Breaking Change

The summer heat ended up thawing out my podcast, so I had no choice but to go buy a new microphone and grumble into it for a couple hours. Just how that works. Please enjoy.

I am actively soliciting mailbag participation. As always, the address is podcast@searls.co, and I'd be really curious to hear how America is doing because it seems like everything is going great.

For the first time I let Claude write these links for me, because it never occurred to me I didn't have to format the markdown manually:

PicoRuby Kaigi 2025

FleaFlicker, my first iOS game!

Aaron's puns, ranked

Claude Fable 5 gets another bump: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Who's Afraid of Chinese Models?

Apple vs OpenAI

Apple's Chip Plans: M6, M7 Pro, M7 Max, M7 Ultra, M8 Details; Touch MacBook Pro (archive)

Public betas for iOS 27, macOS 27 and more Apple platforms are now available

Apple's fm CLI

Nvidia's Jensen Huang reunites with Sega exec who saved the company with $5M investment

New survey claims 100% of Japanese online game developers use generative AI tools

PlayStation announces the end of disc games, starting in January 2028

Super Mario Bros. 2: The Lost Levels and Japan's HARD OFF stores

Xbox confirms plans to cut 5 studios and thousands of jobs

Obsidian is reportedly making a new Avowed Fallout game

Id Software dev claims it's been 'relegated to support studio size'

Rebooting (a.k.a. Brush Up Life)

Straight to Hell

You Can't Expense This!

Forza Horizon 6

Cook, Serve, Delicious!

The Odyssey

The promise of Breaking Change is that with every major version (this being the 60th episode of the program, but only the 53rd such release), I will break something. Well, I finally did it. I think I broke the show. Find out how by listening for yourself!

Want to be my friend? Drop me a line at justin@searls.co. Want to file a complaint with my supervisor? Forward your concerns to podcast@searls.co.

These links may rot, but alas—death comes for us all:

Tonal (without a subscription)

Better with Becky

My appearance on the freeCodeCamp podcast

Dual-loop BDD is the new Red-green TDD

Models are commodities, harnesses are differentiators

Aaron's puns, ranked

United Airlines can now boot passengers who refuse to use headphones with their devices (News+)

Your Meta glasses are watching you pee (9to5mac's summary)

Tuna for Mac by friend of the show, Mikkel Malmberg

MacBook Neo

MacBook Neo offers more single-core performance than any mobile processor from AMD, Intel or Qualcomm

Apple + Nvidia's CloudXR & Foveated streaming partnership: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Xbox's Project Helix

Microsoft's 'Xbox mode' is coming to every Windows 11 PC (News+)

Windows: Announcing new tools and platform updates for Windows PC game developers

Sony is testing dynamic pricing in the PlayStation Store

DLSS 5 should make you excited and/or outraged: video, backlash

Gamblers trying to win a bet on Polymarket are vowing to kill me if I don't rewrite an Iran missile story

South Korean Police Lose Seized Crypto By Posting Password Online

China mobilizes "one-person company" AI startups

Scrubs is back!

Mickey 17 is not about a cartoon mouse

The Expanse

Marathon - and how sickos like me can't stop thinking about it

Today, we're joined by a very special guest, Len Testa! You might know him from The Disney Dish podcast or from his excellent theme park travel planning app Touring Plans. Or you might not know him at all! No wrong answers.

This episode is all about Disney's ill-fated Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser live action role-playing hotel—which we both had the opportunity to experience right when it first launched. It was a life-changing experience for both of us, so why did it fail? Is it true that the top Disney brass learned all the wrong lessons from that failure? And will the CEO-in-waiting Josh D'Amaro ever have the courage to attempt something so ambitious again? Listen to this episode, in which we speak with an unearned confidence that suggests we have all of these answers!

You can reach out to Len at len@touringplans.com and you can write into the show at podcast@searls.co. He'll read your e-mail and reply to it, but I may only skim it.

Sure feels like some combination of AI, the US military, and the AI military could bring an end to the world any day now, so I figured I'd better record one last show for posterity. Welcome me on this version's speedrun to the apocalypse!

So long as the EMP blasts don't nuke all our ham radios, write in to podcast@searls.co and I'll read it on the next release of the program. Over.

Be sure to click all these links while the clickin's good:

Ninja Creami Deluxe

prove_it

Agents are ushering in the Antisocial Era

Brace for the Fuckening

Citrini Research fanfic

Would you like your AI singularity benign or extinction-level?

Original post by the Dallas Fed

Anthropic's Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth

OpenAI's agreement with the Department of War

U.S. Strikes in Middle East Use Anthropic, Hours After Trump Ban

Human brain cells on a chip learned to play Doom in a week

Apple introduces a new video podcast experience on Apple Podcasts

Foveated Streaming for Apple Vision Pro

Huge Xbox shakeup: Phil Spencer retiring, Sarah Bond resigns, Microsoft AI boss becomes new Microsoft Gaming CEO

XCOM's Jake Solomon announces his new studio is closing, reveals now-cancelled AI-driven narrative game

Fan group makes Unreal Tournament 2004 available to play for free and in 4K

Video Games Are Losing a Brain Rot Race to Gambling and Porn (News+)

Netflix walks away from its deal to buy Warner Bros. after Paramount came back with a better offer (News+)

Why Netflix Actually Won Even Though It Lost Warner Deal (News+)

Aaron's puns, ranked

Your Friends & Neighbors

Rental Family

Halt and Catch Fire (again)

Paradise: Season 2

Star Trek: Voyager - Across the Unknown

xcbeautify

turbocommit

The double loop model for agentic coding

I feel like I'm getting saltier, and it's concerning. If you want me to tone it down and/or up, let me know. It'll go a lot better if you just write to podcast@searls.co instead of yelling at your phone.

As usual, I brought the goods. Now here are the receipts:

prove_it is doing its job, mostly

Aaron's puns, ranked

Starsand Island studio confused by alleged 'praise-bombing' attack

Sony is considering holding back PlayStation 6 until 2028 or 2029

Southwest changes are infuriating fans (News+)

NYT: All the news that's fit to manspread

Gurman: Tesla CarPlay Held Back by Need for Wider Adoption of Apple's iOS 26 (Archive)

YouTube on Vision Pro (News+)

Apple Announces Special Event in New York, London, and Shanghai on March 4

Filed my first SwiftUI bug as feedback. It's FB21962656

Thoughtworks concludes TDD is good and billable juniors valuable

Ugh, Anthropic CEO was right about the timing of AI writing all the code

Peter Steinberger Chose OpenAI. The Code Was Never the Point

Eternity

Starfleet Academy

Your Friends & Neighbors