Grumpy Old Geeks

Episode 744 kicks off with new merch in the wild and the ongoing expansion of the “protect the children from the internet” playbook. Manitoba is floating a ban on social media and AI chatbots for kids with details still TBD, while the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee somehow managed unanimous approval on chatbot age-verification legislation. Utah, not to be outdone, passed SB 73 — a law that tries to pin age verification on...

In FOLLOW UP, the child social media crackdown keeps expanding. Turkey just approved a ban for under-15s, and Sony will require age verification for PlayStation communication features in the UK and Ireland starting in June—because now you need to prove you’re an adult before trash-talking strangers online. Meanwhile, Anthropic’s prediction that fully autonomous AI employees would already be transforming business hasn’t mat...

In FOLLOW UP, while countries race to ban kids from social media, Estonia is opting out — its education minister arguing that bans just offload responsibility onto kids while governments and platforms avoid accountability. Australia already shows the limits: 61% of banned kids are still online, 70% say it’s easy to bypass, and major platforms are under investigation. The EU is rolling out an age-verification system using z...

We kick off with a the Dodgers spanking the Blue Jays and torn allegiances in Brian's house, then dive into Europe taking dead aim at your kids' screen time. Ireland is rolling out a Government Digital Wallet that'll verify ages before young'uns can doom-scroll their lives away, while Greece went fully scorched-earth and announced a ban on all under-15s using social media at all — announced, naturally, on TikTok.

IN THE NEW...

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks, where we're starting to notice a patience epidemic! As people get used to barking orders at their AI, they're starting to talk to other humans with the same terse impatience. We discuss the enshittification of social media like Threads, which are now completely overrun with AI-generated slop.

This week, we dive into the corporate shenanigans of the tech world. OpenAI was caught secretly funding ...

Meta fined $375M for child safety failures. Musk lost 3 lawsuits in a week. Sam Altman compared to a Nazi. Netflix raised prices again. The Pentagon can't quit Claude. Reddit wants your face scan. Star Trek's streaming era is over. But the thin black line holds! 🎙️

Sponsors:

DeleteMe - Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to JoinDeleteMe.com/GOG and use promo code GOG at checkout.

SquareSpace - go to squarespace.co...

13 years of podcasting has taught us nothing; companies are lying about AI layoffs while Meta destroys itself from the inside; Andreessen has zero introspection and it shows; Dune 3 looks incredible; Firefly lives again; one idiot executive staked Buffy; Adobe paid $75M for being evil; your AI passwords are garbage; Dave Bittner is here to make you feel worse about all of it.

Sponsors:

DeleteMe - Get 20% off your Del...

In this week's show we start with FOLLOW UP: The world keeps trying to protect kids online — Indonesia just joined Australia, Spain, and Malaysia in banning social media for under-16s, while COPPA 2.0 sailed through the US Senate unanimously. Meanwhile, Roblox is using AI to clean up its chat, because apparently "Hurry TF up" is the hill they've chosen to die on — even as they're still dealing with the whole "pedophile pro...

Microsoft's anti-"Microslop" censorship backfired spectacularly; Australia is cracking down on AI age verification while Meta is busy targeting toddlers; prediction markets are basically just insider trading with extra steps; AI chatbots are getting people killed and exposing spy operations; the Moon landing got pushed again; Opera got nostalgic at 30; Sony bought Charlie Brown; and Netflix is making documentaries with rob...

Starting off in FOLLOW UP, we’ve got a tax economist who actually made money betting against the "efficiency" of Elon’s budget-slashing fever dreams, while Tesla is busy trying to dodge a $243 million jury verdict for an Autopilot-assisted fatality. Not content with being legally liable, Tesla is also suing the California DMV because they’re offended someone called their "Autopilot" and "Full Self-Driving" marketing decept...

If you thought the internet was a dumpster fire before, the EU LAUNCHES SECOND INVESTIGATION INTO GROK because Musk’s bot won't stop generating nonconsensual imagery. Meanwhile, META LARGELY FAILS TO PROTECT KIDS FROM AI CHATBOTS, proving that their internal safety checks are about as effective as a screen door on a submarine. If that doesn't creep you out, AFTER RING PRIVACY BACKLASH over police partnerships, a LEAKED EMA...

We kick things off in FOLLOW UP with the ongoing "nuclear war" between Automattic and WP Engine, where discovery has revealed Matt Mullenweg’s alleged hit list of competitors and a desperate attempt to bully payment processors—because nothing says "open source" like an eight-percent royalty shakedown. Meanwhile, the Harvard Business Review confirmed what we already knew: AI isn’t reducing our work; it’s just compressing it...

In this week’s FOLLOW UP, Bitcoin is down 15%, miners are unplugging rigs because paying eighty-seven grand to mine a sixty-grand coin finally failed the vibes check, and Grok is still digitally undressing men—suggesting Musk’s “safeguards” remain mostly theoretical, which didn’t help when X offices got raided in France. Spain wants to ban social media for kids under 16, Egypt is blocking Roblox outright, and governments e...

We kick off FOLLOW UP by checking in on Elon Musk’s personal dumpster fire, where the EU is investigating Grok for deepfake slop while Tesla’s “unsupervised” robotaxis turned out to be supervised by literal chase cars — shocker. At least some of you are getting Siri settlement crumbs in your bank accounts, though you could probably double it betting against Musk’s worthless promises on Polymarket.

Transitioning to IN THE NE...

Ep 730: Ethical Broads PRIVATE

We kick off FOLLOW UP with California’s AG sending a cease-and-desist to xAI over Grok generating creepy deepfakes of minors, while regulators finally notice Elon Musk’s xAI datacenter illegally running methane turbines in Memphis. The FTC is also appealing its loss in the Meta monopoly case, because apparently breaking up Zuckerberg’s data empire is still the hill they want to die on.

IN THE N...

We kick things off with the existential dread of FOLLOW UP and the absolute joy of jury duty. While xAI’s Grok is busy getting banned in Malaysia and Indonesia for its CSAM-generating "features," the Senate is unanimously passing the DEFIANCE Act to give us some legal teeth against the deepfake machine. Meta is busy nuking 550,000 Australian accounts to appease regulators, while Roblox’s age verification is so broken that ...

Welcome back to the digital wasteland, fellow survivors. We kick things off in the FOLLOW UP by marking a year since the LA Fires—hello, PTSD—alongside a 4th Strokiversary and three years of sobriety, all while wondering why America is currently obsessed with shooting its own civilians in the face.

In the IN THE NEWS segment, Wired is finally teaching us how to protest safely in the age of surveillance, and the EFF is cheer...

Welcome back to another hour of digital cynicism. We kick things off with a FOLLOW UP on Amazon’s Fallout recaps, which were apparently so hallucination-heavy they made the actual wasteland look organized; naturally, they’ve been nuked along with the "Video Recaps" feature. In a massive dose of IN THE NEWS, Tesla is finally getting a legal side-eye in California for its deceptive "Autopilot" branding, while TikTok is perfo...

The labor market has swung from the Great Resignation to “job hugging,” where workers cling to their roles out of fear of AI-driven layoffs and inflation, crushing engagement and accelerating burnout. At the same time, OpenAI is accused of suppressing research showing job losses, ignoring internal warnings about chatbot mental health risks, and bleeding safety staff, while state Attorneys General fire off an opening salvo ...