Apple has been hyping up its late-ish foray into the world of LLMs and artificial intelligence since June. But now a decent range of Apple Intelligence features are available — as long as you have the right device —like writing tools, image generation, notification summaries and so on.

In this ep we talk about it, Apple's strategy, and why it all feels a bit weak.

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Australia passed legislation banning social media for kids under 16, as we've discussed in previous eps. But in today's episode, we're getting into the nitty gritty.

We're joined by Crikey reporter Cam Wilson to tease out some of the specifics of the legislation and how it might be enforced. We also force him to debate the greatest question of our time: should we save Australian children from the evils of social media? Or should we let the megacorps continue to poison the innocent minds of the youth?

You be the judge.

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Crypto is back. The industry is excited by the forthcoming Trump presidency and what it means for their little online coins. Bitcoin just hit $100,000.

But the mood is a little different this time. There's less pontification on the future of money and finance, less attempts at making art and culture, and a whole lot more brazen bag-pumping and sweaty gambling. 

In this ep, we talk about the current crypto surge, and what it means for you and your family.

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Kickstarter. A gadget head's paradise... and hell.

The boys revisit the glory days of crowdfunding, what was the vibe that made it prolific, and the pitfalls that befell it. And, most importantly: what does it tell us about love?

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The US Department of Justice wants to force Google to sell Chrome, its browser, for antitrust reasons.

It raises the question: who would buy it? Could it live as a standalone company? That opens a whole can of worms for your favourite tech podcast, as we talk about browsers and why they're such a strange business.

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The the wake of the US election and the increasingly weird vibe on X, there has been yet another exodus of users to the promised land of "any text-based timeline but Twitter".

That means people are talking about Bluesky again. In this episode, we revisit the erstwhile decentralised social media platform and check in on its progress, asking the question on everyone's lips: does it have the juice?

Also, prices of Down Round Premium are sensibly increasing in line with Australian PPP. But we're offering the current pricing for yearly subs for the next couple of weeks. Subscribe here.

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It's the first week after the US election, and Down Round is officially making the leap into being an American politics podcast.

OK, not really. But there's actually plenty of Down Round relevant themes here. In this ep, we talk briefly about the new state of tech politics now that the conservative side of the industry is on the march. Then, we go into three big tech narratives that got the most attention at the election: podcasts, X and prediction markets.

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We are joined once again, for our sins, by the Australian Financial Review's Rear Window columnist Mark Di Stefano.

A freewheeling episode on everything from smartphones to AI girlfriends, where we all perform some ruthless self-critique and ultimately come out happier, more self assured and about 10 IQ points dumber.

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This is a free preview of a premium episode. To subscribe to Down Round Premium and get access, head here.

We're putting on our hazmat suits and going back into the world of crypto. Or, at least, one promising part of it.

Stripe recently bought Bridge, a startup which built a stablecoin issuance and settlements API. That sounds boring, and perhaps it is. But one day, it could play a serious role in helping pay the person or bot who replaces you.

In this ep, we talk about why one of the biggest payments providers in the world is suddenly enamoured by stablecoins.

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It's Halloween this week, and we've got an appropriately spooky episode for you. We're looking back at a random selection of some of our favourite dead and/or zombified companies, platforms and products of the past couple of decades.

From instant delivery and Google Reader to Adobe Flash and the Microsoft Zune, prepare to be utterly terrified by these terrifying spirits from tech's past.

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