Better Offline
Better Offline is a weekly show exploring the tech industry’s influence and manipulation of society - and interrogating the growth-at-all-costs future that tech’s elite wants to build. Combining narrative-form storytelling, one-on-one interviews and panel-based discussions, Better Offline cuts through the buzzwords and obfuscation of the tech industry, investigating and evaluating the schemes and scams of everyone from cryptocurrency scumbags to the greediest of the venture capital elite. Tech industry veteran Ed Zitron and a dynamic coterie of guests will help listeners understand the who, how and why of how tech’s most powerful players are changing the world - for better or for worse.
Episodes
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.
Original Air Date: 6.5.24
In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs you through how the “does AI have ROI?” debate is coming at the worst possible time for two companies that can’t afford to slow down thanks to their $1.1 trillion in compute commitments.
Newsletter: AI Doesn’t Have ROI https://www.wheresyoured.at/ai-doesnt-have-roi/
Ed on Bloomberg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbKDmkJPVvI
Th...
In this week’s Better Offline, Ed Zitron is joined by economist Paul Kedrosky to talk about why nobody can find the ROI of AI, why there won’t be a Dot Com Bubble-style recovery for AI data centers, and how Google’s $80bn equity sale shows we’re at the top.
https://paulkedrosky.com/
The Nick, Dick and Paul Show: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFbDiETo29GTIjg6Lk4imig
In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs you through how AI’s move to token-based billing has revealed that absolutely nobody has a way of measuring AI’s ROI - and how these massive costs might finally burst the bubble.
Companion newsletter:
https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-revenge-of-the-business-idiot/
Axios: AI sticker shock hits corporate America https://www.axios.com/2026/05/28/ai-spen...
In this week's Better Offline, Ed Zitron runs you through how Uber’s COO said the quiet part out loud - that AI’s outputs and efficacy do not match up with its ruinous costs - and how despite its bluster, the AI industry’s grift is failing.
Free newsletter tie-in: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-revenge-of-the-business-idiot/
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In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs you through Anthropic’s claims it will be non-GAAP EBITDA profitable for Q2 2026 by having SpaceX discount its compute costs, and how said revenues don’t match up with its CFO’s sworn affidavit or previous reporting on its finances.
Companion newsletter:
https://www.wheresyoured.at/anthropics-profitability-swindle/
In this episode, Ed Zitron is joined by Steve Burke of GamersNexus to talk about NVIDIA’s alleged GPU shipments to China, how AI is choking the PC gaming industry, and how mad Jensen Huang keeps getting on podcasts.
Save $10 off a year of my premium newsletter: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/gzqwkv54e1 - I’d be so grateful!
GamersNexus:
Yes, This All ...
In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs you through how LLMs and the obsession with AI is actively destroying the fabric of the tech industry.
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On this week’s Better Offline, Ed Zitron is joined by the hosts of the Ben & Emil show to talk about how the markets have been driven insane by semiconductor buzz and social media hysteria.
https://benandemilshow.com/
https://www.youtube.com/@benandemilshow
Please support me by subscribing to my premium newsletter - here’s $10 off your first year of annual https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.p...
This week’s Better Offline is a recording of a panel held by Clarion West in Seattle earlier this year with Cory Doctorow and Ed Zitron, discussing enshittification, The Rot Economy, and the destruction of modern tech platforms, moderated by Whitney Beltrán.
Original Air Date: 11.12.25
Cory Doctorow: https://craphound.com/
Whitney Beltrán: https://brightwhitney.com/
Get involved with Clarion West: https://www.clario...
In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs through how 70-80% of Amazon and Microsoft’s AI revenue and capacity is taken up by OpenAI and Anthropic, and how capacity constraints across the industry are a result of hyperscalers sacrificing their infrastructure to the least-profitable startups of all time.
Premium newsletter out later today - AI’s Demand Story Is A Lie - save $10 off a year of my premi...
On this week’s Better Offline, Ed Zitron digs into Palantir’s 22-point manifesto with Caleb and June from Kill The Computer.
The Manifesto: https://x.com/PalantirTech/status/2045574398573453312
Caleb and June
https://bsky.app/profile/birdrespecter.bsky.social
https://bsky.app/profile/killthecomputer.com
In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs through how OpenAI must grow its revenue by 1000% in the next three years and raise at least another $200 billion for it to be able to pay its compute deals with Oracle and other providers, and how Oracle dies if OpenAI fails to pay its bills.
This week’s free newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/four-horsemen-of-the-aipocalypse/
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In this week’s Better Offline, Ed is joined by computer science professor and writer Cal Newport to talk about the Claude Mythos marketing scam, the lies around AI job loss, and why LLMs shouldn’t talk like they’re people.
Please support me by subscribing to my premium newsletter - here’s $10 off your first year of annual https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/84r...
In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron discusses how AI labs’ dangerous rhetoric around AI capabilities and job loss are antagonizing and terrifying people that are already on edge, and that de-escalation starts with Altman and Amodei talking about LLMs as normal software.
This week’s free newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/i-will-never-respect-a-website/
In this week’s Better Offline, Ed Zitron is joined by journalist and astrophysicist Adam Becker to talk about introspection-free venture capital, the Pee-Wee’s Playhouse effect of LLMs, and trying to find a better future to focus on.
https://bsky.app/profile/adambecker.bsky.social
https://www.youtube.com/@DreamingAgainstTheMachine
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/adam-becker/more-everyth...
In a special episode of Better Offline, Ed Zitron is joined by writers Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz of the New Yorker to talk about their massive investigation into Sam Altman, his ouster from OpenAI, and the consequences of trusting Silicon Valley with the future.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04/13/sam-altman-may-control-our-future-can-he-be-trusted
Save $10 off a year of my premium newsletter: ht...
In this week’s Better Offline, Ed Zitron is joined by economist Paul Kedrosky to talk about the large amount of speculative data center land purchases, the brittle NVIDIA GPU economy, and the economic realities of AI.
The Nick, Dick and Paul Show: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFbDiETo29GTIjg6Lk4imig
Save $10 off a year of my premium newsletter: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/p...
In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron breaks down why AI isn’t too big to fail, why no bailout is coming, and how people need to learn more about history before using it to justify burning billions of dollars.
This week’s free newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-subprime-ai-crisis-is-here/
Premium newsletter tie-in out later today - save $10 off a year of my premium newsletter: https://edzi...
In this week’s Better Offline, Ed Zitron discusses Anthropic’s aggressive new rate limits, the leak of Claude Code’s source code, and the dread consequences of having software written 100% by LLMs.
Free newsletter: The Subprime AI Crisis Is Here https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-subprime-ai-crisis-is-here/
Save $10 off a year of my premium newsletter: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpos...
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