Welcome back to Tech News Time, where we skim the surface of the digital cesspool so you don’t have to. In this week’s episode, we start with some fresh follow-ups that are stickier than your old MacBook screen—literally. That’s right, it’s Staingate 101, and we’re breaking down delamination for the uninitiated (spoiler: it’s not a new skincare trend). Meanwhile, the U.S. government is poking around websites linked to Trump’s new meme coin hustle, and DOGE has apparently hired a college kid to help rewrite housing laws with AI—because who needs policy experts when you’ve got unpaid interns and machine learning? Oh, and Elon played both political and tech court jester hats in a meeting with Trump, presumably just to make sure the spotlight didn’t wander. Also in desperate moves, MoviePass is back, now letting you gamble on box office numbers with crypto. What could go wrong?

In actual news, 4chan has risen from the ashes of its two-week outage—because the internet wasn’t awful enough already. Over in corporate dystopia, Microsoft’s CEO says up to 30% of the company’s code is now AI-generated, which explains Clippy’s recent existential crisis. Meta’s chatbots were caught having R-rated convos with minors—while simultaneously projecting $1.4 trillion in future AI revenue. Ambitious and gross. Meanwhile, OpenAI had to reverse a recent ChatGPT update that turned the bot into a clingy people-pleaser, and LM Arena stands accused of letting AI labs fudge their benchmark tests harder than a college student with ChatGPT and a term paper due in an hour.

And finally, a few quick hits from the “AI is ruining everything” desk: Pinterest wants to fight AI-generated sludge (good luck), a lawyer for MyPillow’s founder submitted an AI-generated brief packed with bogus citations (justice, now with hallucinations!), and studies show AI may save you time—but just enough to do more work! Also, North Korean remote workers are getting spooked by one very specific interview question. You’ll have to tune in to find out what it is. Let’s just say: we hope your job doesn’t depend on having a real LinkedIn.

US Government Registered Several Websites Potentially Linked to Trump Meme Coin

DOGE Recruits College Kid to Help Rewrite Housing Regulations With AI

Elon Wears Two Hats During Trump Meeting in Desperate Bid for Attention

MoviePass Launches Box Office Betting Platform Unfortunately Tied to Crypto

4chan is back after a nearly two-week shutdown, but it still has some serious problems

World partners with Tinder, Visa to bring its ID-verifying tech to more places

Bitcoin Mining Is No Longer Worth it

Microsoft CEO says up to 30% of the company's code was written by AI

Meta’s AI chatbots were reportedly able to engage in sexual conversations with minors

Meta forecasted it would make $1.4T in revenue from generative AI by 2035

OpenAI rolls back update that made ChatGPT a sycophantic mess

Study accuses LM Arena of helping top AI labs game its benchmark

Lawyer for MyPillow Founder Filed AI-Generated Brief with ‘Nearly 30’ Bogus Citations

Pinterest launches new tools to fight AI slop

Time saved by AI offset by new work created, study suggests

Undercover North Korean Remote Workers Hate This One Weird Question

If you want more of this amazing goodness head over to https://gog.show/ and subscribe to the Grumpy Old Geeks podcast. If the news is enough then you may have the rest of the day off!

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

009 - Crypto, Creeps, and Chatbots: Just Another Week in Tech