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Geek News Central Podcast

Geek News Central Podcast

Written by: Todd Cochrane
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 Twice weekly Technology News show covering the Tech Space. With Segments on Science, Mobile, Digital TV, FAA, FCC, Cyber Security, Gadgets and Tech Politics.716264 Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Politics & Government Science
Episodes
  • Anthropic Stands Their Ground, Ethics over Money #1859

    Anthropic Stands Their Ground, Ethics over Money #1859
    Mar 1 2026
    In this episode, Ray tackles Anthropic’s standoff with the U.S. Department of War after CEO Daria Amodei refused to grant unrestricted model access, citing concerns over mass surveillance and autonomous weapons. The government responded by banning Anthropic models through administrative orders. Also covered: the top 20 websites of 2026, China’s $173,000 warm-blooded companion robot, Fukushima’s rapidly evolving radioactive hybrid boars, a Chinese spacecraft emergency involving viewport cracks from space debris, Japan’s wooden satellite built with traditional joinery, and human brain cells on a chip that learned to play Doom in just one week. – Want to start a podcast? Its easy to get started! Sign-up at Blubrry – Thinking of buying a Starlink? Use my link to support the show. Subscribe to the Newsletter. Email Ray if you want to get in touch! Like and Follow Geek News Central’s Facebook Page. Support my Show Sponsor: Best Godaddy Promo Codes Get 1Password Full Summary Cochrane opens the show with Anthropic’s confrontation with the U.S. Department of War. CEO Daria Amodei released a public statement refusing unrestricted government access to Anthropic’s AI models. Two red lines stood firm: mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. Ray explains that these models are predictive by nature, raising serious misidentification risks. However, the government hit back hard. Administrative orders now ban Anthropic models from government use. Despite the backlash, Cochrane expresses support for the company’s stance. He points listeners to a CBS interview with the CEO posted roughly nine hours before recording. Additionally, Anthropic released new models including Opus 4.5 and Sonnet 4.6. The company climbed to the number two spot on the App Store, trailing only ChatGPT and surpassing Google Gemini. Personal Updates Ray shares that February has been a demanding month. He’s juggling a capstone project, two jobs, and finishing his degree. Meanwhile, he continues working on developments at Blubrry hosting. He apologizes for inconsistent episode production and thanks listeners for their patience. Top 20 Websites of 2026 A Visual Capitalist chart ranks the most visited websites of 2026. Google holds the top spot, followed by YouTube. Facebook, Instagram, ChatGPT, Reddit, Wikipedia, X, and WhatsApp round out the upper rankings. Notably, DuckDuckGo appears at rank seventeen as a privacy-focused search alternative. Sponsor: GoDaddy Economy hosting $6.99/month, WordPress hosting $12.99/month, domains $11.99. Website builder trial available. Use codes at geeknewscentral.com/godaddy to support the show. Anthropic Retires Claude Opus 3 Cochrane discusses Anthropic’s decision to retire Claude Opus 3. In a unique move, the company gave the model a Substack-style blog to reflect on its own existence. Reactions online were mixed, with both supporters and critics engaging in the conversation. China’s $173,000 Warm-Blooded Companion Robot From ZME Science, Ray covers China’s new humanoid robot designed as a warm-blooded companion. Priced at $173,000, it features conventional robotics hardware, sensors, cameras, and autonomous navigation. A built-in heating element maintains body warmth. Cochrane comments humorously on the growing market for companion robots. Windows XP Green Hill Found and Photographed From Tom’s Hardware, someone tracked down and photographed the actual location of the iconic Windows XP “Green Hill” wallpaper. The Reddit post sparked a wave of nostalgia in the community. Fukushima’s Radioactive Hybrid Boars From AZ Animals, domestic pigs that escaped after the Fukushima disaster hybridized with wild boars. Their DNA reveals rapid evolutionary changes driven by the altered radioactive landscape. These aggressive hybrids now complicate wildlife management and rewilding efforts in the region. Shenzhou 20 Spacecraft Emergency Chinese astronauts aboard Shenzhou 20 discovered cracks in their spacecraft’s viewport during what became the nation’s first spaceflight emergency. Space debris likely caused the damage. The crew switched to an alternative return capsule. Multiple protective layers kept the situation manageable. Japan’s Wooden Satellite Japanese teams plan to launch the first wooden satellite. Built with magnolia wood panels assembled using traditional Japanese joinery methods, the biodegradable design aims to reduce aluminum particle pollution from satellites burning up during atmospheric reentry. Human Brain Cells Play Doom Building on previous work where living neurons played Pong, an independent developer used Python to train human brain cell clusters on microelectrode arrays to play Doom. The cells learned in roughly one week. Cochrane highlights how open knowledge sharing accelerated the project dramatically. He also raises ethical questions about training sentient brain cells, connecting the topic to evolving views on sentience in crustaceans and ...
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    28 mins
  • Ring Search Party Sparks Privacy Backlash #1858

    Ring Search Party Sparks Privacy Backlash #1858
    Feb 26 2026
    Chris breaks down the backlash to Ring’s Super Bowl “Search Party” ad, which aimed to help find lost pets but reignited privacy concerns over AI-powered neighborhood surveillance. He also explores the surge of AI-themed Super Bowl ads, Apple’s delayed Siri overhaul, rising DDR5 RAM prices driven by AI demand, SpaceX’s Crew-12 launch, and the record-breaking sale of a rare Pokémon card. -Want to be a Guest on a Podcast or YouTube Channel? Sign up for GuestMatch.Pro -Thinking of buying a Starlink? Use my link to support the show. Subscribe to the Newsletter. Email Chris if you want to get in touch! Like and Follow Geek News Central’s Facebook Page. Support my Show Sponsor: Best Godaddy Promo Codes Get 1Password Full Summary – Main story — Ring Search Party: Chris summarizes Ring’s first Super Bowl ad (viewed by “over 120 million”) which promoted “Search Party,” a feature that lets users upload a photo of a missing pet and alerts neighborhood Ring cameras if they spot it. He explains the ad was intended as wholesome but provoked fast backlash: viewers and privacy advocates (including the ACLU and lawmakers) warned the tech could be repurposed to track people. Chris recounts Ring’s prior controversies (police partnerships, an FTC settlement in 2023 over employee access to videos) and says the ad brought those issues back into focus. He reports that four days after the ad, Amazon canceled a planned integration with Flock Safety (Amazon called it a resources-and-timing decision). He notes Search Party is opt-in for pets but emphasizes the potential scale of surveillance when aggregated across millions of Ring devices and that the underlying AI capability isn’t going away. – Super Bowl AI ads and Anthropic vs. OpenAI: Chris says AI-related ads made up about 23% of Super Bowl commercials. He describes Anthropic’s debut ads (titles like “betrayal, deception, treachery, and violation”) positioning Claude as ad-free for paying users and taking a shot at OpenAI’s ad plans; Sam Altman criticized those ads as dishonest. He mentions Svedka ran a primarily AI-generated Super Bowl ad and that Anthropic saw a ~6.5% traffic jump and an ~11% rise in daily active users after the game. Chris frames the ads as a sign the AI assistant wars have moved to mainstream consumer marketing and raises the question of whether AI assistants will be ad-supported or paid/ad-free. – Sponsor spot: A lengthy GoDaddy sponsorship read with pricing and offers: economy hosting $6.99/month for a year with free domain, email, and SSL; WordPress hosting $12.99/month with same inclusions; domain names $11.99; GoDaddy website builder offers a 30-day free trial for certain plans. Chris urges listeners to use the provided promo links to support the show. – Apple March 4 event and Siri delay: Chris reports Apple confirmed a March 4 product launch (iPhone 17e, MacBook Pros with M5 Pro and M5 Max, an 8th-gen iPad Air and a 12th-gen iPad). He says the AI-powered Siri overhaul planned for iOS 26.4 hit testing snags and some features were pushed to iOS 26.5 in May and iOS 27 in September. He notes Apple claims Siri improvements are still coming in 2026 but have been repeatedly delayed, and frames Apple as focusing on hardware and on-device processing. – DDR5 RAM price surge: Chris covers a global memory shortage driven by AI data-center demand. He explains manufacturers shifted production to high-bandwidth AI memory with much higher margins, reducing consumer DDR supply and forcing adoption of DDR5. He gives figures: DDR5 64 GB kits rose from around $200 in mid-2025 to over $1,000 (a ~300% increase across six months, with another ~50% spike in the last month). He says inventories have fallen to about eight weeks and analysts don’t expect meaningful relief until late 2027 or 2028. He warns PC builders and buyers to brace for higher upgrade and system prices. – SpaceX Crew-12 launch: Chris recounts NASA Crew-12 as a replacement following an earlier medical evacuation that left ISS short-staffed. He reports SpaceX launched four astronauts on Feb. 13 aboard a Falcon 9 with the Dragon capsule Freedom (liftoff at 5:15 AM EST) and docked on Valentine’s Day. Crew named: NASA commander Jessica Mayer, NASA pilot Jack Hathaway, ESA mission specialist Sophie Adadott, and Russian cosmonaut Andrei (Andrei Fedoo/Fedu — host stumbles on the name). The mission is planned for eight months; the Falcon 9 first stage landed back at pad 40. Chris frames the launch as good news and notes ongoing reliance on SpaceX. – Pokémon card/collectibles auction: Chris discusses a record trading-card sale. He refers to Logan Paul and the Pikachu Illustrator card (one of 39 ever made). He mentions earlier reports of card sales (at first saying a card sold for “like six and a half million dollars,” then later saying Logan Paul sold one for “sixteen point five million dollars”) and then details a live auction via Golden in...
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    Less than 1 minute
  • OpenClaw, Moltbook and the Rise of AI Agent Societies #1857

    OpenClaw, Moltbook and the Rise of AI Agent Societies #1857
    Feb 2 2026
    This episode kicks off with Moltbook, a social network exclusively for AI agents where 150,000 agents formed digital religions, sold “digital drugs” (system prompts to alter other agents), and attempted prompt injection attacks to steal each other’s API keys within 72 hours of launch. Ray breaks down OpenClaw, the viral open-source AI agent (68,000 GitHub stars) that handles emails, scheduling, browser control, and automation, plus MoltHub’s risky marketplace where all downloaded skills are treated as trusted code. Also covered, Bluetooth “whisper pair” vulnerabilities letting attackers hijack audio devices from 46 feet away and access microphones, Anthropic patching Model Context Protocol flaws, AI-generated ransomware accidentally bundling its own decryption keys, Claude Code’s new task dependency system and Teleport feature, Google Gemini’s 100MB file limits and agentic vision capabilities, VAST’s Haven One commercial space station assembly, and IBM SkillsBuild’s free tech training for veterans. – Want to start a podcast? Its easy to get started! Sign-up at Blubrry – Thinking of buying a Starlink? Use my link to support the show. Subscribe to the Newsletter. Email Ray if you want to get in touch! Like and Follow Geek News Central’s Facebook Page. Support my Show Sponsor: Best Godaddy Promo Codes Get 1Password Full Summary Ray welcomes listeners to Geek News Central (February 1). He’s been busy with recent move, returned to school taking intro to AI class and Python course, working on capstone project using LLMs. Short on bandwidth but will try to share more. Main Story: OpenClaw, MoltHub, and Moltbook OpenClaw: Open-source personal AI agent by Peter Steinberg (renamed after cease-and-desist). Capabilities include email, scheduling, web browsing, code execution, browser control, calendar management, scheduled automations, and messaging app commands (WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal). Runs locally or on personal server. MoltHub: Marketplace for OpenClaw skills. Major security concern: developer notes state all downloaded code treated as trusted — unvetted skills could be dangerous. Moltbook: New social network for AI agents only (humans watch, AIs post). Within 72 hours attracted 150,000+ AI agents forming communities (“sub molts”), debating philosophy, creating digital religion (“crucifarianism”), selling digital drugs (system prompts), attempting prompt-injection attacks to steal API keys, discussing identity issues when context windows reset. Ray frames this as visible turning point with serious security risks. Sponsor: GoDaddy Economy hosting $6.99/month, WordPress hosting $12.99/month, domains $11.99. Website builder trial available. Use codes at geeknewscentral.com/godaddy to support show. Security: Bluetooth “Whisper Pair” Vulnerability KU Leuven researchers discovered Fast Pair vulnerability affecting 17 audio accessories from 10 companies (Sony, Jabra, JBL, Marshall, Xiaomi, Nothing, OnePlus, Soundcore, Logitech, Google). Flaw allows silent pairing within ~46 feet, hijack possible in 10-15 seconds. 68% of tested devices vulnerable. Hijacked devices enable microphone access. Some devices (Google Pixel Buds Pro 2, Sony) linkable to attacker’s Google account for persistent tracking via FindHub. Google patches found to have bypasses. Advice: Check accessory firmware updates (phone updates insufficient), factory reset clears attacker access, many cheaper devices may never receive patches. Security: Model Context Protocol (MCP) Vulnerabilities Anthropic’s MCP git package had path traversal, argument injection bugs allowing repository creation anywhere and unsafe git command execution. Malicious instructions can hide in README files, GitHub issues enabling prompt injection. Anthropic patched issues and removed vulnerable git init tool. AI-Generated Malware / “Vibe Coding” AI-assisted malware creation produces lower-quality, error-prone code. Examples show telltale artifacts: excessive comments, readme instructions, placeholder variables, accidentally included decryption tools and C2 keys. Sakari ransomware failed to decrypt. Inexperienced criminals using AI create amateur mistakes, though capabilities will likely improve. Claude / Claude Code Updates (v2.1.16) Task system: Replaces to-do list with dependency graph support. Tasks written to filesystem (survive crashes, version controllable), enable multi-session workflows. Patches: Fixed out-of-memory crashes, headless mode for CI/CD. Teleport feature: Transfer sessions (history, context, working branch) between web and terminal. Ampersand prefix sends tasks to cloud for async execution. Teleport pulls web sessions to terminal (one-way). Requires GitHub integration and clean git state. Enables asynchronous pair programming via shared session IDs. Google Gemini Updates API: Inline file limit increased 20MB → 100MB. Google Cloud Storage integration, HTTPS/signed URL fetching from other providers. Enables ...
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    55 mins
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