Better Offline
Episodes
Sam Altman Is Dangerous To Silicon Valley
14 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Ed Zitron walks through how Sam Altman's ridiculous promises about the future of artificial intelligence could be ruinous for Silicon...
The Talented Mr. Altman
12 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Sam Altman has used his power and influence to become a multi-billionaire with stakes in hundreds of startups, but behind the curtain, he's never run ...
The Rot-Com Bust
07 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Ed Zitron walks you through what happens when tech's growth-at-all-costs epoch begins to collapse, and how the only way to save Silic...
The Rot-Com Bubble
05 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Tech's hyper-growth era is ending, with online 100 million new people getting online between 2022 and 2023, and almost every major web platform seeing...
AI Is Breaking Google
29 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On May 14th 2024, Google introduced their Search Generative Experience, a service that uses hallucination-prone artificial intelligence to generate an...
We're Watching Facebook Die
24 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
For three years, Facebook's monthly active users have been declining dramatically, with Facebook.com losing 397 million unique monthly visitors since ...
How Mark Zuckerberg Deliberately Made Facebook Worse
22 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the last decade, Mark Zuckerberg and his internal growth team have repeatedly and intentionally made Facebook and Instagram harder and more dangero...
OpenAI's Video Generating AI Is Dead On Arrival
15 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Earlier in the year, OpenAI debuted Sora, an AI that can generate videos that almost look realistic. In this episode, Ed walks through why generating ...
Enron Musk Ft. Ed Niedermeyer
08 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On April 26 2024, the NHTSA, the government body responsible for keeping roads safe, found Tesla's Autopilot and Full-Self-Driving software created a ...
The Cult of Failing Upwards
01 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Ed Zitron walks you through how career manager Adam Mosseri pushed out Instagram's original founders, turning it into an ultra-profitable app that bar...
The Man That Destroyed Google Search
25 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Ed Zitron tells you the disgraceful story of how Prabhakar Raghavan, Google's former head of ads - led a coup so that he could run Go...
How Managers Are Breaking The Internet
24 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The growth-at-all-costs management consultant mindset has turned most of the modern internet into a painful and profitable social experiment - and in ...
How A Chinese Glycine Manufacturer Went Viral ft. Louise Matsakis and Tianyu Fang
17 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the last few weeks TikTok and other social networks have been flooded with memes about a chinese glycine manufacturer called Donghua Jinlong, all t...
The AI Bubble Is Bursting
12 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Every major tech firm is betting billions of dollars that the generative AI revolution will change society - yet when you look under the hood, the rea...
Are We At Peak AI?
10 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It’s been just under a year and a half since ChatGPT - an AI-powered chatbot launched by so-called non-profit OpenAI - ushered in a new era of inves...
Wikipedia Is All The Web Has Left ft. Molly White
03 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Wikipedia, a non-profit encyclopedia that anybody can edit, remains one of the few trustworthy and reliable websites left online. Ed Zitron is joined ...
Rich Idiots Are Killing The Media To Please The Tech Industry
27 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The media industry has laid off over 30,000 people in the last three years as a result of an executive sect that doesn't read, write, or meaningfully ...
How Growth Is Killing Tech's Innovation, ft. Robert Evans
20 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Ever wonder why Silicon Valley stopped making anything new or interesting? It's because of the same growth-at-all-costs mindset that's destroyed the r...
Musk's Uncharitable Charity ft. David Fahrenthold
13 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A New York Times investigation revealed this week that Musk's $7 billion "Musk Foundation" regularly fails to donate enough money to get its multi-bil...
The Metaverse: How Mark Zuckerberg Lied To The World
06 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 2021, Mark Zuckerberg renamed Facebook to Meta, claiming that it was now a "Metaverse company," throwing the entire tech industry into one of its m...
How The Winklevoss Twins Lost A Billion Dollars
01 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Though the Winklevoss brothers are best known for their role in the early days of Facebook, you'll be surprised to learn that they recently lost custo...
The Rot Economy ft Robert Evans
24 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Ever wonder why Google results are getting worse, or why you aren't seeing your friends on Instagram? It's all because of the growth-at-all-costs econ...
An Autopsy of Apple's Vision Pro
21 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Apple's $3500 face computer is here, and after spending far too many hours inside it, Ed Zitron has found Apple's vision of the future to be equal par...
Introducing: Better Offline
14 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Better Offline is a weekly show exploring the tech industry’s growing influence over society, and how startups, venture capitalists and big tech fir...