This week in tech

Are we witnessing an AI-fueled gold rush or the early signs of an epic crash? Listen to these hard-hitting discussions on bubbles, breakthroughs, and the real impact behind Silicon Valley's AI obsession.

• Time Magazine's 'Person of the Year': the Architects of AI
• The AI Wildfire Is Coming. It's Going to Be Very Painful and Incredibly Healthy.
• 'ChatGPT for Doctors' Startup Doubles Valuation to $12 Billion as Revenue Surges
• Trump Pretends To Block State AI Laws; Media Pretends That's Legal
• It's beginning to look a lot like (AI) Christmas
• Amazon Prime Video Pulls AI-Powered Recaps After Fallout Flub
• Could America win the AI race but lose the war?
• Google Says First AI Glasses With Gemini Will Arrive in 2026
• Border Patrol Agent Recorded Raid with Meta's Ray-Ban Smart Glasses
• The countdown to the world's first social media ban for children
• US could demand five-year social media history from tourists before allowing entry
• Reddit making global changes to protect kids after social media ban - 9to5Mac
• There are no good outcomes for the Warner Bros. sale
• Paramount CEO Made Trump a Secret Promise on CNN in Warner Bros. Convo
• Whatnot's Schlock Empire Shows Digital Live Shopping Can Thrive in America
• The Military Almost Got the Right to Repair. Lawmakers Just Took It Away
• Apple loses its appeal of a scathing contempt ruling in iOS payments case
• Japan law opening phone app stores to go into effect
• Microsoft Excel Turns 40, Remains Stubbornly Unkillable - Slashdot
• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 sweeps The Game Awards — analysis and full winners list
• Microsoft promises more bug payouts, with or without a bounty program
• An ex-Twitter lawyer is trying to bring Twitter back

Host: Leo Laporte

Guests: Iain Thomson, Owen Thomas, and Jason Hiner

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What happens if your internet provider gets the blame for what you download? This week, the panel unpacks a billion-dollar copyright battle at the Supreme Court that could upend how we all use the web.

• Justice Alito Makes The Most Sense, Or This Week At The Supreme Court In The Cox-Sony Copyright Case
• First Porn, Now Skin Cream? 'Age Verification' Bills Are Out of
• These new FDA-approved glasses promise to slow nearsightedness in kids. Here's how they work
• Amazon Tests U.S. Ultrafast Delivery Offering
• What the heck is going on at Apple? | CNN Business
• Meta's Zuckerberg Plans Deep Cuts for Metaverse Efforts
• Meta acquires AI device startup Limitless
• Instagram mandates total return to office for employees in 2026
• Is Netflix Trying to Buy Warner Bros. or Kill It? - Slashdot
• School Cell Phone Bans and Student Achievement
• RoboCop statue rises in Detroit: 'Big, beautiful, bronze piece of art'
• People who talk with their hands seem clearer, more persuasive - Fast Company
• (a petition to cancel Twitter's trademark for abandonment)

Host: Leo Laporte

Guests: Amy Webb, Cathy Gellis, and Brian Woolf

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Is Black Friday really booming, or are inflated prices and AI shopping assistants just muddying the waters? This episode rips into the data, exposes retailer tactics, and debates if smarter tech is actually making us better shoppers.

• Black Friday data shows online sales strong, store results mixed
• Silicon Valley's man in the White House is benefiting himself and his friends
• View: Trump's AI agenda sails toward an iceberg of bipartisan populist fury
• 'We do fail ... a lot': Defense startup Anduril hits setbacks with weapons tech
• Solar's growth in US almost enough to offset rising energy use
• Datacenters in space are a terrible, horrible, no good idea
• China leapfrogs US in global market for 'open' AI models
• Danish authorities in rush to close security loophole in Chinese electric buses
• The Ford F-150 Lightning was supposed to transform the industry. Now, Ford may pull the plug
• Roblox is a problem — but it's a symptom of something worse
• Warner Music and Suno strike deal for AI music, giving artists control over their likeness
• Leak confirms OpenAI is preparing ads on ChatGPT for public roll out
• Jony Ive, Sam Altman: OpenAI plans elegantly simple device
• One tech tip: Modern cars are spying on you. Here's what you can do about it
• How a GM EV1 was sold for the first time
• GPU prices are coming to earth just as RAM costs shoot into the stratosphere

Host: Leo Laporte

Guests: Daniel Rubino, Sam Abuelsamid, and Mike Elgan

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A judge is racing to break up Google's advertising empire before they can appeal, while Microsoft's Copilot stumbles on camera. Australia's sweeping social bans, Roblox's selfie requirement, and flawed AI moderation spark sharp debate on what happens when online gatekeeping gets serious.

• Top MAGA Influencers Accidentally Unmasked as Foreign Trolls
• NetChoice Sues Virginia To Block Its One-Hour Social Media Limit For Kids
• Roblox is requiring 9yo kids to submit a video selfie to prove age
• Outage at Cloudflare Disrupts Parts of the Internet
• It's not just you, many websites are not working this morning amid Cloudflare outage
• Cloudflare-related variation on the classic XKCD
• Trump's DOGE Is Dead and We Won't Miss It
• Meta Wins FTC Antitrust Trial Over Instagram, WhatsApp Deals
• Europe is scaling back its landmark privacy and AI laws
• Talking to Windows' Copilot AI makes a computer feel incompetent
• 780,000 Windows Users Downloaded Linux Distro Zorin OS in the Last 5 Weeks
• Fortnite is getting Unity games
• Oops. Cryptographers cancel election results after losing decryption key.
• SEC Dismisses Case Against SolarWinds, Top Security Officer
• Google Starts Testing Ads In AI Mode
• A decision about breaking up Google's adtech monopoly is on the horizon
• Work is "optional" and irrelevant money: Musk's creepy utopian dream
• White House Tries to axe the GAIN act (Act that would have prevented AI tech from being sold to other nations.)

Host: Leo Laporte

Guests: Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ, Molly White, and Wesley Faulkner

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