Better Offline

A few weeks ago, an Australian tech worker called Nik Suresh wrote an evisceration of the current AI hype boom called "I Will F**king Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again." Ed Zitron and Robert Evans sat down to talk about the blog - and the wider problems that Nik sees in the tech industry at large.

LINKS:

Nik's blog: https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/

Newsletter: wheresyoured.at

Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/betteroffline

Discord chat.wheresyoured.at

Ed's Socials - http://www.twitter.com/edzitron instagram.com/edzitron https://bsky.app/profile/zitron.bsky.social https://www.threads.net/@edzitron 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In a special live-to-tape episode of Better Offline, Ed is joined by The Verge's Alex Cranz and YouTube influencer Michael Fisher to talk about what they're actually enjoying in the tech industry - and why things don't feel quite as magical and exciting as they used to.

https://www.youtube.com/@TheMrMobile

https://www.theverge.com/authors/alex-cranz 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In April, The Onion was acquired by a new entity called Global Tetrahedron, revealed shortly thereafter to be a joint venture between billionaire Jeff Lawson and former NBC disinformation reporter Ben Collins, now its CEO. Ben joins Ed to talk about buying The Onion, keeping its Chicago roots, and how we can save digital media. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Last week, Apple announced that they're integrating artificial intelligence into your iPhone and Mac in a stunningly demure and reserved presentation. In this episode, Ed Zitron walks you through whether you should trust Apple - and how OpenAI agreed to the worst deal in tech history to integrate ChatGPT in the least-prominent way.

EPISODE LINKS: https://tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, Ed Zitron walks through how Sam Altman's ridiculous promises about the future of artificial intelligence could be ruinous for Silicon Valley, and speaks with Bloomberg's Ellen Huet about how Sam Altman - a non-technical founder with little business success - accumulated so much power.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sam Altman has used his power and influence to become a multi-billionaire with stakes in hundreds of startups, but behind the curtain, he's never run a successful company, fired from both Y Combinator and, briefly, OpenAI. In this episode, Ed Zitron digs into the history of Silicon Valley's most popular confidence man, and talks to the Wall Street Journal's Tom Dotan about Altman's many, many investments. EPSIODE LINKS: https://tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, Ed Zitron walks you through what happens when tech's growth-at-all-costs epoch begins to collapse, and how the only way to save Silicon Valley is to put power back in the hands of those who actually build things - and reject the management consultant mindset killing innovation.

Episode Links: https://tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tech's hyper-growth era is ending, with online 100 million new people getting online between 2022 and 2023, and almost every major web platform seeing a decline in growth since 2021. In this episode, Ed Zitron walks you through how tech's decline is driving the tech industry to try and sell you useless products like the metaverse, cryptocurrency and generative AI.

Episode Links: https://tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On May 14th 2024, Google introduced their Search Generative Experience, a service that uses hallucination-prone artificial intelligence to generate answers to queries rather than just presenting links, all so that they could Wall Street that they're innovative and future-forward. The result is an even-more-broken search experience, and in this episode, Ed Zitron walks you through the rotten state of Google, and speaks with Lily Ray, a 15-year veteran of the search engine optimization industry, about how Google abandoned the web.

LINKS:

Lily Ray: https://lilyray.nyc/ https://twitter.com/lilyraynyc

The Verge's Interview With Sundar Pichai: https://www.theverge.com/24158374/google-ceo-sundar-pichai-ai-search-gemini-future-of-the-internet-web-openai-decoder-interview 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For three years, Facebook's monthly active users have been declining dramatically, with Facebook.com losing 397 million unique monthly visitors since May 2021. In this episode, Ed Zitron walks you through how Mark Zuckerberg's abominable growth-at-all-costs mindset has turned Facebook into a dystopia of AI-generated slop, dangerous misinformation and outright pornography, all as a result of Zuckerberg's intentionally harmful approach to social media.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.