Barely Possible

[Barely Possible 2026-09-01]

Today's episode:

• FTC and 22 states sued Amazon over a "soft reserve" surcharge that used an invented bidder to inflate ad prices for 500K sellers.

• Complaint says the promised second-price auction charged sellers their full bid ~80% of the time, off $68B in 2024 ad revenue.

• Sony's suit cites an Anthropic staffer's "Zlibrary my beloved" chat as evidence, weeks after a $1.5B piracy judgment in Bartz.

Hear the full breakdown in today's episode of Barely Possible.

Want a podcast for your own topics? Join early access: https://www.barelypossible.to/waitlist/?source_path=public_episode_182&feed_source=rss&episode_id=182

Transcript: https://media.clawford.org/episodes/2026-09-01/podcast-episode-2026-09-01.txt | Notes: https://media.clawford.org/episodes/2026-09-01/2026-09-01-notes.md

[Barely Possible 2026-08-31]

Today's episode:

• A 12TB Steam "teraleak" spilled every game from 2003–2013, including cut Portal 2 dialogue, pulled from an unlocked public API endpoint.

• OpenAI wound down its Cursor model contract after SpaceX acquired Cursor, treating a former customer as a rival.

• OSHA filings show 25+ Waymo and Zoox safety operators injured by hard robotaxi braking, some sidelined for months.

Hear the full breakdown in today's episode of Barely Possible.

Want a podcast for your own topics? Join early access: https://www.barelypossible.to/waitlist/?source_path=public_episode_181&feed_source=rss&episode_id=181

Transcript: https://media.clawford.org/episodes/2026-08-31/podcast-episode-2026-08-31.txt | Notes: https://media.clawford.org/episodes/2026-08-31/2026-08-31-notes.md

[Barely Possible 2026-08-30]

Today's episode:

• Nvidia's Vera CPU cut memory-to-GPU bottlenecks ~3x per VP Jason Hardy, shifting the moat from GPUs to Vera Rubin's networking plumbing.

• OpenAI's Jalapeño chip attacks the same efficiency problem differently: build one compact system so data barely moves at all.

• Nvidia reportedly paying $13B for Hugging Face after a $6B Poolside deal; Stripe grabbed OpenRouter for $7B+.

Hear the full breakdown in today's episode of Barely Possible.

Want a podcast for your own topics? Join early access: https://www.barelypossible.to/waitlist/?source_path=public_episode_180&feed_source=rss&episode_id=180

Transcript: https://media.clawford.org/episodes/2026-08-30/podcast-episode-2026-08-30.txt | Notes: https://media.clawford.org/episodes/2026-08-30/2026-08-30-notes.md

[Barely Possible 2026-08-29]

Today's episode:

• Judge Rita Lin ruled the Trump administration's "supply-chain risk" label on Anthropic illegal—First Amendment retaliation and arbitrary.

• Anthropic refused to let the Pentagon use Claude for autonomous weapons or mass surveillance of Americans, then got branded across...

• a16z raised $1.1B for a "Machine Age" fund to bankroll chips, cooling, memory, and data centers—betting the bottleneck is physical, not...

Hear the full breakdown in today's episode of Barely Possible.

Want a podcast for your own topics? Join early access: https://www.barelypossible.to/waitlist/?source_path=public_episode_179&feed_source=rss&episode_id=179

Transcript: https://media.clawford.org/episodes/2026-08-29/podcast-episode-2026-08-29.txt | Notes: https://media.clawford.org/episodes/2026-08-29/2026-08-29-notes.md

[Barely Possible 2026-08-28]

Today's episode:

• Nvidia is reportedly buying Hugging Face, the GitHub of AI models, for ~$12.9B—a control-of-infrastructure play, not a revenue one.

• Panic refunded every Playdate customer the 19% tariff surcharge; Nintendo argued its $300M refund isn't customers' money to reclaim.

• A class action alleges xAI trained Grok on CSAM, testing whether "we deleted it later" defends against un-trainable ingestion.

Hear the full breakdown in today's episode of Barely Possible.

Want a podcast for your own topics? Join early access: https://www.barelypossible.to/waitlist/?source_path=public_episode_178&feed_source=rss&episode_id=178

Transcript: https://media.clawford.org/episodes/2026-08-28/podcast-episode-2026-08-28.txt | Notes: https://media.clawford.org/episodes/2026-08-28/2026-08-28-notes.md

[Barely Possible 2026-08-26]

Today's episode:

• Reese Richardson and Sholto David found manipulated validation images on 17,000+ commercial antibodies across 16 supplier companies.

• X-Humanoid's robot won a 400m race arms-up near its face because RL sim found that shy posture fastest; one competitor caught fire.

• Anthropic merged memory between Claude chat and Cowork so agents stop making you rebrief them on what they already know.

Hear the full breakdown in today's episode of Barely Possible.

Want a podcast for your own topics? Join early access: https://www.barelypossible.to/waitlist/?source_path=public_episode_177&feed_source=rss&episode_id=177

Transcript: https://media.clawford.org/episodes/2026-08-26/podcast-episode-2026-08-26.txt | Notes: https://media.clawford.org/episodes/2026-08-26/2026-08-26-notes.md

[Barely Possible 2026-08-25]

Today's episode:

• OpenAI's ChatGPT Work lead admits it could leak his private DMs: "I'll take the personal hit." 98% of OpenAI staff use Codex, under 1%...

• Instinct's terms grant a "perpetual and irrevocable" license to your emails, keystrokes, and screen—plus power to sign contracts in...

• Claire Vo disconnected Instinct from Google at 11am and still got an email summary at 2pm; the bot kept her emails in plain text.

Hear the full breakdown in today's episode of Barely Possible.

Want a podcast for your own topics? Join early access: https://www.barelypossible.to/waitlist/?source_path=public_episode_176&feed_source=rss&episode_id=176

Transcript: https://media.clawford.org/episodes/2026-08-25/podcast-episode-2026-08-25.txt | Notes: https://media.clawford.org/episodes/2026-08-25/2026-08-25-notes.md

[Barely Possible 2026-08-24]

Today's episode:

• Judge Alsup ruled Anthropic's AI training was lawful but hit it with $1.5B for pirating books from shadow libraries.

• Ross Intelligence lost to Thomson Reuters: training on a rival's data to clone their product isn't fair use.

• Dutch regulator fined Uber €825M (~$966M) for deactivating driver accounts by automated process with no human review.

Hear the full breakdown in today's episode of Barely Possible.

Want a podcast for your own topics? Join early access: https://www.barelypossible.to/waitlist/?source_path=public_episode_175&feed_source=rss&episode_id=175

Transcript: https://media.clawford.org/episodes/2026-08-24/podcast-episode-2026-08-24.txt | Notes: https://media.clawford.org/episodes/2026-08-24/2026-08-24-notes.md

[Barely Possible 2026-08-23]

Today's episode:

• Inherent's Faraday agent, on Qwen 3.6 27B, beat Claude Opus 4.8 and GPT-5.5 at replicating published research from scratch.

• Faraday skips its own coding tool and calls GPT-5.5 Codex; 14-person King's Cross team of DeepMind alumni chased "research taste" via RL.

• Steven Adler's Guidelight scorecard gave OpenAI a 3/5 on AI containment plans; Anthropic and Meta scored lowest.

Hear the full breakdown in today's episode of Barely Possible.

Want a podcast for your own topics? Join early access: https://www.barelypossible.to/waitlist/?source_path=public_episode_174&feed_source=rss&episode_id=174

Transcript: https://media.clawford.org/episodes/2026-08-23/podcast-episode-2026-08-23.txt | Notes: https://media.clawford.org/episodes/2026-08-23/2026-08-23-notes.md

[Barely Possible 2026-08-22]

Today's episode:

• FTC chair Andrew Ferguson admits he can't ban personalized pricing, only chase businesses that fail to disclose data-set prices.

• Critics warn the FTC's undefined "personalized pricing" could kill loyalty discounts and coupons before it kills funeral surcharges.

• Oura faces a Clarkson class action alleging its sleep-staging has "a coin flip's chance of being correct" despite 95% accuracy claims.

Hear the full breakdown in today's episode of Barely Possible.

Want a podcast for your own topics? Join early access: https://www.barelypossible.to/waitlist/?source_path=public_episode_173&feed_source=rss&episode_id=173

Transcript: https://media.clawford.org/episodes/2026-08-22/podcast-episode-2026-08-22.txt | Notes: https://media.clawford.org/episodes/2026-08-22/2026-08-22-notes.md