Better Offline

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Better Offline CES 2025: Day 3 - Pt. 2

Better Offline

01/09/25 • 94 min

Welcome to Better Offline’s coverage of the 2025 Consumer Electronics Show - a standup radio station in the Venetian with an attached open bar where reporters, experts and various other characters bring you the stories from the floor. In the second episode,
In this episode Ed Zitron is joined by David Roth of Defector, reporter Edward Ongweso Jr., Ed Niedermeyer of the Autonocast, and tech freelancer Jared Newman to talk about the consequences of spending days at the Consumer Electronics Show, how a show gets away with having so many booths that don’t actually seem to sell things to consumers, and an idea for generative AI that I deeply apologize for.
David Roth: https://bsky.app/profile/davidjroth.bsky.social
Jared Newman: https://bsky.app/profile/advisorator.com
Ed Ongweso Jr: https://bsky.app/profile/bigblackjacobin.bsky.social
Ed Niedermeyer: https://bsky.app/profile/niedermeyer.io
The Autonocast: https://www.autonocast.com/

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3 Listeners

CrowdStruck

Better Offline

07/22/24 • 30 min

On Friday July 19, millions of Windows PCs entered a doom-loop that rendered them non-functional thanks to an update sent by a little-known company called CrowdStrike - and in this emergency Better Offline dispatch, Ed Zitron walks you through exactly what happened, why it's so bad, and why both CrowdStrike and Microsoft executives should face criminal prosecution for such a catastrophic managerial failure. These are the dark consequences of the growth-at-all-costs movement.

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2 Listeners

How Shareholders Are Destroying The Tech Industry

Better Offline

07/12/24 • 55 min

The shareholder supremacy has eaten the tech industry, driving private and public companies to chase unprofitable, unsustainable ideas like generative AI as a means of expressing eternal growth to the markets. In this episode, Ed Zitron walks you through how this destructive mindset has created an entirely new kind of manager - one disconnected from labor and creation - and how the dark hand of shareholder supremacy is behind everything strange and bad in tech in the last few years

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2 Listeners

The Academics That Think ChatGPT Is BS

Better Offline

07/19/24 • 56 min

In a paper released earlier this year, three academics from the University of Glasgow classified ChatGPT's outputs not as "lies," but as "BS" - as defined by philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt in "on BS" (and yes I'm censoring that) - and created one of the most enjoyable and prescient papers ever written. In this episode, Ed Zitron is joined by academics Michael Townsen Hicks, James Humphries and Joe Slater in a free-wheeling conversation about ChatGPT's mediocrity - and how it's not built to represent the world at all.

LINKS:

Paper: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-024-09775-5

Michael Townsen Hicks: https://www.townsenhicks.com/

Joe Slater: https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/humanities/staff/joeslater/

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2 Listeners

An Autopsy of Apple's Vision Pro

Better Offline

02/21/24 • 49 min

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 parts exciting and frustrating - and a dark omen for the future of tech. He also sits down with the Wall Street Journal's Joanna Stern to talk about her experience as one of the early reviewers of the Vision Pro.

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2 Listeners

How Managers Are Breaking The Internet

Better Offline

04/24/24 • 34 min

The growth-at-all-costs management consultant mindset has turned most of the modern internet into a painful and profitable social experiment - and in this episode, Ed Zitron walks you through how these disconnected, growth-hungry personalities have made Google and Meta abdicate any responsibility toward their users and products.

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2 Listeners

The Invisible War

Better Offline

01/01/25 • 35 min

In this year's two-part finale, Ed Zitron enumerates the damage being done to billions of people by the growth-at-all-costs Rot Economy - and why you need to have solidarity with your fellow user.

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2 Listeners

FTC Chair Lina Khan: The Better Offline Interview

Better Offline

12/30/24 • 29 min

FTC Chair Lina Khan joins Ed Zitron to talk about competitiveness in the tech industry, controlling the cloud giants, and what should give you hope as we head into 2025.

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