This Week in Tech (Audio)

This week's episode confronts the mounting legal battles over addictive social apps, questioning whether court rulings should reshape Instagram and YouTube's design. Explore the heated clash between user autonomy, scientific uncertainty, and the next wave of regulation.

NASA: Artemis II

Artemis II Live Tracker – Real-Time Orion Spacecraft Position, Speed & Trajectory

NASA did eventually solve Artemis II's Outlook glitch

How many products does Microsoft have named 'Copilot'? I mapped every one

Phone-free bars and restaurants on the rise across the U.S.

Claude Code's Source Didn't Leak. It Was Already Public for Years. | AfterPack Blog

Anthropic essentially bans OpenClaw from Claude by making subscribers pay extra

OpenAI acquires popular tech talk show for 'low hundreds of millions'

The latest Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are more customizable and expensive

After 16 Years and $8 Billion, the Military's New GPS Software Still Doesn't Work - Slashdot

Why the Pentagon loves Xbox controllers for laser weapons

Iranian missile blitz takes down AWS data centers in Bahrain and Dubai — Amazon reportedly declares "hard down" status for multiple zones

Iran's hackers go to war

Breaking down the government's bizarre router ban

How to turn anything into a router

You Can't Defeat the Robots!': Baseball's AI Strike Zone Is Must-Watch Television

Tech Companies Are Trying To Neuter Colorado's Landmark Right-to-Repair Law - Slashdot

Delta to Tap Amazon Satellite-Internet Service for In-Flight Wi-Fi

The IBM scientist who rewrote the rules of information just won computing's highest prize

Chromebook Remorse: Tech Backlash at Schools Extends Beyond Phones

ZomboCom was stolen by hacker, put up for sale, and has now been...

Host: Leo Laporte

Guests: Patrick Beja, Abrar Al-Heeti, and Iain Thomson

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Big Tech just faced a courtroom reckoning, with Meta and Google found liable for platform "addictiveness" in a social media trial that could unleash a tidal wave of lawsuits. Find out why attorneys, entrepreneurs, and everyday users are suddenly on edge.

• Social media addiction lawsuits hit Meta, Google, YouTube

• Section 230 and First Amendment implications debated after court verdicts

• Supreme Court sides with Cox; ISPs not liable for user piracy

• Elon Musk's lawsuit over X (Twitter) ad boycotts thrown out

• Anthropic versus Department of Defense: AI contracting dispute and retaliation claims

• FCC's confusing foreign-made router ban and consumer tech fallout

• Major supply chain attack: LiteLLM malware infects AI devs

• The rise (and risks) of AI agents with voice, identity, and personification

• Turing Award honors pioneers of quantum cryptography

• Antimatter on the move: CERN's oddball truck experiment

• Sci-fi and reality blur as Neal Stephenson walks away from the metaverse

• Privacy and consent worries escalate with AI-powered recordings and surveillance

• Digital shelf pricing arrives at Walmart and Kroger

• Flipper Zero: voice-controlled hacking gadget gets an AI upgrade

• Age verification laws create headaches for OS and app developers

• Official White House app called out for surveillance and security blunders

• Is AI progress barreling toward a dystopian tech future?

Host: Leo Laporte

Guests: Harper Reed, Brian McCullough, and Cathy Gellis

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Elon Musk faces a multi-billion dollar verdict after a California jury finds his tweets misled Twitter shareholders, raising the stakes for tech CEOs with unchecked social media influence. Plus, CBS kills its legendary radio news service while podcasting explodes, signaling a dramatic shift in how America consumes, trusts, and pays for news.

CBS News Shutters Radio Service After Nearly a Century

A US appeals court puts on hold an earlier ruling that had blocked Perplexity from using its agentic shopping tool to shop on Amazon's marketplace

FBI is buying location data to track US citizens, director confirms

The 49MB Web Page

Microsoft unveils MAJOR improvements coming to Windows 11 this year — movable Taskbar, reduced RAM usage, less AI and ads, and much more CONFIRMED: "We are evolving how Windows is built behind the scenes to raise the quality bar"

Meta will shut down VR Horizon Worlds access in June

Meta changes course on Horizon Worlds VR shut-down

Gamers react with overwhelming disgust to DLSS 5's generative AI glow-ups

Jury agrees that Musk's tweets during Twitter takeover misled investors

After three months, Samsung is ending sales of the $2,899 Galaxy Z TriFold

200,000 Devices Erased? Pro-Iran Hackers Hit US Firm With Data-Wiping Attack

Japan to allow 'proactive cyber-defense' from October 1st

Sears Exposed AI Chatbot Phone Calls and Text Chats to Anyone on the Web

Arizona AG files criminal charges against Kalshi over 'illegal gambling'

Major League Baseball Steps Into the Prediction Markets, Strikes Deal With Polymarket

Polymarket is opening a bar where you can drink and watch the world unravel in real time

It's been 20 years since the first tweet

Project Hail Mary is movie medicine

The futurist who helped define tech trend reports just killed them (literally)

This new cassette player has USB-C and Bluetooth, in case you want to ditch Spotify

Host: Leo Laporte

Guests: Janko Roettgers, Dan Patterson, and Lisa Schmeiser

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preview.modulate.ai

From "gainfully employed robots" to AI that accidentally ruins lives, this week's conversation unpacks the real-world fallout of futuristic promises. Leo, JPT, Iain, and Richard tackle energy sources, social media effects, tech layoffs, and the algorithms quietly taking charge.

Meta is planning sweeping layoffs as AI costs mount

Meta Said to Push Back Launch of Avocado Model

Social media addiction trial: the plaintiff, Meta, and YouTube make closing arguments; jurors begin deliberations Friday on liability for harm to children

Trump administration will reportedly get $10 billion for brokering the TikTok deal

Bluesky CEO Jay Graber will step aside

Digg's open beta shuts down after just two months, blaming AI bot spam

X says it suspended 800 million accounts in 2024 over spam and manipulation

Fake AI Content About the Iran War Is All Over X

Musk admits xAI 'not built right' — weeks after Tesla invested $2 billion

Nvidia Is Planning to Launch an Open-Source AI Agent Platform

Amazon Wins Court Order To Block Perplexity's AI Shopping Bots

Social Security watchdog investigating claims that DOGE engineer copied its databases

DOGE Deposition Videos Taken Down After Judge Order and Widespread Mockery

U.S. State Bans on Lab-Grown Meats Challenged in Court

Easy-to-use solar panels are coming, but utilities are trying to delay them

EcoFlow brings its plug-in solar power plant to US homes (related to the plug-in solar story)

TerraPower gets permit to build reactor

Ex-Uber CEO Kalanick Debuts Plan for 'Gainfully Employed Robots'

Tennessee grandmother jailed after AI facial recognition error links her to fraud

Justice Department and Live Nation Reach Settlement Terms in Antitrust Case

Palantir CEO Makes Shocking Confession on Disrupting Democratic Power

Palantir's lethal AI weaponry deployed to find chairs for US government staff

How Pokémon Go is giving delivery robots an inch-perfect view of the world

'Flying Cars' Will Take Off in American Skies This Summer

YouTube surpasses Disney, Paramount, WBD in 2025 ad revenue

Ig Nobel Prize flees US for Switzerland after 35 years over safety concerns

Swiss e-voting can't count 2,048 ballots after USB keys fail to decrypt them

Tony Hoare, Turing Award-Winning Computer Scientist Behind QuickSort, Dies At 92

Host: Leo Laporte

Guests: Iain Thomson, Richard Campbell, and Jennifer Pattison Tuohy

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Between copyright-free AI art, government blacklists, and data brokers run amok, this episode spotlights the fierce new battles for privacy, agency, and control in our digital lives. Plus, hear Cory Doctorow break down why the AI gold rush may be headed for a colossal crash.

Pentagon Officially Tells Anthropic It Is a Supply Chain Risk

Trump moves to blacklist Anthropic AI from all government work

If AI is a weapon, why don't we regulate it like one?

Sam Altman's greed and dishonesty are finally catching up to him

ChatGPT user base surges 350% in 18 months as it nears 1 billion weekly active users

AI-generated art can't be copyrighted after the Supreme Court declines to review the rule

Chardet dispute shows how AI will kill software licensing, argues Bruce Perens

Grammarly is using our identities without permission

Alphabet Grants Sundar Pichai Stock Awards Worth Up to $686 Million

Google vs Epic Games ends with Android app stores, lower fees

Google Ends Its 30% App Store Fee, Welcomes Third-Party App Stores - Slashdot

Xbox CEO confirms next-gen 'Project Helix' console will play PC games

Motorola Partners With GrapheneOS - Slashdot

Data Broker Breaches Fueled Nearly $21 Billion in Identity-Theft Losses

CBP Tapped Into the Online Advertising Ecosystem To Track Peoples' Movements

Proton Mail Helped FBI Unmask Anonymous 'Stop Cop City' Protester

COPPA 2.0 passes the Senate again, unanimously this time

South Korean Police Lose Seized Crypto By Posting Password Online

Iranian drone strikes at Amazon sites raise alarms over protecting data centers

Charter Gets FCC Permission To Buy Cox, Become Largest ISP In the US

How Big Diaper absorbs billions of extra dollars from American parents

Anne Wojcicki's Plan to Revive 23andMe: Rich Donors, Improved Tests—and Maybe Even MAHA

Bundle of human neurons hooked to silicon learns to stumble through Doom

10% of Firefox crashes are caused by bitflips

Seagate Just Unleashed 44TB Hard Drives

Host: Leo Laporte

Guests: Joey de Villa and Cory Doctorow

Download or subscribe to This Week in Tech at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech

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