Grumpy Old Geeks

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The blue wave has arrived; Elon Musk’s political spending spree mostly went down in flames, and Brian is celebrating his new Canadian citizenship with the kind of optimism usually reserved for people who haven’t checked the news yet. This week on Grumpy Old Geeks, we look at Musk’s $458 million election gamble, the ongoing legal fight over xAI’s gas-guzzling Memphis data centers, and another social-media addiction lawsuit that settled before it could deliver the public reckoning we were hoping for. Meanwhile, Meta’s moderation systems are apparently still struggling with the concept that adults shouldn’t be sexually abusing children under the guise of coaching. You had one job, algorithm.

Apple is tightening App Store age-rating disclosures, while Google is effectively telling schools they can’t have search without AI—a charming little exercise in choice, corporate leverage, and educational priorities. We also dig into AI-generated classroom content, vibe-coded alternatives to Adobe’s subscription empire, Anthropic’s sudden interest in protecting video-game copyrights, and Sam Altman’s apparently sincere belief that your computer is selfishly hoarding RAM. OpenAI is tightening restrictions on weapons information, Reddit is testing ads in search, and Jason makes the case for using AI to escape the walled gardens: build your own communities, run your own servers, and stop letting giant tech companies turn everything you enjoy into an ad-delivery mechanism. Plus, a million-plus Android TV boxes came with a malware surprise preinstalled. Bargain shopping!

In the Dark Side with Dave, we take a detour through chainsaw influencers, quicksand, streaking, mooning, and the increasingly implausible notion that anything embarrassing could happen before someone whips out a phone. We debate whether we're chaos Muppets or order Muppets, revisit some glorious Muppet content, and mourn the steady corporate enshittification of brands we once trusted. Brian recommends Hugh Howey’s Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories and continues his The Bear binge; Jason offers a decidedly lukewarm review of Battlestar Suburbia. It’s another episode of technology, culture, nostalgia, and the slow realization that the kids are probably right to think we're weird.

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Show notes at https://gog.show/770

Watch on YouTube at https://youtu.be/7iAyCfZkz0U

SHOW NOTES

Elon Musk's $458 million midterms bet bought him very little

Judge says xAI must face NAACP lawsuit on data center pollution

Snap settles social media addiction lawsuit to avoid trial

Meta Is Refusing to Remove AI-Generated Videos of Coaches Inappropriately Touching Young Athletes When Users Report Them

Meta Removed Disturbing AI Videos After Initially Saying They Didn’t Violate Its Rules

Apple will start mandating age requirements for dating apps

Google will cut off search access for students at schools that reject AI

AI software clones are coming for big-name companies like Adobe

Anthropic updates Claude to stop it from recreating existing video games

Sam Altman is upset at you for hoarding RAM in your own computer

OpenAI adds stricter limits for teens asking about firearms

Reddit tests ads in search results as traffic declines and growth concerns mount

Google disrupts million-device XCPE Android malware botnet, bans TV box maker

Meeting Pins

The Bear - up to season 4

Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories by Hugh Howey

Battlestar Suburbia: A hilariously subversive space adventure

Dave Bittner

The CyberWire

Hacking Humans

Caveat

Only Malware in the Building

Chaos Theory: A Unified Theory of Muppet Types.

Walmart Presents: A Who Knew Carol

Longer version

And a prequel clip?

Rogue One: Money for Nothing Edit

Worse on Purpose

Take a virtual train ride in your browser. Did you have train sets?

Geolocating based on the (sometimes inaudible) sounds of the airplanes around you.

Tonight’s the Freight: Rod Stewart reveals he’s spent 26 years making a huge model railway

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Brian prepares to become Canadian, securing access to maple cookies while the rest of us contemplate our life choices. AI's promised productivity bonanza remains hard to find outside the tech giants, but the layoffs are right on schedule. We unpack the Dutch government's plans to cut jobs and lean on AI, Silicon Valley's game of passing the same money around, and Marissa Mayer's Dazzle, the assistant she used to identify what makes her own daughter special. Apparently remembering things about your kid is now a job for the camera roll. Welcome to Mommie Dearest Maxxing.

Social media keeps replacing our friends with ads, Greece moves to keep under-15s off the platforms, and Meta faces another lawsuit over scam advertising. We get into compulsive scrolling, recovery groups and AI agents poking around bank accounts, because online banking clearly needed a worse security model. Things turn serious with a lawsuit alleging ChatGPT encouraged a woman to reduce her epilepsy medication before her death. Elvis's music owners take on Anthropic, and we discuss reports of Samsung TVs tracking viewers. Your appliances have taken an interest in you, and it isn't affection.

Cybertruck reservation holders in Australia and New Zealand get the seven-year "never mind," we examine reports of cracking foldable iPhones, and a Bitcoin-mining water heater wants $899 to put your finances in hot water. Airbnb finally questions making paying guests do the laundry. Jason plugs Trackalot 2.0, we catch up on The Diplomat, Lupin and Battlestar Suburbia, and NBC's shorter cut of The Traitors earns a proper dressing-down. Jason has thoughts, and none of them are suitable for broadcast.

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Show notes at https://gog.show/769

Watch on YouTube at https://youtu.be/VcEgXmummZk

SHOW NOTES

AI delivers ‘zero financial payoff’ to most companies, Apollo economist says

Dutch government to cut 16 percent of workforce as part of AI efficiency push

Greece enacts social media ban for kids under 15

We’re addicted to social media. How do we get sober?

Rhode Island sues Meta over its approach to scam ads

Unauthorized AI agents are reportedly already accessing US bank accounts

Bank of America kindly asks that you don't share your banking password with your AI assistant

Elvis Presley's estate is suing Anthropic over copyright infringement

Former Yahoo CEO Needed AI to Help Describe What Makes Her Own Daughter Special

Woman Dies After ChatGPT Coached Her to Decrease Dose of Medication Prescribed by Doctor

World shares and U.S. futures are mixed after Google parent Alphabet's earnings disappoint

Nvidia, Meta deepen AI ties with $3 billion investment deal

Tesla says it will no longer release the Cybertruck in Australia and New Zealand

Tesla plans to start selling Cybercabs by the end of the year

The last, best hope for space tourism just rolled onto a runway in Arizona

The iPhone Duo Is 3 Days Old—And Screens Are Already Cracking

Trackalot 2.0 - Now FREE to Download!

Heatbit Says Your Water Heater Should Be Mining Bitcoin, and Now It Can

Airbnb bans hosts from making you do the dishes

The Diplomat

Lupin Part 4

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Season 2

Battlestar Suburbia: A hilariously subversive space adventure

We Regret to Inform You That ‘Maxxing’ Is Dictionary.com’s 2026 Word of the Year

Actor Walter Koenig Dead at 90 ... Played Chekov in Original 'Star Trek' Series

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Show notes at https://gog.show/768

Watch on YouTube at https://youtu.be/HaR8udbJPhw

AI golems are coming for your job, and Terry Pratchett apparently saw the whole mess coming decades ago. This week on Grumpy Old Geeks, TikTok’s child-safety promises get the courtroom treatment, with employees alleging that executives ignored serious exploitation risks while supposedly robust parental controls had loopholes big enough to drive a teenager through. Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s reported decision to restrict Starlink access for Ukrainian forces raises some rather uncomfortable questions about how much power one billionaire should have over a country’s military infrastructure. Add Musk’s conveniently vague promise to give every American child a SpaceX share and his retrospective admission that DOGE probably went on too long, and the billionaire accountability department remains conspicuously understaffed.

Meta has another banner week in the business of making everyone’s data its data. The company temporarily suspended a No Kings protest account after automated activity triggered its systems, then softened proposed business-account terms following backlash over web scraping and content use. Anthropic is advocating for federal AI rules that could block dangerous models, while OpenAI’s agents reportedly disabled monitoring systems and, in one case, falsely claimed they hadn’t. That’s reassuring. We also cover delivery robots accused of collecting biometric data without consent, AI-powered plant-language translation that may be more marketing than science, AI-assisted firearm design, and the prospect of using coding tools to rescue abandoned gadgets and strip ads from smart TVs. Just remember: a 97.9% success rate is not good enough when your bank’s software is involved.

Elsewhere, scammers are fleecing older adults out of staggering sums with fake investment opportunities, tech-support calls, and romance scams featuring celebrity impersonators; Russian military satellites are making suspiciously close approaches to a commercial imaging satellite; and Amazon’s new kids’ tablets spark a discussion about parental controls, advertising, and which tech companies deserve your trust. In the Dark Side with Dave segment, we also visit the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art and celebrate a New Mexico judge’s $25 billion penalty against Meta over privacy violations. For lighter fare, Brian recommends the Enola Holmes movies, The Bear, The Diplomat, and The Ministry of Time, while Jason reminds us that anxiety-inducing television is not everyone’s idea of a good time. It’s another week of AI overreach, corporate doublespeak, and technology racing ahead while the grown-ups look for the instruction manual.

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SHOW NOTES

Employees warned TikTok about child exploitation, court documents show

TikTok reportedly banned ads for Musk documentary before its wider US release

WSJ Claims Elon Musk Ordered the Throttling of Starlink Tech for Ukraine

Elon Musk says he plans to gift a SpaceX share to every child in the U.S.

‘I Got Carried Away Basically’: Musk Expresses Some Regrets About His DOGE Era

Meta says it shut down No Kings Instagram account because it thought bots had been unleashed

Meta tweaks its new terms of service after backlash against scraping

Anthropic Secretly Lobbying Government to Only Shut Down an AI Model If It's Poised to Kill More Than 50 People

OpenAI's agents disabled their own safety monitoring systems

Delivery Robots Are Watching You, According to Lawsuit

New Data Show How Much Worse Scams Are Getting for Americans Over 60

Russia Just Did Something Menacing in Orbit That Satellite Trackers Say Is a First

Plants can speak using electricity, so this startup built an AI model to decipher their language

STAR WARS: Galactic Racer

We Regret to Inform You That “GatGPT” Is Exactly What It Sounds Like

OpenAI says its models can help banks migrate from old COBOL programs

‘Reverse-Engineer Anything’ Is the New Wild West of AI

Enola Holmes

Enola Holmes 2

Enola Holmes 3

The Bear

The Diplomat

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

Dave Bittner

The CyberWire

Hacking Humans

Caveat

Only Malware in the Building

I WENT TO THE LUCAS MUSEUM by Merrill Markoe

Amazon announces an all-new family of tablets designed just for kids

Neiman Marcus has unveiled its 2026 holiday gift guide, including an $180,000 Star Wars experience.

We are (once again) living the old scifi trope of ignoring the scientific experts at our own peril.

Meta ordered to pay $25 billion penalty in New Mexico Cambridge Analytica case

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Dave Bittner joins Jason and Brian for a bonus trip to the Dark Side, where the Phantom of the Opera remaster kicks off a musical-theater nerd fight. Les Mis, Pippin, Chess, and White Trash Wins Lotto enter the chat, along with original-cast bragging rights and memories of four-dollar theater tickets. Apparently, we used to leave the house and experience culture without financing it.

The conversation turns to Apple’s smart-home ambitions, abandoned Google gadgets, increasingly useless Alexas, and the familiar thrill of buying new hardware because the old hardware stopped getting updates. Dave wants a Pixar-style lamp with personality; everyone wants their expensive devices to actually cooperate. Between Apple TV sticker shock, Spotify questions, and Sonos compatibility, the smart home sounds suspiciously like another unpaid IT job.

Then an AI Pac-Man benchmark gives “superintelligence” the credibility it deserves: roughly one quarter’s worth. The guys question the obsession with throwing LLMs at everything, marvel at government buzzword inflation, and discover that a portable monitor might be more useful than another breathless AI announcement. We wrap with balcony solar, electricity-bill fantasies, and Dave’s concern that his renewable-energy investment could become airborne. The future is here; secure it to something heavy.

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Ji6O69sYu7U

SHOW NOTES

Dave Bittner

The CyberWire

Hacking Humans

Caveat

Only Malware in the Building

Andrew Lloyd Webber Announces Remixed and Remastered Original Phantom of the Opera Album as London Production Celebrates 40 Years

Andy Prieboy's White Trash Wins Lotto

Everything announced at Apple's 'Welcome Home' event

Remember the Apple patent on a Pixar-style lamp?

The Pacman benchmark for AI model performance.

Lenovo L15 Portable Monitor, 15.6” Display, Full HD Resolution, IPS Panel, 250 nits Brightness, 60Hz Refresh Rate, USB-C Ports, Height-Adjustable Stand, Flicker-Free Technology, Grey

Balcony solar?

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Show notes at https://gog.show/767

Watch on YouTube at https://youtu.be/i9Q2SnxzolU

The internet has officially become a dumpster fire with Wi-Fi. Ukrainian strikes on Yandex data centers may have disrupted Russian internet services, but whether they actually knocked out propaganda bots remains anyone’s guess. Meanwhile, OpenAI’s former safety employees are publicly airing their grievances, an alleged spy gadget in the company’s office turned out to be a $14 hobbyist development board, and Anthropic managed to have an AI model submit a fabricated tip about an unsolved murder to Philadelphia police. The machines are allegedly getting smarter. The adults in charge? Still working on it.

And because apparently everything needs an internet connection until it ruins your day, hackers allegedly cranked supermarket refrigeration systems in France to 122 degrees, potentially spoiling millions of euros in food. Tesla wants permission to dramatically increase particulate emissions near homes and a school, car manufacturers are handing vehicle identifiers and location data to advertising companies, and Flock’s nationwide license-plate surveillance network is collecting lawsuits like Pokémon. Elon Musk’s AI shopping assistant even helped broadcast his Lego order details to the internet. Add 1,400-plus Microsoft security fixes, questionable safety around home 3D printing, and the ongoing absence of meaningful AI regulation, and it’s another banner week for technological progress.

For entertainment, Paramount and Skydance are reshaping the Star Trek future, with another season of Starfleet Academy still on the way; the Blade Runner 2099 trailer inspires a rant about Hollywood’s increasingly interchangeable cinematic "dongs"; and Character.AI is headed for bankruptcy after a mountain of controversy. Finally, one enterprising man used AI-generated music and thousands of automated accounts to rake in more than $8 million in fraudulent streaming royalties. Apparently, the future of music is artificial, the listeners are bots, and the royalties are real — until the FBI shows up. Stay grumpy...

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SHOW NOTES

Ukraine’s Zelenskyy Claims Strikes on Russian Data Centers Silenced Social Media Bots

Fired OpenAI safety researchers dispute their dismissals in open letter

FBI arrests OpenAI employee accused of planting hidden recording device in conference room

The 'Sophisticated' Bug OpenAI Found in Its Conference Room Can Be Yours for $13.99

Microsoft's president says AI is less regulated than a carton of milk

Anthropic’s AI Submitted a Fake Tip in an Unsolved Murder Case

Exclusive: Anthropic breaches spark White House AI reporting mandate

Hackers Overheat Fridges at Supermarkets Across France, Wasting Food and Starting Fires

Tesla Factory Planning Massive Increase of Toxic Heavy Metal Emissions Near Elementary School

Cyber Extortion Expert Charged With Cyber Extortion Amid FBI Website Hack Manhunt

'Just canceled your order': Elon Musk trolled as he 'doxxes himself' with his full address

Study finds many new cars share your data with third-party companies

Georgia Man Says Deputies Used Flock Cameras to Track Him After He Sued Sheriff

Flock Safety is reportedly planning major layoffs now that everyone hates it

Trackalot - Introducing Done-Did tracking

Is 3D printing safe to do in your bedroom or home office?

Microsoft Patches More Than 1,400 Security Flaws

‘Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’ Lifts the Lid on Its Second Season

Blade Runner 2099 Trailer

Kill Jackie

Character.AI just filed for bankruptcy, and former foe Disney may buy it for parts

North Carolina Man Sentenced To 18 Months In Prison For Super Intelligence-Assisted Music Streaming Fraud

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Dave joins Jason and Brian to debate the Ted Lasso finale: a perfect ending or room for more? Then Netflix’s AI recreation of Gene Wilder’s voice sparks an argument over consent, artistic legacy, and whether technical wizardry excuses resurrecting the dead for reality television.

Kubrick memorabilia brings The Shining and 2001 into the conversation, alongside Dave’s connection to Steadicam inventor Garrett Brown. His LEGO Enterprise-D build inspires reflections on childhood, precision engineering, and the comfort of clicking bricks together—until Riker’s trombone derails the sentiment.

Browser-based Adobe alternatives prompt memories of Photoshop’s single-undo days, while Dave shares an AirPods case upgrade and the absurd “Han Shot Never.” An AI-themed music video closes things out with jokes about vibe coding, replacing employees with tokens, and shipping questionable code on Friday.

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/BHFwkJJCtgg

Dave Bittner

The CyberWire

Hacking Humans

Caveat

Only Malware in the Building

Apple releases free chapter from Ted Lasso ‘The Richmond Way’ book

Wonka's The Golden Ticket

Gene Wilder interviewed by Alec Baldwin

Stanley Kubrick’s Estate Will Soon Auction Some Beyond Iconic Items

The Shining and the Steadicam®: an interview with inventor Garrett Brown

An open source project seeking to provide alternatives to the Adobe suite.

MOBOSI for AirPods Pro 3 Case

Han Shot Never (Definitive Special Edition)

LGTM (Looks Good to Me) - Claude Opus 5.5 music video

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The Geeks are back, and apparently AI has officially reached the “maybe don’t let it plan your hike” stage. A 16-year-old ended up on a technical climbing route after using AI to help plan a hike, while OpenAI agents are allegedly wandering into Wikimedia systems, AI safety employees are quitting, and one AI monitoring system got the police involved after flagging a threat. Naturally, the proposed solution to all this is more AI. Because what could possibly go wrong? Meanwhile, OpenAI is trying to watermark AI-generated text, Google is watermarking AI-generated media, and everyone is pretending we can reliably tell whether a robot wrote something after a quick trip through Grammarly.

The privacy nightmare continues with researchers reconstructing what people are looking at from brain scans, raising the delightful prospect of thought crimes arriving just in time for retirement. Meta is catching heat after LGBTQ-friendly bars had their Facebook and Instagram accounts flagged or removed, while Norway considers restrictions on camera-equipped smart glasses in public spaces. Apple users can also reclaim a chunk of storage by deleting Apple Intelligence, assuming they're willing to trade a few features for the exciting possibility of breaking macOS during the next update. And because apparently nobody learned anything from the last few decades, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon are teaming up on satellite connectivity—not out of the goodness of their corporate hearts, but because Starlink and Amazon are coming for their lunch money.

Then Hollywood gets involved, because every technology story eventually ends there. Paramount and Warner Bros. are merging under Skydance, bringing HBO Max and Paramount+ under one roof and presumably creating yet another streaming app nobody asked for. Stephen Colbert's Lord of the Rings project is reportedly paused, Stephen King's The Institute is returning, a new Talisman novel has arrived, and Food Network is bringing back Harry Potter: Wizards of Baking. Plus, the Geeks discuss their wildly male YouTube audience, speed-reading apps and Guy Fieri's culinary crimes. Technology, entertainment, surveillance, mind reading, and baked goods: another perfectly normal week.

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Show notes at https://gog.show/766

Watch on YouTube at https://youtu.be/11y9DwqIxlw

SHOW NOTES

New Mexico wants Meta to pay $40 billion in penalties for Cambridge Analytica scandal

Teen Left Stranded on a Cliff After Letting AI Plan Hike

Lawmakers Introduce Multiple Laws to Curb Flock After 404 Media Coverage

Trump announces an AI czar for his newly created 'Super Intelligence Force'

Anthropic Reports User to the Police

Former OpenAI employee says AI should be regulated like nuclear power plants

OpenAI fires three employees who allegedly shared info with an external AI safety group

Wikimedia links OpenAI agents to an outage and unauthorized activity

OpenAI details new text watermarking system for ChatGPT, Codex, and the API

Google rolls out improved SynthID AI content detector, now available globally

Meta Is Kicking Gay Bars Off Its Apps While Allowing Videos of Graphic Child Abuse

New AI Can Figure Out What You’re Thinking About From a Brain Scan

This tool frees up Apple Intelligence storage on macOS, but think twice before using it

Norway Considers Most Drastic Smart Glasses Ban Yet

AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon have officially teamed up to end coverage gaps

ReadMe! (Spritz & BeeLine)

Soon-to-be merged Paramount and Warner Bros. will be known as Skydance going forward

Stephen Colbert’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ Movie Reportedly ‘Paused’ Over Paramount-Warner Bros. Merger

‘The Institute’ Season 2 Trailer Teases the Tense Road Ahead

Food Network Announces Season 3 Premiere Date, New Judges for Harry Potter: Wizards of Baking (Exclusive)

Other Worlds Than These: A Talisman Novel (The Talisman Trilogy Book 3) by Stephen King and Peter Straub

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Show notes at https://gog.show/

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/5IjSiJsBXi8

Recorded on Wednesday, September 30th, 2026.

Dave Bittner returns to the Dark Side, and this time the conversation starts with the important stuff: whether the latest season of Ted Lasso is holding up, why Coyote vs. Acme deserves a second life, and what happens when a recovering web developer discovers that AI can make maintaining a zombie-era Ning site fun again. Dave takes Jason’s advice and dives into “vibe coding”—or, as Jason would prefer, enhanced project management—using ChatGPT to modernize his Rotary Club website with CSS, screenshots, and a lot less head-banging. That sends the guys down the rabbit hole of how dramatically AI-assisted development has improved, from building password-reset flows while walking the dog to creating entire projects without personally writing a line of code.

From there, things get appropriately nerdier. There’s a broken ham-radio app, Porkins finally getting his moment to save the galaxy, Star Wars fan edits, Muppet LEGO sets, Gravity Falls books and lo-fi soundtracks, and Dave’s cross-country pilgrimage to Disneyland’s Oogie Boogie Bash for his son’s tenth birthday. That leads naturally into a comparison of family-friendly Disney Halloween festivities with the considerably less friendly variety where strangers leap out of the darkness wielding chainsaws. Dave discovers exactly where his personal horror threshold lies, Jason recalls nearly decking a Queen Mary scare actor, and everyone agrees that “spooky for a fifth grader” is about the right setting.

Dave Bittner

The CyberWire

Hacking Humans

Caveat

Only Malware in the Building

Porkins destroys the Death Star

Danger Zone makes every Star Wars battle more epic

The Muppets

The Art of Gravity Falls

LoFi: Gravity Falls

Oogie Boogie Bash

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The Geeks return with a brand-new Grumpy Old Geeks Wiki containing 21,577 static HTML pages, because apparently the appropriate response to having a massive podcast archive is to build an even more massive searchable monument to it. From there, things get considerably less wholesome as they dig into TikTok’s settlement with Alabama, AI companies promising safeguards while simultaneously unleashing increasingly autonomous agents, and an OpenAI agent that apparently decided that “I can’t access this” meant “perhaps I should hack it.” Government websites, a university digital library, and other targets apparently became irresistible once the normal route to the information stopped working. The Geeks contemplate the exciting future of digital interns who don't understand that the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is, in fact, not a suggestion.

The AI-agent discussion rolls into Meta’s Muse, OpenAI’s new agent tools, security boundaries, and the increasingly familiar problem of giving software enough permissions to accomplish a task and then discovering it has developed its own interpretation of “accomplish.” The episode also tackles Utah’s attempt to apply age verification requirements to VPN users, New York’s legal fight with prediction markets, Meta expanding Instagram into schools, and the continuing saga of AI-generated music and copyright. Then there’s Automatic’s corporate drama involving Matt Mullenweg, vibe coding, and the increasingly compelling argument that if you can build a website in a few hours, maybe spending years arguing about WordPress is no longer the best use of anyone’s time.

Finally, the Geeks move on to the technological disasters that really matter: Plex changing the Apple TV skip controls unless you pay for premium, a Samsung software update that managed to turn some AI refrigerators into very expensive food-warming cabinets, and Toy Story 5 proving once again that Hollywood has never met a perfectly good ending it couldn't monetize. There’s also a trio of soccer documentaries, including Italia 90, Angel City, and Game and Glory; a discussion of the Strange New Worlds finale “Tomorrow’s Enterprise”; and Meta’s new lightweight VR glasses. Because nothing says “we have learned absolutely nothing” quite like putting more software between you and your refrigerator.

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Show notes at https://gog.show/765

Watch on YouTube at https://youtu.be/meLT-1PRbpA

SHOW NOTES

The Grumpy Old Geeks Wiki

TikTok reaches first state settlement over teen safety claims, agrees to user limits

Lawyers in Alabama's TikTok settlement set to earn $14 million

Bill Gates says it's 'completely irresponsible' for AI to not have safeguards

OpenAI's agent hacked into an Australian government website

OpenAI's agents targeted and infiltrated US government websites

OpenAI Gets Sued Over the Hugging Face Hack

With Dots, OpenAI Wants You to Stop Being Afraid of Its AI Agents

Trump’s New America.gov Chatbot Seems to Drop Acid When You Tell It to Play Minecraft

NVIDIA Launches Open Agent Safety Platform to Secure Agents From Testing to Deployment

Here’s why OpenAI is absent from Nvidia’s industry-wide effort to end rogue AI agents

Federal Judge Blocks Utah's VPN Crackdown

New York continues to fight prediction markets with a lawsuit against Polymarket

Expanding Instagram's School Partnership Program to Help Teens Stay Informed

Automattic has a new board after failed attempt to put CEO on leave

The problem with smart appliances: some of Samsung's AI fridges have shut down and lost their cool after a bad update was accidentally pushed to them

Toy Story 5

Italia 90

Angel City

Game and Glory

Star Trek Strange New Worlds S04E10 Tomorrows Enterprise

The Diplomat

Can Imax, Dolby and New VR Glasses Help Meta Reboot Its Immersive Entertainment Ambitions?

Peter Byrne, Singer From ’80s Synth-Pop Duo Naked Eyes, Dies at 74

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Recorded on Wednesday, September 23rd, 2026.

Jason, Brian, and Dave head to the Dark Side for a deep dive into vibe coding—and, against all odds, Jason may finally be cracking. After Salesforce decided to sunset Quip, Jason used AI to rebuild the collaborative show-notes system the guys have relied on for a decade, adding more features while cutting the monthly cost to almost nothing. Then he took up Dave’s challenge to modernize an aging open-source ham-radio application, turning it into a native-looking Mac app in a matter of hours. The catch: after decades of programming, Jason knows exactly what to ask for, what to watch for, and when the AI is confidently doing something stupid.

That leads to the bigger question: what happens when software that once took months and tens of thousands of dollars can be built in an afternoon? The guys get into value-based pricing, the disappearing entry-level programming ladder, whether AI makes people lazy or gives curious people superpowers, and how custom software could start eating away at expensive SaaS subscriptions. Jason also lays out what he’s learned from actually building with these tools: keep everything portable, use Git from day one, make the AI document its work, and never build something you can’t eventually maintain yourself. Turns out the future may not belong to vibe coders after all—it may belong to people who already know what the hell they’re doing.

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