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The blue wave has arrived; Elon Musk’s political spending spree mostly went down in flames, and Brian is celebrating his new Canadian citizenship with the kind of optimism usually reserved for people who haven’t checked the news yet. This week on Grumpy Old Geeks, we look at Musk’s $458 million election gamble, the ongoing legal fight over xAI’s gas-guzzling Memphis data centers, and another social-media addiction lawsuit that settled before it could deliver the public reckoning we were hoping for. Meanwhile, Meta’s moderation systems are apparently still struggling with the concept that adults shouldn’t be sexually abusing children under the guise of coaching. You had one job, algorithm.
Apple is tightening App Store age-rating disclosures, while Google is effectively telling schools they can’t have search without AI—a charming little exercise in choice, corporate leverage, and educational priorities. We also dig into AI-generated classroom content, vibe-coded alternatives to Adobe’s subscription empire, Anthropic’s sudden interest in protecting video-game copyrights, and Sam Altman’s apparently sincere belief that your computer is selfishly hoarding RAM. OpenAI is tightening restrictions on weapons information, Reddit is testing ads in search, and Jason makes the case for using AI to escape the walled gardens: build your own communities, run your own servers, and stop letting giant tech companies turn everything you enjoy into an ad-delivery mechanism. Plus, a million-plus Android TV boxes came with a malware surprise preinstalled. Bargain shopping!
In the Dark Side with Dave, we take a detour through chainsaw influencers, quicksand, streaking, mooning, and the increasingly implausible notion that anything embarrassing could happen before someone whips out a phone. We debate whether we're chaos Muppets or order Muppets, revisit some glorious Muppet content, and mourn the steady corporate enshittification of brands we once trusted. Brian recommends Hugh Howey’s Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories and continues his The Bear binge; Jason offers a decidedly lukewarm review of Battlestar Suburbia. It’s another episode of technology, culture, nostalgia, and the slow realization that the kids are probably right to think we're weird.
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SHOW NOTES
Elon Musk's $458 million midterms bet bought him very little
Judge says xAI must face NAACP lawsuit on data center pollution
Snap settles social media addiction lawsuit to avoid trial
Meta Removed Disturbing AI Videos After Initially Saying They Didn’t Violate Its Rules
Apple will start mandating age requirements for dating apps
Google will cut off search access for students at schools that reject AI
AI software clones are coming for big-name companies like Adobe
Anthropic updates Claude to stop it from recreating existing video games
Sam Altman is upset at you for hoarding RAM in your own computer
OpenAI adds stricter limits for teens asking about firearms
Reddit tests ads in search results as traffic declines and growth concerns mount
Google disrupts million-device XCPE Android malware botnet, bans TV box maker
Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories by Hugh Howey
Battlestar Suburbia: A hilariously subversive space adventure
Chaos Theory: A Unified Theory of Muppet Types.
Walmart Presents: A Who Knew Carol
Rogue One: Money for Nothing Edit
Take a virtual train ride in your browser. Did you have train sets?
Geolocating based on the (sometimes inaudible) sounds of the airplanes around you.
Tonight’s the Freight: Rod Stewart reveals he’s spent 26 years making a huge model railway
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