Better Offline

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs you through how AI is inflating the price of memory across the board by diverting fab capacity to building high bandwidth memory for GPUs, and how this situation may end in disaster for everyone involved. GamersNexus: The DRAM Cartel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVzeHTlWIDY HBM to increase 90% Year over Year - https://x.com/pequityresearch...

This week’s Better Offline is the first joint episode with Riley, November, Hussein from TrashFuture, covering SoftBank’s crazy annual shareholder meeting and the general collapse of the AI bubble. Ed Zitron and the TF Crew are on both your feeds this week to discuss the Softbank slide deck breakdown you’ve all been waiting for. It’s nothing other than the goose, and whethe...

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs you through Meta’s plans to sell its AI compute, and how this is an admission to the grim fact that there isn’t really a reason for anyone to be building all these AI data centers. Ed Zitron on CNBC: Generative AI's Business Model Does Not Work, And Tech Is Out Of Hypergrowth Ideas https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/comments/1...

In this week’s Better Offline, Ed talks with the Wall Street Journal’s Caitlin Ostroff and Katherine Long about how Polymarket is working with influencers to show videos of fake bets cashing out - and how the prediction markets have grown into a large, barely-regulated operation. Please support me by subscribing to my premium newsletter - here’s $10 off your first year of annual...

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs you through how organizations are freaking out after having to pay the real cost of AI tokens, and how the surge of competitive open weight models could lead to the post-bubble locally-run future of LLMs. Save $10 off a year of my premium newsletter: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/gzqwkv54e1 &nbsp...

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs you through how AI is the pinnacle of Silicon Valley monoculture, and a monument to the cargo cult desperation of a tech industry that celebrates mediocrity and has run out of ideas. Newsletter: Cargo Culture: https://www.wheresyoured.at/cargo-culture/ OpenAI Exclusive: https://www.wheresyoured.at/exclusive-openai-financials/ Save $10 off a y...

In this week’s Better Offline, Ed talks with computer science professor and writer Cal Newport about AI companies “doom trolling” consumers using scary stories about conscious computers, and how we need to make fun of the scare-mongering and ridicule the executives peddling in it. Please support me by subscribing to my premium newsletter - here’s $10 off your first year of...

In a special exclusive episode of Better Offline, Ed Zitron digs into the audited financials of OpenAI from 2024 and 2025. Companion newsletter: www.wheresyoured.at/exclusive-openai-financials/   Save $10 off a year of my premium newsletter: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/gzqwkv54e1  - I’d be so grateful! YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE...

Tech's hyper-growth era is ending, with online 100 million new people getting online between 2022 and 2023, and almost every major web platform seeing a decline in growth since 2021. In this episode, Ed Zitron walks you through how tech's decline is driving the tech industry to try and sell you useless products like the metaverse, cryptocurrency and generative AI. Original Air Date: 6.5.24 Save $1...

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs you through how the “does AI have ROI?” debate is coming at the worst possible time for two companies that can’t afford to slow down thanks to their $1.1 trillion in compute commitments. Newsletter: AI Doesn’t Have ROI https://www.wheresyoured.at/ai-doesnt-have-roi/   Ed on Bloomberg: https://www.youtube.com/watch...

In this week’s Better Offline, Ed Zitron is joined by economist Paul Kedrosky to talk about why nobody can find the ROI of AI, why there won’t be a Dot Com Bubble-style recovery for AI data centers, and how Google’s $80bn equity sale shows we’re at the top. https://paulkedrosky.com/ The Nick, Dick and Paul Show:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFbDiETo29GTIjg6Lk4imig...

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs you through how AI’s move to token-based billing has revealed that absolutely nobody has a way of measuring AI’s ROI - and how these massive costs might finally burst the bubble. Companion newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-revenge-of-the-business-idiot/ Axios: AI sticker shock hits corporate America  https://www.axi...

In this week's Better Offline, Ed Zitron runs you through how Uber’s COO said the quiet part out loud - that AI’s outputs and efficacy do not match up with its ruinous costs - and how despite its bluster, the AI industry’s grift is failing. Free newsletter tie-in: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-revenge-of-the-business-idiot/   Please subscribe to my premium newsletter - sav...

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs you through Anthropic’s claims it will be non-GAAP EBITDA profitable for Q2 2026 by having SpaceX discount its compute costs, and how said revenues don’t match up with its CFO’s sworn affidavit or previous reporting on its finances. Companion newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/anthropics-profitability-swindle/ https://w...

In this episode, Ed Zitron is joined by Steve Burke of GamersNexus to talk about NVIDIA’s alleged GPU shipments to China, how AI is choking the PC gaming industry, and how mad Jensen Huang keeps getting on podcasts. Save $10 off a year of my premium newsletter: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/gzqwkv54e1  - I’d be so grateful! GamersNexu...

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs you through how LLMs and the obsession with AI is actively destroying the fabric of the tech industry. Please subscribe to my premium newsletter - save $10 off a year of my premium newsletter: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/gzqwkv54e1 YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! Go to https://cottonburea...

On this week’s Better Offline, Ed Zitron is joined by the hosts of the Ben & Emil show to talk about how the markets have been driven insane by semiconductor buzz and social media hysteria. https://benandemilshow.com/ https://www.youtube.com/@benandemilshow Please support me by subscribing to my premium newsletter - here’s $10 off your first year of annual  https://edzitronswh...

This week’s Better Offline is a recording of a panel held by Clarion West in Seattle earlier this year with Cory Doctorow and Ed Zitron, discussing enshittification, The Rot Economy, and the destruction of modern tech platforms, moderated by Whitney Beltrán. Original Air Date: 11.12.25 Cory Doctorow: https://craphound.com/ Whitney Beltrán: https://brightwhitney.com/ Get involve...

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs through how 70-80% of Amazon and Microsoft’s AI revenue and capacity is taken up by OpenAI and Anthropic, and how capacity constraints across the industry are a result of hyperscalers sacrificing their infrastructure to the least-profitable startups of all time. Premium newsletter out later today - AI’s Demand Story Is A Lie - sav...

On this week’s Better Offline, Ed Zitron digs into Palantir’s 22-point manifesto with Caleb and June from Kill The Computer. The Manifesto: https://x.com/PalantirTech/status/2045574398573453312   Caleb and June https://bsky.app/profile/birdrespecter.bsky.social https://bsky.app/profile/killthecomputer.com https://bsky.app/profile/junlper.beer https://x.com/canteverdie Please suppo...

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs through how OpenAI must grow its revenue by 1000% in the next three years and raise at least another $200 billion for it to be able to pay its compute deals with Oracle and other providers, and how Oracle dies if OpenAI fails to pay its bills. This week’s free newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/four-horsemen-of-the-aipocalypse/ &nb...

In this week’s Better Offline, Ed is joined by computer science professor and writer Cal Newport to talk about the Claude Mythos marketing scam, the lies around AI job loss, and why LLMs shouldn’t talk like they’re people. Please support me by subscribing to my premium newsletter - here’s $10 off your first year of annual https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/p...

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron discusses how AI labs’ dangerous rhetoric around AI capabilities and job loss are antagonizing and terrifying people that are already on edge, and that de-escalation starts with Altman and Amodei talking about LLMs as normal software. This week’s free newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/i-will-never-respect-a-website/ Premium newsl...

In this week’s Better Offline, Ed Zitron is joined by journalist and astrophysicist Adam Becker to talk about introspection-free venture capital, the Pee-Wee’s Playhouse effect of LLMs, and trying to find a better future to focus on. https://bsky.app/profile/adambecker.bsky.social   https://www.youtube.com/@DreamingAgainstTheMachine   https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/...

In a special episode of Better Offline, Ed Zitron is joined by writers Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz of the New Yorker to talk about their massive investigation into Sam Altman, his ouster from OpenAI, and the consequences of trusting Silicon Valley with the future. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04/13/sam-altman-may-control-our-future-can-he-be-trusted   Save $10 off a year of my...