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Ed Zitron on big tech, backlash, boom and bust: 'AI has taught us that people are excited to replace human beings'

The Guardian

Ed Zitron on big tech, backlash, boom and bust: 'AI has taught us that people are excited to replace human beings' His blunt, brash scepticism has made the podcaster and writer something of a cult figure. But as concern over large language models builds, he's no longer the outsider he once was I f some time in an entirely possible future they come to make a movie about "how the AI bubble burst", Ed Zitron will doubtless be a main character. He's the perfect outsider figure: the eccentric loner who saw all this coming and screamed from the sidelines that the sky was falling, but nobody would listen. Just as Christian Bale portrayed Michael Burry, the investor who predicted the 2008 financial crash, in The Big Short, you can well imagine Robert Pattinson fighting Paul Mescal, say, to portray Zitron, the animated, colourfully obnoxious but doggedly detail-oriented Brit, who's become one of big tech's noisiest critics. This is not to say the AI bubble burst, necessarily, but against a tidal wave of AI boosterism, Zitron's blunt, brash scepticism has made him something of a cult figure. His tech newsletter, Where's Your Ed At, now has more than 80,000 subscribers; his weekly podcast, Better Offline, is well within the Top 20 on the tech charts; he's a regular dissenting voice in the media; and his subreddit has become a safe space for AI sceptics, including those within the tech industry itself - one user describes him as "a lighthouse in a storm of insane hypercapitalist bullshit".


Viral protest video against Iran's supreme leader sparks copycat demonstrations worldwide

FOX News

Iranian refugee' viral video shows woman lighting cigarette with burning image of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sparking global protests as Trump weighs military action.


'No reasons to own': Software stocks sink on fear of new AI tool

The Japan Times

'No reasons to own': Software stocks sink on fear of new AI tool The new year was supposed to bring opportunities for beaten-down software stocks. Instead, the group is off to its worst start in years. The release of a new artificial intelligence tool from startup Anthropic on Jan. 12 rekindled fears about disruption that weighed on software makers in 2025. TurboTax owner Intuit tumbled 16% last week, its worst since 2022, while Adobe and Salesforce, which makes customer relationship management software, both sank more than 11%. All told, a group of software-as-a-service stocks tracked by Morgan Stanley is down 15% so far this year, following a drop of 11% in 2025.


Faisal Islam: Global disruption looms large over biggest-ever Davos

BBC News

Apart from the snow and the temperature Greenland does not have much in common with the Swiss alps. But the fight for the future of the island looms over the gathering of world leaders and businesses at the World Economic Forum (WEF) this week. Indeed the timing of Donald Trump's extraordinary threat must have had in mind this meeting. And that is beyond strange given the views of his base. Last year, he beamed himself into the WEF from the White House, appearing before an audience of largely bewildered European executives just two days after his inauguration.


Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,425

Al Jazeera

Could Ukraine hold a presidential election right now? Will Europe use frozen Russian assets to fund war? How can Ukraine rebuild China ties? 'Ukraine is running out of men, money and time' Russian attacks killed three people, including a 20-year-old woman, and injured 11 others in Ukraine's Kharkiv region, Governor Oleh Syniehubov wrote on Telegram on Sunday. In Ukraine's Kherson region, two people were killed, and one person was injured, as Russian forces launched attacks using drones, air strikes and shelling, Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said on Telegram on Sunday.


Ukrainian drone strikes leave hundreds of thousands without power across Russian-controlled area

FOX News

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Toyota is drag racing hydrogen-powered trucks in the Arizona desert

Popular Science

Hydrogen produces only water emissions, plus the fuel-cell trucks are quick. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Filling up a hydrogen tank is much like filling up a gas-powered car in both the basic experience and in the time it takes. That's been a major barrier for EVs thus far; adding 20 minutes or more for each recharge on a road trip is not nearly as appealing as pulling up to a Chevron station and getting out of there in a few minutes. However, hydrogen hasn't yet caught on as a large-scale solution largely due to funding, even though even the US Department of Energy says it has "several benefits over conventional combustion-based technologies currently used in many power plants and vehicles."



AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage Cory Doctorow

The Guardian

AI is asbestos in the walls of our tech society, stuffed there by monopolists run amok. What I do not do is predict the future. No one can predict the future, which is a good thing, since if the future were predictable, that would mean we couldn't change it. Now, not everyone understands the distinction. They think science-fiction writers are oracles. Even some of my colleagues labor under the delusion that we can "see the future". Then there are science-fiction fans who believe that they are the future. A depressing number of those people appear to have become AI bros. These guys can't shut up about the day that their spicy autocomplete machine will wake up and turn us all into paperclips has led many confused journalists and conference organizers to try to get me to comment on the future of AI. That's something I used to strenuously resist doing, because I wasted two years of my life explaining patiently and repeatedly why I thought crypto was stupid, and getting relentlessly bollocked by cryptocurrency cultists who at first insisted that I just didn't understand crypto.


New personal eVTOL promises personal flight under 40K

FOX News

Rictor X4 personal electric aircraft unveiled at CES 2026 promises affordable flight at $39,900 with 50 mph top speed, 20-minute flight time, and delivery scheduled for Q2 2026.