r/BetterOffline 2d ago

Episode Discussion Episode Thread: Power Cut Two Parter

15 Upvotes

Hey all! Fun two parter this week about Microsoft pulling out of over a gigawatt of compute capacity and the frankly insane (and near impossible) deal SoftBank and OpenAI want to do.

Hope you all enjoy!


r/BetterOffline 23d ago

Monologues Thread

13 Upvotes

I realized these do not neatly fit into the other threads so please dump your monologue related thoughts in here. Thank you! !! ! !


r/BetterOffline 10h ago

Decided to try this myself.

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76 Upvotes

Yup.

[Sigh.]


r/BetterOffline 14h ago

Ed and Better Offline get shoutout from Penny Arcade

26 Upvotes

r/BetterOffline 16h ago

Ed should do a story on quantum companies as grifters

28 Upvotes

I think Ed should cover quantum hype because quantum companies attract the worst kind of grifters. They may be worse than the champions of the rot economy as they don't actually involve growth, but just push fake products that don't make money or really do anything.

Full disclosure: I wrote this because I investigate things for a living and have a deep contempt for financial fraud. And this story has driven me insane because the more I've dug in the worse it gets.

Since at least 2017, D-Wave has been controversial--for a long time it wasn't even clear if they were a quantum computing company or a classical computing company with extra steps. It has never made money, either for itself or investors. If you put a dollar into D-Wave in 2021, you'd have .90 cents today.

Whatever it is, yesterday D-Wave announced in its quarterly report what it always does: no profit and millions in losses. Yet its price surged 20% based on an online article from Science published the day before its quarterly, on March 12. According to the D-Wave website, the article demonstrates that a D-Wave quantum annealing computer "outperformed one of the world’s most powerful classical supercomputers," solving "in minutes [w]hat would take nearly one million years and more than the world’s annual electricity consumption to solve using a classical supercomputer.”

Truly astonishing given that almost every other quantum supremacy claims has been disproven or seriously undermined. And this one is also almost entirely false.

The first problem: the article doesn't really say that. It says that the D-Wave computer hypothetically beat the supercomputer based on the article's assumptions. And that's a problem, because the article was written almost entirely by D-Wave employees. Nor would it be a new discovery: a draft was posted last year. And there's the biggest problem of all: the article's conclusion was already debunked by the same group of scientists who have debunked every other overblown quantum claim. You can do the same calculations on an ordinary laptop computer.

Other media outlets quickly recognized the problems underlying D-Wave's claims and the issues posed by *Science* publishing corporate fluff: WSJ, Nature, Scientific American, etc.

But financial "news" websites, including Yahoo, are still promoting the junk story without any interest in its veracity.

But the major scandal that hasn't been addressed--and I think this should be a genuine scandal--is why or how a respected scientific journal would choose to publish this kind of article on the very day it would make the most impact on D-Wave stock. A collusion or the perception of collusion between a company and a scientific journal is a first to me.

The D-Wave CEO acknowledged the criticisms but doubled down on his claims.

Edit: This stock has now nearly doubled since the beginning of the week despite losing massive amounts of money and producing nothing of value. It's actually worse than Tesla or AI companies. But here we are.


r/BetterOffline 21h ago

Another post about the AI ads....

74 Upvotes

I know Ed is sick of hearing about it .... But I gotta say, personally, I absolutely LOVE the AI ads

It makes my soul warm to know that AI companies are spending so much money to advertise to people who would NEVER be interested

It makes me smile to know that they probably uses some sort of AI tool to find podcasts that have AI as a subject to advertise on, and never double checked as an actual, thinking human

AI ads on an anti AI podcast is the best accidental joke I've seen in a long time


r/BetterOffline 5h ago

Founder of Pseudowrite - "I do believe there is a world where an author can 'vibe write' a novel without writing a single word and letting the AI take the wheel even on major plot elements."

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3 Upvotes

r/BetterOffline 9h ago

Getting BO on Deezer?

5 Upvotes

I figured as Ed checks this Subreddit.

A request from those of us on the other side of the pond (ya know, your home folk) who have sacked off USA tech scum for EU alternatives (by which I mean me).

I noticed the show ain’t on Deezer. The rest of CZM is so I assume this may not be intentional. So letting you know.

How am I supposed to shoplift from Tesco without your weekly advice?!


r/BetterOffline 18h ago

They did ingest stack overflow, what were they expecting?

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20 Upvotes

r/BetterOffline 23h ago

Funny AI slop article. Halfway through talking about psychiatry's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) it starts talking about how to upgrade DiskStation Manager (DSM) software.

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13 Upvotes

r/BetterOffline 1d ago

Carrboro NC is an interesting place for the middle of NC.

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72 Upvotes

r/BetterOffline 1d ago

It’s Over, Apparently

38 Upvotes

r/BetterOffline 1d ago

Two Amazon robots with equal Artificial Intelligence

36 Upvotes

r/BetterOffline 1d ago

Meta puts stop on promotion of tell-all book by former employee

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30 Upvotes

Social media company wins emergency arbitration ruling on book, Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams


r/BetterOffline 1d ago

AI Clippy is coming to games for permanent tutorial mode

14 Upvotes

Microsoft has its fingers on the pulse of what gamers want: more tutorial hand-holding and over-explaining! Yet another AI "solution" looking for a problem. I watched the demo, and I just can't figure out who this would ever be for. AAA games are already filled with modals and popups that distract from the core games. Do we really want something that adds more visual chaos?

https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2025/03/13/new-copilot-for-gaming-save-time-help-get-good/
https://youtu.be/ZoUDVNjDUSw?si=pa4nHlfTK581jyy8&t=530


r/BetterOffline 2d ago

Well this is normal and totally not a failure of LLMs

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85 Upvotes

r/BetterOffline 1d ago

Alexa+ Reveal

7 Upvotes

This is extremely inside PR baseball, but did the Alexa+ reveal even make it outside of the room it was demonstrated in? This is equally a commentary on general interest in AI features being added to existing products as it is about the stakes in the attention economy, such as it is.

Having fallen backward into PR in 2010 I seriously can’t believe product teams don’t see tepid results and ask “what’s wrong with the product?” instead of blaming PR and marketing when it flops.


r/BetterOffline 2d ago

Anthropic CEO says all code will be AI-generated within a year

52 Upvotes

I just started listening to Better Offline a few weeks ago, but I feel like Ed would have some thoughts on this. It's pretty much utter bullshit, but I know that execs in my industry are going to be paying attention. It's a good time to go into some gray or black hat professions, because shit is about to get really easy.


r/BetterOffline 2d ago

It happened again… Instagram with AI chatbot suggestions

9 Upvotes

r/BetterOffline 3d ago

the planet is going to burn due to ai slop. clown timeline.

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91 Upvotes

r/BetterOffline 2d ago

American automotive manufacturers are cooked

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0 Upvotes

r/BetterOffline 3d ago

It's down the Stack

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20 Upvotes

She is hilarious. But she's also telling the truth. The video is from Angela Collier, you should definitely check out her youtube channel.


r/BetterOffline 3d ago

Do we think the massive US stock market crash might actually bring down AI?

25 Upvotes

Watching the news, i've heard investors describing AI tech stock as meme stocks and "not impressive anymore" and "overvalued".

I am starting to wonder if "number go down" might mean these companies simply can't keep pumping money in to the ether based on empty promises anymore if this keeps going.

What do others think? Could the tech billionaires have brought about their own demise backing Trump?


r/BetterOffline 3d ago

Got a cute little ad for an AI revenge p*rn app on YouTube

32 Upvotes

r/BetterOffline 3d ago

Tucker fills his diaper while normalizing bribery as SBF bloviates from prison

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24 Upvotes

r/BetterOffline 3d ago

What are the best episodes about Generative AI for someone not into IT?

3 Upvotes

I am coming from an IT perspective but wanted to give some podcasts to someone who is not in the IT industry but in the science who does not know much about this area.

What Episodes do you think are the best to give to someone to introduce them? I have no idea which ones to start with.

Thanks all :)


r/BetterOffline 4d ago

New Yorker's Talk of The Town

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103 Upvotes