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Welcome to Episode 293 of SC Utd.Great deals on Soccer Card boxes at https://soccercardsunited.com/You can find Soccer Cards United: On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/soccercardsunited/On Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoccerCardsUTDAnd wherever you get podcasts: https://podfollow.com/soccer-cards-unitedYour questions, comments and suggestions could and probably will be featured on the show if you reach out to us! Please rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts or out loud on the street to passers-by. The music for the show is: Modern Jazz Samba by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4063-modern-jazz-samba License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses#soccercards #tradingcards #thehobby #soccercards

This is a special episode, highlighting a session from ELC Annual 2025! Bill Coughran (Partner @ Sequoia Capital & former SVP of Engineering @ Google) and Bret Reckard (Talent Partner @ The General Partnership) deconstruct the evolving role of engineering leadership in an era dominated by AI hype. Bill is a legendary leader who joined Google right after the .com bubble and has seen every major industry shift since. Drawing on his experience scaling Google and advising world-class startups, Bill shares why the best leaders are "catastrophic thinkers," how to balance servant leadership with the need for decisive action, and why AI is forcing every leader to return to their technical roots. Plus they cover enduring companies and real value capture in the AI era, the nuances of organizational design, the "apprentice model" for mentorship and the dangers of over-layered hierarchies that stifle speed. Bill also provides a candid look at leadership transitions, offering a tactical guide for those moving from Big Tech to early-stage startups. ABOUT BILL COUGHRANBill Coughran works as a founders' coach and partner at Sequoia Capital to help build spectacular technology-centric companies. Previously, Bill was Senior Vice President of Engineering at Google with oversight of Chrome, YouTube, maps, google.com, underlying infrastructure systems, and security.ABOUT BRET RECKARDBret Reckard is Talent Partner at The General Partnership (TheGP), a hands-on venture firm working alongside ambitious founders in talent, engineering, go-to-market, and product. He leads TheGP's Talent vertical, matching foundational leaders, early engineers, and key specialists across the portfolio. Before this role, Bret spent over a decade at Sequoia Capital leading Talent and Network, where he helped hundreds of founders at companies like Stripe, Confluent, Retool and DoorDash build their early teams. This episode is brought to you by Span!Span is the AI-native developer intelligence platform bringing clarity to engineering organizations with a holistic, human-centered approach to developer productivity.If you want a complete picture of your engineering impact and health, drive high performance, and make smarter business decisions…Go to Span.app to learn more! SHOW NOTES:Introduction and Bill Coughran's background at Sequoia and Google (1:36)Hiring pitfalls and the biggest mistakes made as a leader (3:49)Managing crises: Acting as a dictator during the 2010 Google hack (5:25)Building for the AI world without chasing "shiny objects" (7:09)Developing context: How to learn AI without relying on LLM summaries (9:02)Identifying enduring companies and real value capture in the AI era (10:53)The debate on coding assistants and the future of junior engineering talent (13:23)Transitions: Making the leap from large organizations to early-stage startups (15:59)Staying curious and finding excitement in the next professional challenge (18:23) LINKS AND RESOURCESLink to the video for this sessionLink to all ELC Annual 2025 sessions This episode wouldn't have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan's also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode of Wake Up with Miya, I'm joined again by Doc Brown — host of The Prometheus Lens Podcast and author of The Epic of Esau: The Birthright and Seed War.We're diving into one of the most mysterious topics in scripture: The Garment of Adam. Was it a relic of divine authority, a symbol of hidden knowledge, or something still guarded by powerful hands today?Doc and I explore what the garment truly represented, its connection to the fall of man, and whether it could still exist — possibly hidden beneath the Vatican or within ancient bloodlines.This conversation goes deep into the divine council, the lost authority of humanity, and the spiritual war that began in Eden.PLUS SIDE – WAIOLA (Exclusive Segment)On the Plus Side, we go even deeper — exploring the ancient divine council, whether Adam inherited the authority Satan lost, and how forbidden knowledge may have been woven into the garment itself. Doc also shares theories on Esau's lineage, modern elites, and whether remnants of the garment could still be hidden today.Watch the full uncensored Plus Side on Patreon: Join Waiola – Water of LifeWaiola members get:• The final 15–20 minutes of every episode (uncensored)• Access to the members-only Discord for deeper discussion• Plus-member shoutouts and early access to future episodesTOPICS WE EXPLOREWhat was Adam's true role in Eden?Did humanity inherit divine authority that made us a target?The Garment of Adam — where it came from and who had itEsau, Edom, and the hidden bloodlines through historyCould the garment or fragments still exist today?How forbidden knowledge connects to ancient power and the modern worldBUY ME A COFFEE LINKSupport the Show & Stay Connected:Buy Me a Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/sensiblehippiehttps://www.youtube.com/@WakeUpWithMiyaJoin My Free Patreon for ad-free episodes & exclusive content: https://Patreon.com/WakeupwithMiya

What does 2026 hold for indie authors and the publishing industry? I give my thoughts on trends and predictions for the year ahead. In the intro, Quitting the right stuff; how to edit your author business in 2026; Is SubStack Good for Indie Authors?; Business for Authors webinars. If you'd like to join my community and support the show every month, you'll get access to my growing list of Patron videos and audio on all aspects of the author business — for the price of a black coffee (or two) a month. Join us at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn. Joanna Penn writes non-fiction for authors and is an award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling thriller author as J.F. Penn. She's also an award-winning podcaster, creative entrepreneur, and international professional speaker. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. (1) More indie authors will sell direct through Shopify, Kickstarter, and local in-person events (2) AI-powered search will start to shift elements of book discoverability (3) The start of Agentic Commerce (4) AI-assisted audiobook narration will go mainstream (5) AI-assisted translation will start to take off beyond the early adopters (6) AI video becomes ubiquitous. ‘Live selling' becomes the next trend in social sales. (7) AI will create, run, and optimise ads without the need for human intervention (8) 1000 True Fans becomes more important than ever You can find all my books as J.F. Penn and Joanna Penn on your favourite online store in all the usual formats, or order from your local library or bookstore. You can also buy direct from me at CreativePennBooks.com and JFPennBooks.com. I'm not really active on social media, but you can always see my photos at Instagram @jfpennauthor. 2026 Trends and Predictions for Indie Authors and Book Publishing (1) More indie authors will sell direct through Shopify, Kickstarter, and local in-person events — and more companies like BookVault will offer even more beautiful physical books and products to support this. This trend will not be a surprise to most of you! Selling direct has been a trend for the last few years, but in 2026, it will continue to grow as a way that independent authors become even more independent. The recent Written Word Media survey from Dec 2025 noted that 30% of authors surveyed are selling direct already and 30% say they plan to start in 2026. Among authors earning over $10,000 per month, roughly half sell direct. In my opinion, selling direct is an advanced author strategy, meaning that you have multiple books and you understand book marketing and have an email list already or some guaranteed way to reach readers. In fact, Kindlepreneur reports that 66% of authors selling direct have more than 5 books, and 46% have more than 10 books. Of course, you can start with the something small, like a table at a local event with a limited number of books for sale, but if you want to consistently sell direct for years to come, you need to consider all the business aspects. Selling direct is not a silver bullet. It's much harder work to sell direct than it is to just upload an ebook to Amazon, whether you choose a Kickstarter campaign, or Shopify/Payhip or other online stores, or regular in-person sales at events/conferences/fairs. You need a business mindset and business practices, for example, you need to pay upfront for setup as well as ongoing management, and bulk printing in some cases. You need to manage taxes and cashflow. You need to be a lot more proactive about marketing, as you won't sell anything if you don't bring readers to your books/products. But selling direct also brings advantages. It sets you apart from the bulk of digital only authors who still only upload ebooks to Amazon, or maybe add a print on demand book, and in an era of AI rapid creation, that number is growing all the time. If you sell direct, you get your customer data and you can reach those customers next time, through your email list. If you don't know who bought your books and don't have a guaranteed way to reach them, you will more easily be disrupted when things change — and they always change eventually. Kindlepreneur notes that “45% of the successful direct selling authors had over 1,000 subscribers on their email lists,” with “a clear, positive correlation between email list size and monthly direct sales income — with authors having an email list of over 15,000 subscribers earning 20X more than authors with email lists under 100 subscribers.” Selling direct means faster money, sometimes the same day or the same week in many cases, or a few weeks after a campaign finishes, as with Kickstarter. And remember, you don't have to sell all your formats directly. You can keep your ebooks in KU, do whatever you like with audiobooks, and just have premium print products direct, or start with a very basic Kickstarter campaign, or a table at a local fair. Lots more tips for Shopify and Kickstarter at https://www.thecreativepenn.com/selldirectresources/ I also recommend the Novel Marketing Podcast on The Shopify Trap: Why authors keep losing money as it is a great counterpoint to my positive endorsement of selling direct on Shopify! Among other things, Thomas notes that a fixed monthly fee for a store doesn't match how most authors make money from books which is more in spikes, the complexity and hassle eats time and can cost more money if you pay for help, and it can reduce sales on Amazon and weaken your ranking. Basically, if you haven't figured out marketing direct to your store, it can hurt you.All true for some authors, for some genres, and for some people's lifestyle. But for authors who don't want to be on the hamster wheel of the Amazon algorithm and who want more diversity and control in income, as well as the incredible creative benefits of what you can do selling direct, then I would say, consider your options in 2025, even if that is trying out a low-financial-goal Kickstarter campaign, or selling some print books at a local fair. Interestingly, traditional publishers are also experimenting with direct sales. Kate Elton, the new CEO of Harper Collins notes in The Bookseller's 2026 trend article, “we are seeing global success with responsive, reader-driven publishing, subscription boxes and TikTok Shop and – crucially – developing strategies that are founded on a comprehensive understanding of the reader.” She also notes, “AI enables us to dramatically change the way we interact with and grow audiences. The opportunities are genuinely exciting – finding new ways to help readers discover books they will love, innovating in the ways we market and reach audiences, building new channels and adapting to new methods of consuming content.” (2) AI-powered search will start to shift elements of book discoverability From LinkedIn's 2026 Big Ideas: “Generative engine optimization (GEO) is set to replace search engine optimization (SEO) as the way brands get discovered in the year ahead. As consumers turn to AI chatbots, agentic workflows and answer engines, appearing prominently in generative outputs will matter more than ranking in search engines.” Google has been rolling out AI Mode with its AI Overviews and is beginning to push it within Google.com itself in some countries, which means the start of a fundamental change in how people discover content online. I first posted about GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) and AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) in 2023, and it's going to change how readers find books. For years, we've talked about the long tail of search. Now, with AI-powered search, that tail is getting even longer and more nuanced. AI can understand complex, conversational queries that traditional search engines struggled with. Someone might ask, “What's a good thriller set in a small town with a female protagonist who's a journalist investigating a cold case?” and get highly specific recommendations. This means your book metadata, your website content, and your online presence need to be more detailed and conversational. AI search engines understand context in ways that go far beyond simple keywords. The authors who win in this new landscape will be those who create rich, authentic content about their books and themselves, not just promotional copy. As economist Tyler Cowen has said, “Consider the AIs as part of your audience. Because they are already reading your words and listening to your voice.” We're in the ‘organic' traffic phase right now, where these AI engines are surfacing content for ‘free,' but paid ads are inevitably on the way, and even rumoured to be coming this year to ChatGPT. By the end of 2026, I expect some authors and publishers to be paying for AI traffic, rather than blocking and protesting them. For now, I recommend checking that your author name/s and your books are surfaced when you search on ChatGPT.com as well as Google.com AI Mode (powered by Gemini). You want to make sure your work comes up in some way. I found that Joanna Penn and J.F. Penn searches brought up my Shopify stores, my website, podcast, Instagram, LinkedIn, and even my Patreon page, but did not bring up links to Amazon. If you only have an author presence on Amazon, does it appear in AI search at all? Do you need to improve anything about what the AI search brings up? Traditional publishers are also looking at this, with PublishersWeekly doing webinars on various aspects of AI in early 2026, including sessions on GEO and how book sales are changing, AI agents, and book marketing. In a 2026 predictions article on The Bookseller, the CEO of Bloomsbury Publishing noted, “The boundaries of artificial intelligence will become clearer, enabling publishers to harness its benefits while seeking to safeguard the intellectual property rights of authors, illustrators and publishers.” “AI will be deeply embedded in our workflows, automating tasks such as metadata tagging, freeing teams to focus on creativity and strategy. Challenges will persist. Generative AI threatens traditional web traffic and ad revenue models, making metadata optimisation and SEO critical for visibility as we adjust to this new reality online.” (3) The start of Agentic Commerce AI researches what you want to buy and may even buy on your behalf. Plus, I predict that Amazon does a commerce deal with OpenAI for shopping within ChatGPT by the end of 2026. In September 2025, ChatGPT launched Instant Checkout and the Agentic Commerce Protocol, which will enable bots to buy on websites in the background if authorised by the human with the credit card. VISA is getting on board with this, so is PayPal, with no doubt more payment options to come. In the USA, ChatGPT Plus, Pro, and Free users can now buy directly from US Etsy sellers inside the chat interface, with over a million Shopify merchants coming soon. Shopify and OpenAI have also announced a partnership to bring commerce to ChatGPT. I am insanely excited about this as it could represent the first time we have been able to more easily find and surface books in a much more nuanced way than the 7 keywords and 3 categories we have relied on for so long! I've been using ChatGPT for at least the last year to find fiction and non-fiction books as I find the Amazon interface is ‘polluted' by ads. I've discovered fascinating books from authors I've never heard of, most in very long tail areas. For example, Slashed Beauties by A. Rushby, recommended by ChatGPT as I am interested in medical anatomy and anatomical Venuses, and The Macabre by Kosoko Jackson, recommended as I like art history and the supernatural. I don't think I would have found either of these within a nuanced discussion with ChatGPT. Even without these direct purchase integrations, ChatGPT now has Shopping Research, which I have found links directly to my Shopify store when I search for my books specifically. Walmart has partnered with OpenAI to create AI-first shopping experiences, and you have to wonder what Amazon might be doing? In Nov 2025, Amazon signed a “strategic partnership” with OpenAI, and even though it's focused on the technical side of AI, those two companies in a room together might also be working on other plans … I'm calling it for 2026. I think Amazon will sign a commerce agreement with OpenAI sometime before the end of the year. This will enable at least recommendation and shopping links into Amazon stores (presumably using an OpenAI affiliate link), or perhaps even Instant Checkout with ChatGPT for Amazon. It will also enable a new marketing angle, especially if paid ads arrive in ChatGPT, perhaps even integrating with Amazon Ads in some way as part of any possible agreement, since ads are such a good revenue stream for Amazon anyway. The line between discovery, engagement, and purchase is collapsing. Someone could be having a conversation with an AI about what to read next, and within that same conversation, purchase a bookwithout ever leaving the chat interface. This already happens within TikTok and social commerce clearly works for many authors. It's possible that the next development for book discoverability and sales might be within AI chats. This will likely stratify the already fragmented book eco-system even more. Some readers will continue to live only within the Amazon ecosystem and (maybe) use their Rufus chatbot to buy, and others will be much wider in their exploration of how to find and discover books (and other products and services). If you haven't tried it yet, try ChatGPT.com Shopping Research for a book. You can do this on the free tier. Use the drop down in the main chat box and select Shopping Research. It doesn't have to be for your book. It can be any book or product, for example, our microwave died just before Christmas so I used it to find a new one. But do a really nuanced search with multiple requirements. Go far beyond what you would search for on Amazon. In the results, notice that (at the time of writing) it does not generally link to Amazon, but to independent sites and stores. As above, I think this will change by the end of 2026, as some kind of commerce deal with Amazon seems inevitable. (4) AI-assisted audiobook narration will go mainstream I've been talking about AI narration of audiobooks since 2019, and over the years, I've tried various different options. In 2025, the technology reached a level of emotional nuance that made it much easier to create satisfying fiction audio as well as non-fiction. It also super-charges accessibility, making audio available in more languages and more accents than ever before. Of course, human narration remains the gold standard, but the cost makes it prohibitive for many authors, and indeed many small traditional publishers, for all books. If it costs $2000 – $10,000 to create an audiobook, you have to sell a lot to make a profit, and the dominance of subscription models have made it harder to recoup the costs. Famous narrators and voice artists who have an audience may still be worth investing in, as well as premium production, but require an even higher upfront cost and therefore higher sales and streams in return. AI voice/audio models are continuing to improve, and even as this goes out, there are rumours on TechCrunch that OpenAI's new device, designed by Jony Ive who designed the iPhone, will be audio first and OpenAI are improving their voice models even more in preparation for that launch. In 2026, I think AI-narrated audio will go mainstream with far-reaching adoption across publishing and the indie author world in many different languages and accents. This will mean a further stratification of audiobooks, with high quality, high production, high cost human narrated audio for a small percentage of books, and then mass market, affordable AI-narrated audio for the rest. AI-narrated audiobooks will make audio ubiquitous, and just as (almost) every print book has an ebook format, in 2026, they will also have an audio format. I straddle both these worlds, as I am still a human audiobook narrator for my own work. I human-narrated Successful Self-Publishing Fourth Edition (free audiobook) and The Buried and the Drowned, my short story collection. I also use AI narration for some books. ElevenLabs remains my preferred service and in 2025, I used my J.F. Penn voice clone for Death Valley and also Blood Vintage, while using a male voice for Catacomb. I clearly label my AI-narration in the sales description and also on the cover, which I think is important, although it is not always required by the various services. You can distribute ElevenLabs narrated audiobooks on Spotify, Kobo Writing Life, YouTube, ElevenReader, and of course your own store if you use Shopify with Bookfunnel. There are many other services springing up all the time, so make sure you check the rights you have over the finished audio, as well as where you can sell and distribute the final files. If they are just using ElevenLabs models in the back-end, then why not just do that directly? (Most services will be using someone's model in the back-end, since most companies do not train their own models.) Of course, you can use Amazon's own narration. While Amazon originally launched Audible audiobooks with Virtual Voice (AVV) in November 2023, it was rolled out to more authors and territories in 2025. If your book is eligible, the option to create an audiobook will appear on your KDP dashboard. With just a few clicks, you can create an audiobook from a range of voices and accents, and publish it on Amazon and Audible. However, the files are not yours. They are exclusive to Amazon and you cannot use them on other platforms or sell them direct yourself. But they are also free, so of course, many authors, especially those in KU, will use this option. I have done some for my mum's sweet romance books as Penny Appleton and I will likely use them for my books in translation when the option becomes available. Traditional publishers are experimenting with AI-assisted audiobook narration as well. MacMillan is selling digital audiobooks read by AI directly on their store. PublishersWeekly reports that PRH Audio “has experimented with artificial voice in specific instances, such as entrepreneur Ely Callaway's posthumous memoir The Unconquerable Game,” when an “authorized voice replica” was created for the audiobook. The article also notes that PRH Audio “embrace artificial intelligence across business operations—my entire department [PRH Audio] is using AI for business applications.” And while indie authors can't use AI voices on ACX right now, Audible have over 100 voices available to selected publishing partnerships, as reported by The Guardian with “two options for publishers wishing to make use of the technology: “Audible-managed” production, or “self-service” whereby publishers produce their own audiobooks with the help of Audible's AI technology.” In 2026, it's likely that more traditional publishers — as well as indie authors — will get their backlist into audio with AI narration. (5) AI-assisted translation will start to take off beyond the early adopters Over the years, I've done translation deals with traditional publishers in different languages (German, French, Spanish, Korean, Italian) for some fiction and non-fiction books. But of course, to get these kinds of deals, you have to be proactive about pitching, or work with an agent for foreign rights only, and those are few and far between! There are also lots of languages and territories worldwide, and most deals are for the bigger markets, leaving a LOT of blue water for books in translation, even if you have licensed some of the bigger markets. I did my first partially AI-translated books in 2019 when I used Deepl.com for the first draft and then worked with a German editor to do 3 non-fiction books in German. While the first draft was cheap, the editing was pretty expensive, so I stopped after only doing a couple. I have made the money back now, but it took years. In 2025, AI Translation began to take off with ScribeShadow, GlobeScribe.ai, and more recently, in November 2025, Kindle Translate boosting the number of translated books available. Kindle Translate is (currently) only available to US authors for English into Spanish and also German into English, but in 2026, this will likely roll out to more languages and more authors, making it easier than ever to produce translations for free. Of course, once again, the gold standard is human translation, or at least human-edited translations, but the cost is prohibitive even just for proof-reading, and if there is a cheap or even free option, like Kindle Translate, then of course, authors are going to try it. If the translation gets bad reviews, they can just un-publish. There are many anecdotal stories of indie success in 2025 with AI-translated genre fiction sales (in series) in under-served markets like Italian, French, and Spanish, as well as more mainstream adoption in German. I was around in the Kindle gold-rush days of 2009-2012 and the AI-translation energy right now feels like that. There are hardly any Kindle ebooks in many of these languages compared to how many there are in English, so inevitably, the rush is on to fill the void, especially in genres that are under-served by traditional publishers in those markets. Yes, some of these AI translated books will be ‘AI-slop,' but readers are not stupid. Those books will get bad reviews and thus will sink to the bottom of the store, never to be seen again. The AI translation models are also improving rapidly, and Amazon's Kindle Translate may improve faster than most, for books specifically, since they will be able to get feedback in terms of page reads. Amazon is also a major investor in Anthropic, which makes Claude.ai, widely considered the best quality for creative writing and translation, so it's likely that is used somewhere in the mix. Some traditional publishers are also experimenting with AI-assisted translation, with Harlequin France reportedly using AI translation and human proofreaders, as reported by the European Council of Literary Translators' Associations in December 2025. Academic publisher Taylor and Francis is also using AI for book translation, noting: “Following a program of rigorous testing, Taylor & Francis has announced plans to use AI translation tools to publish books that would otherwise be unavailable to English-language readers, bringing the latest knowledge to a vastly expanded readership.” “Until now, the time and resources required to translate books has meant that the majority remained accessible only to those who could read them in the original language. Books that were translated often only became available after a significant delay. Today, with the development of sophisticated AI translation tools, it has become possible to make these important texts available to a broad readership at speed, without compromising on accuracy.” (6) AI video becomes ubiquitous. ‘Live selling' becomes the next trend in social sales. In 2025, short form AI-generated video became very high quality. OpenAI released Sora 2, and YouTube announced new Shorts creation tools with Veo 3, which you can also use directly within Gemini. There are tons of different AI video apps now, including those within the social media sites themselves. There is more video than ever and it's much easier to create. I am not a fan of short form video! I don't make it and I don't consume it, but I do love making book trailers for my Kickstarter campaigns and for adding to my book pages and using on social media. I made a trailer for The Buried and the Drowned using Midjourney for images and then animation of those images, and Canva to put them together along with ElevenLabs to generate the music. But despite the AI tools getting so much easier to use, you still have to prompt them with exactly what you want. I can't just upload my book and say, “Make a book trailer,” or “Make a short film.” This may change with generative video ads, which are likely to become more common in 2026, as video turns specifically commercial. Video ads may even be generated specifically for the user, with an audience of one, maybe even holding your book in their hands (using something like Cameos on Sora), in the same way that some AI-powered clothing stores do virtual try-ons. This might also up-end the way we discover and buy things, as the AI for eCommerce and Amazon Sellers newsletter says about OpenAI's Sora app, “OpenAI isn't just trying to build a TikTok competitor. They're building a complete reimagining of how we discover and buy things …” “The combination of ChatGPT's research capabilities and Sora's potential for emotional manipulation—I mean, “engagement”—could create something we've never seen before: an AI ecosystem that might eventually guide you through every type of purchase, from the most considered to the most impulsive.” In 2026, there will be A LOT more AI-generated video, but that also leads to the human trend of more live video. While you can use an AI avatar that looks and sounds like you using tools like HeyGen or Synthesia, live video has all the imperfect human elements that make it stand-out, plus the scarcity element which leads to the purchase decision within a countdown period. Live video is nothing new in terms of brand building and content in general, but it seems that live events primarily for direct sales might be a thing in 2026. Kim Kardashian hosted Kimsmas Live in December 2025 with a 45 minute live shopping event with special guests, described as entertainment but designed to be a sales extravaganza. Indie authors are doing a similar thing on TikTok with their books, so this is a trend to watch in 2026, especially if you feel that live selling might fit with your personality and author business goals. It's certainly not for everyone, but I suspect it will suit a different kind of creator to those who prefer ‘no face' video, or no video at all! On other aspects of the human side of social media, Adam Mosseri the CEO of Instagram put a post on Threads called Authenticity after Abundance. He said, “Everything that made creators matter—the ability to be real, to connect, to have a voice that couldn't be faked—is now suddenly accessible to anyone with the right tools.” “Deepfakes are getting better and better. AI is generating photographs and videos indistinguishable from captured media. The feeds are starting to fill up with synthetic everything. And in that world, here's what I think happens.Creators matter more.” It's a long article so just to pick a few things from it: “We like to talk about “AI slop,” but there is a lot of amazing AI content … we are going to start to see more and more realistic AI content.” I've talked to my Patreon Community about this ‘tsunami of excellence' as these tools are just getting better and better and the word ‘slop' can also be applied to purely human output, too. If you think that AI content is ‘worse' than wholly human content, in 2026, you are wrong. It is now very very good, especially in the hands of people who can drive the AI tools. Back to Adam's post: “Authenticity is fast becoming a scarce resource, …The creators who succeed will be those who figure out how to maintain their authenticity [even when it can be simulated] …” “The bar is going to shift from “can you create?” to “can you make something that only you could create?” He talks about how the personal content on Instagram now is: “unpolished; it's blurry photos and shaky videos of people's daily experiences … flattering imagery is cheap to produce and boring to consume. People want content that feels real… Savvy creators are going to lean into explicitly unproduced and unflattering images of themselves. In a world where everything can be perfected, imperfection becomes a signal. Rawness isn't just aesthetic preference anymore—it's proof. It's defensive. A way of saying: this is real because it's imperfect.” While I partially love this, and I really hope it's true, as in I hope we don't need to look good for the camera anymore I would also challenge Adam on this, because pretty much every woman I know on social media has been sent sexual messages, and/or told they are ugly and/or fat when posting anything unflattering. I've certainly had both even for the same content, but I don't expect Adam has been the target for such posting! But I get his point. He goes on:“Labeling content as authentic or AI-generated is only part of the solution though. We, as an industry, are going to need to surface much more context about not only the media on our platforms, but the accounts that are sharing it in order for people to be able to make informed decisions about what to believe. Where is the account? When was it created? What else have they posted?” This is exactly what I've been saying for a while under my double down on being human focus. I use my Instagram @jfpennauthor as evidence of humanity, not as a sales channel. You can do both of course, but increasingly, you need to make sure your accounts at places have longevity and trust, even by the platforms themselves. Adam finishes: “In a world of infinite abundance and infinite doubt, the creators who can maintain trust and signal authenticity—by being real, transparent, and consistent—will stand out.” For other marketing trends for 2026, I recommend publicist Kathleen Schmidt's SubStack which is mostly focused on traditional publishing but still interesting for indies. In her 2026 article, she notes: “We have reached a social media saturation point where going viral can be meaningless and should not be the goal; authenticity and creativity should. She also says, “In-person events are important again,” and, “Social media marketing takes a nosedive… we have reached a saturation point … What publishers must figure out is how to make their social media campaigns stand out. If they remain somewhat uninspired, the money spent on social ads won't convert into book sales.” I think this is part of the rise of live selling as above, which can stand out above more ‘produced' videos. Kathleen also talks about AI usage. “AI can help lighten the burden of publicity and marketing.” “A lot of AI tools are coming to market to lessen the load: they can write pitches, create media lists for you, send pitches for you, and more. I know the industry is grappling with all things AI, but some of these tools are huge time savers and may help a book more than hurt it.” On that note … (7) AI will create, run, and optimise ads without the need for human intervention Many authors will be very happy about this as marketing is often the bane of our author business lives! As I noted in my 2026 goals, I would love to outsource more marketing tasks to AI. I want an “AI book marketing assistant” where I can upload a book and specify a budget and say, ‘Go market this,' then the AI will action the marketing, without me having to cobble together workflows between systems. Of course, it will present plans for me to approve but it will do the work itself on the various platforms and monitor and optimize things for me. I really hope 2026 is the year this becomes possible, because we are on the edge of it already in some areas. Amazon Ads launched a new agentic AI tool in September 2025 that creates professional-quality ads. I've also been working with Claude in Chrome browser to help me analyse my Amazon Ad data and suggest which keywords/products to turn off and what to put more budget into. I'll do a Patreon video on that soon. Meta announced it will enable AI ad creation by the end of 2026 for Facebook and Instagram. For authors who find ad creation overwhelming or time-consuming, this could be a game-changer. Of course, you will still need a budget! (8) 1000 True Fans becomes more important than ever Lots of authors and publishers are moaning about the difficulty of reaching readers in an era of ‘AI slop' but there is no shortage of excellent content created by humans, or humans using AI tools. As ever, our competition is less about other authors, or even authors using AI-assisted creation, we're competing against everything else that jostles for people's attention, and the volume of that is also growing exponentially. I've never been a fan of rapid release, and have said for years that you can't keep up with the pace of the machines. So play a different game. As Kevin Kelly wrote in 2008, If you have 1000 true fans, (also known as super fans), “you can make a living — if you are content to make a living but not a fortune.” [Kevin Kelly was on this show in 2023 talking about Excellent Advice for Living.] Many authors and the publishing industry are stuck in the old model of aiming to sell huge volumes of books at a low profit margin to a massive number of readers, many of them releasing ever faster to try and keep the algorithms moving. But the maths can work for the smaller audience of more invested readers and fans. If you only make $2 profit on an ebook, you need to sell 500 ebooks to make $1000, and then do it again next month. Or you can have a small community like my patreon.com/thecreativepenn where people pay $2 (or more) a month, so even a small revenue per person results in a better outcome over the year, as it is consistent monthly income with no advertising. But what if you could make $20 profit per book? That is entirely possible if you're producing high quality hardbacks on Kickstarter, or bundle deals of audiobooks, or whole series of ebooks. You would only need to sell to 50 people to make $1000. What about $100 profit per sale, which you can do with a small course or live event? You only need 10 people to make $1000, and this in-person focus also amplifies trust and fosters human connection. I've found the intimacy of my live Patreon Office Hours and also my webinars have been rewarding personally, but also financially, and are far more memorable — and potentially transformative — than a pre-recorded video or even another book. From the LinkedIn 2026 Big Ideas article: “In an AI-optimized world, intentional human connection will become the ultimate luxury.” The 1000 True Fans model is about serving a smaller, more personal audience with higher value products (and maybe services if that's your thing). As ever, its about niche and where you fit in the long long long long long tail. It's also about trust. Because there is definitely a shortage of that in so many areas, and as Adam Mosseri of Instagram has said, trust will be increasingly important. Trust takes time to build, but if you focus on serving your audience consistently, and delivering a high quality, and being authentic, this emerges as part of being human. In an echo of what happened when online commerce first took off, we are back to talking about trust. Back in 2010, I read Trust Agents: by Julien Smith and Chris Brogan, which clearly needs a comeback. There was a 10th anniversary edition published in 2020, so that's worth a read/listen. Chris Brogan was also on this show in 2017 when we talked about finding and serving your niche for the long term. That interview is still relevant, here's a quick excerpt, where I have (lightly edited) his response to my question on this topic back in 2017: Jo: The principle of know, like, and trust, why is that still important or perhaps even more important these days? Chris: There are a few things that at play there, Joanna. One is that the same tools that make it so easy for any of us to start and run a business also allow certain elements to decide whether or not they want to do something dubious. And with all new technologies that come, you know, there's nothing unique about these new technologies. In the 1800s, anyone could put anything in a bottle and sell it to you and say, this is gonna cure everything. Cancer — gone. And the bottle could have nothing in. You know, it could be Kool-Aid. And so, the idea of trying to understand what's behind the business though, one beautiful thing that's come is that we can see in much more dimensions who we're dealing with. We can understand better who's the face behind the brand. I really want people to try their best to be a lot clearer on what they stand for or what they say. And I don't really mean a tagline. I mean, humans don't really talk like that. They don't throw some sentence out as often as they can that you remember them for that phrase. But I would say that, we have so many media available to us — the plural of mediums — where we can be more of ourselves. And I think that there's a great opportunity to share the ‘you' behind the scenes, and some people get immediately terrified about this, ‘Ah, the last thing I want is for people to know more about me,' but I think we have such an opportunity. We have such an opportunity to voice our thoughts on something, to talk about the story that goes behind the product. We were all raised on overly produced material, but I think we don't want that anymore. We really want clarity, brevity, simplicity. We want the ability for what we feel is connection and then access. And so I think it's vital that we connect and show people our accessibility, not so that they can pester us with strange questions, but more so that you can say, this person stands with their product and their service and this person believes these things, and I feel something when I hear them and I wanna be part of that.” That's from Chris Brogan's interview here in 2017, and he is still blogging and speaking at writing at ChrisBrogan.com and I'm going to re-listen to the audiobook of Trust Agents again myself as I think it's more relevant than ever. The original quote comes from Bob Burg in his 1994 book, Endless Referrals, “All things being equal, people will do business with, and refer business to, those people they know, like and trust.” That still applies, and absolutely fits with the 1000 True Fans model of aiming to serve a smaller audience. As Kevin Kelly says in 1000 True Fans, “Instead of trying to reach the narrow and unlikely peaks of platinum bestseller hits, blockbusters, and celebrity status, you can aim for direct connection with a thousand true fans.” “On your way, no matter how many fans you actually succeed in gaining, you'll be surrounded not by faddish infatuation, but by genuine and true appreciation. It's a much saner destiny to hope for. And you are much more likely to actually arrive there.” In 2026, I hope that more authors (including me!) let go of ego goals and vanity metrics like ranking, gross sales (income before you take away costs), subscribers, followers, and likes, and consider important business numbers like profit (which is the money you have after costs like marketing are taken out), as well as number of true fans — and also lifestyle elements like number of weekends off, or days spent enjoying life and not just working! OK, that's my list of trends and predictions for 2026. Let me know what you think in the comments. Do you agree? Am I wrong? What have I missed? The post 2026 Trends And Predictions For Indie Authors And The Book Publishing Industry with Joanna Penn first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Leaving thousands of dollars in credit card offers on the table because you forgot to activate them? Brooke Merkle from CardPointers reveals how the Chrome extension and app automatically track 40+ credit cards, find the best card for every purchase, and helped one user rack up $40,000 in statement credits, all without spreadsheets or mental math. CardPointers is a tool that automatically adds credit card offers, tracks points across multiple cards, and recommends which card to use for every purchase. This is particularly valuable for military families with fee-waived premium cards. CardPointers even offers a military discount exlusive to our fans at militarymoneymanual.com/cardpointers. Main Points What Card Pointers Does Chrome extension automatically adds offers to all your credit cards (Amex, Chase, Citi, Capital One, Bank of America) Mobile app shows which card earns most points/cash back for each purchase Tracks all points balances across programs in one place Particularly powerful for military families with 5-10+ fee-waived cards The Offer Problem Card Pointers Solves Average credit card user has offers worth $2,000-3,000 annually Most people only activate/use 10-20% of available offers Offers expire if not added to cards within limited time Manually checking 40+ cards for offers is impossible Card Pointers adds ALL offers automatically to ALL cards How It Works Download Chrome extension (free) Connect credit card accounts (read-only access) Extension automatically checks for new offers daily Adds all offers with one click App shows real-time recommendations Pricing Chrome extension: Free basic version Premium features: ~$100-120/year Worth it if you have 5+ credit cards with offers Privacy & Security Read-only access to credit card accounts Same security as Mint, Personal Capital, Monarch Money Doesn't store credit card numbers Can't make purchases or move money Comparison to Manual Tracking Manual: Check 10 cards daily = 30+ minutes Card Pointers: Automatic, 0 minutes Manual: Miss 80% of offers Card Pointers: Capture 95%+ of offers Manual: Forget which card to use Card Pointers: Tells you instantly Best Practices Check extension weekly for new high-value offers Review app before major shopping trips Set up for both spouses if both have cards Particularly valuable during holiday shopping Monitor for targeted high-value offers (10X points, large statement credits) Integration with Military Benefits Works with all fee-waived military cards Tracks Amex Platinum benefits (Lululemon, Resy, streaming credits) Chase Sapphire Reserve credits (DoorDash, travel) Helps maximize value from cards you're not paying annual fees for Resources & Links Military discount on CardPointers available: militarymoneymanual.com/cardpointers Chrome Extension: Search "Card Pointers" in Chrome Web Store Mobile App: Available on iOS and Android app stores Military Money Manual: militarymoneymanual.com Military Money Manual Instagram: @militarymoneymanual   Spencer and Jamie offer one-on-one Military Money Mentor sessions. Get your personal military money and personal finance questions answered in a confidential coaching call. militarymoneymanual.com/mentor Over 20,000 military servicemembers and military spouses have graduated from the 100% free course available at militarymoneymanual.com/umc3 In the Ultimate Military Credit Cards Course, you can learn how to apply for the most premium credit cards and get special military protections, such as waived annual fees, on elite cards like The Platinum Card® from American Express and the Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card. https://militarymoneymanual.com/amex-platinum-military/ https://militarymoneymanual.com/chase-sapphire-reserve-military/ Learn how active duty military, military spouses, and Guard and Reserves on 30+ day active orders can get your annual fees waived on premium credit cards in the Ultimate Military Credit Cards Course at militarymoneymanual.com/umc3 If you want to maximize your military paycheck, check out Spencer's 5 star rated book The Military Money Manual: A Practical Guide to Financial Freedom on Amazon or at shop.militarymoneymanual.com. Want to be confident with your TSP investing? Check out the Confident TSP Investing course at militarymoneymanual.com/tsp to learn all about the Thrift Savings Plan and strategies for growing your wealth while in the military. Use promo code "podcast24" for $50 off. Plus, for every course sold, we'll donate one course to an E-4 or below- for FREE! If you have a question you would like us to answer on the podcast, please reach out on instagram.com/militarymoneymanual.

Artist: Vladis Cue (Koh Phangan, Thailand) Label: Hollystone Records Genre: Progressive House Release Date: 09.01.2026 Beatport: https://www.beatport.com/release/cairo/5698226 Hollystone Records: https://soundcloud.com/hollystonephangan Workover: https://soundcloud.com/zubovandrey Vladis Cue: @vladiscue CONTACT (DHM): Email — deephousemoscow@hotmail.com

On this episode, I cover some security concerns that have bubbled up over the last couple of weeks including MongoBleed and several harmful Chrome extensions, talk of ads coming to ChatGPT and much more! Reference Links: https://www.rorymon.com/blog/mongobleed-being-exploited-ram-price-inflation-continues-ads-in-chatgpt/

Kim Mitchell - All We AreDeep Purple - Hungry DazeLed Zeppelin – Stairway To HeavenBlack Sabbath – Iron ManBon Jovi – I'll Be There For YouTOTO – RosannaStevie Nicks – Edge Of Seventeen Kiss – Rock & Roll All Nite Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Guns ‘N Roses – November RainPrince – Purple RainElton John – Tiny DancerU2 – Where The Streets Have No NameKansas – Carry On Wayward SonStyx – Mr. RobotoThe Ramones – I Wanna Be Sedated Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ring in the new year with us, the Podcast Fellows. Matt: mastodon.cloud/@mattherron Louisa: mastodon.xyz/@Louisa Jeff: Letterboxd.com/jeffjk Please rate, review, and subscribe to our podcast and follow us on Twitter @hackthenetpod or e-mail us at SeeingReddit@gmail.com! Tell your friends if you enjoy the show! Our theme song is Chrome by Podington Bear and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.

NOTE: When you sign up for Patreon, PLEASE do it through a web browser (Safari, Chrome, etc.) and NOT an app on your iPhone. The Apple app charges 30% !!! If you just click on the link above, it should be fine. In today's episode, Becket Cook talks with former gay man Josh Duiker who shares his powerful testimony of leaving the LGBTQ lifestyle after a dramatic encounter with Jesus at age 40. From growing up secular and struggling with same-sex attraction, addiction, and promiscuity in Los Angeles, to attending a progressive gay-affirming church in Hollywood, Josh reveals how he discovered it was a false gospel and ultimately found true freedom at a biblical church. In this emotional interview, Josh opens up about his radical salvation experience alone in his apartment, why progressive "gay Christianity" couldn't satisfy his hunger for truth, how reading Scripture and solid preaching exposed the deception, leaving the gay lifestyle, facing backlash from friends and family, and embracing biblical faith. A must-listen story of redemption, grace, and the transforming power of the real Jesus Christ. The Becket Cook Show Ep. 225 Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

1855 kicks off with a bombshell AP investigation revealing how Silicon Valley giants IBM, Intel, NVIDIA, Oracle, and more spent decades building China’s surveillance state. Also covered, malicious Chrome extensions stealing credentials from 170+ sites, Microsoft’s ambitious Rust migration plans, China’s combat-ready humanoid robot, and Japan restarting the world’s largest nuclear plant. -Want to be a Guest on a Podcast or YouTube Channel? Sign up for GuestMatch.Pro -Thinking of buying a Starlink? Use my link to support the show. Subscribe to the Newsletter. Email Ray if you want to get in touch! Like and Follow Geek News Central’s Facebook Page. Support my Show Sponsor: Best Godaddy Promo Codes $11.99 – For a New Domain Name cjcfs3geek $6.99 a month Economy Hosting (Free domain, professional email, and SSL certificate for the 1st year.) Promo Code: cjcgeek1h $12.99 a month Managed WordPress Hosting (Free domain, professional email, and SSL certificate for the 1st year.) Promo Code: cjcgeek1w Support the show by becoming a Geek News Central Insider Get 1Password Full Summary Cochrane opens episode 1855 with a bombshell. The Associated Press released a major investigation into Silicon Valley’s role building China’s surveillance state. Companies like IBM, Intel, NVIDIA, and Oracle sold technologies for facial recognition and predictive policing. These tools enabled mass detention in Xinjiang. Cochrane expressed horror at the findings and emphasized American companies’ complicity in human rights abuses. Next, the podcast covered serious browser security concerns. Two malicious Chrome extensions had been stealing credentials from over 170 websites for years. Cochrane stressed the need for caution when installing plugins. He also highlighted how attackers exploit trusted extensions through manipulative tactics. Additionally, Cochrane discussed Microsoft’s ambitious plan to replace all C/C++ code with Rust by 2030. The company faces ongoing security challenges from memory safety issues in legacy languages. However, he noted this remains a research project rather than an official goal. Still, the move reflects broader industry trends toward Rust adoption. The episode then featured GitHub Universe 2025’s most influential open-source projects. Cochrane remarked on how the development landscape continues to evolve. TypeScript has emerged as a dominant language alongside new tools that streamline workflows. Meanwhile, advancements in humanoid robotics took center stage. Engine AI unveiled its T800 combat-ready humanoid robot with impressive features. The company even released a viral video of the robot kicking its CEO to prove authenticity. Following this, Cochrane covered the Blackbird flying car prototype. This eVTOL innovation showcases paradigm-shifting propulsion technology. It could transform urban transportation in the coming decades. The podcast also reviewed Android Central’s best smartphones of 2025. OnePlus 15 claimed the top spot thanks to its impressive specs and consumer-focused features. Furthermore, Cochrane addressed a controversial topic: Anna’s Archive scraping Spotify’s entire library. He expressed mixed feelings about the situation. On one hand, artists and the music industry face real harm. On the other, questions about digital preservation and access deserve consideration. Finally, the episode explored groundbreaking brain simulation research. Japan’s Fugaku supercomputer enabled unprecedented neural modeling. This marks a significant step toward understanding neurological diseases. Cochrane wrapped up by discussing Japan’s plans to restart the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant. Local residents remain concerned about safety despite government approval. The decision reflects Japan’s shifting energy strategy post-Fukushima. As the episode closed, Cochrane wished listeners a Happy New Year. He encouraged self-reflection and thanked everyone for tuning in throughout the year. Show Links Silicon Valley’s Role in Building China’s Surveillance State Two Chrome Extensions Caught Secretly Stealing Credentials from Over 170 Sites Microsoft to Replace All C/C++ Code With Rust By 2030 This Year’s Most Influential Open Source Projects EngineAI Unveils T800: Combat-Ready Humanoid Targets Mass Production Aviation Startup Shares Incredible Video of Prototype EV’s Maiden Takeoff Flight Android Central’s Best of 2025: Phones Pirate Archivist Group Scrapes Spotify’s 300TB Library This Breakthrough Brain Simulation Captures a True Brain at Work Japan Prepares to Restart World’s Biggest Nuclear Plant The post Money over Ethics: Silicon Valley and China’s Police State #1855 appeared first on Geek News Central.

We're taking a look back at some of our favorite episodes of 2025. This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett welcomes Bryan “Bossman” Martin, Owner of 4 State Trucks/Chrome Shop Mafia in Joplin, Missouri. During the episode, Bryan shares his journey from a mechanic to a leader in the custom truck industry, detailing the evolution of his business from a small parts store to a renowned custom truck shop. He discusses the impact of the "Trick My Truck" TV show on his business and the growth of his truck show. The episode highlights the sense of community in trucking, Bryan's future plans for 4 State Trucks and Chrome Shop Mafia, and so much more.Key topics in today's conversation include:Bryan's Background in Trucking (2:05)Evolution of 4 State Trucks (3:23)Impact of "Trick My Truck" (7:08)Reality of Reality TV (8:37)Origin of Chrome Shop Mafia (10:46)Trends in Truck Customization (16:24)Guilty by Association Truck Show Origins (20:26)Entertainment at the Truck Show (24:44)Community and Camaraderie in the Trucking Community (27:16)Future Plans for 4 State Trucks (28:05)Location and Accessibility for 4 State Trucks (30:14)Final Thoughts and Takeaways (32:04)Oakley Trucking is a family-owned and operated trucking company headquartered in North Little Rock, Arkansas. For more information, check out our show website: podcast.bruceoakley.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey Midnighters,Episode 187 of The Midnight Project hits different. This is a high speed mix, released on the final Wednesday of 2025, and it is packed with momentum from start to finish. No slowing down, no looking back, just pure drive as we close the year together.This episode brings together some of the most streamed techno of 2025 alongside fresh cuts and exclusives. From Ailen DC opening the door to an alternate universe, to Eli Brown, Adrianna, Bart Skils with Heerhorst, and the unmistakable pull of Adam Beyer and HNTR, the energy stays locked in. Arcane makes a huge mark throughout the mix with tracks from Miane, Matt Guy, TigerBlind, Nelayan, and Marie Vaunt, shaping a sound that defined the year.There is a personal thread running through this one as well. You will hear my remix of Raving Adventure by Horatio and Pagano, plus my extended remix of Chrome by bismark and Sygma, both built for speed, tension, and late night intensity. Space 92 hits hard twice, Joyhauser and Drunken Kong keep it raw, and the closing moments feel like a final statement before the year flips.Dive into the full tracklist and relive the journey right here:

It's our 2025 review of Linux and open source news including great gaming news, the impact of AI, the disappointments from Mozilla, the year of Wayland on the desktop, the politics of open source, Intel’s lack of interest, and wins for KDE. Gaming Steam Machine, controller, VR headset incoming from Valve Steam Deck LCD production is ending AI bullshit Open source devs say AI crawlers dominate traffic, forcing blocks on entire countries Wikimedia Foundation bemoans AI bot bandwidth burden ardour.org has banned 1.2M distinct IP addresses for trying to slurp from our git repository Introducing CC Signals: A New Social Contract for the Age of AI You should enforce your own existing licenses against AI mass crawling Anubis guards gates against hordes of LLM bot crawlers FSF calls Anubis malware It seems like the AI crawlers learned how to solve the Anubis challenges Mozilla Updates on Mozilla's Leadership and Growth Planning Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox An update on our Terms of Use Firefox deletes promise to never sell personal data, asks users not to panic Investing in what moves the internet forward When I say that I can't recommend third-party forks of either Firefox or Chrome for real world use, this kind of thing is why Firefox is fine. The people running it are not Mozilla Slammed Over Battery-Draining “Garbage” AI in Firefox Firefox Adds CoPilot Chatbot, New Tab Widgets in Nightly Builds Introducing AI, the Firefox way: A look at what we're working on and how you can help shape it Rewiring Mozilla: Doing for AI what we did for the web Mozilla's next chapter: Building the world's most trusted software company Wayland Fedora 43 Cleared To Ship With Wayland-Only GNOME GNOME Dropping X11 Support May Complicate Next Ubuntu LTS Ubuntu 25.10 drops support for GNOME on Xorg Ubuntu 25.10 and Fedora 43 to drop X11 in GNOME editions An update on the X11 GNOME Session Removal Wayback Is Now Hosted On FreeDesktop.org Wayback 0.3 released! GNOME Mutter Now “Completely Drops The Whole X11 Backend” KDE Going all-in on a Wayland future Politics The price of software freedom is eternal politics Framework flame war erupts over Linux controversy PSF Gets a Donor Surge After Rejecting Anti-DEI Federal Grant Intel All good things come to an end: Shutting down Clear Linux OS Intel's Open-Source Strategy Is Changing At Odds With The Ethos Of Open-Source The Death Of Clear Linux, Other Intel Linux Engineering Setbacks In 2025 KDE KDE Highlights from 2025 Tailscale Tailscale is an easy to deploy, zero-config, no-fuss VPN that allows you to build simple networks across complex infrastructure. Go to tailscale.com/lnl and try Tailscale out for free for up to 100 devices and 3 users, with no credit card required. Use code LATENIGHTLINUX for three free months of any Tailscale paid plan. Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes See our contact page for ways to get in touch. RSS: Subscribe to the RSS feeds here

Happy 2026 to you and yours! Matt: mastodon.cloud/@mattherron Louisa: mastodon.xyz/@Louisa Jeff: Letterboxd.com/jeffjk Please rate, review, and subscribe to our podcast and follow us on Twitter @hackthenetpod or e-mail us at SeeingReddit@gmail.com! Tell your friends if you enjoy the show! Our theme song is Chrome by Podington Bear and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.

It's our 2025 review of Linux and open source news including great gaming news, the impact of AI, the disappointments from Mozilla, the year of Wayland on the desktop, the politics of open source, Intel’s lack of interest, and wins for KDE. Gaming Steam Machine, controller, VR headset incoming from Valve Steam Deck LCD production is ending AI bullshit Open source devs say AI crawlers dominate traffic, forcing blocks on entire countries Wikimedia Foundation bemoans AI bot bandwidth burden ardour.org has banned 1.2M distinct IP addresses for trying to slurp from our git repository Introducing CC Signals: A New Social Contract for the Age of AI You should enforce your own existing licenses against AI mass crawling Anubis guards gates against hordes of LLM bot crawlers FSF calls Anubis malware It seems like the AI crawlers learned how to solve the Anubis challenges Mozilla Updates on Mozilla's Leadership and Growth Planning Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox An update on our Terms of Use Firefox deletes promise to never sell personal data, asks users not to panic Investing in what moves the internet forward When I say that I can't recommend third-party forks of either Firefox or Chrome for real world use, this kind of thing is why Firefox is fine. The people running it are not Mozilla Slammed Over Battery-Draining “Garbage” AI in Firefox Firefox Adds CoPilot Chatbot, New Tab Widgets in Nightly Builds Introducing AI, the Firefox way: A look at what we're working on and how you can help shape it Rewiring Mozilla: Doing for AI what we did for the web Mozilla's next chapter: Building the world's most trusted software company Wayland Fedora 43 Cleared To Ship With Wayland-Only GNOME GNOME Dropping X11 Support May Complicate Next Ubuntu LTS Ubuntu 25.10 drops support for GNOME on Xorg Ubuntu 25.10 and Fedora 43 to drop X11 in GNOME editions An update on the X11 GNOME Session Removal Wayback Is Now Hosted On FreeDesktop.org Wayback 0.3 released! GNOME Mutter Now “Completely Drops The Whole X11 Backend” KDE Going all-in on a Wayland future Politics The price of software freedom is eternal politics Framework flame war erupts over Linux controversy PSF Gets a Donor Surge After Rejecting Anti-DEI Federal Grant Intel All good things come to an end: Shutting down Clear Linux OS Intel's Open-Source Strategy Is Changing At Odds With The Ethos Of Open-Source The Death Of Clear Linux, Other Intel Linux Engineering Setbacks In 2025 KDE KDE Highlights from 2025 Tailscale Tailscale is an easy to deploy, zero-config, no-fuss VPN that allows you to build simple networks across complex infrastructure. Go to tailscale.com/lnl and try Tailscale out for free for up to 100 devices and 3 users, with no credit card required. Use code LATENIGHTLINUX for three free months of any Tailscale paid plan. Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes See our contact page for ways to get in touch. RSS: Subscribe to the RSS feeds here

Trans Siberian Orchestra – Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24Mavis Staples – Christmas VacationVince Guaraldi Trio – Linus & LucyCeline Dion – O Holy NightAlvin & The Chipmunks – All I Want For ChristmasKevin Bacon & The Guardians Of The Galaxy – Here It Is ChristmastimeJohn Lennon & Yoko Ono – Happy Xmas (War Is Over)Elvis Presley – Blue ChristmasNat King Cole – Joy To The WorldFirst To Eleven – Jingle Bell RockLyric Noel – Silent NightBing Crosby & The Andrews Sisters – Mele Kalikimaka (Merry Christmas) Dean Martin – Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Wham! – Last ChristmasThe Jackson 5 – I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa ClausQueen – Thank God It's ChristmasThe Ronettes – Sleigh RideElvis Presley – Here Comes Santa ClausThurl Ravenscroft & Boris Karloff – You're A Mean One, Mr. GrinchPaul McCartney – Wonderful ChristmastimeBrenda Lee – Rockin' Around The Christmas TreeJose Feliciano – Feliz NavidadTony Bennett – My Favourite ThingsEartha Kitt – Santa BabyFrank Sinatra & Dorothy Kristen – Baby It's Cold Outside Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Take a look back at some of our favorite interviews from the past year on Tech News Weekly! Eric Migicovsky, founder of the smartwatch company Pebble, joins Mikah to talk about exciting news with Pebble. Bloomberg antitrust reporter Leah Nylen returns to unpack the latest in the DOJ's case against Google. She explains the three proposed remedies—including a possible Chrome browser divestiture—and what testimony from tech competitors like DuckDuckGo, Perplexity, and OpenAI revealed about Google's dominance in search and AI. Leila Zia, Head of Research at the Wikimedia Foundation, outlines their new AI roadmap, which focuses on supporting Wikipedia's volunteer editors rather than replacing them. She details how AI will assist with moderation, multilingual knowledge expansion, and mentorship—all while upholding values of transparency and human agency. Scott Stein of CNET is staying busy as he joins the show to share his hands-on impressions of Nintendo's Switch 2 console, Mario Kart World, and its new features. And Consumer Reports' Derek Kravitz details Instacart's AI pricing practices. Host: Mikah Sargent Download or subscribe to Tech News Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit

Take a look back at some of our favorite interviews from the past year on Tech News Weekly! Eric Migicovsky, founder of the smartwatch company Pebble, joins Mikah to talk about exciting news with Pebble. Bloomberg antitrust reporter Leah Nylen returns to unpack the latest in the DOJ's case against Google. She explains the three proposed remedies—including a possible Chrome browser divestiture—and what testimony from tech competitors like DuckDuckGo, Perplexity, and OpenAI revealed about Google's dominance in search and AI. Leila Zia, Head of Research at the Wikimedia Foundation, outlines their new AI roadmap, which focuses on supporting Wikipedia's volunteer editors rather than replacing them. She details how AI will assist with moderation, multilingual knowledge expansion, and mentorship—all while upholding values of transparency and human agency. Scott Stein of CNET is staying busy as he joins the show to share his hands-on impressions of Nintendo's Switch 2 console, Mario Kart World, and its new features. And Consumer Reports' Derek Kravitz details Instacart's AI pricing practices. Host: Mikah Sargent Download or subscribe to Tech News Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit

Take a look back at some of our favorite interviews from the past year on Tech News Weekly! Eric Migicovsky, founder of the smartwatch company Pebble, joins Mikah to talk about exciting news with Pebble. Bloomberg antitrust reporter Leah Nylen returns to unpack the latest in the DOJ's case against Google. She explains the three proposed remedies—including a possible Chrome browser divestiture—and what testimony from tech competitors like DuckDuckGo, Perplexity, and OpenAI revealed about Google's dominance in search and AI. Leila Zia, Head of Research at the Wikimedia Foundation, outlines their new AI roadmap, which focuses on supporting Wikipedia's volunteer editors rather than replacing them. She details how AI will assist with moderation, multilingual knowledge expansion, and mentorship—all while upholding values of transparency and human agency. Scott Stein of CNET is staying busy as he joins the show to share his hands-on impressions of Nintendo's Switch 2 console, Mario Kart World, and its new features. And Consumer Reports' Derek Kravitz details Instacart's AI pricing practices. Host: Mikah Sargent Download or subscribe to Tech News Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit

Take a look back at some of our favorite interviews from the past year on Tech News Weekly! Eric Migicovsky, founder of the smartwatch company Pebble, joins Mikah to talk about exciting news with Pebble. Bloomberg antitrust reporter Leah Nylen returns to unpack the latest in the DOJ's case against Google. She explains the three proposed remedies—including a possible Chrome browser divestiture—and what testimony from tech competitors like DuckDuckGo, Perplexity, and OpenAI revealed about Google's dominance in search and AI. Leila Zia, Head of Research at the Wikimedia Foundation, outlines their new AI roadmap, which focuses on supporting Wikipedia's volunteer editors rather than replacing them. She details how AI will assist with moderation, multilingual knowledge expansion, and mentorship—all while upholding values of transparency and human agency. Scott Stein of CNET is staying busy as he joins the show to share his hands-on impressions of Nintendo's Switch 2 console, Mario Kart World, and its new features. And Consumer Reports' Derek Kravitz details Instacart's AI pricing practices. Host: Mikah Sargent Download or subscribe to Tech News Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit

Take a look back at some of our favorite interviews from the past year on Tech News Weekly! Eric Migicovsky, founder of the smartwatch company Pebble, joins Mikah to talk about exciting news with Pebble. Bloomberg antitrust reporter Leah Nylen returns to unpack the latest in the DOJ's case against Google. She explains the three proposed remedies—including a possible Chrome browser divestiture—and what testimony from tech competitors like DuckDuckGo, Perplexity, and OpenAI revealed about Google's dominance in search and AI. Leila Zia, Head of Research at the Wikimedia Foundation, outlines their new AI roadmap, which focuses on supporting Wikipedia's volunteer editors rather than replacing them. She details how AI will assist with moderation, multilingual knowledge expansion, and mentorship—all while upholding values of transparency and human agency. Scott Stein of CNET is staying busy as he joins the show to share his hands-on impressions of Nintendo's Switch 2 console, Mario Kart World, and its new features. And Consumer Reports' Derek Kravitz details Instacart's AI pricing practices. Host: Mikah Sargent Download or subscribe to Tech News Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit

Take a look back at some of our favorite interviews from the past year on Tech News Weekly! Eric Migicovsky, founder of the smartwatch company Pebble, joins Mikah to talk about exciting news with Pebble. Bloomberg antitrust reporter Leah Nylen returns to unpack the latest in the DOJ's case against Google. She explains the three proposed remedies—including a possible Chrome browser divestiture—and what testimony from tech competitors like DuckDuckGo, Perplexity, and OpenAI revealed about Google's dominance in search and AI. Leila Zia, Head of Research at the Wikimedia Foundation, outlines their new AI roadmap, which focuses on supporting Wikipedia's volunteer editors rather than replacing them. She details how AI will assist with moderation, multilingual knowledge expansion, and mentorship—all while upholding values of transparency and human agency. Scott Stein of CNET is staying busy as he joins the show to share his hands-on impressions of Nintendo's Switch 2 console, Mario Kart World, and its new features. And Consumer Reports' Derek Kravitz details Instacart's AI pricing practices. Host: Mikah Sargent Download or subscribe to Tech News Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit

Max is digging through the back of his closet for a flannel shirt as he ventures into the world of the Grunge throwback record from Superheaven; 2015's Ours is Chrome. Will he be rocking it out, or will he find it all is a bit of a Blur?Relisten to Superheaven's "Ours is Chrome" on Spotify and Apple Music.Discover more new music and hear your favourite artists with 78 Amped on Instagram and TikTok. Watch episodes on our YouTube channel and don't forget to like and subscribe.

Take a look back at some of our favorite interviews from the past year on Tech News Weekly! Eric Migicovsky, founder of the smartwatch company Pebble, joins Mikah to talk about exciting news with Pebble. Bloomberg antitrust reporter Leah Nylen returns to unpack the latest in the DOJ's case against Google. She explains the three proposed remedies—including a possible Chrome browser divestiture—and what testimony from tech competitors like DuckDuckGo, Perplexity, and OpenAI revealed about Google's dominance in search and AI. Leila Zia, Head of Research at the Wikimedia Foundation, outlines their new AI roadmap, which focuses on supporting Wikipedia's volunteer editors rather than replacing them. She details how AI will assist with moderation, multilingual knowledge expansion, and mentorship—all while upholding values of transparency and human agency. Scott Stein of CNET is staying busy as he joins the show to share his hands-on impressions of Nintendo's Switch 2 console, Mario Kart World, and its new features. And Consumer Reports' Derek Kravitz details Instacart's AI pricing practices. Host: Mikah Sargent Download or subscribe to Tech News Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit

Take a look back at some of our favorite interviews from the past year on Tech News Weekly! Eric Migicovsky, founder of the smartwatch company Pebble, joins Mikah to talk about exciting news with Pebble. Bloomberg antitrust reporter Leah Nylen returns to unpack the latest in the DOJ's case against Google. She explains the three proposed remedies—including a possible Chrome browser divestiture—and what testimony from tech competitors like DuckDuckGo, Perplexity, and OpenAI revealed about Google's dominance in search and AI. Leila Zia, Head of Research at the Wikimedia Foundation, outlines their new AI roadmap, which focuses on supporting Wikipedia's volunteer editors rather than replacing them. She details how AI will assist with moderation, multilingual knowledge expansion, and mentorship—all while upholding values of transparency and human agency. Scott Stein of CNET is staying busy as he joins the show to share his hands-on impressions of Nintendo's Switch 2 console, Mario Kart World, and its new features. And Consumer Reports' Derek Kravitz details Instacart's AI pricing practices. Host: Mikah Sargent Download or subscribe to Tech News Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit

A single Chrome setting change can remove AI from your Chrome search bar … if you want! The post GET AI OUT OF YOUR SEARCH BAR! appeared first on sound*bytes.

In this episode, we cover Claude's Chrome plugin becoming available to all paid users and what the rollout means for everyday workflows. We also break down the potential security and privacy risks tied to browser-based AI tools and why users should be cautious as adoption accelerates.Try Delve: https://delve.co/Get the top 40+ AI Models for $20 at AI Box: ⁠⁠https://aibox.aiJoin my AI Hustle Community: https://www.skool.com/aihustleSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Choosing a browser used to be simple - pick Chrome, Edge, or Safari and move on. But in 2025, browser choice has become a much deeper decision, especially for developers and power users. With options like Firefox, Arc, Brave, Opera GX, and even AI-driven browsers entering the conversation, the question isn't just which browser is best - it's what are you optimizing for? In this Web News, we break down how people choose their browser, when it makes sense to switch, and whether paying for a browser experience is actually worth it. ‍Show Notes: https://www.htmlallthethings.com/podcast/how-to-choose-the-right-browser

Hidden listing keywords. An Amazon & TikTok Shop reality show. And a tool that exposes the Amazon influencers hyping your competitors' products. Special edition Weekly Buzz today. Let's go!   We're back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10's VP of Education and Strategy, Bradley Sutton, and Helium 10's Principal Brand Evangelist, Carrie Miller. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, TikTok Shop, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10's newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level. 1️⃣ Listing Builder combines 8 tools into one, integrating keyword research and listing creation so you can find, analyze, and optimize Amazon listings in one place. 2️⃣ Helium 10's Scale Stories YouTube series follows real sellers at different stages, with expert mentors guiding beginners and stuck sellers step by step to grow. 3️⃣ TikTok Product Finder helps sellers discover winning TikTok Shop products using filters like category, price, sales, GMV, affiliates, and influencers. 4️⃣ Helium 10's Chrome extension now supports Amazon Saudi Arabia, letting sellers analyze sales and opportunities in this fast-growing market. 5️⃣ TikTok Hot Videos shows top-performing TikTok Shop videos by keyword, category, and timeframe, helping sellers and influencers replicate high-converting content. 6️⃣ Amazon Influencer Finder helps sellers discover, analyze, and contact Amazon influencers making product videos, making it easy to recruit proven creators for listings. 7️⃣ TikTok Shop Ads tool lets sellers analyze GMV Max ads by platform, product, and video to spot top-performing creatives and improve ROI. 8️⃣ Helium 10 Share of Voice shows how much page-one visibility your brand owns across organic, sponsored, and video placements, revealing true share of shelf beyond rankings. 9️⃣ Keyword Tracker now includes built-in translation, letting sellers instantly understand and analyze foreign-language keywords across global Amazon marketplaces.

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NOTE: When you sign up for Patreon, PLEASE do it through a web browser (Safari, Chrome, etc.) and NOT an app on your iPhone. The Apple app charges 30% !!! If you just click on the link above, it should be fine. In this powerful, testimony, Janick Christen joins Becket Cook from Switzerland to share her journey through childhood trauma, identity confusion, gender dysphoria, medical transition (including hormones and surgeries), and the moment she says God confronted her with a choice that changed everything. This conversation walks through the pain, the beliefs, the questions, and the cost—then traces what she describes as a step-by-step restoration of identity through surrender to Jesus. Janick speaks candidly about mental health battles, the complexity of family dysfunction, and why she believes “fruit” in someone’s life isn’t the same as God’s approval. If you’ve wrestled with identity, faith, suffering, or how Christians should respond with truth and compassion, this episode is for you. Janick Christen's Book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/2970145715 Her Ministry Website: https://trans4freedom.org The Becket Cook Show Ep. 224 Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Atlassian has announced plans to take on Google and Apple with a near-$1 billion acquisition of an AI-powered browse. Nvidia is investing $5 billion USD into its long-time rival Intel that flips a decades-long rivalry into a collaboration. OpenAI, the owner of ChatGPT wants to buy Google’s Chrome… if Google is forced by the courts to sell it _ Download the free app (App Store): http://bit.ly/FluxAppStore Download the free app (Google Play): http://bit.ly/FluxappGooglePlay Daily newsletter: https://bit.ly/fluxnewsletter Flux on Instagram: http://bit.ly/fluxinsta Flux on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@flux.finance —- The content in this podcast reflects the views and opinions of the hosts, and is intended for personal and not commercial use. We do not represent or endorse the accuracy or reliability of any opinion, statement or other information provided or distributed in these episodes.__See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The White House bans foreign-made drones. African law enforcement agencies crackdown on cybercrime. A new phishing campaign targets Russian military personnel and defense-related organizations. A University of Phoenix data breach affects about 3.5 million people. A pair of Chrome extensions covertly hijack user traffic. Romania's national water authority suffered a ransomware attack. A cyberattack in France disrupts postal, identity, and banking services for millions of customers. NIST and MITRE announce a $20 million partnership for AI research centers. A think-tank says the U.S. needs to go on the cyber offensive. Tim Starks from CyberScoop discusses the passage of the defense Authorization Bill and a look back at 2025. In high school, it's no child left unscanned. Remember to leave us a 5-star rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Miss an episode? Sign-up for our daily intelligence roundup, Daily Briefing, and you'll never miss a beat. And be sure to follow CyberWire Daily on LinkedIn. CyberWire Guest Today we are joined by Tim Starks from CyberScoop discussing the passage of the Defense Authorization Bill and a look back at 2025. Selected Reading Trump Administration Declares Foreign-Made Drones a Security Threat (The New York Times) Hundreds of Arrests as Operation Sentinel Recovers $3m (Infosecurity Magazine) Cyber spies use fake New Year concert invites to target Russian military (The Record) University of Phoenix Data Breach - 3.5 Million+ Individuals Affected (CybersecurityNews) Malicious extensions in Chrome Web store steal user credentials (BleepingComputer) Ransomware Hits Romanian Water Authority, 1000 Systems Knocked Offline (Hackread) Cyberattack knocks offline France's postal, banking services (BleepingComputer) NIST, MITRE announce $20 million research effort on AI cybersecurity (CyberScoop) US Must Go on Offense in Cyberspace, Report Warns (Govifosecurity) AI Bathroom Monitors? Welcome To America's New Surveillance High Schools (Forbes) Share your feedback. What do you think about CyberWire Daily? Please take a few minutes to share your thoughts with us by completing our brief listener survey. Thank you for helping us continue to improve our show. Want to hear your company in the show? N2K CyberWire helps you reach the industry's most influential leaders and operators, while building visibility, authority, and connectivity across the cybersecurity community. Learn more at sponsor.thecyberwire.com. The CyberWire is a production of N2K Networks, your source for strategic workforce intelligence. © N2K Networks, Inc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After a year tangled in political drama, AI hype, and regulation battles, the TWiT crew explains how many of tech's "biggest stories" simply fizzled into nothing or left us with new headaches by year's end. • Year-end tech trends: AI, politics, and security dominated 2025 • Major stories faded fast: TikTok saga, political tech drama, DOGE scandal • TikTok's ownership battle—Oracle, Trump donors, and US-China tensions • China tech fears: banned drones, IoT vulnerabilities, secret radios in buses • Rising political pressure for internet privacy and media literacy reform • Surveillance and kill switch concerns in US grid and port infrastructure • Convenience vs. privacy: Americans trade data for discounts and ease • Age verification, surveillance, and flawed facial recognition across countries • Discord's ID leak highlights risks of rushed compliance with privacy laws • Social media's impact on kids pushes age-gating and verification laws • ISPs monetize customer data, VPNs pitched for personal privacy • Global government crackdowns: UK bans VPN advertising, mandates age checks • The illusion of absolute privacy: flawed age gates and persistent tracking • AI takes over: explosive growth, but profits elusive for big players • Arms race in LLMs: DeepSeek's breakthrough, OpenAI/Meta talent bidding war • Ad-driven models still rule; Amazon's playbook repeated in AI • Humanoid robots and AGI hype: skepticism vs. Silicon Valley optimism • AI-generated art, media, and the challenge of deepfake detection • Social platforms falter: Instagram and X swamped by fake or low-value content • Google's legal, regulatory, and technical woes: ad tech trial, Manifest V3 backlash • RAM price spikes and hardware shortages blamed on AI data center demand • YouTube overtakes mobile for podcast and video viewing, Oscars move online • The internet's growth: Cloudflare stats, X vs. Reddit, spam domain trends • Weird tech stories: hacked crosswalks, Nintendo Switch 2 Staplegate, LEGO theft ring • Sad farewell: Lamar Wilson's passing and mental health awareness in tech • Reflections on the year's turbulence and hopes for a better 2026 Host: Leo Laporte Guests: Mikah Sargent, Paris Martineau, and Steve Gibson Download or subscribe to This Week in Tech at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: expressvpn.com/twit zscaler.com/security Melissa.com/twit ventionteams.com/twit auraframes.com/ink

You're winding down for the year?

After a year tangled in political drama, AI hype, and regulation battles, the TWiT crew explains how many of tech's "biggest stories" simply fizzled into nothing or left us with new headaches by year's end. Year-end tech trends: AI, politics, and security dominated 2025 Major stories faded fast: TikTok saga, political tech drama, DOGE scandal TikTok's ownership battle—Oracle, Trump donors, and US-China tensions China tech fears: banned drones, IoT vulnerabilities, secret radios in buses Rising political pressure for internet privacy and media literacy reform Surveillance and kill switch concerns in US grid and port infrastructure Convenience vs. privacy: Americans trade data for discounts and ease Age verification, surveillance, and flawed facial recognition across countries Discord's ID leak highlights risks of rushed compliance with privacy laws Social media's impact on kids pushes age-gating and verification laws ISPs monetize customer data, VPNs pitched for personal privacy Global government crackdowns: UK bans VPN advertising, mandates age checks The illusion of absolute privacy: flawed age gates and persistent tracking AI takes over: explosive growth, but profits elusive for big players Arms race in LLMs: DeepSeek's breakthrough, OpenAI/Meta talent bidding war Ad-driven models still rule; Amazon's playbook repeated in AI Humanoid robots and AGI hype: skepticism vs. Silicon Valley optimism AI-generated art, media, and the challenge of deepfake detection Social platforms falter: Instagram and X swamped by fake or low-value content Google's legal, regulatory, and technical woes: ad tech trial, Manifest V3 backlash RAM price spikes and hardware shortages blamed on AI data center demand YouTube overtakes mobile for podcast and video viewing, Oscars move online The internet's growth: Cloudflare stats, X vs. Reddit, spam domain trends Weird tech stories: hacked crosswalks, Nintendo Switch 2 Staplegate, LEGO theft ring Sad farewell: Lamar Wilson's passing and mental health awareness in tech Reflections on the year's turbulence and hopes for a better 2026 Host: Leo Laporte Guests: Mikah Sargent, Paris Martineau, and Steve Gibson Download or subscribe to This Week in Tech at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: expressvpn.com/twit zscaler.com/security Melissa.com/twit ventionteams.com/twit auraframes.com/ink

After a year tangled in political drama, AI hype, and regulation battles, the TWiT crew explains how many of tech's "biggest stories" simply fizzled into nothing or left us with new headaches by year's end. Year-end tech trends: AI, politics, and security dominated 2025 Major stories faded fast: TikTok saga, political tech drama, DOGE scandal TikTok's ownership battle—Oracle, Trump donors, and US-China tensions China tech fears: banned drones, IoT vulnerabilities, secret radios in buses Rising political pressure for internet privacy and media literacy reform Surveillance and kill switch concerns in US grid and port infrastructure Convenience vs. privacy: Americans trade data for discounts and ease Age verification, surveillance, and flawed facial recognition across countries Discord's ID leak highlights risks of rushed compliance with privacy laws Social media's impact on kids pushes age-gating and verification laws ISPs monetize customer data, VPNs pitched for personal privacy Global government crackdowns: UK bans VPN advertising, mandates age checks The illusion of absolute privacy: flawed age gates and persistent tracking AI takes over: explosive growth, but profits elusive for big players Arms race in LLMs: DeepSeek's breakthrough, OpenAI/Meta talent bidding war Ad-driven models still rule; Amazon's playbook repeated in AI Humanoid robots and AGI hype: skepticism vs. Silicon Valley optimism AI-generated art, media, and the challenge of deepfake detection Social platforms falter: Instagram and X swamped by fake or low-value content Google's legal, regulatory, and technical woes: ad tech trial, Manifest V3 backlash RAM price spikes and hardware shortages blamed on AI data center demand YouTube overtakes mobile for podcast and video viewing, Oscars move online The internet's growth: Cloudflare stats, X vs. Reddit, spam domain trends Weird tech stories: hacked crosswalks, Nintendo Switch 2 Staplegate, LEGO theft ring Sad farewell: Lamar Wilson's passing and mental health awareness in tech Reflections on the year's turbulence and hopes for a better 2026 Host: Leo Laporte Guests: Mikah Sargent, Paris Martineau, and Steve Gibson Download or subscribe to This Week in Tech at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: expressvpn.com/twit zscaler.com/security Melissa.com/twit ventionteams.com/twit auraframes.com/ink

After a year tangled in political drama, AI hype, and regulation battles, the TWiT crew explains how many of tech's "biggest stories" simply fizzled into nothing or left us with new headaches by year's end. Year-end tech trends: AI, politics, and security dominated 2025 Major stories faded fast: TikTok saga, political tech drama, DOGE scandal TikTok's ownership battle—Oracle, Trump donors, and US-China tensions China tech fears: banned drones, IoT vulnerabilities, secret radios in buses Rising political pressure for internet privacy and media literacy reform Surveillance and kill switch concerns in US grid and port infrastructure Convenience vs. privacy: Americans trade data for discounts and ease Age verification, surveillance, and flawed facial recognition across countries Discord's ID leak highlights risks of rushed compliance with privacy laws Social media's impact on kids pushes age-gating and verification laws ISPs monetize customer data, VPNs pitched for personal privacy Global government crackdowns: UK bans VPN advertising, mandates age checks The illusion of absolute privacy: flawed age gates and persistent tracking AI takes over: explosive growth, but profits elusive for big players Arms race in LLMs: DeepSeek's breakthrough, OpenAI/Meta talent bidding war Ad-driven models still rule; Amazon's playbook repeated in AI Humanoid robots and AGI hype: skepticism vs. Silicon Valley optimism AI-generated art, media, and the challenge of deepfake detection Social platforms falter: Instagram and X swamped by fake or low-value content Google's legal, regulatory, and technical woes: ad tech trial, Manifest V3 backlash RAM price spikes and hardware shortages blamed on AI data center demand YouTube overtakes mobile for podcast and video viewing, Oscars move online The internet's growth: Cloudflare stats, X vs. Reddit, spam domain trends Weird tech stories: hacked crosswalks, Nintendo Switch 2 Staplegate, LEGO theft ring Sad farewell: Lamar Wilson's passing and mental health awareness in tech Reflections on the year's turbulence and hopes for a better 2026 Host: Leo Laporte Guests: Mikah Sargent, Paris Martineau, and Steve Gibson Download or subscribe to This Week in Tech at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: expressvpn.com/twit zscaler.com/security Melissa.com/twit ventionteams.com/twit auraframes.com/ink

Brett and Christina host an OG episode. Christina talks about her upcoming spinal surgery and navigating insurance hassles. Brett talks about his sleep issues, project progress, and coding routines. They dive into the complexities of USB-C cables, from volts to data rates. And TV’s just ‘okay’ now, except for some softcore gay porn. Kagi search saves the day. Happy holidays — and get some sleep. Sponsor Copilot Money can help you take control of your finances. Get a fresh start with your money for 2026 with 26% off when you visit try.copilot.money/overtired and use code OVERTIRED. Shopify is the commerce platform behind 10% of all eCommerce in the US, from household names like Mattel and Gymshark, to brands just getting started. Get started today at shopify.com/overtired. Show Links CaberQu BLE cable tester Umami Analytics Plausible Analytics Kagi The Comfortable Problem of Mid TV – The New York Times Fallout Heated Rivalry (TV Series 2025– ) – IMDb Chapters 00:00 Introduction and Greetings 00:40 Christina’s Health Update 05:05 Brett’s Sleep and Work Routine 12:19 USB-C Cable Confusion 22:03 Sponsor Break: Shopify 24:26 Sponsor Break: Copilot Money 26:57 Exploring Rocket Money and Web Interfaces 27:21 Discovering Umami Analytics 28:06 Nostalgia for Mint and Fever 28:44 The Decline of RSS and Google Reader 31:45 Switching to Kagi Search Engine 32:33 The Rise of AI-Generated Content 40:46 TV Shows: Is TV Just Okay Now? 47:24 The Cultural Phenomenon of Heated Rivalry 52:50 Wrapping Up and Holiday Wishes Join the Conversation Merch Come chat on Discord! Twitter/ovrtrd Instagram/ovrtrd Youtube Get the Newsletter Thanks! You’re downloading today’s show from CacheFly’s network BackBeat Media Podcast Network Check out more episodes at overtiredpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Find Brett as @ttscoff, Christina as @film_girl, Jeff as @jsguntzel, and follow Overtired at @ovrtrd on Twitter. Transcript Universal Serial Bitching Introduction and Greetings [00:00:00] Brett: Hey, you’re listening to Overtired. I am Brett Terpstra, and it’s just me and Christina Warren this morning. How you doing, Christina? Christina: Doing pretty good. Doing pretty good. Yeah. This is the, this is the OG Overtired configuration. Brett: right back to basics. Um, Christina: We do miss you Jeff, though. Ho, ho, ho. Hope that Jeff is having a great holiday with his family. Brett: we’ll have to have some, uh, gratuitous Wiki K hole that you go down just to, to commemorate the olden days. Um, so yeah, let’s, uh, let’s, let’s do a quick check-in. Christina’s Health Update Brett: Um, I’m curious about your health and all of the wildness that’s going on with your spine and whatnot. Christina: Yeah. Yeah. Um, same. I wanna hear about you too. Um, so, uh, Christina’s cervical spine update, as it were. Um, I am [00:01:00] still waiting to, as we’re recording this, which is like. Uh, three days before Christmas, uh, I’m still waiting to hear from the, uh, hospital to see if I can, when I can get scheduled. Um, insurance has sort of been a pain in the ass, so when I talked to them last week, they were like, we sent them some paperwork. We’re still waiting for some things back then. I called the insurance company and the, the, uh, like my insurance is like, has like an intermediary service that is supposed to contact the insurance company on your behalf and that person, but like, I can’t contact them directly. And then that person was like, oh, you don’t need pre-authorization. Go ahead and schedule the surgery. And I’m like, this doesn’t feel right. Um, so, but, but we, we went ahead and we called back the, you know, the, the surgeon, um, his office and they were very nice and we were like. They say that we can get on the books. So I don’t know when that will be. I’m hoping that it will be, you know, like the first week of January, um, or, or, or thereabouts. Um, but I don’t know. Um, [00:02:00] so I am still kind of in this like limbo stage where I don’t know exactly when I’m gonna have the surgery, except hopefully soon. And, um, and, and for anyone who hasn’t caught up, I, uh, I have a bulging disc on C seven on my cervical spine, and I’m going to get a, um, artificial disc replacement. Um, so they’re gonna take out the, you know, bulging bone and all that and put in, uh, some synthetic piece and then hopefully that will immediately relieve the, the pain that has been primarily through the left side of, uh, my arm and my shoulder, um, uh, down through my fingers. But it’s been on my right side a little bit too. So hopefully when that is done, it’ll be a relatively short recovery. Um, I’ll have an early scar and um, I will be, you know, not. Uh, the pain right now, like the levels aren’t terrible, but I’m pretty numb, uh, on my, my, my left arm, my, my right arm, um, uh, or right fingers I guess too, but, but really it’s, it’s, uh, the, the, the left side [00:03:00] that’s the worst. And traveling. Um, I’m, I’m in Atlanta with my family right now and, you know, kind of doing other things is just not, it’s not great. So, um, hopefully I’ll be getting surgery sooner rather than later. But obviously all that stuff does impact your mental health too, when you’re in pain and, and you, you know, are freaked out too about, you know, like, even though like they do, you know, it, it’s not an uncommon surgery and, and it, and it should be fine, but you know, there’s always these things in the back of your mind. You’re like, okay, well what if something goes wrong or whatever. So I’m just, I’m looking forward to, um, you know, light at the end of the tunnel, but um, still kind of in a holding pattern with that. So Brett: Wow. So that scar’s, that scar’s gonna be on your throat. Christina: Yeah, Brett: Wow. Christina: yeah. Like probably like. No, not really. I’m, I mean, I’m hoping that it’ll be, uh, like no, it really won’t be at all. Brett: I, I, I would like to have it. I can understand why you wouldn’t. Christina: yeah, I mean, you know, I will obviously, you know, uh, hopefully it’ll be like low enough to be [00:04:00] primarily covered by shirts or other things, although, who knows? ’cause I do like to wear like, lower cut things sometimes. I don’t know. It, it’ll hopefully, you Brett: I heard chokers are coming back. Christina: Yeah, I don’t, unfortunately. I think it’s gonna be too, uh, low for that. Brett: Okay. Christina: uh, like, it, it’s gonna be, I think like it might hit against my laryn is, is what they say. That’s the other thing too. I might have, you know, some hoarseness after, won’t we permanent? Um, you know, knock on wood. Um, Brett: go on Etsy, you can get, um, they’re for BDSM, they’re like neck, uh, they hold your chin up. They’re like posture enhancers. Uh, but they sell them within leather with like corset straps. ’cause they’re like A-B-D-S-M accessory. That would work. Christina: No, no. Not even once. Uh, not even once. I mean, look, a good group of people who wanna do that, uh, I I will not be wearing a collar of any sort of that sort of thing. Uh, I, I, I don’t, I don’t really wanna, wanna be part [00:05:00] of, uh, one of that, those types of, you know, uh, Harlequin romance novels. , Brett’s Sleep and Work Routine Brett: All right, well, I will go ahead and check in. Um, I, I’m sleeping really well for like two days at a time, and then I’ll have. A string of like five or six hours of sleep, which isn’t nothing. Um, but it’s not quite enough for me to not feel tired all the time. And two nights of sleep is not enough for me to catch up on sleep. And, um, so I’m kind of, this has been going on for like a year though, so it’s, I’m just kind of, I’m used to it and I’ve learned to operate pretty well on six or seven hours of sleep, even though historically like I need eight and a half. Um, but I’m doing okay and I get up about four every morning and I start coding and I usually code from like four to noon, so an eight [00:06:00] hour workday, uh, with a breakfast somewhere in there. And, um, I’ve made really good progress. Marked is, as far as I can tell, ready to go wide with the beta. Um. I think I’ve solved every bug that’s been reported so far. I only have about a hundred testers right now, um, but I’m gonna open it up, uh, try to get maybe a thousand testers for a couple weeks and then go for a live release. The biggest thing that I’m running into is problems with getting the, like free trial and the purchase mechanisms working, which is the exact same thing that’s holding up NV Ultra right now. Um, so if I can figure it out for Mark, I can port it to NV Ultra. I can have two apps out there making money, hopefully never have to get a job again. Um, I’m teamed up right now with Dan Peterson, formerly of One Password. Um, and we’re [00:07:00] working on some iOS apps and. And, uh, apex. My, my, all my Universal markdown processor is, it’s coming along really well. I’ve, I’ve put it out there. Um, I’ve talked to John Gruber a little bit about it. He’s gonna give it more of a workout and get back to me. Um, but I think, I think it’s getting to a point where I would be comfortable integrating it into Mark and even talking to some other, uh, apps about using it as their default processor, um, and kind of alleviating some of the issues people run into with, uh, differences in syntax. Um, I. I, I, I talked to Devon, think, uh, Eric from Devon think about using it. ’cause they use multi markdown right now, uh, which has a lot of cool features, but is not [00:08:00] really in sync with what most of the web is using these days. Um, so I talked to them about it and they’re like, oh, we had the exact same idea and we’re almost done with our own universal processor. Um, and theirs is gonna output like RTF and things that I don’t need apex to do. ’cause you can just pipe apex into panoc and do everything you need. So anyway, I’m, I’m tired. I’m, I’m in good spirits. I. I’m dealing fine with winter. My, I’m alone on Christmas, which is gonna be weird. Um, my family’s outta town. Elle is house sitting I’ll, I’ll go visit Elle, but most of the day I’m gonna be like by myself on Christmas and I don’t drink anymore. And I, I don’t, I don’t know how that’s gonna go yet. Um, initially I thought, oh, that’s fine. I like being alone. But then, [00:09:00] then the idea of like, not having anyone to talk to you on Christmas day started to feel a little depressing. Christina: Yeah. Yeah. Um, but, um, hopefully, um, when, when will, uh, when will I’ll be back from, from house sitting. How long is, uh, are, are they going to be Brett: I think. I think the people, the, the house owners come back Thursday or Friday. Christina: Okay. Brett: Then we’re gonna take off and go up to Minneapolis to hang out with her family for a weekend. So, I don’t know. It’ll, it’s gonna be fine. It’s gonna be fine. We’re gonna like cook on Christmas Eve and, and have leftovers on Christmas day. It’ll be fine. Christina: Yeah, yeah. Well, but, but it, but, but that is weird. Like, I’m sure like to be, you know, not, not, not, not with like your usual crew, but, um, [00:10:00] especially without the alcohol there. But that’s probably a good thing too. Brett: Yeah, I guess. Um, I will have all the cats. I’ll be fine. I have to take care of the dog too. Christina: Have, have you heard any updates, like, um, I guess, um, about when you were, you know, you were in the hospital a few times over the last year with, with various things. Did you ever get any definitive update on what that was? Brett: On which one? I have so many symptoms. Which one are we talking about? Christina: Well, I guess I, I guess when you, you know, you’ve had to be like hospitalized or Brett: The pancreatitis. Christina: had the pancreatitis. Brett: the, the fact that it hasn’t happened again since I stopped drinking, um, really does indicate that it was entirely alcohol that was causing the problem. Um, so yeah, I’m just, I’m never gonna drink again. That’s fine. It’s, it’s all fine. Um, I did, I did get approved to get back on Medicaid. Um, so [00:11:00] yeah, I haven’t gotten the paperwork in the mail yet. Uh, but my old card should just start working and I’ll be able to, my, my new doctor wants a whole bunch more tests, including an MRI of my pituitary gland. Um. Like testosterone tests and stuff that I guess is more specific to what she thinks might be going on with me. Um, but now I can, I can actually get those tests That would’ve been just a huge out-of-pocket expense over the last couple months. So I’m excited. I’m excited to be back on Medicaid. I wish everyone could have Medicaid. Christina: Yeah, that would be really nice. That would be really nice if, if, if we had systems like that available, um, for everyone. Um, but. Instead, you know, if they’re, like, if you have really great health, I mean, you, you pointed those out. Like you have really great health insurance if you [00:12:00] can prove that you, you know, make absolutely no money. Um, but, but that opens up so many other, you know, issues that most people aren’t lucky enough to be able Brett: right. Yeah, totally. Christina: right. Brett: All right, well do you, okay, first topic. USB-C Cable Confusion Brett: How much do you know about USBC cables and the various specs? Christina: Uh, Brett: you know a shit ton. Christina: I do, unfortunately, I know a lot. Brett: So I, I had been operating under the assumption that there were basically, you had like data USBC cables, you had, uh, thunderbolt USBC cables and you had like, power only USPC cables. It turns out there’s like 18 different varieties of different, uh, like vol, uh, voltage, uh, amperage, uh, levels, like total wattage basically. And, um, and transfer speeds. And, [00:13:00] um, and there’s like maximum links for different types of cable. And it, it, I started to understand why like. One device would charge with one cable and another device would not charge with the same cable, even though they all have the same connector. Christina: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think this is, this is why, um, some of us have been really like eye rolly at the EU for their pronouncements about certain things, because simply mandating a connector type doesn’t actually solve the problem. Brett: No, it actually confuses it a little bit Christina: I think Yeah, I was going to say exactly. I think in some cases it makes it worse. Right? And, and then you have different, like, and, and then getting SB four into it, uh, uh, versus like, like, like, like various Thunderbolt versions. Like that adds complications too, because technically SB four and Thunderbolt four should basically be the same, but they’re not really, there are a couple of things that Thunderbolt might have that [00:14:00] USB four doesn’t necessarily have to have, although for all intents and purposes they might be the same. And then of course, thunderbolts five is its own thing too. So like I bought off of Kickstarter, I got like this, you know, like a cable charger, basically like, like a connector thing. It was like $120. For this, this, this thing that basically you can plug a cable into and you can see its voltage and um, or not voltage, I guess it’s uh, you know, amperage or whatever. And you can see like, it, it, it’s transfer speed and you can basically like check that on like a little display, which is useful, but the fact that like, you have to buy that sometimes. So like figure out, well, okay, well which cable is this? Right? And then, uh, to your point about lengths, right? So like, okay, so you want something that’s going to be fast charging but also high speed data transfer. Alright, well that means that you, the cable’s gonna have to be stiff. It’s not gonna be able to be something that’s really bendable. Um, which of course is what most people are going to want. So like you can get a fast charge, like a 240 wat or a hundred and, you know, 20 wat or, or [00:15:00] whatever, um, like a USB 2.0 transfer speed cable. But if you want one that’s, uh, going to be, you know, fast charging and. Fast data transfer, then like that’s a different type. And they have like limited lengths, which again, can also be associated with like Thunderbolt or Thunderbolt. You know, cables are much more expensive. Um, and, uh, uh, you know, the, the, the, but their, their lengths are limited. Um, yeah. Uh, it’s very confusing. Brett: Did you know that in rare circumstances there are even devices that will only charge with an A to C cable. Christina: Yes, Brett: That’s so insane. Christina: yeah, no, I’ve run into that myself and then that’s a weird thing and I don’t even know how that should work. ’cause it’s, it’s, it’s a bizarre thing. You’re like, okay, well I thought this was just like a, you know, maybe like a dumb end, but it’s like, no, there’s like, you know, basically a microchip Brett: Like a two pin to two pin. Christina: at this point. Brett: Like two pen to two pen, no pd like you would think that would work with C to C, [00:16:00] but somehow it has to be A to c. I am getting one of those cable testers. I asked for one for Christmas so I could figure out this pile of cables I have and like my Sonos Ace headphones are very particular about which cables and what, um, charging hub I hooked them up to Christina: Right. Oh, yeah, hubs. I was gonna say, hubs introduce a whole other complication into this too, because depending on what hub you’re using, if you’re using a USB hub, it may or may not have certain things versus a Thunderbolt hub versus something else, versus just like, um, you know, a power brick. Like, yeah. Brett: Yeah. It’s fun stuff you. Christina: Yeah. No, it’s annoying. And, um, like, and what, what’s frustrating about this is like some of the cables that they’re better, like you can look at the, you know, the bottoms of them and you can see like they will have like the USB like four, or they might have 3.2, or they might have, you know, like the thunderbolt, you know, um, uh, icon [00:17:00] with, with, with its version. So you can figure out is this 20 gigabits, is this 40, is this 80? Um, but um. That’s not a guaranteed thing, and that also doesn’t guarantee authenticity of stuff, right? So a lot of the cables, you know, you buy off the internet can be, you know, and they might be, or even at stores, right? Like you’re, you’re not buying something from, even if you get things from Belkin or whoever, like, those things can have issues too. Um, although they at least tend to have better warranties. I bought a Balkan, um. Uh, like a, a, a PD cable, like a two 40 cable that I think it was like, you know, uh, 10 feet longer something. It was supposed to have some sort of long warranty and, and because the, the, you know, um, faster transfer ones, um, are, even though it was braided, you know, it stiff and it, it broke, like there was, uh, the, like the, you know, the connect with the part of the, the, the cable near the, the end, um, did that thing that typically apple cables do, where like, it, it sort of [00:18:00] fraying and you started like seeing the exposed wires and then like, you start to like, feel like, you know, like an electric charge, like Brett: A little tingle. Christina: you’re Yeah. And you’re like, okay, this isn’t good. Um, and so I at least had my Amazon receipt, so I was able to like. Get them to mail me a new one relatively easily. And like Anchor has an okay warranty too. But it’s one of those things you’re like, okay, when did I buy this? I was like, I didn’t even buy this a year ago, and this thing already crapped out. Um, versus, you know, you can get some really nice braided cables that are flexible, but they’re just gonna be 2.0 speeds. Um, and, and then if you buy, you know, you just buy like some random cable, you know, like at the airport or whatever. You’re like, all right, well, I don’t even know Brett: Great. Christina: anything about this. Uh, yeah, Brett: I have heard good things. I’ve heard good things about the company. Cable Matters. Christina: Yeah. Yeah. They make good stuff. They make good stuff. But again, at least the cables matters, cables that I have have been primarily stiffer cables because they tend to be like the, the higher transfer [00:19:00] speeds. So, um, like I have a cable, cable matters Thunderbolt cable, and I have like a USB four cable, I think. Um, but like, these are cables that like. I don’t, I mean, I, I have one that I, I kind of travel with, but I don’t, um, either keeping it as little cable matters, uh, uh, plastic, um. Like, so they come in like these, these case, uh, not these cases. Uh, they come in like these, uh, almost like Ziploc bag type of things. Um, which is a great way to ship cables honestly, you know, rather than using a box and, and like I, and I might toss one of those in a suitcase or a backpack, um, rather than having like the cable just out there loose. But I do that primarily because again, like they’re stiff and they’re not the sorts of things that I necessarily want, like in the bottom of my bag, you know, potentially getting broken and, and, and, and twisted and all of that. Um, they are overpriced for what they are and they are definitely not like, they’re not a high transfer cable, but if you can find ’em on sale, the beats, cables, the, the, the, the, the, the branded Beats cables, I actually like them better [00:20:00] than the apple cables that are the same thing, because they are, they’re longer, uh, by, you know, um, a, a few inches than, um, the, the Apple ones. But they’re still braided and they’re nice. And I was able to get, I dunno, this was a, this was not even Black Friday, but this was. Um, you know, sometime in like early November, I think, um, or maybe it was like late October. It might’ve been a Prime Day thing, I don’t know, but they were like eight or $9 a piece, and so I bought like five or six of them. Um, and they are, you know, uh, uh, PD and like, like, like fast charging peoples, they might not be 240, but I think they’re, they’re, they were like a hundred and you know, like 20 watts or whatever. But, um, you know, not high transfer speeds, but if you’re wanting to just quickly charge something and have it, you know, be a, a decent length and be like flexible. Those I don’t, those I don’t hate. Um, anchor makes pretty good cables. You green seems to be the company that’s sponsoring everyone now for various things. [00:21:00] But, um, I don’t know. I’ve started using MagSafe more and more, uh, like wireless charging when I can for some things, at least for phones, Brett: yeah. I actually have some U green wireless charging solutions that are really good. Christina: Yeah. Yeah. I just got one of their, uh, their 10,000 million pair battery fast charging battery things because now the MagSafe, uh, can be like up to, you know, 30 watts or whatever, or 25 watts or, or, or, or whatever it is. Like it’s, um, a lot more, um, usable than, you know, when it was like 10 or, or, or even 15. You’re like, okay, this, this is actually not going to be like the, the slowest, you know, charging thing known to man. But of course, obviously it’s like you can use it with your phone and with your AirPods, but the rest of the things out there don’t, don’t all support shi too, so, Brett: Right. Christina: yeah. Brett: All right. So, um, I want to talk about TV a little bit. Christina: Yeah. I think before we do that though, we should probably Brett: oh, we should, we [00:22:00] have two sponsors to fit in Jesus. I should get on that. Sponsor Break: Shopify Brett: Um, let’s start with, uh, let’s start with Shopify. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Have you been dreaming of owning your own business? In addition to having something to sell, you’ll need a website, a payment system, a logo, a way to advertise to new customers, et cetera, et cetera. It can all be overwhelming and confusing, but that’s where today’s sponsor, Shopify comes in. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world, and 10% of all e-commerce in the us From household names like Mattel and Gym Shark to brands. Just getting started, get started with your own design studio with hundreds of ready to use templates. Shopify helps you build beautiful online store to match your brand style, accelerate your content creation. Shopify is packed with helpful AI tools that write product descriptions, page headlines, and even enhance your product photography.[00:23:00] Get the word out like you have a marketing team behind you. Easily create email and social media campaigns wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling. And best yet, Shopify is your commerce expert with world-class expertise and everything from managing inventory to international shipping, to processing returns and beyond. If you’re ready to sell, you’re ready for Shopify. Turn your big business idea into with Shopify on your side. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today@shopify.com slash Overtired. Go to shopify.com/ Overtired. That is shopify.com/ Overtired. Thanks Shopify. Christina: Thank you Shopify. Brett: It’ll be, it’ll be just tight as hell by the time people hear it. But that was rough. I, that, that, that, that read, you just heard I [00:24:00] edited like six places. ’cause I kept, I, I don’t know. I’m tired. I’ve been up since, I’ve been up since two today. Christina: Yeah. Shit, man. That’s, yeah, you again, like you’ve been having like sleep issues. It’s, it’s, Brett: Maybe, maybe I shouldn’t be doing sponsor reads. Christina: No, no, no, no, no. Uh, no. We definitely wanna talk about tv. Do you wanna do, do we wanna do our second, um, uh, uh, ad break Brett: let’s do a block. Let’s make it a Christina: Let’s do it. Block. Alright, fantastic. Sponsor Break: Copilot Money Christina: Alright, well, since we are about to go into 2026, this is a great time to, uh, think about your finances. So are you ready to take control of your finances? Well meet copilot money. This is the personal finance app that makes your money feel clear and calm with a beautiful design. Smart automation copilot money brings all of your spending, saving and investment accounts into one place. It’s available on iOS, Mac, iPad, and now on the web, which is really great, uh, because I know, uh, for me anyway, that’s one of my one kind of things [00:25:00] about some of these like tools like this is that there’s not a web app. I’m really bothered by it. This is, you know, it’s a frustration that like the Apple card, for a long time, you know, you couldn’t really access things on, on the web. Even now it’s still kind of messy, like being able to handle things on the web. But as we enter 2026, it is time for a fresh start. And so with the, uh, mint shutdown and rising financial uncertainty, consumers are seeking clarity and control. And this is where copilot money comes in. So copilot money can help you track your budgets, your savings goals, and your net worth seamlessly. Plus, with the the new, um, web launch, you can enjoy a sudden experience on any device, which is really good. And guess what? For a limited time, you can get 26% off your first year when you sign up through the web app. New Year’s only don’t miss out on the chance to start the new year with confidence. There are features like automatic subscription tracking, so you’ll never miss upcoming charges again. Copilot money’s privacy first approach ensures that your data is secure and their team is dedicated to helping you stress less [00:26:00] about money. So whether you’re a finance pro or just starting out, copilot money is there to help you make better decisions. Visit, try dot copilot money slash Overtired and use the code Overtired to sign up for your one month free trial and embrace financial clarity. That’s try.copilot.money/ Overtired. Use the coupon Overtired. And again, that is 26% off for your first year. So thank you copilot money for, uh, sponsoring this week’s, uh, uh, episode. Oh, one other note about copilot money. They were, um, an apple, uh, design award finalist. So it’s a really well designed app and, um, we love to see, um, apps like this available on, on the web as well as iOS and, and MAC os. Brett: I have started using it very much because of the web version, and it is, it is really good. Christina: yeah, yeah. No, yeah. For, yeah, for me, that is like a, an actual like. Concrete requirement. Exploring Rocket Money and Web Interfaces Christina: Any money Brett: Like I’ve, I’ve [00:27:00] paid, I have about eight months left. I paid for a year of, of Rocket Money or whatever it’s called now. Um, and I’ve always loved that app, but yeah, it does not have a web interface. And once I started trying copilot out, I realized how much I really did want a web interface for that stuff, you know? What else have you seen? Discovering Umami Analytics Brett: Umami the analytics platform. Christina: Yes. Brett: It is so good. And it’s, it’s open source and you can self-host. And it is like, I, I’ve been using Fathom Analytics for a long time and I like Fathom, but Umami is, it has like all of the, uh, advanced stuff you would get with Google Analytics, but with like way more privacy focus and you’re not giving information to Google for one. Um, and the interface is beautiful. I love that. It’s so good. Christina: Yeah. Um, umami is really good. I think, uh, there’s another one, I’m [00:28:00] trying to think of what it was called. There are a number of these various, um, analytics, uh, hosted things, but no, umami is definitely a really good one. Nostalgia for Mint and Fever Christina: And I like, um, it reminds me, um, it was, what was it? It was Mint. It was Mint, Sean Edmond’s Mint. Which Brett: I was just gonna ask you if you remembered that. Christina: yeah, which was, which was one of the, uh, plausible analytics. It’s another one too. Um, which is also like, um, they, they have a hosted version, but you can also self-host. Um, and then that’s also a, a, a, another, uh, good one. But yeah. Um, was like my, my all time favorites, uh, you know, app. I, I, I loved that. Brett: Um, what was his RSS one? Uh, fever? Fever. Christina: was, was the best fever, was the best. The Decline of RSS and Google Reader Christina: And it was funny, like I, I think I’ve talked about this before, I was more insulated and like less upset than some people by the, the Google reader death because I had a, a, I’d been using Fever for so long, and then obviously, you know, stuff being updated and doesn’t really work [00:29:00] super well with like, the latest versions of PHP and things like that. But, you know, a lot of people were really, understandably and, and still more than a decade on, you know, very upset by the death of, um, Google reader. But I think because I, I had paid for and used, you know, my own, um, self-hosted fever installation, and then there were apps that people used for, you know, APIs and whatnot to build, you know, Macs or iOS apps or, or whatever. Like, I, I was obviously upset about Google Reader being shut down, but I was like, okay, you know, I, I can just, you know, move on to something else. And, um, and I’ve used, uh, feeder, um, not, not, not feeder, um, Brett: Reader Christina: is. No, no. Maybe, uh, it’s, uh, not Feed Demon. Um, that was like the OG one. Um, it’ll come to me, um, because I, I, yes. Thank you. Feed Ben. Thank you, thank you. One of the ones that’s still around, uh, from like the, of the, you know, various Google reader alternatives, like many of them. You know, closed up shop.[00:30:00] Brett: Yeah. Christina: if they kind of realized, you know, by Google reader, like this is the, unfortunately a niche market. Um, now that didn’t help the fact that like, you know, when people, when web browsers Safari, I think started at first and then Firefox did, and then, you know, uh, Chrome was, was fairly early too. Like when all the web browsers took away like RSS buttons to make it easy to subscribe to feeds or to auto discover feeds, and you had to like install like a, an extension or whatever to do that. Like, that all helped with the, the demise of RSS in a lot of ways. And of course, people moving everything into closed platforms and, and social networks and stuff that, you Brett: In, in the tech world though. So I have, my blog gets about 20,000 visits a week, but it gets 30,000 RSS downloads, like, uh, like daily, 30,000 readers are, are, are pulling my site. Um, so RSS is far from dead in the tech world. Christina: Right. Well, [00:31:00] well, I think, I think in a certain demographic, right? I think if you were to ask like a new, like college grads, I don’t think that any of them are using RSS at least not actively, right? Like, I mean, you might have a few, but like it’s, it’s just not gonna be like a thing where they’re gonna be, act like they might be using some apps that do similar types of things and might even pull in feed sources maybe. But it, it’s, it’s just not like a, like when, when I was graduating from college or in college, like everybody had, you know, RSS clients and that was just kind of a, a known thing. Brett: Yeah. So speaking of traffic, um, I don’t, did I mention that I got delisted on Bing and Christina: You did, Brett: I am, I’m back Christina: figure that out? You’re back now. Okay. Brett: I’m back now. Switching to Kagi Search Engine Brett: And, um, I have switched to using Kaji, um, as my primary search engine and they replicate all of duck duck go’s bang searches. Christina: Yes. Brett: So I Christina: one of the things I love about them. [00:32:00] Yes. Brett: I was pleased to see there’s a Bang Turp search on Kaji. Um, I actually use Christina: or is it kgi? Because I think I’ve always called it kgi. Yeah, it’s KA, it’s K, it’s KAGI. For anybody who’s who’s, uh, I don’t know how to, how, how, if it’s kgi, kgi, um, uh, you know, Kaji, whatever, Brett: It’ll be in the show notes. What the fuck ever, we’ll just call it KGI. Um, and yeah, so like I was super happy ’cause I used the Bang Turp to search my own site. I just got used to doing that. The Rise of AI-Generated Content Brett: Um, and, but it is like you can, the reason I switched to said web, uh, search engine is um, because you can report sites that are just AI slop and they will verify those reports and remove or flag slop sites in your search results. ’cause I was getting sick, even with DuckDuckGo, like five out [00:33:00] of 10 results were always, I’d get in, I’d get there, I’d get one, maybe two paragraphs into, uh, an article and realize, oh, someone just typed in my search term into chat GPT and then Christina: Oh yeah. Brett: automated it. Christina: Oh, I was gonna say there, there it is. Automated at this point. And, and like, to be clear, like a lot of search results, even before like the rise of like genre of AI were a variant of this, where you would see like people like buying older domain names that expired. Well, yeah, but even before that happened mean that, that obviously when, when, when the Christina Warren and Brett Terpstra and then they, they changed your name. Um, I Brett: know, like Jason Turra or Christina: Or something like that. Yeah, it was, it was, it was, it was weird. Um, I mean, you know, um, does that site, did, did have they given up the ghost on that? I’m curious. Um, yeah. Wow. Okay. They are still, well, no, they haven’t published anything since November 30th. So something has happened where they, uh, are [00:34:00] they, they’re definitely cutting down on, on various things. Um, oh no. Paul Terpstra. Oh my God. Paul Terpstra. You are still, Brett: Yeah. Christina: you were like the one author there that I see on this website. Um, now what was, what was messed up about, about this? Um, although no. Okay. Their homepage, the last one they say is like, OCT is like, uh, November, um, uh, 30th. But if you click on the, the Paul trips to handle, then like you see, um, December 22nd, uh, which is, which is today as we’re recording this, Brett: Wow, I didn’t even realize. Christina: Yeah. So, alright. So that is still, somehow that grift is still going on. But yeah, I mean, even before the rise of those things, you would see, you know, sites that would either buy up dead domains and then like, have like very similar looking content, but slightly different maybe, you know, like, uh, you know, injected with a bunch of, you know. Links or whatever, or you would see people who would, you know, do very clearly SEO written and, and probably, you know, [00:35:00] like, again, pre generative ai, but, you know, assisted slop content. But yeah, now it’s, it’s just, it’s crazy. Like, and it doesn’t help that, like the AI summaries, which can be useful, but, um, and they’re getting better, which is good only because they’re so prominent. Like, I’m not a fan of them. But if you’re not using an alternative search engine, like, you know, you see these AI summaries and like if they’re bad and sometimes they are then. Brett: Often Christina: You know, well, they’re, they’ve gotten better, uh, is the only thing I would say. I, I still wouldn’t rely on them, but I’ve, I’ve noticed a, like, I’ve noticed a, a genuine, like uptick in like, improvements and in like, how awful they are probably in like the last six weeks, which is damning with faint praise. I’m not at all saying it’s good. I am simply saying, it’s like, I’m primarily thinking for like, people who are like, like less tech savvy relatives who are going to just go to, you know, bing.com or, or google.com and then see those sorts of things. Right. Um, and, uh, you know, we’re not gonna be able to convince them to go to a, a, a third [00:36:00] party search engine. Um, although, you know, some people, like, I think my mom was using Duck to Go for a while as like her default on her iPhone, um, which I was, I was like proud of her about, but I was also kind of like, uh, that’s got its own issues. But no, I, I like ka a lot. Um, I, I’ve Brett: Well, and it’s so keyboard driven, like DuckDuckGo has good keyboard shortcuts. KAGY slash Kaji has even better keyboard shortcuts. Like you can navigate and control everything with, uh, like Gmail style, single key keyboard shortcuts, which I really like. Christina: Yeah. Yeah, I like that too. And then they, they, of course, they make like a, a web kit, um, like a browser, um, that, that has, they’ve back ported, um, you know, a lot of chrome extensions too. I personally don’t see the point in that. Um, I, I think that if you’re going to be like that committed to, like, using like the, you know, the web extension format and like using like more popular extensions, you might as well [00:37:00] just use a Chrome fork if you don’t wanna use Chrome, which is fine, but like, you could use a browser like Helium, which, which we talked about last show, which has, um, the, the, the hash bangs kind of integrated in, or you could use, you know, if you wanted to use, um, um, you know, the, the, the, the Brett: o is Orion, is Orion the one you’re talking about that? Yeah. Christina: that, that, yeah, that, that, that, that, that, that’s Katy’s thing. And that was actually originally how I heard about them was because it was like, oh, this is interesting. Um, you know, this is a kind of an interesting, you know, kind of alternative browser. And then it turned out that that was just kind of a, in some ways, kind of a front to promote the, the search engine, which is the real, you know, thing. Um, which is fine, right? I mean, that, that was Google’s model. Um, Brett: Well, and we should mention for anyone who hasn’t tried it, it is a paid service. Um, and you are getting search results with no ads and, and spam, uh, ai, slot protection and all of the benefits you would expect from a paid service. So [00:38:00] I think, like for me, five bucks a month gets me, I think 300 searches, which is. Plenty for me, like, I guess I, I’m still waiting to see, I’ve never counted how many searches I do a month, Christina: Yeah, Brett: you know, like three searches a day, uh, would come out to like 90 searches a month and I have 300 available, so I think I’ll be fine. Christina: yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, basically being able to get to do 10 a day, which in most cases is fine. What I’ve done is I’m on, like, they have a, a, a family plan, um, and they don’t care. They even, I think in their documentation, or at least they did, they do not care if you are like actually in a family with the people that you are on or not. So if you, you know, find some folks that you wanna kind of sync up with, you can like, you know, be on a family plan together and you can save money, um, on, uh, whatever their, uh, um, their pricing [00:39:00] stuff is. So, um, so me, me and Justin Williams are, uh, in a, uh, Brett: Justin Williams, I haven’t heard that name in forever. Christina: Yeah. Yeah. We went to C Oasis together. We went both nights in Los Angeles, um, in August. Yeah. Um, or September rather. Um, yeah, so, okay, so this is how this works. They have, their starter plan is, is $5 a month, which includes, and they do have an AI assistant too. So it was funny, they had the AI slot protection, but they also have like an AI assistant that you can use and like an AI summarizer and whatnot. Um, that’s $5 a month. And then there’s the professional plan, which is, so that’s for 300 searches a month for the standard AI for starter $5 a month. The professional plan is unlimited searches and standard ai, that’s $10 a month. And then the ultimate is, um. Uh, everything in professional plus you get like premium model access, which, okay, but the family plan, um, is, is the, so you can do one of two things. You have a duo [00:40:00] plan, which is two professional accounts for a couple, which is $14 a month plus sales tax. So it’s, uh, you know, average of $7 per person, which I think is what Justin and I are on. And then there’s a family plan with up to six family members. And again, they don’t care if you are actually in a family or not, and that’s $20 a month. So the real thing to do if you’re wanting to like, you know, save on this is like find five friends, Brett: Yeah. Christina: get on the $20 a month, you know, family plan thing. Spread the, spread the cost, and that way you can get the, you know, professional plan for, for, for less. But to your Brett: All right. Christina: most people, it’s probably $300, 300 searches a month is probably plenty. And if you search a lot like we do, I, I think it is worth paying for. Brett: yeah, yeah. All right. TV Shows: Is TV Just Okay Now? Christina: anyway, but we wanted to talk about tv, so let’s Brett: Well do, we’re, we’re at 50 minutes already, so I think we need to choose whether we do TV or gratitude. What Christina: do you have a [00:41:00] gude, like a good one? Brett: I, I, no, I have a, I have a throwaway one. Christina: Okay. Brett: I, it was one of those, like, I looked at my doc and I was like, oh, I don’t think I’ve talked about that even though I probably have, um, yeah, let’s just talk about tv. So I, I have been noting, and my question in the show notes was, is TV just okay now? Because I’ve been watching, I watched Stranger Things, pluribus Down, cemetery Road, platonic, and all of it was, it was entertaining, but it wasn’t like, must watch tv. None of it was like, none of it was as good as like Modern Family. Modern Family was fucking good. Tv, like family friendly and just like I’ve, I’ve been through that series so many times and it’s always fun and it’s always better than like pluribus. I like the, I like the concept kind of, it’s not. not all that, um, engaging, I guess.[00:42:00] Christina: I like it. But, Brett: Yeah. I don’t hate it like I do, I do like it, but it’s not like, I don’t, I don’t count the days until the next episode comes out and I miss, I miss things being really good. So you had a couple responses to that though. Christina: Well, I mean, I tend to agree with you. So first of all, there, I put in the, in the show notes, um, there’s a link to a thing that, uh, that James and Pozak wrote for the, the New York Times, uh, God a year and a half ago now called, um, the Comfortable Problem of Mid tv. And he said it, it, it’s got a great cast, it looks cinematic, it’s, um, fine and is everywhere. And kind of talking about like, you know, we went from like the era of like peak TV to now being, um. You know what, what he’s dubbed like mid tv and I think that there’s, there’s some truth to that. Um, and, and, and he even says at the beginning, let me say up front, this is not an essay about how bad TV is today, just the opposite. There’s, um, little truly bad high profile television made anymore, um, is it’s more talking about, um, like [00:43:00] what we have instead Today is something less awful, but in a way more sad, the willingness to retreat, to settle to trade, the ambitious for the defendable. And I think that there’s some truth to that. Um, I think that we see this movies now too, and with movies it’s actually much more of a problem. Like there’s some really high highs. Um, but because the movie industry is in such a bad place, um, it, it’s that much more notable when like, you don’t have like a big strong slate of, of things. And so, you know, it, it, it’s more of a problem. TV for, for better or worse, has become the dominant entertainment form. And yeah, I think that it, it, it’s fine. Uh, but there are very few things that I’m like, oh, wow, yeah, that, that’s like, you know, the wire. Um, not that anything is, but you know what I mean? But is, but even like, you know, pluribus, which I really like. I actually think that’s, um, my, my favorite show of, of, um, 2025, um, at least new show. Um, well, maybe the studio. The studio. I might have, I, I, I might put, Brett: That was pretty Christina: above that. But, but, but, but [00:44:00] like, it’s one of those things where I’m like, okay, you know, um, it’s not breaking bad, right? Like, if we’re gonna be comparing Vince Gilligan shows, and maybe that’s unfair, but, you know, it just, but, but still, like, you know, you’re gonna be compared to your last hit. And, and, and, and that is what it is. Um, I will say though, like, I haven’t watched Stranger Things in years, and I don’t, I don’t, I don’t think I can force myself to like, care about that again, but I’ve heard kind of mixed Brett: That’s where L is too, L doesn’t care. And, and then there’s the whole like two cast members being Zionists kind of turned a whole bunch of people off and Christina: Well, and well, David Harbor, David Harbor’s whole Lily Allen thing. Are you, are you, are you familiar with this floor at all? Brett: No. Christina: Okay. You know who Lily Allen is? Brett: Yes. Christina: Okay. So she and David Harbor were married and, um, she wrote an album called, uh, uh, west End Girl that, that came out, uh, like in November, which is actually a really good album, [00:45:00] which is like White Girl Lemonade, where she just basically reads him to filth for being an absolute piece of shit. Like, apparently like, you know, they were together, they were married or whatever. She goes off to London to perform in a play and he’s like. Oh, we’re gonna be away for months. I, I wanna sleep with other people. And so they kind of like, she kind of accepts getting into an open relationship with him, even though she didn’t really want to be, which look that her, that’s her bad, whatever. But then he proceeds to like, do things that was not what they’d agreed upon on, upon the parameters of their, of their relationship. And then she’s just like brutally honest about the entire thing. And so as you’re listening to this album, you’re just learning more and more about like, David Harbor’s like sex life and, um, and stuff. And, and like, it’s just on blast. It’s incredible. Um, but, uh, yeah, so there’s, there’s some of that stuff. There’s, I, I don’t know, like I don’t, I don’t really follow the rest of the cast stuff except that, uh, the girl who plays, um, 11 like. Frequently want to smack because just the most annoying [00:46:00] celebrity in on the planet. But like, putting that aside, um, I just, I stopped caring. It took them too long between seasons and the, and, and, and the budget for that show was also so insane. I’m like, you, you cost more than strain than thinking of Thrones. Game of Thrones is, was even at its worst, was a better show than Stranger Things. So like it, yeah. But but that goes to your point. Like, it’s like, it’s okay. Brett: Yeah. Yeah, Christina: Um, I will say the new season of Fallout just, um, premiered and so far I I’m still really enjoying that. Um, Brett: yet to see it. Christina: you should, you should definitely watch the Brett: What is it on? Christina: uh, Amazon Brett: Okay. Christina: and, uh, and it’s, and it’s really, really good. Um. And this year they are doing the episodic, um, not episodic, the weekly drop, right. Rather than the binge thing. So the first season, uh, they dropped it all at once and um, and I was a little bit worried. I was like, fuck, does that mean they don’t [00:47:00] believe in this? What are they going to do? Wound up being like Amazon’s biggest hit after their Lord of the Rings, um, you know, thing. And so it was immediately kind of picked up for a second season and it was picked up for a third season before the second season even, uh, premiered. Um, and uh, and that might be the final one. Um, they’re saying, but, but, but, but who knows? But, but so far anyway, like they’ve only, there’s only been one episode, but it’s, it’s been good so far. The Cultural Phenomenon of Heated Rivalry Christina: Um, but, but what I was gonna talk to you about is the gay hockey show. Brett: Which is. Christina: It’s called Heated rivalry. It’s on HBO Max. It was originally just supposed to be on, uh, a Canadian streamer called Crave. And um, then at the, like, the, the like 11th hour, HBO Max picked it up and was like, okay, we’ll play this in, um, some of our territories and other things. And I wanna be very clear, this is not high art at all. This is like, no way. Like this actually in some ways it, it personifies [00:48:00] the TV is just okay now thing, but in other ways it’s actually a little bit more interesting just because the cultural phenomenon that has happened around it in like the last, like, like it hasn’t even been out a month and it’s only six episodes, although they are also going to be getting a second season. Um, it’s sort of wild how, like I went from, I’d seen a trailer for it and I was like, okay, whatever. And like it came out, I think like right after Thanksgiving. Then like within like two or three weeks, like literally I wasn’t following anything around it, but my Instagram, my TikTok, Twitter, everything that I was seeing was just all about the discourse around the show. And it’s like a bunch of us all seem to have to have discovered it. Like one weekend where we were like, okay, we’re gonna actually sit down and watch the gay hockey show. Um, and this is exactly what it is. It is a gay hockey show. So it is based on, there was a series of books that this, uh, female, uh, writer Rachel Reed wrote, um, uh, about like, uh, I think like they were like eBooks, types of thing. Um, uh, I think although there, there is now I [00:49:00] think like a, a hard cover release because they’ve been so popular and they’re just, it’s just ero, it’s just smut, right? It’s basically fanfic dressed up in something else. And the idea was like, okay, you have like these, you know, male like hockey players who are closeted and kind of have like this, this romance that, that starts from like 2008, um, through like, I dunno, like, like 2017 or 2018. And there are a number of different. Books or stories in the universe. But the one that people liked the most was the, the second book, which is called Heed Rivalry. You don’t really need to know any about that. The big thing about the show is that it is essentially like soft core gay porn. Um, but yet it’s like weirdly compelling in a way. Like, it, it is very, like, there’s, there’s some sweet aspects to it. Like you were before the, the show, you were saying, oh, it’s kinda like Heart Stopper could not be further from Heart Stopper. ’cause Heart Stopper is very sweet and twee and kind of like loving and like whatnot. This is like. You know, like guys in their twenties with amazing asses, [00:50:00] you know, like doing things to one another kind of an in secret. And, and the, the thing is, there’s not a whole lot of plot. Like the plot is the porn. Because, because the whole thing is, is that like they don’t spend, they don’t have a time to spend a lot of time together because they’re, they’re closeted and their rivals. Oh, that’s the whole conceit. It’s like they’re these two great hockey players and they, they, they, um, you know, um, play for opposing teams and they’re like, each other’s biggest rivals, but like, they’re, they’re fucking, um, and uh, it, it’s, uh, again, it’s not high art at all, but Brett: the target audience for this? Christina: And here’s the interesting thing. So the books are almost entirely read by women, um, and which, which makes sense. There’s, there’s a lot of like, you know, like, male, male, like, um, like the history of slash fiction goes back to like, like Fanfic in general, like goes back to like women writing, like Spock and, and, uh, um, what’s the space together? Kirk Together. Yeah. Um, and so the books are almost entirely, uh, consumed by, by women and probably straight women, although probably some queer women too. Um, but the [00:51:00] show seems to be a mix of gay men, straight women, all, although I’ve seen a lot of lesbians. As well. Um, yeah, yeah, because again, like the discourse is just kind of ridiculous and, and the memes are fun. Um, the guy who created it, he’s gay or created the, the, the television adaptation. He’s gay and, uh, I think he’s done a, a, a pretty good job with it. The, the leads are the thing that’s like incredible, like the, especially the guy who plays the, the Russian character, Ilya, uh, that actor is really, really good and he’s Texan, and yet he does like a great Russian accent and, um. And, and he’s very attractive. And like I, I, I can see like why a lot of people are into it, but it’s funny ’cause like New York Magazine, like they weren’t even covering the show, which, why would you, it was like some Canadian kind of, you know, you know, thing that barely gets picked by HBO. Then it takes off and now like they’re covering it. The, the last time I remember New York Magazine covering a show like this, like Vociferously was Gossip Girl, like 18 years ago. Um, [00:52:00] and it kind of reminds me of that, where like everybody woke up one day when they’re like, oh, this is like a cultural moment now. So again, not good television, probably not gonna necessarily be for everyone, but, but it’s a moment. And like, I kept seeing edits, I kept seeing Mo, I kept seeing edits on TikTok and stuff and I was like, okay, do I have to watch the gay hockey show? All right, I have to watch the gay hockey show so that it’s, we might be at the point where like TV is just okay, but at least there are some good like moments about, whereas the culture, we can all like agree. Okay, we’re all gonna be talking about this one thing. Brett: That sounds like what I’ll be doing on Christmas Day. Christina: Oh my God. Actually that would be a great thing to watch on Christmas. And I think that the final episode is gonna come out like the day after Christmas, so there you go. Brett: Done Deal. Cool. Wrapping Up and Holiday Wishes Brett: All right, well thanks for, we’re recording this the same morning. The show’s supposed to come out, so I gotta do some editing, but uh, but [00:53:00] thanks for showing up while you’re in Atlanta and yeah, this has been a classic, a fun classic Overtired. Christina: absolutely. Well, um, get some sleep, uh, take care of yourself. Um, happy holidays. Um, uh, hope that a, a Christmas isn’t too weird for you. And, um, and happy New Year. Brett: you too. Get some sleep.

If you're not getting cited by ChatGPT, your “AI SEO” strategy isn't working, no matter what your dashboards say. Most of it is observability theater: dashboards, charts, synthetic prompts — and zero actual placement.In this episode, we chat with Shawn Schneider, founder of Eldil AI, about what actually determines whether your company shows up in ChatGPT answers. The short answer: LLMs don't reward more content, clever prompts, or prettier dashboards. They reward a small set of trusted third-party sources — and most brands aren't mentioned in any of them.Shawn breaks down why observability alone creates a false sense of progress, how to identify the specific citations that dominate your category, and how to turn that insight into real placements through outreach and negotiation. We also unpack why Google Search Console is still the best signal we have for AI-driven queries, how to prioritize the one citation that actually matters, and what the first 30–90 days can look like when you do this correctly.GuestShawn Schneider — founder of Eldil AI, a GEO / AI SEO platform focused on identifying and securing the citations LLMs rely on most; helps brands and agencies win visibility in ChatGPT by targeting the power-law sources that shape AI answers.Guest LinksLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawn-schneider-61b2b5207/ Company Website: https://www.eldil.ai/What You'll LearnWhy most GEO / AI SEO observability tools are meaningless without actual placements The only thing that reliably improves AI search visibility: citation placementsHow to use Google Search Console to surface AI fan-out queriesWhy synthetic prompt data is still unreliable (and what to trust instead)The power law of citations: why only 1–3 sources actually matterHow Eldil turns citation discovery into outreach and negotiated placementsWhat 30–90 days can look like when you secure the right citationWhich industries should invest heavily — and which should ignore this for nowWhy ChatGPT dominates referral traffic compared to other LLMsWhat happens when ads arrive inside AI search resultsTimestamps00:00 — GEO, AI SEO, AEO: noise vs. reality00:21 — Why observability tools don't move the needle03:55 — Where GEO tools get their data (and why it's messy)07:16 — Using Google Search Console as a prompt proxy09:40 — The three pillars: technical, content, authority12:07 — Citations as the dominant ranking lever13:07 — The power law: thousands of citations, one winner19:07 — How fast results actually show up20:39 — When building your own citation content makes sense30:41 — Which business models win with GEO37:11 — ChatGPT ads and the future of AI search41:32 — Where to find Shawn and closing thoughts Key Topics & Ideas1. Why dashboards feel good but don't create outcomes.Most tools are essentially “Google Analytics for LLMs”ChatGPT referrals rise naturally as usage increasesCharts go up even if you do nothingWithout placements, observability is just vanity2. The three common approaches in the market today:Guessing prompts with LLMsClickstream data sourced from Chrome extensions and brokersSynthetic prompts without transparencyEldil uses Google Search Console + Analytics as the best available proxy for real intent.3. How to spot AI-generated fan-out queries:50+ character queriesHigh impressionsLow or zero clicksThese often represent LLMs expanding short prompts into long-form searches.4. The three pillars: Technical, Content, AuthorityTechnical — can an LLM crawl and understand your site?Content — does useful information exist?Authority — does anyone credible back it up?Authority is the multiplier most teams ignore.5. What actually shapes AI answers:Citations are not backlinks, they are semantic explanationsLLMs repeatedly return to the same trusted sourcesThird-party listicles and niche blogs dominate citation share6. The Power Law of Citations10k–15k citations may exist200–300 matter1–3 actually move the needleIf you're not in those, content volume won't save you.7. The real workflow:Identify high-value customer questionsExtract dominant citationsRank them by weightContact site ownersNegotiate placementMonitor AI visibility and referral trafficThis is where most tools stop — and where Eldil focuses.8. How many placements do you need?Surprisingly few.You don't need 100 placementsYou need the right oneThen expand into adjacent verticalsThis is concentrated betting, not spray-and-pray SEO.9. Why GEO feels different from traditional SEO:You are inserting into sources that already rankChanges can show up in weeks, not yearsMeaningful referral growth often appears within ~60–90 days10. Who Should (and Shouldn't) Do ThisBest fit:High-ACV B2B SaaSLong buying cyclesHigh-LTV e-commerce (supplements, skincare)ICPs that already live in ChatGPTIf your customers do not use LLMs yet, start elsewhere.11. Why ChatGPT is the main eventBased on Eldil's data:ChatGPT referrals dwarf Perplexity and othersFor most companies, this is where focus belongsSmaller channels still matter for high-ticket sales12. What's coming nextPaid placements inside LLMsOrganic plus paid becoming a one-two punchCitation inventory getting expensive fastThe window for cheap dominance will not last.SponsorToday's episode is brought to you by Graphed – an AI data analyst & BI platform.With Graphed you can:Connect data like GA4, Facebook Ads, HubSpot, Google Ads, Search Console, AmplitudeBuild interactive dashboards just by chatting (no Looker Studio/Tableau learning curve)Use it as your ETL + data warehouse + BI layer in one placeAsk:“Build me a stacked bar chart of new users vs. all users over time from GA4”…and Graphed just builds it for you.

Google sues SerpApi, Chrome and Edge browser extensions secretly collect and sell AI chatbot conversations, Starlink satellite explodes. MP3 Please SUBSCRIBE HERE for free or get DTNS Live ad-free. A special thanks to all our supporters–without you, none of this would be possible. If you enjoy what you see you can support the show onContinue reading "New York Gov. Kathy Hochul Signs the RAISE Act Into Law – DTH"

Amazon launches a new Alexa+ web browser, Europe introduces new fees for small imports, and Helium 10 adds more tools for the Saudi Arabia market. ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft We're back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10's Principal Brand Evangelist, Carrie Miller. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, TikTok Shop, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10's newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level.   Introducing Alexa+, the next generation of Alexa https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/devices/new-alexa-generative-artificial-intelligence https://alexa.amazon.com/about EU to impose 3 euro duty on e-commerce parcels from July 2026 https://www.reuters.com/world/china/eu-impose-3-euro-duty-small-e-commerce-parcels-july-2026-2025-12-12/ New Helium 10 Tools for the Saudi Arabia Amazon Marketplace Brand Store quality rating now reflect sales performance https://advertising.amazon.com/en-us/resources/whats-new/brand-store-quality-rating-now-reflect-sales-performance/?ref_=a20m_us_wn_gw TikTok Shop is driving social commerce growth https://www.retaildive.com/news/tiktok-shop-drives-social-commerce-growth/807665/ Amazon Seller News: View updated Customer Service Insights in Feedback Manager https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-news/articles/QVRWUERLSUtYMERFUiNHSDIyVjY1QzRVNllYVUNO In episode 480 of the AM/PM Podcast and Weekly Buzz, Carrie covers: 00:45 - New Alexa+ Web Browser 02:36 - New 3 Euro Duty 06:06 - Saudi Arabia Tools 07:57 - Brand Story Quality Rating 09:32 - Advanced Keyword Research 14:54 - TikTok Shop Driving Growth 16:26 - Customer Service Insights Enjoy this episode? Want to be able to ask questions to Leo Sgovio live in a small group with other 7 and 8-figure Amazon sellers?  Join the Helium 10 Elite Mastermind and get quarterly workshops, monthly training, and networking calls with Leo at h10.me/elite Make sure to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to our podcast!

Hewlett Packard Enterprise patches a maximum-severity vulnerability in its OneView infrastructure management software. Cisco warns a critical zero-day is under active exploitation. An emergency Chrome update fixes two high-severity vulnerabilities. French authorities make multiple arrests. US authorities dismantle an unlicensed crypto exchange accused of money laundering. SonicWall highlights an exploited zero-day. Researchers earn $320,000 for demonstrating critical remote code execution flaws in cloud infrastructure components. A U.S. Senator urges electronic health record vendors to give patients greater control over who can access their medical data. Our guest is Larry Zorio, CISO from Mark43, discussing first responders and insider cyber risks. A right-to-repair group puts cash on the table.  Remember to leave us a 5-star rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Miss an episode? Sign-up for our daily intelligence roundup, Daily Briefing, and you'll never miss a beat. And be sure to follow CyberWire Daily on LinkedIn. CyberWire Guest Today we are joined by Larry Zorio, CISO from Mark43, to discuss first responders sounding the alarm on insider cyber risks. To see the full report, check it out here. Selected Reading HPE warns of maximum severity RCE flaw in OneView software (Bleeping Computer) China-Linked Hackers Exploiting Zero-Day in Cisco Security Gear (SecurityWeek) Google Chrome patches two high severity vulnerabilities in emergency update (Beyond Machines) France arrests 22-year-old over Interior Ministry hack (The Record) France arrests Latvian for installing malware on Italian ferry  (Bleeping Computer) FBI dismantles alleged $70M crypto laundering operation (The Register) SonicWall Patches Exploited SMA 1000 Zero-Day (SecurityWeek) Zeroday Cloud hacking event awards $320,0000 for 11 zero days (Bleeping Computer) Senator Presses EHR Vendors on Patient Privacy Controls (Govinfosecurity) A nonprofit is paying hackers to unlock devices companies have abandoned (TechSpot) Share your feedback. What do you think about CyberWire Daily? Please take a few minutes to share your thoughts with us by completing our brief listener survey. Thank you for helping us continue to improve our show. Want to hear your company in the show? N2K CyberWire helps you reach the industry's most influential leaders and operators, while building visibility, authority, and connectivity across the cybersecurity community. Learn more at sponsor.thecyberwire.com. The CyberWire is a production of N2K Networks, your source for strategic workforce intelligence. © N2K Networks, Inc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

NOTE: When you sign up for Patreon, PLEASE do it through a web browser (Safari, Chrome, etc.) and NOT an app on your iPhone. The Apple app charges 30% !!! If you just click on the link above, it should be fine. Author and pastor Jamie Bambrick joins Becket Cook to talk about his new book, “Set Free in a World of Chaos and Confusion: Only Jesus Can Save and Set You Free.” They discuss how the gospel offers real freedom in a culture that’s deeply confused about identity, sexuality, and truth. Jamie shares the story behind his viral response to the “He Gets Us” Super Bowl ad and why a Jesus who only “relates” to us—but never calls us out of sin—falls short of the biblical Christ. From there, the conversation moves into the big questions: God, evil, suffering, and why our intuitions about right and wrong point beyond a purely material universe. Along the way, you’ll hear powerful glimpses of lives radically changed by Christ and a clear, hopeful explanation of what it actually means to be “set free.” If you’re a skeptic, a struggler, or a believer looking for clarity in the chaos, this episode will challenge you to reconsider who Jesus is and what He offers. Jamie Bambrick's Book: https://tinyurl.com/yck6wcxj The Becket Cook Show Ep. 223 Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Maybe a Little Bit More Interesting React2Shell Exploit Attackers are branching out to attack applications that initial exploits may have missed. The latest wave of attacks is going after less common endpoints and attempting to exploit applications that do not have Next.js exposed. https://isc.sans.edu/diary/Maybe%20a%20Little%20Bit%20More%20Interesting%20React2Shell%20Exploit/32578 UAT-9686 actively targets Cisco Secure Email Gateway and Secure Email and Web Manager Cisco s Security Email Gateway and Secure Email and Web Manager patch an already-exploited vulnerability. https://blog.talosintelligence.com/uat-9686/ https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-sma-attack-N9bf4 SONICWALL SMA1000 APPLIANCE LOCAL PRIVILEGE ESCALATION VULNERABILITY A local privilege escalation vulnerability, which SonicWall patched today, is already being exploited. https://psirt.global.sonicwall.com/vuln-detail/SNWLID-2025-0019 Google releases vulnerability details Google updated last week s advisory by adding a CVE to the mystery vulnerability and adding a statement that it affects WebGPU. No new patch was released. https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/2025/12/stable-channel-update-for-desktop_16.html