This week, we kick things off with the return of Space Karen’s meltdown tour: Elon Musk got flustered in an interview, sputtered out one-word answers, and called the journalist an “NPC,” which is rich coming from the guy whose only real upgrade since PayPal is yelling “freedom” in meme fonts. Meanwhile, 23andMe sold your DNA to Regeneron at a bankruptcy auction, proving once and for all that your spit is more valuable than most tech startups.

IN THE NEWS is a parade of corporate idiocy and dystopian fuckery. Coinbase employees got bribed into leaking user data (because clearly we didn’t have enough crypto chaos), Klarna keeps flip-flopping between AI and human workers like it’s a bad Tinder date, and OpenAI is out here buying Jony Ive’s design firm for $6.5 billion because sure, what’s another billion when you’re trying to build a surveillance device to stalk 100 million users? Meanwhile, the Chicago Sun-Times is publishing AI-generated trash with imaginary authors, Anthropic’s new model attempts blackmail, and researchers dumped two billion Discord messages online just for kicks. And yes, Elon’s Tesla robotaxis will now only roam the safest parts of Austin, which is code for “we still can’t make this thing turn left.”

Elon Musk Gets Rattled by Hard Questions He Can't Answer, Calls Interviewer an "NPC" While Giving One-Word NPC-Like Responses Himself

23andMe (and Your Genetic Data) Sold to Regeneron in Bankruptcy Auction

Extortionists bribed Coinbase employees to give them customer data

OpenAI buys Jony Ive's design startup for $6.5 billion

Sam Altman Tells Staff Plan to Ship 100 Million Devices That See Everything in Users' Lives

Klarna Hiring Back Human Help After Going All-In on AI

Klarna CEO and Sutter Hill take victory lap after Jony Ive's OpenAI deal

Klarna used an AI avatar of its CEO to deliver earnings

Klarna users are buying now, but not paying later

DOGE Used a Meta AI Model to Review Emails From Federal Workers

Chicago Sun-Times publishes made-up books and fake experts in AI debacle

We’re Focused on the Wrong A.I. Problem in Journalism

Anthropic's new AI model turns to blackmail when engineers try to take it offline

MIT Backs Away From Paper Claiming Scientists Make More Discoveries with AI

Researchers Dump 2 Billion Scraped Discord Messages Online

Musk says Tesla's self-driving tests will be geofenced to 'the safest' parts of Austin

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