This Week in Tech (Audio)

Apple is suing OpenAI for allegedly stealing trade secrets, sparking a heated debate about AI, hardware ambitions, and Silicon Valley's shifting alliances. Leo, Wesley, Lou, and Patrick tackle what Apple's legal gambit could mean for OpenAI's IPO and the future of AI development.

Apple Sues OpenAI for Trade Secret Theft in Blockbuster Case

Apple's OpenAI lawsuit highlights broader tensions

Microsoft says the world is changing faster than it can keep up as it guts commercial, Xbox teams

Claude Fable 5 promotional access

Meta says four states want $1.4 trillion in penalties at August youth-safety trial

Meta Removes A.I. Feature on Instagram After Days of Backlash

Meta tests 'super sensing' AI glasses that can capture every moment

Meta Ordered by E.U. to Alter 'Addictive Design' of Instagram and Facebook

The backlash against Sony ditching PlayStation discs is not slowing down

Colibrì proof-of-concept gains frontier-level 1.5-TB AI model — novel approach runs on only 25GB of RAM and shows promise for local AI setups

Waymo called the cops on teen riders, raising privacy concerns

Waymo says some of its robotaxis ran out of power during San Francisco's July 4 gridlock and had to be towed

Zombie 'who owns Unix?' lawsuit comes alive again

Copy That Floppy! - Copy That Floppy!

Host: Leo Laporte

Guests: Wesley Faulkner, Louis Maresca, and Patrick Beja

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A landmark Supreme Court decision shakes up digital privacy, setting new limits on police surveillance and potentially redefining personal data rights in the age of AI and location tracking. Plus, Chinese AI models are rapidly gaining ground while American companies battle lawsuits, regulatory crackdowns, and soaring chip shortages. The global race for AI dominance is wide open!

US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

Musk's X poses "serious risk to Americans' privacy," advocates warn FTC

The World Cup added $1 billion in security systems. What happens after the games end?

U.S. Lifts Restrictions on Anthropic's Most Powerful A.I. Models

OpenAI floats giving Trump administration 5 percent cut of AI boom

Cloudflare to block cynical search-and-scrape bots from ad-supported web pages

Companies Are Throttling Employees' AI Use Because It's Too Expensive

Chinese A.I. Models Gain Ground on Anthropic and OpenAI

Swedish court orders Google to pay $1.5 billion to Klarna in antitrust damages

Google loses final appeal over $4.7 billion EU Android antitrust fine

Google warns EU's plans to weaken its monopoly could expose user data

Google's AI buildout drove 37% increase in electricity use in 2025

America Is Having MacBook Sticker Shock

Apple may struggle to get clearance for Chinese RAM, even for Chinese iPhones

BYD Sells the Most Battery Electric Cars Again

NASA mission to rescue the falling Swift observatory has launched

NASA inspector general suggests Boeing's Starliner will now be a decade late

South Korea to spend $1T on more memory chip production and humanoid robots

Spotify deletes streams of chart-topping song after suspicious Kalshi bets

Prediction Markets Let You Bet on Whether a Wildfire Will Burn Down Your Town

Host: Leo Laporte

Guests: Jason Hiner, Lisa Schmeiser, and Owen JJ Stone

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Tech giants and chipmakers are facing off as AI-fueled memory shortages trigger sweeping price hikes on everything from Macs to game consoles. Hear why global supply chain standoffs, long-term contracts, and old-school market forces are quietly reshaping your daily technology.

• Apple and Microsoft hike prices on devices amid global memory shortages

• Surge in AI data centers drives RAM and storage crisis

• Intel's comeback: Core Ultra chips compete with AMD in handheld gaming

• Microsoft's pivot to ARM, Qualcomm-NVIDIA alliance, and x86 rivalry

• AI fear and backlash; organic concern amplified by international actors

• White House abruptly pulls Anthropic's Fable model, sparking industry uproar

• US government U-turns on AI regulation, restricts top models to select partners

• Tension over AI innovation vs. regulatory "rug pull" and global competition

• Smart home chaos: Matter 1.6 standard, Samsung and Level Lock shake-up

• Debate over local vs. cloud smart home control and API access fees

• Ring and Flock cameras ignite privacy and surveillance state concerns

• Social media bans for under-16s fail in Australia, UK, and Norway plan similar rules

• BBC Radio 4 long wave broadcast ends after a century

• Meta gets caught tracking employees for AI; PlayStation deletes owned movies

• US regulators propose removing brake pedals from Robotaxis

• Ford's automated systems flop, company rehiring engineers

• Farewell to tech journalist and GigaOm founder Om Malik

Host: Leo Laporte

Guests: Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, Dan Patterson, and Daniel Rubino

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AI giants are battling not just in code, but in politics, with behind-the-scenes lobbying, strategic naming, and rumors of blockbuster deals at the heart of this week's wildest tech stories. Get the inside scoop on who's pulling the strings.

Apparently The Real Reason Anthropic's Models Are Offline: A Six-Year-Old Trump Grudge

Trump says he no longer views Anthropic as a national security threat after G7 meeting with CEO

Exclusive | Apple to Raise Prices Due to Memory Chip Crunch, Tim Cook Says

Elon Musk's Next Move May Be a Mega-Merger of SpaceX and Tesla

Anthropic's latest feud with the Trump admin may actually help it, sales data suggests

Google's Gemini co-lead Noam Shazeer is leaving for OpenAI

Google's Secret Warrant Fight Over DOJ Pipe Bomb Probe Revealed

The UK Places a Sweeping Ban on Social Media for Kids Under 16

Meta lobbies Congress for protection from child-harm lawsuits

Waymo recalls nearly 4,000 robotaxis to stop them driving into highway construction zones

Snap Launches $2,195 Specs, Declaring Glasses the Next Computer

Fox wants to take over your TV — and the tech inside it

Midjourney goes from generating cat images to full-body ultrasound scans

Nothing cancels this year's CMF phone due to RAM prices

The AI IPO boom is different

Joshua Baer, Capital Factory Founder, Dies in Laredo Plane Crash - RuntimeWire

Ubisoft's co-founder Claude Guillemot dies in plane crash

Host: Leo Laporte

Guests: Iain Thomson, Owen Thomas, and Doc Rock

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The US government abruptly forced Anthropic to pull its most advanced AI model offline after fears it was simply too powerful to be safe. Hear the real story behind the sudden shutdown that rocked the tech world—and what it reveals about the uneasy alliance between Washington and Silicon Valley.

• Anthropic's Fable 5 AI model release sparks cybersecurity and jailbreak concerns

• White House pressures Anthropic to withdraw Fable amid security fears

• Debate over government intervention, model regulation, and Anthropic's IPO timing

• SpaceX IPO rockets to record-breaking $1.77 trillion valuation

• Apple unveils revamped Siri and Apple Intelligence at WWDC

• Apple's new child safety and parental controls in iOS

• OpenAI and Anthropic plot IPOs, face economic realities of AI industry

• Supply chain attacks hit Arch Linux packages, security risks highlighted

• Spotify battles surge of fake podcasts promoting illegal drugs

• German court rules Google AI overviews legally liable for inaccuracies

• FCC pursues crackdown on anonymous burner phones, raising privacy alarms

• North Korean hackers' massive infiltration of US tech sector exposed

• iFixit teardown reveals Trump Phone is just a rebadged HTC U24 Pro

• Smartphone and internet access linked to declining US birth rates

• Skydance-Paramount merger approved as Warner Bros seeks next mega deal

• Roku seeks buyer, raising questions about future streaming platforms

Host: Leo Laporte

Guests: Christina Warren, Harry McCracken, and Richard Campbell

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