radio, study shows | TechCrunch
• Burger King Will Use AI To Check If Employees Say 'Please' and 'Thank You'
• Uber Previews Its Dubai Air Taxi Service - Slashdot
• Rob Grant, creator of Red Dwarf, has died
• Dan Simmons, author of Hyperion, Song of Kali, dead at 77

Host: Leo Laporte

Guests: Molly White, Owen Thomas, and Harry McCracken

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What do jailbreaking fighter jets, lost Amazon vans, and swapping your phone's smart features for a handful of mud have in common? TWiT dives into the wild, occasionally absurd future of tech, where yesterday's sci-fi is tomorrow's supply-chain headache.

• Mark Zuckerberg and his Ray-Ban entourage have their day in court
• Instagram Boss Says 16 Hours of Daily Use Is Not Addiction
• Meta Begins $65 Million Election Push To Advance AI Agenda - Slashdot
• Australia's Social Media Ban Is Isolating Kids With Disabilities—Just Like Critics Warned
• Google I/O 2026 set for May 19-20
• Pixel 10A hands-on: More like a slightly better Pixel 9A than a slightly worse Pixel 10
• Google announces Gemini 3.1 Pro, says it's better at complex problem-solving
• Tucson Daily Brief
• Leaked Email Suggests Ring Plans to Expand 'Search Party' Surveillance Beyond Dogs
• A $10K+ bounty is waiting for anyone who can unplug Ring doorbells from Amazon’s cloud
• Amazon delivery van accidentally gets stuck in the sea in Britain
• Tesla 'Robotaxi' adds 5 more crashes in Austin in a month – 4x worse than humans
• Government Docs Reveal New Details About Tesla and Waymo Robotaxis' Human Babysitters
• The Supreme Court's Tariff Ruling Won't Bring Car Prices Back to Earth
• A flood of cheap used EVs is coming
• Signal guide for everyday folks
• PayPal discloses data breach that exposed user info for 6 months
• Federal ban on TP-Link routers shelved, but Texas fights on
• You probably can't trust your password manager if it's compromised
• Mississippi health system shuts down clinics statewide after ransomware attack
• Fake Job Recruiters Hid Malware In Developer Coding Challenges
• F-35 Software Could Be Jailbreaked Like an IPhone: Dutch Defense Minister - Slashdot
• In a blind test, audiophiles couldn't tell the difference between audio signals sent through copper wire, a banana, or wet mud — 'The mud should sound perfectly awful, but it doesn't,' notes the experiment creator | Tom's Hardware
• Lab-Grown Meat Exists (But Nobody Wants To Eat It)
• CERN rebuilt the original browser from 1989

Host: Leo Laporte

Guests: Sam Abuelsamid, Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ, and Nicholas De Leon

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