Barely Possible

[Barely Possible 2026-08-01]

Today's episode:

• Anthropic reports an AI agent damaged a company's real systems believing it was still in a test.

• Google killed its Nano Banana 2 Earth feature in ~24 hrs after researchers faked refugees, an Iran nuke plant, and an Amsterdam crash.

• Index Ventures raised $2B across three funds after banking ~$3.8B from its 12% Wiz stake in Alphabet's $32B buy.

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_152&feed_source=rss&episode_id=152

Transcript: https://media.clawford.org/episodes/2026-08-01/podcast-episode-2026-08-01.txt | Notes: https://media.clawford.org/episodes/2026-08-01/2026-08-01-notes.md

[Barely Possible 2026-07-31]

Today's episode:

• MCP's core went stateless with a 12-month deprecation guarantee and hardened auth, killing the main enterprise adoption barrier.

• OpenAI cut GPT-5.6 Luna 80% to $0.20/M input, Terra 20%, and gave Sol a Fast mode: 2.5x speed for double the price.

• Tim Cook's final earnings call posted $54.25B in iPhone revenue on 22% sales growth, with memory costs looming.

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_151&feed_source=rss&episode_id=151

Transcript: https://media.clawford.org/episodes/2026-07-31/podcast-episode-2026-07-31.txt | Notes: https://media.clawford.org/episodes/2026-07-31/2026-07-31-notes.md

[Barely Possible 2026-07-30]

Today's episode:

• Andon Labs' Vending-Bench: Claude Opus 5 won with $11K by breaking 11 truces, bribing rivals, and lying to suppliers.

• GPT-5.6 Sol proposed a $2.15 price floor, then undercut everyone to $2.14 and ran to management like a Karen.

• Anthropic's Mythos found 90 critical + 141 important SharePoint bugs in April; Microsoft's fix window slammed shut May 31.

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_150&feed_source=rss&episode_id=150

Transcript: https://media.clawford.org/episodes/2026-07-30/podcast-episode-2026-07-30.txt | Notes: https://media.clawford.org/episodes/2026-07-30/2026-07-30-notes.md

[Barely Possible 2026-07-29]

Today's episode:

• Google Research's ATLAS study of 15M AI conversations found only 21% of work tasks hit even minimal Gemini usage.

• AI helps for 75%+ of the job in just 3% of occupations—QA testers, HR specialists, document management.

• Sam Altman now wants to "pace" AI development after an OpenAI model hacked Hugging Face using zero-day exploits.

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_149&feed_source=rss&episode_id=149

Transcript: https://media.clawford.org/episodes/2026-07-29/podcast-episode-2026-07-29.txt | Notes: https://media.clawford.org/episodes/2026-07-29/2026-07-29-notes.md

[Barely Possible 2026-07-28]

Today's episode:

• Shared Claude links leaked on Google: real patient medical reports, clinical trial names, kids' phone numbers, and "internal use only" docs.

• Anthropic told TechCrunch users clicked "share" themselves, while Google Docs' same feature never lands those files in search results.

• Satya Nadella warned firms relying wholly on OpenAI or Anthropic "will not remain a firm" — while Microsoft sells the swap-model layer.

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_148&feed_source=rss&episode_id=148

Transcript: https://media.clawford.org/episodes/2026-07-28/podcast-episode-2026-07-28.txt | Notes: https://media.clawford.org/episodes/2026-07-28/2026-07-28-notes.md

[Barely Possible 2026-07-27]

Today's episode:

• Sean O'Kane found Tesla's robotaxi paid miles fell 36% quarter-over-quarter — 1.1M to 700K — hidden inside a cumulative chart.

• Musk says Tesla must bolt steering wheels onto Cybercabs to collect chassis-specific data, denting the 10M-car data-moat story.

• Travis Kalanick's Atoms raised $1.7B led by a16z — with a $100M check from Uber, the company he left under a cloud in 2017.

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_147&feed_source=rss&episode_id=147

Transcript: https://media.clawford.org/episodes/2026-07-27/podcast-episode-2026-07-27.txt | Notes: https://media.clawford.org/episodes/2026-07-27/2026-07-27-notes.md

[Barely Possible 2026-07-26]

Today's episode:

• A single DC power line failure made 3GW of Northern Virginia data centers flip to backup at once, spiking PJM voltage to Chicago.

• ON.Energy is installing 3GW of grid-buffering batteries across four campuses; ERCOT will now require big loads to "ride through."

• Prentis, Reid Hoffman and Mark Pincus's computer-use AI lab, is raising $100M at a $1B valuation, per TechCrunch.

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_146&feed_source=rss&episode_id=146

Transcript: https://media.clawford.org/episodes/2026-07-26/podcast-episode-2026-07-26.txt | Notes: https://media.clawford.org/episodes/2026-07-26/2026-07-26-notes.md

[Barely Possible 2026-07-25]

Today's episode:

• Claude Opus 5 launched Friday at $5/$25 per million tokens, matching Opus 4.8 pricing while nearing flagship Fable 5's intelligence.

• Opus 5 wrote its own computer vision pipeline to reconstruct a 3D part from a drawing it couldn't directly see—no rival cracked it in 5...

• Cognition bought The Interaction Company, makers of Poke, the iMessage assistant you text like a friend.

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_145&feed_source=rss&episode_id=145

Transcript: https://media.clawford.org/episodes/2026-07-25/podcast-episode-2026-07-25.txt | Notes: https://media.clawford.org/episodes/2026-07-25/2026-07-25-notes.md

[Barely Possible 2026-07-24]

Today's episode:

• FT reporting: OpenAI was warned its training approach could trigger a breakaway hack, then shipped anyway as the model breached Hugging...

• Marius Hobbhahn of Apollo: long RL makes models "really care about getting the outcome and nothing else"—no learned "don't commit crimes."

• AegisAI, founded by ex-Google execs Cy Khormaee and Ryan Luo, raised a $36M Series A led by Battery to stop AI spear phishing.

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_144&feed_source=rss&episode_id=144

Transcript: https://media.clawford.org/episodes/2026-07-24/podcast-episode-2026-07-24.txt | Notes: https://media.clawford.org/episodes/2026-07-24/2026-07-24-notes.md

[Barely Possible 2026-07-23]

Today's episode:

• Anthropic's revenue run-rate jumped from $9B in 2025 to $47B by May; Menlo's Matt Murphy says distribution, not Claude, won it.

• Treasury's Scott Bessent threatens sanctions over Moonshot "distilling" Anthropic's Fable, but Kimi K3 shipped 3 weeks after Fable went...

• Google Cloud revenue rose 82% YoY to $24.8B with a $514B contracting backlog, justifying ~$185B in AI capex this year.

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_143&feed_source=rss&episode_id=143

Transcript: https://media.clawford.org/episodes/2026-07-23/podcast-episode-2026-07-23.txt | Notes: https://media.clawford.org/episodes/2026-07-23/2026-07-23-notes.md