This Week in Tech (Audio)

• Coldplay kiss-cam flap proves we're already our own surveillance state
• Amazon Ring Cashes in on Techno-Authoritarianism and Mass Surveillance
• OpenAI LLM's gold medal-level performance on the world's most prestigious math competition
• Thinking Machines Lab Raises $2 Billion at $10 Billion Valuation
• The Epic Battle for AI Talent—With Exploding Offers, Secret Deals and Tears
• Trump Signs Stablecoin Bill, Delivering Win for C...

• A New Era of Internet Regulation Is About to Begin
• Australia is quietly rolling out age checks for search engines like Google
• Bluesky is rolling out age verification in the UK
• House "crypto week" could change how Americans use, save money
• Latest stablecoin bill addresses foreign issuers, national security safeguards
• Grok team apologizes for the chatbot's 'horrific behavior' and blames 'MechaHitler' on a bad update
• Grok...

• SCOTUS Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton
• Adalytics finds 9,000+ pirated movies, including summer blockbusters, TV shows, and live sports on YouTube, amassing a collective 250M+ views from July to May
• SCOTUS granting cert to Cox v. Sony
• Bartz v. Anthropic AI copyright case
• Kadrey v. Meta AI copyright case
• Microsoft layoffs hit 9,000 employees in new wave of cuts
• Here are the letters that let Apple and Google ignore the Ti...

• The panel discusses the current gaming environment
• More on Apple's Trust-Eroding 'F1 The Movie' Wallet Ad
• Low-income broadband fund can keep running, says Supreme Court
• The Supreme Court just upended internet law, and I have questions
• Meta and Anthropic prevailed in copyright suits against them, but the rulings have major caveats and don't address when AI output might infringe copyright
• ICE Is Using a New Facial Recogni...

• Pope Leo makes AI's threat to humanity a signature issue
• Why We Don't Talk About Job Destruction
• Israel-Tied Predatory Sparrow Hackers Are Waging Cyberwar on Iran's Financial System
• Iran restricts internet access to ward off Israeli cyberattacks
• The AI Slop Fight Between Iran and Israel
• It's Official: Streaming Is Now the King of TV
• AI search finds publishers starved of referral traffic
• Mastodon updates its terms to p...

• Opinionated Design: Early Reactions to Apple's Liquid Glass Design Language
• Big Tech Is Dealing Flat Design a Death Blow
• Apple gets over its hang-ups, and the iPad enters a new era
• Apple Targets Spring 2026 for Release of Delayed Siri AI Upgrade
• Apple's de-chatbot-ification of AI is nearly complete
• Google launches Android 16, rolling out now to Pixel
• Google offers voluntary buyouts to US staff across several businesses...

• Bill Atkinson, Macintosh Pioneer and Inventor of Hypercard, Dies at 74
• Folklore.org: Round Rects Are Everywhere!
• OpenAI slams court order to save all ChatGPT logs, including deleted chats
• A ban on state AI laws could smash Big Tech's legal guardrails
• Federal judge blocks Florida from enforcing social media ban for kids while lawsuit continues
• TikTok dodges U.S. ban — again — as Trump administration pushes deadline back
...

• YouTube Is Swallowing TV Whole, and It's Coming for the Sitcom
• Trump Taps Palantir to Compile Data on Americans
• Trump makes a last-minute backtrack on his pick to lead NASA
• Xbox co-founder J Allard is working on 'breakthrough' devices at Amazon
• GitHub Users Angry at the Prospect of AI-Written Issues From Copilot
• Using technology may sharpen aging brains, not harm them
• We Bought a 'Peeing' Robot Attack Dog From Temu. It...

In this jam-packed episode celebrating Towel Day, the TWiT crew dives into Apple's terrible week with Trump's tariff threats, Google and Microsoft's latest AI advances, the death of CAPTCHAs, and some wild new tech including laser-powered smart homes and sock-picking robot vacuums.

• Trump's Phone Tariff Ultimatum - President threatens 25% tariffs on iPhones and Samsung devices unless manufacturing moves to the US, putting Appl...