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
In a Better Offline exclusive, Ed Zitron reveals how much OpenAI spent on inference in 2024 and 2025, as well as how much it paid Microsoft as part of its 20% revenue share. Inference costs are much higher - and implied revenues much lower - than previously reported.
(Free) Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/oai_docs/
The Information - OpenAI’s First Half Results: $4.3 Billion in Sales, $2.5 Billion Cash Burn -&nb...
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.
Cory Doctorow: https://craphound.com/
Whitney Beltrán: https://brightwhitney.com/
Get involved with Clarion West: https://www.clarionwest.org/get-...
In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron talks about OpenAI hinting they’d want a federal backstop for data center loans, NVIDIA’s weird, desperate post about China, and his deep suspicion about OpenAI’s leaked numbers.
Want to support me? Get $10 off a year’s subscription to my premium newsletter: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/w08jbm4jwg It wou...
Welcome to Radio Better Offline, a tech talk radio show recorded out of iHeartRadio's studio in New York City. Ed is joined in-studio by founder and writer Charlie Meyer to talk about the BS of vibe coding, why the valley went so crazy about scaling laws, and the realities of AI coding.
https://blog.charliemeyer.co/
https://csmeyer.substack.com/
Code Doesn’t Happen To You - https://csmeyer.substack.com/p/...
In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron takes a moment to discuss the current state of the bubble, and the way we’re all feeling at this time in history.
Want to support me? Get $10 off a year’s subscription to my premium newsletter: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/w08jbm4jwg it would mean a lot!
The Register: Microsoft seemingly just revealed that OpenAI lost $11....
Welcome to Radio Better Offline, a tech talk radio show recorded out of iHeartRadio's studio in New York City.
Ed is joined in-studio by Paris Martineau of Consumer Reports and freelance writer Ashwin Rodrigues to talk about the amount of lead in protein shakes, why people turn to the internet for medical advice, and how supplements are the wild west of e-commerce.
Paris Martineau
https://www.consumerreports.org/about-us/o...
In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron walks you through why nobody should be afraid of generative video, and how it’s impossible, impractical and expensive to make movies with Sora.
https://www.npr.org/2025/10/20/nx-s1-5567119/sora-2-openai-hollywood
https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/video-generation
https://mediashower.com/blog/first-ai-viral-ad/
In a Better Offline exclusive, Ed Zitron reveals how much Anthropic spent on Amazon Web Services in 2024 and 2025, and how the costs of running their services are increasing linearly with their revenue, suggesting there may be no path to profitability for LLMs.
(Free) Newsletter: www.wheresyoured.at/costs/
Want to support me? Get $10 off a year’s subscription to my premium newsletter: https://edzitronswheresyour...
In this week’s Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron walks you through data from Deutsche Bank that shows ChatGPT’s growth is flatlining in Europe, and how advertising isn’t going to save OpenAI.
OpenAI’s ‘flatlining’ subs in Europe: The AI boom’s poster child may be struggling to recruit new subscribers, Deutsche Bank warns
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/openai-flatlining-subs-euro...
In this week’s episode of Better Offline, Ed flies out to North Carolina for a deep interview with Steve Burke of Gamersnexus about the state of PC hardware, AI, Linux gaming, their extremely scientific hardware testing, and building a channel watched by 2.5 million people.
https://www.youtube.com/gamersnexus
Get $10 off a year’s subscription to my premium newsletter: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost...
In this episode, Ed Zitron is joined by writer Brian Merchant to talk about US AI regulation, and how governments never seem to make the effort to understand technology.
https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/
https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/were-about-to-find-out-if-silicon
Get $10 off a year’s subscription to my premium newsletter: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/w08jbm4jwg
Welcome to Radio Better Offline, a tech talk radio show recorded out of iHeartRadio's studio in New York City. Ed Zitron is joined in studio by The Verge’s Victoria Song and Defector’s David Roth to talk about Sora 2, Meta’s AR glasses, the “friend” pendant, and why none of these products can ever truly deliver meaningful friendship.
Victoria Song: https://www.theverge.com/authors/victoria-song ...
In part four of this week’s four-part case against generative AI, Ed Zitron walks you through how there’s literally not enough money in the world to pay for OpenAI’s estimated $1 trillion four-year burn, and why the media tell the truth about AI to save retail investors.
Latest Premium Newsletter: OpenAI Needs A Trillion Dollars In The Next Four Years: https://www.wheresyoured.at/openai-onetrillion/
In part three of this week’s four-part case against generative AI, Ed Zitron walks you through how “AI replacing software engineers” is a myth spread by the media and investors - and how Microsoft only has 8 to 12 million active paying customers for Microsoft 365’s AI Copilot out of 440 million users.
Latest Premium Newsletter: OpenAI Needs A Trillion Dollars In The Next Four Years: https://www.wheresyoured....
In part two of this week’s four-part case against generative AI, Ed Zitron walks you through how NVIDIA funds and pumps money into unprofitable, debt-ridden “neoclouds” all to create vehicles to buy more GPUs - all to cover up the lack of demand for generative AI compute.
Latest Premium Newsletter: OpenAI Needs A Trillion Dollars In The Next Four Years: https://www.wheresyoured.at/openai-onetrillion/
In part one of this week’s four-part case against generative AI, Ed Zitron walks you through how generative AI is sold through a complete misunderstanding of the concept of labor - and myth-building by companies like NVIDIA and OpenAI.
Latest Premium Newsletter: OpenAI Needs A Trillion Dollars In The Next Four Years: https://www.wheresyoured.at/openai-onetrillion/
YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! go t...
In this week’s Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron walks you through NVIDIA and OpenAI’s nonsense deal, and how OpenAI now needs $600 billion in the next four years to survive.
OpenAI and NVIDIA Announce Strategic Partnership to Deploy 10 Gigawatts of NVIDIA Systems
https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/openai-and-nvidia-announce-strategic-partnership-to-deploy-10gw-of-nvidia-systems
New York Times -...
Welcome to Radio Better Offline, a tech talk radio show recorded out of iHeartRadio's studio in New York city.
Ed Zitron is joined in studio by astrophysicist Adam Becker to talk about his new book More Everything Forever, the BS AGI story, why Eliezer Yudkowsky should never be taken seriously, and why billionaires love LLMs.
https://bsky.app/profile/adambecker.bsky.social
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/ti...
In this episode, Ed Zitron is joined by software engineer Colt Voege to talk about how AI isn’t 10xing the productivity of software engineering, the truth about coding LLMs, and what we can actually expect AI to do for software in the future.
YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! Go to https://cottonbureau.com/people/better-offline and use code FREE99 for free shipping on orders of $99 or more.
Welcome to Radio Better Offline, a tech talk radio show recorded out of iHeartRadio's studio in New York City. Ed Zitron is joined in studio by Allison Morrow of CNN, Ed Ongweso Jr. of the Tech Bubble newsletter to talk about the AI vibe shift, OpenAI’s burn rate, what will finally burst the bubble, and something called “Critterz.”
Allison Morrow
https://www.cnn.com/profiles/allison-morrow
https:...
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