April 18, 2025

693: Let Them Eat Space

Fyre Fest 2 is postponed again; Automattic’s leak-hunting watermarks creep everyone out; Katy Perry’s space PR stunt flops harder than her last album; Elon Musk juggles baby mamas, GOP cash, and creepy DMs; DOGE may have swiped labor data; OpenAI wants to be a social network now; 4chan’s down for the count after a hack; Google loses an ad tech monopoly case; China cracks down on fake self-driving hype; Trump’s FCC chair wants NBC to act more like Fox News; the Pentagon’s tech team quits over Musk interference; Reality Labs sets $45 billion on fire; and AI agents are now just confidently wrong at scale.

Show Notes

This week, we blast off with a tale as old as grift: Fyre Fest 2 has been postponed—again—proving that you really can fail upward if you squint hard enough and wear enough white linen. Over at Automattic, employees discovered secret watermarks in their internal comms, because what workplace isn’t better with a sprinkle of corporate surveillance cosplay? Meanwhile, Katy Perry took a joyride to the upper atmosphere with Gayle King and Bezos’ better half, giving us the 2025 edition of the cringiest “Imagine”-style celebrity moment yet. Spoiler: no one needed this.

In Elon World™, things are somehow even weirder. Seth Rogen dropped some truth bombs about Silicon Valley’s MAGA leanings, only to have them surgically removed from the Breakthrough Prize stream. Musk, for his part, is managing his growing empire of baby mamas like a Bond villain with a baby registry. Add in a cringe-filled offer to a YouTuber to become Space Karen’s next broodmare, and we’ve officially entered peak simulation. Meanwhile, whistleblowers are spilling DOGE secrets, OpenAI is building a social network (because we clearly don’t have enough doomscrolling options), and 4chan has finally been hacked into oblivion. Pour one out—for the internet’s dumpster fire.

Also in the news: Google lost a big ad tech monopoly case (cue tiny violins), China is no longer buying the “autonomous” car hype after a fatal crash, and Trump’s FCC chair is threatening Comcast for not being enough like Fox News (as if that’s the journalistic gold standard). The Pentagon’s nerd squad resigned after butting heads with DOGE, Reality Labs burned $45 billion like it was going out of style, and AI customer service bots are now inventing policies out of thin air. Oh, and if your AI thinks your Python package has a delivery issue—you’re not crazy, it probably hallucinated it. Welcome to the future.

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Show notes at https://gog.show/693

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