This Week in Tech (TWiT) Ep. 1059: "I'm Interested in Your Toolset"

Date: November 24, 2025
Host: Leo Laporte
Guests: Molly White, Wesley Faulkner, Father Robert Balisar

Episode Overview

This week’s episode brings together Leo Laporte, tech writer Molly White, developer advocate Wesley Faulkner, and the ever-insightful Father Robert Balisar for a rollicking, thoughtful, and occasionally sardonic roundtable.

The panel tackles a packed agenda: major sites going dark during a Cloudflare outage, the ongoing fallout and debate on AI moderation and legislation, draconian new youth social media laws in Australia, the persistent power of bots and foreign trolls on X (formerly Twitter), the dilemmas of age verification online, crypto regulation and chaos (plus indulgences on the blockchain!), and the surprising surge in Linux desktop adoption.

Key Discussion Points

1. Major Tech Outages: Why Your Favorite Sites Went Dark

Timestamps: 31:57–38:54, 42:03–44:40

• Cloudflare Outage: This week's internet downtime revealed how deeply web infrastructure depends on a few players. Sites as big as Spotify, X (Twitter), OpenAI, and even the Vatican (!) were affected.
• Underlying Causes: The root was a “fat fingered” change to a bot-management feature that crashed servers across the board. “It doubled more than double the size that it was supposed to be...that was automatically propagated to all the machines...and it crashed.” (Father Robert, 35:00)
• The Dependency Problem: “Everybody uses Cloudflare...Maybe rethink that dependency on a single point of failure.” (Leo, 31:57)
• Cloudflare’s Transparency: The panel praised Cloudflare’s exceptional post-mortem transparency, including posting internal Slack messages.
• Centralization Risks: They discussed concerns about aggregating power/control in the hands of services like Cloudflare and Google.

2. Social Media Bans for Kids in Australia & Global Age Verification Chaos

Timestamps: 12:12–22:41

• Australia’s Social Media Ban: Australia has enacted a law banning under-16s from major social platforms and even YouTube, effective immediately. Similar moves are brewing in Denmark, Norway, France, Spain.
• Enforcement Questions: The panel dives into the impracticality of site- and ISP-level age gating, the privilege required to tech-savvily bypass blocks, and the scary precedent of using video selfie age verification (as Roblox now does).
• Quote: “If you’re gay and your parents are pissed off, they’re not going to let you go online...that might be your only resource.” (Leo, 14:28)
• Effectiveness Doubts: “VPNs are just whack a mole.” (Father Robert, 14:08)
• Roblox’s Plan for Kids: Roblox in Australia, New Zealand, and the Netherlands now requires a video selfie, using the Persona model for age estimation. The panel points out issues of effectiveness and AI bias, particularly for non-white faces.
• Security Cautionary Tale: “I actually used AI vibe coding and I coded a way around this in about...No, you're a priest! You’re not allowed to do that!” (Father Robert, Leo, 21:25)

3. Twitter/X: Bots, Trolls, Metrics, and Monetization

Timestamps: 5:36–12:08

• Geo-Gating Fiasco: X briefly revealed the true (often foreign) locations of “American” influencers—then rolled the feature back in a hurry once people started catching on.
• Panel’s Social Media Choices: Most of the panel have abandoned X for their own well-being; those who remain, like Molly White, do so for research and cryptosphere monitoring only.
• Why People Stay: “I think it's a privilege to be able to walk away from [X]...there is still a good amount of people who are on X to reach those people...sometimes their paycheck is based on their following.” (Wesley, 9:54/10:10)
• Monetization: Monetizable metrics on X are unmatched, thus maintaining a strong grip on many professionals.

4. Crypto, Regulation, and Stablecoins: Between Grift, Innovation & Power Politics

Timestamps: 44:41–68:17, 107:20–118:28

• Ongoing Crypto Losses: Molly’s ‘Web3 is Going Just Great’ grift counter is up to $79.6 billion in losses since 2021, and climbing.
• Regulatory Intrigue: The FTC failed in its recent court target against Meta (Instagram/WhatsApp). Much debate on how tech monopolies are judged in an AI-shaken environment.
• EU Pulls Back on Cookie Law: There’s relief (and some trolling) as EU cookie pop-up requirements may move to browser-level preferences instead.
• US Crypto Market Structure Legislation: Molly outlines how the crypto industry is lobbying for crypto/market structure laws before the 2026 midterms derail momentum: “They are constantly providing feedback on these drafts and rewriting sections of them. ... It’s very much the crypto lobby pushing this stuff.” (Molly, 109:56)
• Stablecoin Primer: Molly explains practical stablecoin mechanics and why banks want in; panel covers the risks, regulatory headaches, and bank ambitions (“they want to become banks, which has been an interesting trend” — Molly, 111:50).

5. AI, Regulation & Hype: Between Panic and Progress

Timestamps: 53:09–62:08

• The Patchwork Panic: States are moving ahead with AI legislation; the feds aren’t. The proposed federal ban on state AI regulations is debated.
• Legislate Now or Wait? “The threat is so diffuse and vague that any legislation you make now is going to land wrong.” (Father Robert, 55:47)
• The Lobby Is Here: “There’s also the AI super PACs which are springing up...money in the image of the crypto super PACs.” (Molly, 59:11)
• Show Title Moment: “AI is the new radioactive banana.” (Leo + panel, 57:43)

6. Ambient AI Comes to Windows – and It’s... Incompetent

Timestamps: 75:09–80:51

• Microsoft’s Copilot AI Ad vs. Real World: The Verge tested Microsoft’s “Talk to your Computer” Copilot AI ad: none of the advertised tasks worked as shown. The AI hallucinated, misidentified, gave wrong answers.
• Panel Reactions: “It’s a moron.” (Leo, 75:10)
  “Visual interpretation is not easy...it lies all the time.” (Wesley, 76:44)
• Voice Agents as Gimmick: “I've never seen the use case for 90% of the voice-activated agents. I don’t want to talk to my laptop!” (Molly, 78:28)

7. Linux: Year of the Desktop?

Timestamps: 81:12–86:11

• Linux Uptick: ZorinOS and similar distros report a huge surge in Windows users downloading Linux (up to 4% of desktops). “It happened. It actually happened!” (Leo, 81:44)
• Reasons for the Shift: Microsoft's AI push, Copilot’s bugginess, and dropped support for older Windows versions are nudging users.
• Panel’s Experiences: Steam gaming through Linux now competitive with Windows, especially with compatibility layers like Proton; some, like Father Robert, still stick with Windows for Adobe Suite compatibility only.
• LLMs Locally: For privacy, especially in sensitive settings (like the Vatican), local LLMs are becoming essential.

8. Robots, Automation & The Dystopian Optimism of Tech Giants

Timestamps: 129:28–140:49

• Elon Musk’s “End of Work” Dreams: Musk claims that AI and robots will make money “irrelevant” in 10–20 years. The panel is, shall we say, unconvinced.
  • “He also wanted to have a fully autonomous assembly line for Tesla...that has not informed his decision.” (Wesley, 132:56)
  • “I am increasingly convinced that Elon and people in his echelon don’t know what jobs are like...Have you ever met a plumber?” (Molly, 132:03)
• Robot Dogs in Law Enforcement: Boston Dynamics’ Spot is already used by bomb squads & SWAT teams in the US, with chilling implications.

9. Odds & Ends / Notable Moments

• Molly White: Crypto “Grift Counter” is live at web3isgoinggreat.com – check it out for jaw-dropping stats. (44:43)
• Indulgences on the Blockchain: “Have you considered putting them on the blockchain?” “Boom!” (Molly, Father Robert, 4:46–5:28)
• AI Age Verification a Joke: Father Robert’s priestly hacking undermines selfie verification in minutes (21:25).
• Personal Projects:
  • Wesley Faulkner launches works-not-working.com “for people who feel stuck in jobs but can’t leave due to the economy or health insurance.” (27:06)
  • Father Robert: Jesuit pilgrimage app in 20 languages, soon to be expanded (143:16).
• Thanksgiving food chatter, pro tips, and affection for “traditional” Ocean Spray cranberry sauce with the can lines. (167:17–169:50)

Notable Quotes & Moments

• Cloudflare Outage:
  “All those machines shut down...because that file has a limit on how large it can be. So it was double the file limit...all those machines shut down. Without the bot management, the entire network went down. That's just...”—Father Robert, 35:42

• The Centralization Dilemma:
  “What bothered me is it felt like Cloudflare had a little too much power in that conversation.” —Leo, 40:28

• On Age Verification:
  “Roblox is requiring video selfies. Is that a good idea?” —Leo, 21:25
  “I coded a way around this in about...It wasn’t hard at all.” —Father Robert, 21:31

• AI Regulation:
  “At the moment the threat (of AI) is so diffuse and vague that any legislation you make right now is going to land wrong.” —Father Robert, 55:47

• On Crypto Laws:
  “They are constantly providing feedback on these drafts and rewriting sections of them. ... It’s very much the crypto lobby pushing this stuff.” —Molly, 109:56

• On Robots Replacing Workers:
  “I am increasingly convinced that Elon and people in his echelon don't know what jobs are like.” —Molly, 132:03
  “He also wanted to have a fully autonomous assembly line for Tesla...that has not informed his decision that this...is something they can even get under control.” —Wesley, 132:56

• Centralization Risks:
  “I just don't like the centralization of power. That worries me.” —Leo, 40:59

• Copilot AI Review:
  “It’s a moron.” —Leo, 75:10
  “Visual interpretation...it lies all the time.” —Wesley, 76:44

• Cultural/Comical Moments:

  • “Have you considered putting indulgences on the blockchain?” (Molly, 4:46)
  • “Every child at birth needs to be put on the blockchain. Exactly how old they are.” (Father Robert, joking, 24:35)

Segment Timestamps

| Time | Segment | |----------|------------| | 00:00–04:30 | Panel introductions, Vatican indulgences banter | | 05:36–12:08 | X/Twitter influencer location leak, bots, mental health, social networks | | 12:12–22:41 | Australia bans kids' social media, Roblox selfie, global copycats | | 31:57–38:54 | Cloudflare outage, web dependency risk | | 44:41–68:17 | Crypto regulation, stablecoin explainer, “grift counter”, security centralization | | 75:09–80:51 | Windows Copilot AI ads fail in real world | | 81:12–86:11 | Linux downloads explode, year of the Linux desktop? | | 107:20–118:28 | Crypto lobbying, US legislative landscape, bitcoin stability | | 129:28–140:49 | Elon Musk’s “end of work” robot utopia, panel skepticism | | 143:16 | Apps: Jesuit Pilgrimage app, Wikipedia editing | | 167:17–169:40 | Thanksgiving food, techie stuffing & cranberry sauce chat |

Closing Thoughts

A lively episode brimming with both high-level analysis and cultural asides. The undertones: Regulation can’t keep up with the wave of technological, economic, and social change. Neither can many of the platforms and laws designed for a simpler world. Yet, as ever, geeks and critics alike keep tinkering, testing, and—occasionally—just enjoying the show.