The Better Offline Mailbag

In this episode, Ed Zitron is joined by producer Sophie Lichterman to answer questions about life, technology, and Better Offline itself. YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! Go to https://cottonbureau.com/people/better-offline and use code FREE99 for free shipping on orders of $99 or more. --- LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/ Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/ Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at https://discord.com/invite/QUUQUP9szv Ed's Socials: https://twitter.com/edzitron https://www.instagram.com/edzitron https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com https://www.threads.net/@edzitron See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Speaker 01

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• 0:35Speaker 02

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• 1:06Speaker 03

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• 2:12Speaker 04

  She's been thinking about this sleepover all week, but I think about her food allergies all the time. Fortunately, her doctor prescribed Zolair, omalizumab. It's proven to significantly reduce allergic reactions if a food allergy accident happens.

• 2:26Speaker 03

  150 milligrams is a prescription medication used to treat food allergy in people one year of age and older to reduce allergic reactions due to accidental exposure to one or more foods. While taking Zolair, you should continue to avoid all foods to which you are allergic. Don't use if you are allergic to Zolair. Zolair may cause a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. Tell your doctor if you ever had anaphylaxis. Get help right away if you have trouble breathing or if you have swelling of your throat or tongue. Zolair should not be used for the emergency treatment of allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis. Zolair is for maintenance use to reduce allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, while avoiding food allergens. Serious side effects such as cancer, fever, muscle aches, and rash, parasitic infection, or heart and circulation problems have been reported. Please see zolair.com for full prescribing information. Ask an allergist about Zolair.

• 3:08Speaker 03

  This is an advertisement for Zolair, paid for by Genentech and Novartis.

• 3:14Ed Zitron?

  Cool Zone Media. Hello and welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host Ed Zitron.

• 3:32Ed Zitron?

  Today I'm joined by the wonderful Sophie Lichterman, who will be overseeing our Q and A episode, our very first one. Sophie, thank you so much for joining me.

• 3:39Speaker 06

  Yeah, I'm kind of the Q and A emcee over here at Cool Zone Media, as in you need somebody to ask you the questions.

• 3:46Ed Zitron?

  And we've had wonderful questions from all of you this this week. Thank you so much. We're gonna try and do these every couple months, but I love hearing from you. Please post on the Reddit, please message me. You have my email, [email protected], and that's [email protected] for the Canadians and the British who listen to this as well. But Sophie, why don't we take it away?

• 4:06Speaker 06

  Yeah, I'm just gonna jump through some of these questions and uh, yeah.

• 4:10Ed Zitron?

  Sounds good.

• 4:11Speaker 06

  And like, thank you guys so much for submitting them. Like, we really genuinely appreciate it.

• 4:14Ed Zitron?

  It's cool.

• 4:15Speaker 06

  It's cool. It's cool that you have a podcast where people like you enough where they want to ask you questions.

• 4:21Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, it's sick.

• 4:22Speaker 06

  All right, I'm gonna start with a question from Garrett Smart. Do you think AI is actually useful in any capacity, even as an assistant in the areas of art or programming? If so, why?

• 4:37Ed Zitron?

  So when it comes to art, I think that there are new functions like slightly better clone tools as well that I've heard people use, but really this is just a bridge from Photoshop. I will say for the most part, art is a not a great one because usually it's just getting rid of the creative side. Programming is a more complex one. So there's an excellent video linked to in the episode notes from the Internet of Bugs that Carl Brown, I think his name is, I really want him on the show, Carl, if you're listening, please come on, where he kind of said that generative AI code is different to what software engineering is like. Software engineering is solving a murder or an investigation far more than generative AI is just creating code. Because software engineering isn't just spouting

• 5:21Ed Zitron?

  out code and saying, here we go, we're done. We now have software. Software is a manifold series of different things you have to do. And on top of that, things break when you plug them into other things. And our internet and most software products are built in a patchwork of different things. So software development, the best I've heard is that it can be used in very controlled situations for very specific things. If you're really interested in learning what it can actually do, I recommend Max Wolf and Simon Wilson. I'll link them in the notes as well. But those two are non-hype AI guys. I also really recommend the Internet of Bugs, which again, I'll, I'll link as well. There are software developers who use this stuff. I don't know about, and actually, the Internet of Bug

• 6:03Ed Zitron?

  video is really good as well, because it breaks the whole myth of, oh, Microsoft and Google saying 20 to 30% of their code is written by AI. It's kind of bullshit, as you'd expect, because you can't just hand off code like this. There's also vibe coding. Vibe coding in and of itself has so many problems in that, yeah, when you create something that works in a way that you literally don't understand by definition, yeah, it's probably going to fucking break. I mean, it will break at some point, and you won't know how to fix it, other than to poke the machine that built it and say, fix the problem I don't understand.

• 6:34Speaker 06

  That's a good answer. From Falcon underscore 1983.

• 6:39Speaker 06

  I'd be interested to hear Ed's process for researching and planning his stuff. How long does it take to go from an idea to a finished article and podcast? I'm, I'm excited to hear the truth for this one.

• 6:49Ed Zitron?

  Okay, so Sophie, Sophie's gonna love this. So the answer is several seconds or several days or several weeks. So I'll give you an example. I have an upcoming newsletter that's about 13,000 words long. I'm going to break it into probably two or three episodes. That thing started with me listening to JoJo Bizarre Adventure, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure music even. Sitting outside, just it was a nice day, had a smoke. It was like, oh, fuck. I started writing down like the most insane notes ever. I then sent that to my editor and my mate Casey, and we talked about it for like a day or two. And then I get pissed off like a baby that needs to fart or burp. I sit there being mad at the idea. I message people like, what do you think about that? You, you ever see this?

• 7:33Ed Zitron?

  And they're like, I don't know what you're talking about, Ed. I don't understand what you're talking about. What do you mean? And then I'll, then in explaining it to them, I'll actually come up with the idea. And then I will sit down and I will write for several hours. And I will write for several hours straight. I will research as I'm writing. There will be stuff that I pick up along the way in my day that I'm reading. And I'll go, yeah, this kind of makes me feel annoyed or feels like it slots in. And then I will go through a full, I, so the 13,001 took me about three days. Probably three days, about three hours each, bits and pieces. And I'm researching as I go. That's a big part of my process, which sounds insane, but it's mostly because I'm trying to explain it to myself as I go. Which works pretty well.

• 8:16Ed Zitron?

  It makes the things a little long, but I mean, that's why you listen to the podcast. Then there will be situations like with Giant Bomb. So the Giant Bomb episode that came out last week. So that one came together in a few minutes. I was like, I messaged Dan Reichert over there and said, hey, look, I would love to do an episode with you guys. And it just came together quickly, same with like Karen Howe. And so it really is a tapestry of different things. There will be times when I ping friends and just say, hey, look, what do you think about this idea? And I will shoot the shit with them for a few hours and something will come out. That's why I end up, I mentioned Casey Kagawa a lot. He's one of my closest friends and we ideate a lot because we both have brain worms. So yeah, I don't know if anyone else in the world writes like this. I did sound, it makes me sound insane, but I really enjoy it.

• 9:01Ed Zitron?

  And I feel better at the end. Like it feels like I, I really built something. It's, it's cool. I like doing it. The monologues are insane in that those usually take me about

• 9:14Ed Zitron?

  10 minutes of pacing around thinking and then about 20 minutes of writing, then I record straight. Because I like the monologues. The monologues, I think I have more fun with than anything else because they're so low. They're low velocity, low pressure. I love doing them like, and I always say, I'll just do five minutes. It comes out as 10. Oh, really should do a monologue this week.

• 9:34Speaker 06

  I love your monologues.

• 9:36Ed Zitron?

  Oh, they're the best.

• 9:36Speaker 06

  I love that. I love that you were like, yeah, I'll try it. And then you were like, I had so much fun doing this. It's like,

• 9:43Ed Zitron?

  It's because it's low pressure.

• 9:45Speaker 06

  You can tell, but you can tell. That's why they're so, that's why they're so good. Because if you were doing them out of like, oh, obligation to rant, as opposed to like, I actually like doing it, then it's just not as interesting. In my opinion, you can tell, you can tell as like a, as like a, a, a podcast, a producer of many podcasts, you can tell when somebody's phoning it in.

• 10:07Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, I don't think I have it in me to phone it in.

• 10:09Speaker 06

  No, you don't.

• 10:10Ed Zitron?

  I guess, I mean, the man who killed Google Search, you know, from last monologue. Sorry, two monologues back even when we're recording this.

• 10:16Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 10:17Ed Zitron?

  Was literally, that came from me being pissed off about, like I was trying to phone in a Sheen newsletter. It was like soup, not Sheen newsletter, podcast, and it was super early and better offline. So I had no process. I was just like war, just constantly worried every week.

• 10:31Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 10:31Ed Zitron?

  Not anymore though. Now I, now I feast on content.

• 10:35Speaker 06

  Yeah, you, you caught the podcast illness.

• 10:38Ed Zitron?

  Oh yeah, the Evans madness.

• 10:42Speaker 06

  Uh, let's, let's do another one. Um, from Logan. My question is,

• 10:48Speaker 06

  How do you see the copyright lawsuits playing out and its effect on generative AI in the tech industry? Do you have faith that creators will win and copyrighted content will need to be pulled from these models severely hindering their performance?

• 11:04Ed Zitron?

  I think that it's going to be

• 11:07Speaker 06

  It's a good question.

• 11:08Ed Zitron?

  It's going to be weird and confusing right up until it isn't. So I don't think you're going to have like a unilateral win in any of these cases. It's never that clean. It's never that easy. But I think what is most likely to happen is there's going to be a win and then there will be a massive settlement, but that settlement will be used in the future to break these machines. If they lose these things and there is ever like a precedent set that says, and I'm not a lawyer, I've realized, but and they say, okay, this is the thing where this, this proves that feeding into the models is copyright, is a violation of copyright, let's just say. They can't untrain these things. They cannot do it. You cannot untrain a model. Once a model is trained,

• 11:52Ed Zitron?

  it's done. There are stages to them. They could probably revert back to from what I understand. But you can't just be like, okay, remove all pictures of Scooby Doo, remove all pictures of Garfield. It's they, and another important detail is the model developers don't really understand how these things work themselves. They're still working it out. It's why the, it's why there's so many questions they have when it's like they get where they're like, oh yeah, yeah, it'd just be a very complex to remove. The answer is they don't know how. OpenAI like a year ago said they were going to make a media central thing. We could opt out of stuff. Just never happened. No one checked. On the less fun level, it will probably be a big settlement. On the funny level will be the judge says, yeah, this is, you have to amend your models. There is no amending these models. They will have to spend

• 12:36Ed Zitron?

  tens, hundreds of millions of dollars to retrain anything that is used there. There will be some that refuse to. I would not be surprised if Elon Musk. If even order just goes, oh, oh, yeah, that, that's, that's not at Pickle Bay. It's the one that's not going to do it. And, and no one is gonna, like, no one's gonna out sue him. OpenAI is far more scared of that. Anthropic, extremely weak to that. And on top of that, any of these lawsuits prevailing will fuck OpenAI's nonprofit situation, which is already pretty fucked. Like, there are so many weak points in these companies that people don't realize. And there's always, there's always hope. Never give up hope that these assholes can get crushed.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  Empower is all about helping you invest well, so you can go out and live a little. And their free Empower Personal Dashboard shows you your full financial life in one place. You'll be able to see your net worth, monitor budgets, analyze your portfolio, set retirement goals, and more. Whether you're saving for something big, want to treat yourself, friends, or family, or meet long-term goals, Empower helps you see where you stand. You've worked hard for your money, and Empower can help you make the most of it. Download the Empower Personal Dashboard or visit empower.com. Not an Empower client paid or sponsored.

• 13:54Speaker 07

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• 14:24Speaker 03

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• 14:55Speaker 04

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• 15:10Speaker 03

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 15:21Speaker 04

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies. So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 15:55Speaker 06

  All right. From Mela, I think it's Mela, M-E-L-A. I'm sorry if it's not Mela. Question, I'm a teacher. Any thoughts on AI being implemented in the classroom, specifically in public schools? We talk about it pretty often because it constantly getting marketed as a tool, but it is mostly in the context of students learning on it to write research, but not about how it is being marketed to schools.

• 16:21Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, so I don't know this subject in depth, but I'll say this. I've heard of people using it for lesson plans. Teachers, and if you're not a teacher and you hear this, teachers have to like buy all their own shit and they need to do all their own work. They get basically no support. So I wouldn't be surprised if the, if OpenAI or one of these companies tries to push it and be like, oh, it's a teacher's system. And it's a rare case where like, maybe it kind of helps, but I think after a certain point, if you're making a lesson plan with ChatGPT, you're no longer fucking teaching. I think you're just, you are just representing someone else's information and hoping it works. I worry about administrations in poorly funded education departments

• 17:04Ed Zitron?

  just being like, okay, yeah, let's just shove this in here. I think the worries that people have over

• 17:13Ed Zitron?

  Over the whole like, oh, kids are just gonna be handed a GPT and told to go nuts. I don't think that will happen, just because, well, Google's already trying to do that with Gemini. They're already trying to give Gemini to kids. I don't think that that's going to last as long as people think, because at some point, a child is going to hurt themselves because of one of these things or hurt someone else. And as much as we love our restrained capital, unrestrained capitalism in this country and the world at large, there comes a point where that kind of stuff fucks you in Europe. Like, Europe will open, unhinge their jaw and swallow OpenAI whole. And the same with Google, if they do anything with kids and AI in a way they don't like.

• 17:53Ed Zitron?

  Over here, you're gonna see some tests, but the fun about the thing is, it can't do the teaching part. It can do the, hi, I want, like, finish my homework for me, but the actual lesson instruction, no. And nor is there a situation where they're just gonna sit kids down in front of it, because, I don't know, how would that even, I mean, sure, in some dystopian future, we just hand them a laptop and chat GPT and say, go nuts, but on a practical level, I just don't see that happening. And if, I guess you could say, then there are the doomers out there will say, oh, the Department of Education can force Grok onto everything. Uh, if you think in that way, if you constantly pull yourself in the doomerist direction, yeah, anything can literally happen ever. Anytime, anything terrible can happen.

• 18:37Ed Zitron?

  I think you are going to see a lot of, of departments push teachers to learn this stuff, to the point of your question. I think when it becomes student facing, that's when things are gonna get a little bit weird and a little bit crazier, because another thing to think about, how well do you think conservatives will react to their child being plonked in front of chat GPT or Grok or what have you? And Grok or chat GPT tells them that, like, black people should have the same rights as white people. They're gonna hate that. They're gonna be furious at that idea. They're gonna say that they're being given a woke education. And there is only so much amendment you can do to a system prompt before you entirely break it, as proven by the fact that Grok talked about white genocide or the Boers

• 19:20Ed Zitron?

  ad nauseam the other day. Shout out to Kylie Robertson, went on, Chris Hayes talked about that. But yeah, I, it's a mix. It's really, it's a question of how far this hype cycle goes and for how long? Because if it lasts another two or three years, somewhere it's gonna happen, but I don't see that happening at all.

• 19:40Speaker 06

  Yeah, I know it's really kind of gnarly for teachers when they can, when they can so easily tell that students are just using AI to turn in homework. I, I mean, somebody's gonna create something that is like a plagiarism tracker, but it's like an AI tracker at some point, you'd have to imagine.

• 19:58Ed Zitron?

  And those already exist and they're already dinging students for. And I think that there is a wider problem with the old chat GPT essay writing thing, which is we don't teach children to write.

• 20:08Speaker 06

  Correct.

• 20:09Ed Zitron?

  I remember when I was at Penn State, I had a group project, if any of you are listening, I'm very sorry your writing sucked. I had a group project with like seniors and juniors and I was a sophomore at the time. And it was like an eighteen page, eighteen page, double spaced essay. And everyone's writing was different, but the same kind of bad. And it kind of mirrored the shitty writing of chat GPT. It's the kind of uh intro body conclusion slop. We taught people to write like this and we graded them based on this writing. We don't, because we think, oh, not everyone can write. Actually, they can. I fully believe they can if given media to consume and encouragement and have good writers teach them.

• 20:49Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 20:49Ed Zitron?

  Because we do not prioritize communication as, in fact, I think it is a wider thing. It's we don't prioritize teaching people communication at all. People are using chat GPT to mediate conflict because we don't have any kind of institutionalized men- mental health. I don't mean like institutions, I mean like making people do mental health stuff. We don't have any kind of classes to teach people conflict resolution. And we also don't teach people how to fucking communicate. We romanticize, especially in college, this kind of overstuffed architect in the matrix style. Indubitably bullshit, which is about making yourself sound smart rather than actually communicating an intelligent point. This is a natural weak point for things like chat GPT, which is entirely about sounding smart without being smart.

• 21:33Ed Zitron?

  So, I mean, I'm actually shocked that teachers can't tell that chat, when chat GPT is writing, because I've been able to one hundred percent notice when I get that slob. It's a really certain kind of echoing nothing behind it. There's no, there is no, I'm not even being kind of condescending. I mean, there is a way it writes. There is a way that Claude writes as well. It always goes like, that's a really good point.

• 21:57Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, there's usually some kind of like, indeed, that is great.

• 22:00Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 22:01Speaker 06

  There's some like really strange or like, and, and unusually awkward punctuation as well that you can just tell.

• 22:09Ed Zitron?

  And it doesn't feel right. And but again, if we have teachers that don't know how to write, who don't know what good writing is, they just, and again, that is a, well, not again, I didn't say this yet, but there is also likely not the institutional support for teachers either. So it's just, we create these weak systems that get exploited. And none of this is a business model for ChatGPT either. Like, they got sixteen point five million, I think, from Cal State University System. It's like, that's still losing the money. And already, people are trying to get rid of it. It's just, it's also sickening.

• 22:44Speaker 06

  It's a mess. Let's go to, let's go to, let's go to a fun question from Nora. Do you have a piece of tech you wish had been successful but wasn't? Or that you wish was widely influential but didn't turn out that way? I would love to know your answer to this question.

• 22:59Ed Zitron?

  So my one is the PlayStation Vita. So the PlayStation Vita was this little gaming console that Sony did. It was PlayStation three era, I think it was. It was so cool. It was like a step up from the PlayStation Portable. The graphics were good. It had this weird touchscreen on the back that you could use. It really wasn't a great idea, but it was like they were trying stuff. It was also just a great form factor, great way, great games, really great. Same with the PSP. And I get why it didn't take off. And I think we are getting there. There's the GPD Win4, which is like a little gaming PC handheld that kind of feels like it, but it's too chunky. I think in the next few years, you might actually see growth in this.

• 23:40Ed Zitron?

  Because, good lord, is the, like, I love the mobile gaming PCs. I'm for the show, actually, I'm playing with an Asus Rogue Ally X, which is really cool. We are probably five to 10 years away from what I'm dreaming of, which is a super thin one that's kind of like a Nintendo Switch, but a powerful gaming PC.

• 24:00Ed Zitron?

  I wish the PS Vita had done better because we would have seen this quicker. We would have seen a push for smaller silicon for batteries, like there would have been just more money going into it. But again, maybe it didn't get there because the tech wasn't ready. I still loved it. I still really loved it. And I, I really love that form factor as well. And the big thing I guess I'm saying is it's not just do these things exist. It's all like Sony is very good at ergonomic stuff. They've, I love their controllers. Like that was what really made it as well. It was just the, ah, I missed, I missed that. And I'm sure there's some, if you are a listener who played with the PlayStation Portable and PlayStation Vita Homebrew scene, love you. Please email me. I would love to talk about it. I miss it. It's cool as shit. Raymond Wong, who used to write Inversa, did a lot about it as well.

• 24:47Ed Zitron?

  It's just, I guess the part of tech I'm missing is, well, that never really took off, is these powerful portable handhelds. And we're so close. We're so close. I can, I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel the cosmos. It's gonna be wonderful when it gets here.

• 25:02Speaker 06

  There was a article that I read a couple of days ago from Vice that was probably, you know, not an original piece from Vice, no offense to Vice. Uh, that was like, your pets could one day be able to talk to you with AI. And, uh, I just, like, that to me was one, you've been talking about, and there's a question that talks about the AI bubble burst, which is what this is leading into. You've talked about that. That is such an indicator to me that I'm like, come on, come on, come on, guys.

• 25:34Ed Zitron?

  Part of the joy of pets is that they can't communicate with us and we have to show them extra love and affection.

• 25:39Speaker 06

  I know.

• 25:40Ed Zitron?

  That we have to understand their needs without fully understanding them, that we have to be empathetic and caring about them. The idea that, also, I don't want to hear what Babu thinks of me. I think he loves me, but, no, he loves me. I think Howell is the one, the, the, my off, my cat who kind of like stays in my office mostly. He is the one who I think he's probably got some mean things to say. He loves me, but he also hits me in the face sometimes, so.

• 26:05Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, like, I think Anderson would would not trade me for a piece of string cheese. But my my newest rescue dog Truman. I mean, I'd love for for us to know when she'd be like that. I'm scared of that. But also, uh, I don't want to hear that she would trade me for a piece of string cheese, which I'm pretty sure she would at this point, and I understand it.

• 26:26Ed Zitron?

  What if my dog's racist?

• 26:28Speaker 06

  Yo, I mean, come on. What if your dog has like really bad taste in television?

• 26:33Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, you oh, God, what if your dog is just annoying? What if your dog just like hums?

• 26:39Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 26:39Ed Zitron?

  What if your dog's sitting there like kind of going hmm? Just like makes like weird mouth like there's just other like my pets are beautiful and wonderful. I love them so much and they make my life so good. They they really are angels.

• 26:54Speaker 06

  Yeah, exactly. Can you imagine?

• 26:56Ed Zitron?

  Oh, I don't need to. Well, I mean, Babu talks to me anyway.

• 27:00Speaker 06

  I can understand almost everything that my dogs communicate to me.

• 27:03Ed Zitron?

  Nice.

• 27:04Speaker 06

  And I and that's great, and that's where it needs to stay.

• 27:07Ed Zitron?

  Think Babu can understand me for sure.

• 27:10Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 27:11Ed Zitron?

  Because I have tons of videos of me saying, Babu, what do you want? And he meows at me. I'm saying, really? He goes meow. And it's like, OK, yeah, we're talking. That's what I'm telling myself.

• 27:19Speaker 06

  Like Anderson can, she's right behind me staring at you.

• 27:23Ed Zitron?

  Legend, the legend. Look at her.

• 27:25Speaker 06

  Yeah, she's perfect. But like, I think she is more self aware about what's going on in the world than most humans.

• 27:32Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, that doesn't surprise me.

• 27:33Speaker 06

  Yeah, anyways, from Justin, uh, this was leading into the AI bubble bursting. As the AI bubble bursts, what will become of the many mediocre customers who have become overly reliant on it? For just about everything. That's a great question.

• 27:47Ed Zitron?

  I think the first thing they're going to find out is they're not reliant on it at all. But that is the the first thing they're going to discover is that they were never reliant on this stuff. I also think that in the event that they were reliant on it, they'll choose one of the many open source models. And because large language models are not going to disappear. It's not like OpenAI dies tomorrow. Large language models will not. The hype cycle dies, they will not die. There are on device models that Nvidia is putting out like a $3,000 G, I think it's the DGX. Box they're doing that can run large language models of a certain parameters like it's very doable. And there are going to be people who just go, I didn't, I never really needed this. Yeah, there are going to be those who say, oh, well, I use chat GPT for this, that and the other.

• 28:32Ed Zitron?

  Chat GPT dot com or forward to Copilot like you're going to have access to one of these fucking things. You're just going to find out what happens when people are not told to use this stuff, when people naturally use it. And I think you can kind of see what will happen there based on the user numbers for these companies outside of OpenAI. They can barely muster up the combined active users of like a free to play game that sells your information to the Chinese like I. I think that so much of this demand is artificial too. And I think that it's curiosity. People are like, oh, I hear about this constantly. I should try it out. And then, yeah, people are ultimately a bit lazy. I know I can be.

• 29:13Ed Zitron?

  And they're like, oh, I'm in an argument with my mate. What do I do about it? How do I deal with the argument with my friend, uh, chat GPT? And there will be that people use it for that. But I also think that again, that's not a business model and people will not care for that. So I think the future will be large language models with heavy usage limits. And premium ones that no one pays for really that are just way more expensive. And I really do think OpenAI eventually cops it. I think they get absorbed into Microsoft because we don't really have antitrust right now. So I think they'll just get

• 29:47Speaker 06

  Paying for premium AI?

• 29:50Ed Zitron?

  Sadly, so they're paying, OpenAI gets like billions of dollars through this, but it's like people, organizations buying it and you have people. Think about it like this, if every single news outlet everywhere forever for two, sorry, not forever. For two years straight or more has said chat GPT, AI, generative AI, chat GPT, yeah.

• 30:11Ed Zitron?

  Billions of billions of dollars of revenue. Sure. People will shove money into something if they are told to. And on top of that, you have tons of business idiots who are just like, yeah, I need to put AI in my business and I have the podcast that's coming up. I actually believe our economy is run by a lot of people who don't do any work. So this shit seems like magic. Of course they'll buy it for their all entire organization. They don't know what the fuck they're doing. Yeah, sure. Put chat GPT and everything. That's how that works. Oh, here we go. And I think that when it goes away, or chat GPT does, I think that we'll probably see just the kind of very boring large language model industry. And it just, it just won't, it won't be as prevalent. You won't hear about it as much.

• 30:54Ed Zitron?

  And it'll actually be better for the tech, I think, all told.

• 31:08Speaker 01

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• 32:40Speaker 04

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• 32:55Ed Zitron?

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant. So I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic. In a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 33:06Speaker 04

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• 33:41Speaker 06

  And we're back from, I'm gonna try to get this right. P eight N T B A L L N X J. I think I did that.

• 33:53Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 33:55Speaker 06

  I think they're trying to say paintball.

• 33:58Ed Zitron?

  Paintball.

• 33:59Speaker 06

  And X J. All right. The question is, Ed, what are your favorite activities that have nothing to do with tech?

• 34:06Ed Zitron?

  Okay, so I have a local basketball court I've been going to on my own. And I've been playing basketball on my own, which sounds very sad, but.

• 34:15Speaker 06

  No, it doesn't.

• 34:16Ed Zitron?

  I do a shit ton of fitness. So last year, lost a ton of weight. I'm down like buck sixty five now muscle. It's great. So I work out a lot. The reason I don't bring up lifting is because that's tech. Like my tonal is a tech thing. Basketball is not. It's me, my music and hoop him. And I'll tell you, I am one of the worst shooters of all time. I am so bad at it, but I really like rebounding and I really like the cardio thing because I needed a cardio level to go. Cause my boxing was kind of stalling. So I really enjoy just like running around for half an hour, like catching a ball in the air and shooting it.

• 34:50Speaker 06

  I wanna play basketball with you.

• 34:53Ed Zitron?

  You will demolish me more than that. I have, I have the cardio. I have the cardio, but I, I'm like, how tall are you?

• 35:00Speaker 06

  I'm five foot three on a good day.

• 35:02Ed Zitron?

  Okay, yeah, I might, I might be all right then. I'm five nine.

• 35:05Speaker 06

  I was, I was captain of my varsity basketball team.

• 35:08Ed Zitron?

  Oh, then you'll demolish me then. Okay, you will, you will send me to hell. You'll be able to actually get the ball in the hoop, which is my one problem. But I really like that and I really like um barbecue. So I have two pellet smokers, which I realize to some listeners who do like the wood chunks is kind of considered haram, but. Fuck you, you purist bastard. Um, but I love making ribs. I love making tri-tip. I hate making brisket. It was a few years ago. I really fucked up some brisket.

• 35:35Speaker 06

  I love.

• 35:36Ed Zitron?

  Tri-tip's the bit, my tri-tip's incredible as well. I really enjoy that. I do use some tech things. I have a combustion thermometer, but really it's just a giant's. Steel thing full of smoke that I watch and it's great and it honestly has been. Really good for me and it allows me to cook for people, which I love doing. And yeah, that, and when I'm waiting for stuff to cook, I will stand watching TV outside, bouncing the basketball around, catching it in the air. I just, I have some weird habits, as you can probably guess, but I really enjoy like being bad at basketball. I honestly have not enjoyed.

• 36:12Speaker 06

  Do you like to watch basketball?

• 36:14Ed Zitron?

  I'm getting there. I'm still learning the, the people. I know that like James Harden is constantly at strip clubs or being traded.

• 36:23Speaker 06

  I hate, I hate him. My brother played against him in high school. He's been an asshole since he was a child.

• 36:28Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, and he seems to like enjoy like tricking people into doing fouls, but I've just, I'd like him more if he was ruder. Like if he was more of a heel, if he like, like was like nah, the fans a bit or a cape.

• 36:40Speaker 06

  Prop Ian and I can teach you.

• 36:42Ed Zitron?

  I would love to learn basketball. I.

• 36:44Speaker 06

  You're a Laker fan, by the way. You are.

• 36:47Ed Zitron?

  I like the Lakers.

• 36:48Speaker 06

  It's good. You've been assigned.

• 36:50Ed Zitron?

  Uh, baseball as well. I really enjoy baseball. I got into baseball a few years ago. I really enjoy going to baseball. Don't really enjoy watching it on TV like I can, but I need to like have a reason I'm there. Like it needs to be like a, like an LDS or something. I'm like a Dodgers Padres Mets fan. It's a whole mess.

• 37:09Speaker 06

  That's fun.

• 37:10Ed Zitron?

  I'm more of a game. I'm like the Rob Lowe, wearing the NFL hat guy. I'm just like, I'm here for the game, but I really do. I really enjoy baseball. And with that in mind, I also enjoy, but haven't been for a while, going to a batting cage. I really enjoy batting cages. It's just, especially when you're on the computer all, all the time. You're looking at screens all the time and you just go and you hit a ball that's like thrown at you at seventy miles an hour. It's very difficult, but again, really enjoy it.

• 37:39Speaker 06

  How do you feel about like mini golf and like the driving range?

• 37:42Ed Zitron?

  I do. I like mini golf. Never done the driving range though.

• 37:45Speaker 06

  I like mini golf a lot. Mini golf's great. You know, I don't, I don't like that, like, um, what's it called? The like yassified like driving range where there's.

• 37:54Ed Zitron?

  Oh, Topgolf?

• 37:55Speaker 06

  Yeah, I really don't enjoy Topgolf. Um.

• 37:57Ed Zitron?

  Oh.

• 37:58Speaker 06

  It's just unenjoyable.

• 38:00Ed Zitron?

  I've never like really known where you'd go. I guess it just felt like a driving range to me and it's like, I like mini golf. I think mini golf's fun and silly.

• 38:07Speaker 06

  I like like a really like old school mini golf course that you know has been there forever and like.

• 38:13Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, it's kind of shit.

• 38:14Speaker 06

  It's shit and the tech and there's like no tech. It's just like really bad, like wooden, wooden art and it's just hilarious.

• 38:21Ed Zitron?

  You're not sure if it's meant to go in a certain place, but you keep playing anywhere.

• 38:25Speaker 06

  It's like bowling?

• 38:27Ed Zitron?

  No. So I have a, uh, coordination disability called dyspraxia, which is really weird. I realize basketball has honestly been an exploration of how prevalent that is in my life though. Because I could not dribble the ball when I started. Like I physically could not, I would get maybe three or four bounces before I drop it. Now I can run at full speed up and down the court dribbling, changing hands. I can turn around. I can grab the ball in the air. So it's been this weird exploration. So bowling might be one of those things where maybe if I try it more.

• 38:59Speaker 06

  I don't know. The sticking your fingers into dirty holes thing is.

• 39:04Ed Zitron?

  I can, uh, we all been there, but it's, it's, it's one of those things where. Six months ago, I'd have said no, but the basketball side, again, on screens all day. So like my achievements are all typing, but like being able to grab a ball out of the air, being able to actually rebound successfully is thrilling. I really enjoy it. And it's like something where I can't look at a screen. I have to look at where I'm gonna miss next.

• 39:29Speaker 06

  I'm, I'm telling, I'm gonna text Ian in prop right now. We, we're going to give you a full basketball education.

• 39:35Ed Zitron?

  I would love that. I would genuinely love that. Casey Kigawa, friend of the show, got me into baseball in the same way. That's how I get into sport. I also do watch the NFL, but I think saying I like the Raiders is a stretch. It's like attending a years-long class action suit.

• 39:51Speaker 06

  That was the weirdest thing that's ever coming out of your mouth. The Raider. I know, I know locationally, sure. But like to actually like the Raiders, you have to be a specific type of person, which you are not.

• 40:02Ed Zitron?

  Well, the funny thing is, is, uh, Reeve Hassan from Sixty Minute Drill, uh, football podcast I do, laughed at me once because he asked on the pod, he said, uh, why'd you get into the Raiders? And I was like, oh, I lived in Oakland at the time and, uh, the season ticket's really cheap. And he just goes, you got into a football team because of market conditions? And that is something that will haunt me for the rest of my life because it's true. However, the team might be good this year, maybe.

• 40:25Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 40:25Ed Zitron?

  But I haven't had hope before, so who cares?

• 40:31Speaker 06

  Uh.

• 40:31Ed Zitron?

  Yeah. Oh, and also the show Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. That's another thing I really like. You don't want to get me talking about that too much.

• 40:37Speaker 06

  Is that what the question about Jojo is?

• 40:40Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, there's, you can skip that.

• 40:42Speaker 06

  I was like, I don't know what that is. I'm not gonna ask.

• 40:44Ed Zitron?

  You don't need to. I would have to explain a bunch of stuff.

• 40:47Speaker 06

  I'm not, uh, I was like, that, that went over my head. Um, I'll ask one more serious one and then we'll do the cats.

• 40:53Ed Zitron?

  Sounds good.

• 40:53Speaker 06

  All right. Um, which one do I want to ask that's serious? Oh, this comes from Eric. How the fuck is anyone supposed to make anything cool and make a living out of music anymore? I quit touring to be with my kid, but all the avenues I was going to explore and crumble under my feet. I think that's a good question. I think that's like music, but it's also just like, how the fuck are you supposed to create anything anymore?

• 41:14Ed Zitron?

  I think the thing that the problem is that it was never really a good way of making money before. And the internet had this explosion of where it was good to, it was good to make money for a bit. But there were only so many people who could. I mean, iHeartRadio and Cool Zone came to me and I did the podcast because they could pay. Like, I wouldn't have done, like, the idea of starting a podcast and like building an audience and selling ads. Sounds nightmarish to me. I can't imagine being a musician right now. It seems the way that musicians I know are making money are skipping streaming services, doing a shit ton of touring, doing merch, like, kind of old school measures. I know these aren't really good answers. I have, I can only sing. I can't play any musical instruments. I wish I could.

• 42:00Ed Zitron?

  I've never toured with anyone or have experience with that. But my general thing with creators right now is, and the only really good advice I've ever had is find whatever is easiest and do that. The reason I do my newsletter is, though they're very long, I enjoy doing it and it isn't, it's work, I guess, but it comes very naturally. I don't do anything that doesn't. I find ways to streamline things that I don't like doing, like I think anyone does. And I obviously like run like a PFM and another thing. So I like, I need to make sure my time is used well. But the big thing is, is I don't know how anyone does anything independently anymore. The newsletter, I think I could have monetized, but

• 42:41Ed Zitron?

  the best advice I got there was from Drew, Drew Fairweather. So I'm Married to the Sea, uh, the shares I'm, was just keep creating stuff, which I know is deeply unsatisfying, but the mistake that people get pulled into is they're like, okay, so I've got Patreon, I've got this, what platforms am I on? I'm on the platform on this platform. Am I posting to social? Am I posting to LinkedIn? Am I on Instagram? Do I have Instagram clips? Do I have this? All of that time could be spent making something. And indeed, this is advice that I got from Sophie and Robert earlier. Just fucking record. Just go for it. You will never be perfect. You will never be able to do a flawless episode or flawless product. What will come through is that you care about doing it and you're actually fucking doing it. Because so many-

• 43:23Ed Zitron?

  People get obsessed with the social media of it or with the pushing like with the I must hit content every week in this way in this perfect way with all these clips that I must resemble. Another content creator when it really comes down to is just push it out, try stuff. Another great bit of advice I got was from wonderful Matt Weinberger. I used to be at Business Insider, a great editor, great writer, and he said, look to hit singles rather than home runs. You want to just keep putting stuff out regularly enough that you get feedback, that you get the natural feeling of what bangs. Before you even finish it, that way it will have more mass appeal because you'll learn more from people's reaction and from creating stuff than you ever will.

• 44:07Ed Zitron?

  From doing a perfect social campaign, from following the right people, from having enough retweets in this, the beginning sucks. When I started, I already had somewhat of a following ironically from PR. Um, I can, I can only recommend just creating more. I realize this is kind of an unsatisfying answer, but there are no good ones here. The discovery sucks on everything now, even for popular stuff.

• 44:32Speaker 06

  When I started his podcast, he was like, I'm terrible. And I'm like, keep doing it. You're not.

• 44:38Ed Zitron?

  Now I enjoy it. Now I enjoy it. Now, now.

• 44:41Speaker 06

  You're sicko.

• 44:41Ed Zitron?

  Now they have to tell me to do less.

• 44:43Speaker 06

  It's true. Um, last question from Carolina. They say, I have an underlying curiosity to hear what your cat's favorite toys are and if they like. Churu, is that how you pronounce that?

• 44:54Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, Churu is this taste that you hand cats. It's this goop. I have yet to give my cats the goop.

• 45:01Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 45:01Ed Zitron?

  So Babu, Poki, Howl doesn't really like, I am his toy. He comes and sits on me. He bites my hand occasionally. He purrs, he lies down. He's a big, big softie. Same with Tingas Pingas. Tingas Pingas doesn't really play. Poki and Babu's favorite toy is each other. They chase each other, two Bengals, they just bolt around the house. They don't do it much. I have one of those cat wheels. Babu will go and run on it for 15 seconds. He will walk over, meow. Run on it, get ahead of steam and then stop and then sit down on it. They like the classic dangly toys. They like to jump. Babu, we have like a river in the wall. Where we put something very high.

• 45:43Ed Zitron?

  With like one of the dangly ones and Babu will just do these insane like six foot tall jumps. He loves. Oh, he loves it. He loves it. And yes, of course, boxes. Anytime I get a box, they get, they wanna get in that. They wanna play in the box. The twist tie things. I get cheap toys for them because they seem just as happy. Um. Another thing is, uh, this isn't really a toy, but I got one of these donut beds for the cats. And they didn't use it for a year. And then one day I found in the space of 24 hours, all three of them trying the donut hole in the middle. Now Pingus mostly uses it. I have never tried giving them churro. I am now going to get some churro and try just because.

• 46:24Speaker 06

  Have you tried one of those, um, uh, like glove brushes? My, my best friend's cats.

• 46:31Ed Zitron?

  I.

• 46:31Speaker 06

  I go to their house and I just sit there with the brush and they're just so happy.

• 46:35Ed Zitron?

  One of them. And I use it a few times and it never seems to, there is always more hair. So I think I need to get a deeper grooming.

• 46:42Speaker 06

  Not even for the brush. It's not even for the, the grooming.

• 46:45Ed Zitron?

  Oh, they love it. They love it. Yeah. I pull that thing out sometimes when Pingus, I don't know, he looks particularly cute.

• 46:52Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 46:52Ed Zitron?

  And I just go and pick, I go and like pick him up and sit down and start like grooming him like Blofeld, but with a giant. Kind of like blue spiky glove. Looks very sinister. But he, he really, he really, Pingus is the sweetie. He's the sweetest of them. All of them is, I'm blessed with my beautiful cats. And my friends as well, but like my cats really, I genuinely believe that cats echo something about their owners. So if you have someone with like super dysfunctional cats, there's a reason.

• 47:22Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 47:22Ed Zitron?

  Like that.

• 47:24Speaker 06

  Yeah, I feel that way about my dogs. They are me and I am them.

• 47:28Ed Zitron?

  Well, they're wonderful dogs. I've yet to meet them, though. One day I will.

• 47:32Speaker 06

  You will.

• 47:33Ed Zitron?

  Have to make it to, yeah.

• 47:35Speaker 06

  You will.

• 47:35Ed Zitron?

  And, but yeah, I'm going to get churro after this.

• 47:40Speaker 06

  I actually have some because they gave it to me to, to.

• 47:43Ed Zitron?

  Thought you were gonna say you were eating some.

• 47:46Speaker 06

  No, somebody gave, somebody, when I, when I, they was like trying to, it was, it's like, in like, a, like, for like pill, pill hiding for pets. Somebody gave it to me as like a thing. But turns out, um, Truman will eat a, eat a, eat a pill out of my hand, just à la carte. She doesn't need the churro.

• 48:03Ed Zitron?

  Perfect dog.

• 48:04Speaker 06

  She's angel. She's a good girl. Well, you did the, you did the mailbag. You did the Q and A.

• 48:10Ed Zitron?

  Mailbag. I will do another one of these in maybe a month or two. I love doing this. I love hearing from all of you and genuinely thank you to all the listeners who reach out regularly. Because if I say so much as something negative about myself, you are all very reassuring and you refuse to accept it. I love you all genuinely. I'm blessed to have you. So, thank you for listening and yeah, until next time. Sophie, thank you for being on with me.

• 48:35Speaker 06

  Of course, of course. I can't wait to teach you more about basketball. Proff and Ian are, the, the group chat has decided you're, you're in the club. You made it.

• 48:44Ed Zitron?

  Hell, yeah. I look forward to it. Thank you for listening, everyone.

• 48:54Ed Zitron?

  Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matt Osowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects at mattosowski.com. M A T T O S O W S K I dot com. You can email me at [email protected] or visit betteroffline.com to find more podcast links and of course my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat dot where's your ed dot app to visit the Discord and go to r slash better offline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening.

• 49:26Speaker 06

  Better Offline is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 49:59Speaker 01

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• 52:37Speaker 06

  Being a small business owner isn't just a career, it's a calling. Chase for Business knows how much heart and effort go into building something of your own. Manage all your business finances, from banking to payments to credit cards, all in one place with our digital tools. Plus, access online resources designed to help your business thrive. Learn more at chase.com/business. Chase for Business: Make more of what's yours. The Chase mobile app is available for select mobile devices. Message and data rates may apply. J.P. Morgan Chase Bank, N.A., member FDIC. Copyright 2026 J.P. Morgan Chase and Company.

• 53:09Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.