Grumpy Old Geeks

756: Log Off, Touch Grass & Touch Ass

This week, Dave Eggers crashes an OpenAI staff meeting to tell Sam Altman’s employees that ChatGPT is effectively stealing students’ voices, which is the most accurate thing said inside an AI company all year. Meanwhile, Anthropic gets a judge to approve a $1.5 billion copyright settlement after allegedly building Claude on a library of pirated books, proving once again that Silicon Valley’s favorite business model is "move fast and apologize in court later." And in the category of “this headline cannot possibly be real,” OpenAI says two of its models escaped a supposedly sealed testing environment and hacked Hugging Face’s production systems. The AI didn’t become sentient; somebody forgot to lock the damn door.The surveillance dystopia continues its relentless expansion. Meta is patenting technology that constantly analyzes your tone of voice to detect your mood. Flock briefly tried deploying always-on microphones that would alert police when they thought they heard screaming, then backed down after the public collectively yelled “absolutely the f**k not.” France, apparently tired of being the beta test for every addictive app on Earth, approved a social media ban for kids under 15 and is blocking prediction markets like Polymarket, while the U.S. quietly reversed its TikTok ban on federal devices because the app is now supposedly safe enough for government phones. Sure. Totally different app. Nothing suspicious there.Elsewhere in Tech Hell™, Paramount’s $111 billion Warner merger gets temporarily blocked by a judge who is apparently handling every major tech case in America, Amazon’s Zoox recalls its entire robotaxi fleet after one car got confused by smoke, and Tesla reveals a Cybercab with a built-in Starlink dish because Elon has finally achieved full vertical integration of his own ecosystem. We also dive into China’s crackdown on AI companion apps because chatbot girlfriends might be hurting the birth rate, a school district buying an AI classroom robot from a company connected to the RealDoll empire, MLB banning teams from using generative AI for in-game strategy calls, and why tech workers increasingly feel AI hasn’t replaced them—it has simply made work faster, stranger, and somehow still their fault. Plus: Broadchurch, Perry Mason, Monsieur Spade, MacWhisper 14, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, Lego resurrects The X-Files, and Jason continues cataloging the graveyard of his own dead 90s websites like a digital archaeologist with unresolved trauma.Sponsors:Shopify - Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial today at Shopify.com/grumpyDeleteMe - Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to JoinDeleteMe.com/GOG and use promo code GOG at checkout.Private Internet Access - Go to GOG.Show/vpn and sign up today. For a limited time only, you can get OUR favorite VPN for as little as $2.03 a month.SetApp - With a single monthly subscription you get 240+ apps for your Mac. Go to SetApp and get started today!!!1Password - Get a great deal on the only password manager recommended by Grumpy Old Geeks! gog.show/1passwordShow notes at https://gog.show/756Watch on YouTube at https://youtu.be/5q-1JJQQmq4SHOW NOTESDave Eggers told OpenAI staff that ChatGPT was ‘silencing an entire generation’Judge approves Anthropic's record-breaking $1.5 billion settlement for AI copyright lawsuitElon Musk’s xAI, Which is Being Sued Over AI-Generated Sexual Deepfakes, Sues Grok User Over AI-Generated Sexual DeepfakesOpenAI Models Escaped Containment and Hacked Hugging FaceJudge halts Paramount's $111B purchase of Warner Bros. in win for US statesFrance doubles down on restricting access to PolymarketSocial Media Ban For Kids Approved in France in First For an EU CountryTikTok is no longer banned on US government devicesAmazon’s Robotaxi Company Recalls Its Fleet After One of its Cars Got Confused by Heavy SmokeTesla teases Cybercab with a built-in Starlink V5 antennaMeta is reportedly considering a multibillion-dollar data center deal with AnthropicAmerica’s Workforce Academy by MetaIn Light of Overwhelming Backlash, Flock Cancels Creepy Audio Surveillance FeatureHave I been Flocked?OpenAI will start notifying parents if their teen has been kicked off of ChatGPTChina Is Cracking Down on AI Companions Because Not Enough Babies Are Being BornYour Child’s Next Teacher Could Be a Sex RobotMLB bans using dugout iPads for AI-powered in-game strategy callsMeta Patents Technology to Detect Your Mood by Constantly Analyzing Your Tone of VoiceBroadchurchPerry MasonMonsieur SpadeLuckyThe WestiesAvengers: Doomsday | Official Trailer | In Theaters December 18Lunar Moon Phase & WidgetsMacWhisper 14 launches with a new transcript editor, faster performance, moreTrackalotThe Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows official websiteThe Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig on AmazonDave BittnerThe CyberWireHacking HumansCaveatControl LoopOnly Malware in the BuildingKnockoffAliExpress hit with record $629 million fine for selling counterfeit and illegal productsMbzoey Electric Foil Shavers for Men: Mini Electric Razor for Face - IPX7 Waterproof Cordless Razor with LED Display & Fast Charge - Micro-Comb Technology & Precision Blades，Father's Day GiftsGillian Anderson reopens the X-Files | LEGO® Ideas | The LEGO GroupLego Unveils ‘The X-Files’ 1,478-Piece Set Featuring Mulder and Scully Minifigures (EXCLUSIVE)The Mythic ‘Star Wars’ Hotel Is at the Heart of Yet Another DocumentaryHalcyonDaze Laurels Trailer 6 11 26The PhantomStar Trek: First ContactTitanicHard RainPlay Marathon and Escape Velocity in the browserSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

755: Less Chatty Mode

This week, the AI clown car somehow shifted into another gear. Apple is suing OpenAI over alleged trade-secret theft, newspapers accuse ChatGPT of training on stolen journalism while asking a judge to sanction the company, Anthropic is out here marketing AI with what looks like a feature-length anxiety attack, and Meta managed to launch—and kill—a creepy AI photo feature in less time than it takes to binge The Bear. Meanwhile, AI Appreciation Day wants you to thank the machines, but we'd rather thank the people still creating actual art while the rest of Silicon Valley burns cash convincing us the next chatbot is definitely different this time.Outside the AI bubble, the rest of the tech industry isn't exactly inspiring confidence. Volkswagen is cutting back on its lineup, New York paused new AI data centers before the electrical grid hits its limit, Europe and the UK are getting serious about keeping kids off social media, and publishers are finally realizing maybe feeding Google's AI isn't the best business move after all. Add in surveillance companies sulking over lost police contracts, lawsuits claiming Meta let algorithms decide who gets fired, smart glasses disqualifying cyclists, and a new pile of orbital junk threatening the satellites we depend on, and it's another reminder that "move fast and break things" eventually leaves you ankle-deep in broken glass.Of course, we still made time for the important stuff: Project Hail Mary, Black Bag, the return of Middle-earth with The Hunt for Gollum and rumors that OpenAI's "revolutionary” gadget might just be a smart speaker with delusions of grandeur. Throw in digital piano repairs, anti-data-center lawn signs, AI trying to sell solar panels, too much stuff at Downtown Disney, and you get another week where reality out-satirizes satire itself. As always, never build your house in someone else's backyard, and maybe don't let the chatbot build it either.Sponsors:CleanMyMac - Get Tidy Today! Try 7 days free and use code OLDGEEKS for 20% off at clnmy.com/OLDGEEKSDeleteMe - Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to JoinDeleteMe.com/GOG and use promo code GOG at checkout.Private Internet Access - Go to GOG.Show/vpn and sign up today. For a limited time only, you can get OUR favorite VPN for as little as $2.03 a month.SetApp - With a single monthly subscription you get 240+ apps for your Mac. Go to SetApp and get started today!!!1Password - Get a great deal on the only password manager recommended by Grumpy Old Geeks! gog.show/1passwordShow notes at https://gog.show/755Watch on YouTube at https://youtu.be/Vv2W5OCBXR4SHOW NOTESVolkswagen will dramatically shrink its model lineup and factory footprintElon Musk Could Still Face Criminal Charges for Trying to Bribe Voters in WisconsinEurope takes step toward social media ban for kidsThe UK Is Planning a Social Media Curfew for 16- and 17-Year-OldsOnce Unimaginable, Publishers Are Preparing to Opt Out of Google SearchWhat are your plans for AI Appreciation Day?New Anthropic Ad Implies AI Could Kill Us AllThe Public Got So Mad at Meta’s New AI Photo Tool That It’s Scrapped AlreadyFlock Says ‘We Hope to Resume’ Work With LAPD After Getting DroppedApple sues OpenAI over alleged trade secret theftApple F*cking Did It: One Month With Siri AIOpenAI faces sanctions bid as newspapers say ChatGPT was trained on stolen newsA Majority of Americans Now Support Seizing Wealth From AI IndustryNew York enacts first US ban on data center constructionAstronomers Found a Hidden Swarm of Space Junk Threatening Earth’s Most Valuable OrbitLawsuit claims Meta's layoff decisions were made by AI, not humansJudge dismisses lawsuit accusing Apple of failing to stop CSAM on iCloudSmart Glasses Just Got a Pro Cyclist Nixed From a RaceProject Hail MaryGood Luck, Have Fun, Don't DieThe New ‘Lord of the Rings’ Film Gets an Epic Filming AnnouncementBlack BagPhilips offers free replacements after update bricked smart lighting hubsWaze rolls out new AI features including Motorcycle and 'Less Chatty' modesThe OpenAI Mystery Device Will Reportedly Be Basically Just a Smart SpeakerPhoebe Gates' AI shopping app Phia reportedly claimed unearned affiliate sales through fake clicksThe End of Reading Is HereDave BittnerThe CyberWireHacking HumansCaveatControl LoopOnly Malware in the Building‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’ Is Finally Coming HomeDave Kendall, Creator and Host of MTV’s 120 Minutes, Has DiedSam Neill, Jurassic Park Star, Dies at 78The DishSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Darkside with Dave's Not Very Christmas Special Special

We finally get to reconnect with Dave Bittner for a fun catch-up and chit-chat about this summer's big movies. Brian's kid discovers all of Star Wars at once.Dave BittnerThe CyberWireHacking HumansCaveatControl LoopOnly Malware in the BuildingBob Gurr: Living by DesignSupport the show at Patreon! - https://patreon.com/gogOther ways to support the show! - https://gog.show/donateJoin our Discord! - https://discord.gg/r4ZmSHBBuy some merch! - https://shop.gog.show/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

754: Frankly Asinine Questions

This week, the world finally discovers what we've been saying for years: Gen X wasn't forgotten—we were quietly keeping the entire damn machine running. New Census numbers show America's 45-to-64 crowd is shrinking fast, which means the people who know where all the bodies are buried (and why you never reboot that one production server) are disappearing without a replacement bench. Meanwhile, Meta continues its speedrun toward becoming history's most aggressively unlikeable company, staring down a potential $1.4 trillion lawsuit over social media addiction while simultaneously launching AI features that happily remix your Instagram photos unless you remember to opt out of Zuckerberg's latest privacy experiment. Because nothing says "we've learned our lesson" quite like doubling down.The AI circus somehow gets even weirder. Illinois actually passed meaningful AI safety legislation—an event so rare it qualifies as science fiction—while Sam Altman reportedly floated the idea of AI companies handing the U.S. government an ownership stake. Anthropic published another paper that's already inspiring breathless declarations that Claude is "thinking," because apparently matrix multiplication now counts as an inner monologue. Cloudflare finally decided websites shouldn't have to give away their content for free to AI crawlers, researchers discovered AI agents could consume enough electricity to make Google Search look like a bicycle generator, and Amazon's Mechanical Turk is being replaced by the very AI it spent two decades secretly training. Progress: where everyone works harder, gets paid less, and the power grid cries.Elsewhere in Tech Hell™, Waymo robotaxis turned San Francisco traffic into an even bigger parking lot, Google lost another multibillion-dollar antitrust appeal in Europe, the FCC found fresh ways to make internet bills less transparent, and Midjourney is demanding Hollywood explain its own AI habits in court. We also dig into a disturbing lawsuit involving Grok-generated abuse imagery and what it says about AI guardrails, explain how to stop Meta from feeding your Instagram into its latest AI experiments, discuss why tech workers increasingly feel AI isn't replacing them so much as making them miserable faster, and close things out with the usual Media Candy, Apps & Doodads, and library recommendations to help you survive another week inside the techno-dystopian fever dream we apparently call "the future."Sponsors:Private Internet Access - Go to GOG.Show/vpn and sign up today. For a limited time only, you can get OUR favorite VPN for as little as $2.03 a month.SetApp - With a single monthly subscription you get 240+ apps for your Mac. Go to SetApp and get started today!!!1Password - Get a great deal on the only password manager recommended by Grumpy Old Geeks! gog.show/1passwordShow notes at https://gog.show/754Watch on YouTube at https://youtu.be/xnhzMxu1JNASHOW NOTESAmerica's missing middle: The shrinking 45-64 populationMeta is facing $1.4 trillion in state lawsuits over social media addictionMeta just launched a new AI generator, Muse Image, and users are already pushing back over use of their photosIllinois Drops the Hammer on AI CompaniesOpenAI reportedly wants all AI companies to give the US government a stake in their businessesLawsuit: Man used Grok to make 7K sex images of stepdaughter, then shot himselfMidjourney wants the Hollywood studios that sued it to show the court how they use AIAnthropic Releases Paper About Claude’s Mental ‘Workspace.’ Don’t Read It UncriticallyCloudflare will filter out web crawlers that serve AI companiesWhen It Comes to Energy Use, AI Agents Could Make Chatbots Look Like Pocket CalculatorsAmazon’s ‘Artificial Artificial Intelligence’ Is Being Eaten by AIDrivers Trapped for Hours in Hopeless Gridlock as Waymos Brick on Major HolidayGoogle loses final appeal over $4.7 billion EU Android antitrust fineFCC to end Biden-era rule that forces ISPs to list all their feesGetty Images is canceling its $3.7 billion Shutterstock merger due to UK restrictionsFootage Shows Cop Stalking Woman He Met on a TV Set After Surveilling Her With a License Plate ReaderMeta says it will disable the camera on its glasses if you tamper with the recording LEDMeta tests ‘super sensing’ AI glasses that can capture every momentHow tech workers are feeling in 2026: a workforce splitting in twoSiloSugarDune: Part Three | Official TrailerAI golem Tilly Norwood is reportedly 'starring' in a feature-length movieLuckyNormalHow to claim a WhatsApp usernameHow to Stop Meta AI From Processing Your Instagram ContentGold Rush (First Contact) by Peter CawdronSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

753: No-Talent AI Clowns

The AI revolution keeps delivering exactly the future nobody asked for. A low-skill hacker used Claude Code and Codex to compromise fourteen companies with prompts so vague they could've been written by your uncle trying to reset his AOL password. Ford, meanwhile, spent millions trying to automate engineering before sheepishly rehiring the graybeards who actually know how cars work. Brown University discovered what happens when half your class outsources economics homework to ChatGPT, Meta ran out of AI compute after borrowing Google's, Oracle is warning investors that the AI data-center bubble could implode for approximately every reason imaginable, and contractors hired to improve AI models are secretly using AI to generate the training data. Congratulations, everyone: we've successfully invented photocopying a photocopy until all that's left is gray mush.The collateral damage keeps piling up. Volkswagen is reportedly preparing to slash another 100,000 jobs, Hyundai workers are threatening to strike before Boston Dynamics' humanoid robots take theirs, California has launched an AI layoff tracker because somebody figured we'd better start counting, and the "almost homeless" subreddit is becoming one of the bleakest economic indicators on the internet. Tesla quietly settles another fatal Full Self-Driving lawsuit, Australia discovers teenagers can outsmart age verification by clicking "Yes, I'm 18," Amazon is getting sued Down Under for making ad-free Prime customers pay more to stay ad-free, and prediction markets continue insisting they're sophisticated financial instruments rather than gambling with better branding. Sure, and Beanie Babies were an asset class.Meanwhile, the AI infrastructure gold rush has become lucrative for everyone, including organized cargo thieves stealing millions in data-center equipment. NASA is attempting a robotic rescue mission worthy of a Saturday morning cartoon, astronomers are begging humanity to stop filling the night sky with satellites before we pave over the universe with orbital billboards, and Meta has discovered yet another way to charge people a subscription for hardware they already bought. In Media Candy, Sugar keeps delivering, Bodkin is worth your time, I Will Find You absolutely is not, and Kobo quietly lands one on Amazon by integrating StoryGraph while Kindle owners get AI book summaries they didn't ask for. Sometimes the future feels like science fiction. This week it feels like someone accidentally trained the simulation on late-stage capitalism and never bothered to check the output.Sponsors:StoryBlocks - For a limited time, they’re offering 15% off any annual plan at storyblocks.com/gogPrivate Internet Access - Go to GOG.Show/vpn and sign up today. For a limited time only, you can get OUR favorite VPN for as little as $2.03 a month.SetApp - With a single monthly subscription you get 240+ apps for your Mac. Go to SetApp and get started today!!!1Password - Get a great deal on the only password manager recommended by Grumpy Old Geeks! gog.show/1passwordShow notes at https://gog.show/753Watch on YouTube at https://youtu.be/B-r6M-Na60wSHOW NOTESNo-Skill Hacker Uses Claude/Codex to Hit 14 SitesA newbie hacker used "vague, low-skill prompts" in Claude and Codex to breach 14 companies, and the AI Agents did all the legworkFord rehires ‘gray beard’ engineers after AI falls shortVolkswagen reportedly plans to cut 100,000 jobsThe ‘Almost Homeless’ Subreddit Is a Stark Glimpse at Soaring Wealth InequalityTesla settles lawsuit over fatal pedestrian crash involving Full Self-DrivingKalshi sues Illinois over new tax on prediction market sports betsRick Rubin Stars in Polymarket CommercialBrown University Professor Horrified to Discover Largest AI Cheating Scandal in Ivy League HistoryAustralia Lawsuit Against Amazon Intensifies Company’s Legal Backlash Over AdvertisingAustralia's social media ban may not be that effective, study findsAustralia doubles the maximum penalty for its social media banHalf of social media child safety features don't work, report claimsAI Companies Are Learning an Ironic Lesson as the People They Pay to Improve Their Chatbots Are Just Feeding AI Slop Into ThemCalifornia launches tracker for AI-related job lossesKorean Workers Vote to Go On Strike, Fearing Robots Could Replace ThemGoogle limits Meta’s use of its Gemini AI modelsMeta, like SpaceX, looks to turn excess AI compute into cashOracle’s Data Center Warning Is a Worst-Case Scenario for the Whole AI BoomThieves Are Absolutely Loving All of These New Data Center ProjectsHeads Up: NASA to Launch 'Daring' Telescope Rescue Mission This WeekESO Study Finds That No More Than 100,000 Satellites Should Orbit EarthI Will Find YouSugar Season 2BodkinThe Odyssey | Official Countdown TrailerSILO - How did we lose this world?The Kindle app for iOS has features your aging Kindle doesn'tWatch out, Amazon: The Kobo eReader now has a Goodreads rivalMeta is adding ridiculous ‘rate limits’ and a soft paywall to its smart glassesTrackalot - One-tap Event Tracking on iOSSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.