Breaking Change

I'm about to get on a plane and will be gone for a couple weeks, but didn't want to leave you Breaking Changeless so I did the thing where I stand up in front of a microphone and talked at you. Again. Like I do. Fun fact: this is the first and only time I've taken a phone call live, on-air! I was just too lazy to edit that out gracefully. Whenever I go to Japan solo, I experience moments of loneliness, so I'd really appreciate it if you sent me some praise or complaints or ideas to podcast@searls.co and I'll feel comforted by the knowledge that you exist. Your engagement sustains me. Lotta weird and dumb links this go-round: Eric Doggett is a great friend/artist Fortune Feimster isn't spelled how I would've guessed Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarer (Gen 2) is the best gift anyone's given me in a while POSSE Party's tutorial videos are just enough to convince you to either bother or not bother Reddit's r/selfhosted is at least a little self-aware I'm giving myself some grace when it comes to the newsletter EDID Emulators are a hardware product that exist only because Windows is bad Looking forward to trying Happy for remote Claude Code / Codex CLI work Aaron's puns, ranked Pebble Index 01 Google's / XReal Putting It All on Glasses Next Year XReal is partnering with Asus ROG, too Google and Apple partner on better Android-iPhone switching NYT profiles John Ternus AirPods Pro with IR cameras (instead of stem clicks?!) JPMorgan Chase Reaches a Deal to Take Over the Apple Credit Card (News+) The Clicks Power Keyboard looks rad Expedition 33's Game Awards sweep has me asking, who will be the first to VEGOT? Valve still sending this guy chocolates every Christmas The post-GeForce era: What if Nvidia abandons PC gaming? The 5090 could cost $5090 by the end of 2026 Nvidia plans heavy cuts to GPU supply in early 2026 Racks of AI chips are too damn heavy (News+) Vera Rubin is probably even heavier GPT Image 1.5 is better but not good enough PSA: make ChatGPT less warm, enthusiastic, and emoji-tastic (News+) You can (supposedly) buy your Instacart groceries without leaving ChatGPT The massive year-end Ed Zitron newsletter. Podcasts are AI now (News+) Copywriters reveal how AI has decimated their industry A Stanford degree wont save you (News+) 'Godfather of SaaS' Says He Replaced Most of His Sales Team With AI Agents NYC phone ban reveals some students can't read clocks Swearing Actually Seems to Make Humans Physically Stronger Corporation for Public Broadcasting to Shut Down After 58 Years Due to Trump Eliminating Funding Grok Is Generating Sexual Content Far More Graphic Than What's on X (News+) Outer Worlds 2 Ball X Pit Stranger Things Season 5 Reddit's terrific r/RealOrAI sub The RayNeo Air 3s are the display glasses I'd recommend if you can find them for $199 Murderbot UDCast universal subtitling (and the movie I wanted to watch) Beckygram.com

During the end-of-year podcasting doldrums, I'm pleased to bring you this Feature Release, in which I eschew my tradition of eschewing traditions and present a second annual sorting of the puns. As 2025 (a.k.a. Season 2) of Breaking Change comes to a close, Aaron Patterson once again joins the show to execute our latest iteration of the punsort algorithm. Following along at home? Here's a spoiler-free link to the original Season 2 rankings. Ready to be spoiled? Visit /puns for the final pun rankings of 2025. If you agree, disagree, or are indifferent about where things landed, feel free to get it off your chest at podcast@searls.co.

I'm experiencing what breathing out of my nose properly feels like for the first time. Everything is new and wondrous and I've never felt so optimistic. This sensation lasted for two days and now I'm used to it and existence is once again pain. Share your existential musings at podcast@searls.co and I'll nod and sigh along. I might even nod and sigh performatively for you on the show! Important ground covered in this episode: My new gaming PC's final parts list This nifty Wake-on-LAN app for iOS The POSSE Party has STARTED! Aaron's puns, ranked Polymarket Builds In-House Trading Team as It Re-Enters the US (Archive) Amazon explores cutting ties with USPS, building its own delivery network (News+) The RAM Shortage Comes for Us All (Another good take) Kirby Air Riders tops the Japanese physical charts as Switch and Switch 2 games sweep the top 15 Meta confirms cuts for Metaverse Efforts (Archive) Alan Dye is leaving apple (Archive) Ben Thompson on Nvidia and OpenAI Everyone in Seattle Hates AI Gemini 3 Pro: the frontier of vision AI Pluribus Star Trek: Enterprise Section 31 Lower Decks Soulframe Outer Worlds 2

Had a little pep in my step this time. Maybe it's because I decided to start recording after 7 AM for once. Maybe it's because I can finally fucking breathe out of my nose holes. Tell me about what you do while you continue to draw breath at podcast@searls.co. Things you can read if you're bored: Beckygram.com Aaron's puns, ranked Steam Frame and Steam Machine Xbox reportedly warning of yet another potential price increase InKonbini retro convenience store simulator Pipboy 3000 replica for $300 Apple introduces Digital ID, a new way to create and present an ID in Apple Wallet Google Antigravity kinda sucks I think I might regret watching The Bear Nano Banana Pro made this episode's social image GPT-5.1-Codex-Max is the best coding model I've used yet Adversarial Poetry is a great way to jailbreak LLMs (Comment thread) Cryptographers Cancel Election Results After Losing Decryption Key Outer Worlds 2 ⚡️ Death by Lightning really slaps (claps?) Wicked: For Good is Very, Very Bad (News+) The guy from Pomplamoose is the CEO of Patreon??! "Pixar: The Early Days" interview with Steve Jobs NotebookLM

I'm back and I'm angry. My power went out, which caused my Internet to go down, which broke my favorite mug. And that's just the shit that happened before 7 AM. By 9 AM my doorbell was continuously chiming for no fucking reason. Join me in the struggle. We shall persevere. Tell me how your morning went by writing in to: podcast@searls.co. Here 4 U: Kudos to Adam Mcrea and Judoscale for solving my Heroku issue Kudos to me for separately solving my Heroku issue with Straight-to-Video ALVR for streaming SteamVR games Streaming flat games with Sunshine and Moonlight Aaron's puns, ranked AI's Dial-Up Era (and my take) Sandwich made the world's first immersive ad spot Coinbase CEO Stunt Exposes Prediction Market Vulnerability OpenAI and Microsoft resolve their issue without resolving their issue Amazon v. Perplexity BioWare reassures fans Mass Effect 5 is still coming The Outer Worlds 2 Eddy Burback - ChatGPT Made me Delusional

This may be the version 45 release of Breaking Change, but when you factor in its Hotfixes and Feature Release entries, this is somehow the 50th episode of the show! Why? Why are we still doing this to ourselves? Write in your answer and how you feel about yourself as a result to podcast@searls.co. Seriously, I need some new material. The web runs on links, so have some: KnightCite's Wikipedia page Whisprflow wasn't for me The POSSE Party is still on and will come to you, eventually Aaron's puns, ranked This Cheap, Tiny Device May Reverse Memory Loss—And Even Prevent Alzheimer's (News+) Why Western executives who visit China are coming back terrified (News+) Plug-in hybrids pollute almost as much as petrol cars, report finds Tele-conbini workers in Manilla South Korea lost 858TB of government data without a backup The AWS/Smart bed outage (News+) Calendearing by Zach Holman Detection firm finds 82% of herbal remedy books on Amazon 'likely written' by AI Sora update #1 ChatGPT Is Blowing Up Marriages as Spouses Use AI to Attack Their Partners Perverts on Sora Sam Altman says ChatGPT will soon sext with verified adults Don't let AI invent your next holiday destination Apple notification forwarding API is a potential game changer for Meta glasses John Ternus as Next CEO? Apple released the M5 Vision Pro And a new Vision Pro Developer Strap Apple Readies High-End MacBook Pro With Touch, Hole-Punch Screen You Only Need $750 to Pilfer Unencrypted Data From Satellites They're making a new Star Trek Voyager game That Wolverine game sure looks M-rated Halo on PlayStation? In this economy? The next Xbox console is a 'premium' system Adam Driver says Disney nixed a Kylo Ren film he pitched with Steven Soderbergh Microsoft Teams can now track attendance Foundation Alien: Earth The Last of Us Invasion The Bear PSVR2 Tears of the Kingdom John writes: Why programming languages aren't going anywhere

Post-recording update: As I've been lobbying for (both publicly and behind the scenes), it has been announced that the RubyGems and Bundler client libraries are being transferred to Matz and the Ruby core team. Mike McQuaid (of Homebrew fame) and I scheduled this episode of Hot Fix a week before the Ruby community exploded. Hot Fix is all about getting spicy, but even we were a little wary of the heat in that particular kitchen. The problem Mike brought to the table is the same one he's always on about: open source is not a career. Incidentally, Mike's favorite topic also happens to be relevant to the latest RubyGems controversy—because it all boils down to paying people to work on open source. Not content to miss out on the fun, Jerod from The Changelog asked if he could join and discuss the ongoing Ruby drama as a group. So we decided to team up and do a collab episode—call it Breaking Changelog, I guess? It's nothing if not efficient: record once, edit twice, and syndicate everywhere. If you don't mind swear words, listen to this version. If you don't like swearing, what the fuck are you doing here? (But seriously, you can listen to their edit if you want!) Please send your compliments to podcast@searls.co and your complaints to editors@changelog.com.

If you know who José Valim is, then you know he probably made a mistake by joining me for our third installment of 🔥Hotfix🔥. The inventor of the Elixir programming language is at it again with his colleagues at Dashbit and they've got a new product called Tidewave. It's a coding agent with a twist: it has such a deep level of integration with your web framework that it can get the executable feedback it needs to tackle the entire feature development lifecycle. I do eventually let him plug the tool (and our conversation genuinely makes me want to try it—I logged a todo and everything!), but to be on Hotfix you gotta bring a thorny problem to the table, and he picked a great one: marketing hype aside, nobody has a clue what the future of AI agents looks like. Like always, we totally 100% and A+ solved the problem by correctly predicting the future. You gotta listen to find out. Every time I talk to José, I get ideas for what I should be doing instead of what I'm actually doing. If you feel so inspired, write into podcast@searls.co and I'll read it on the next mainline version release of Breaking Change. You can follow José on Bsky, X, and Mastodon. Pick your poison. ☠️

Hey, look! Breaking Change now has chapter support for each segment! More on how I did that while still upholding my commitment to laziness later. I didn't get a good job connecting this version's release to what I was referencing, so to be clear I was referring to my heart rate as opposed to any other bodily functions. The other ones are getting up just fine, thank you. Get your head out of the gutter. Thanks for all the great e-mails the last couple weeks! Throw yours on the pile at podcast@searls.co. Hopefully Fastmail won't lose it. For the folks who pronounce URLs like Earls: Fallout comes to HHN Apple's bullshit Watch Series 11 battery claims Echofeed is like POSSE Party, kind of Only POSSE Party is POSSE Party. Working on it. Aaron's puns, ranked Scuba-wearing restaurant robber swims away with cash at Disney Springs India is fucked H1-B's cost $100k now making India super fucked Why tradwives aren't trad Why Marriage Is Increasingly for the Affluent (News+) Virtual Boy is coming to the Switch Samsung brings ads to US fridges Meta's bad demos and explanations Steve Jobs smoking the good shit Expedition 33 Super Mario Odyssey Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 Paradise Season 1 The Last of Us Season 2 The Invincible

It's an emergency bonus edition of Breaking Change as I take the covers off yet another show-within-a-show. I call it Feature Release, and its job is to fill in that middle number in our semantically versioned series of conversations together. No pun, no news, just some timely content wrapped up in a name, logo, and jingle package that still has that new podcast smell. It's a 1-hour review of the Airpods, Apple Watch, and iPhone updates Apple announced today. You can see the full event video on YouTube. The Verge has a 17 minute abridged version if you just want the synopsis. Please enjoy this episode of Feature Release! It may be the only one. Write into podcast@searls.co with your feedback!

Remember it is your civic duty to e-mail me at podcast@searls.co. As of this episode, that address is monitored by Fastmail, so there's a higher probability I'll actually get your e-mail! Some links you won't click: Why I-4 is the most dangerous highway in America The Beak and the Barrel Sign up for Fastmail. It is good. The Gilroy Order Making ChatGPT doubt itself Why I wasn't cut out for management How to comment on my blog Aaron's puns, ranked New Xcode beta adds GPT-5, Claude account support Apple Responds to Accusations of Jay Blahnik Creating 'Toxic Workplace' 4chan Refuses To Pay UK Online Safety Act Fines Americans' junk-filled garages are hurting EV adoption, study says New Book Argues Hybrid Schedules 'Don't Work', Return-to-Office Brings Motivation and Learning Shenmue 3 is getting an Enhanced edition Raguelike game may portend AI disruption in the gaming industry Making cash off 'AI slop': The surreal video business taking over the web (News+) Stellantis shelves Level 3 driver-assistance program that totally works and has no problems Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff says AI enabled him to cut 4,000 jobs Timeline Japan: 1980 Perfect Days Rental Family Black Mirror Season 7 Yumtein Gummy Bears Listener Björn made this Equaliteam app

🔥Hotfix🔥 is back with a new guest! Scott Werner is the CEO of Sublayer, helps organize the Artificial Ruby meetup in NYC, and is the author of the extremely well-named (and well-written) Substack, Works on my Machine. In this conversation, we jointly grapple with WTF is happening to programming as a career. Did the unprecedented peacetime the software industry experienced from 2005-2022 make us all soft? Is the era of code-writing agents fundamentally changing the nature of the job? Should we be less like DHH/Matz and more like why the lucky stiff? We'd love to get your feedback to podcast@searls.co — I'll read it all and flag relevant questions and comments for the next Breaking Change. You can follow Scott Werner online at: Works on my Machine on Substack @scottwernerd on Twitter/X A handful of things we mentioned: There's no AI in Team The Goal book Lean Thinking vs Fat Thinking (a newsletter that draws a different lesson from The Goal) why the lucky stiff (aka "_why") That fireside chat between Matz and DHH Sublayer's product, APM (Actions Per Minute)

Thanks for writing so many lovely emails to podcast@searls.co. Hell, thanks even for the unlovely ones. Be sure to look out for me showing up on Dead Code at some point after it records next Tuesday. I'm realizing not all podcasts have a 1-hour-or-less turnaround time like this one does. As promised, some URLs follow: Want a Japanese girlfriend? Better be the right Myers-Briggs type Aaron's puns, ranked Men sucking at chores is turning women gay! (News+) Nightmares kill you (Archive) This shiner from /r/overemployed Hour of Code is now Hour of AI Gary Marcus taking a few victory laps around GPT-5 OpenAI caves to 4o-pilled users Meta's AI rules have let bots hold 'sensual' chats with children Apple returns blood oxygen monitoring to the latest Apple Watches (sort of) The Trump Trophy My man Steve Wozniak has a 6-digit /. account Enough Andor Alien: Earth Sims 2 Legacy Collection Foundation Season 3 Mariusz schools us on running Claude Code in a Docker container (sources) Marick's ZIRP reply and my follow-up post

I've made it! I'm over the hump! I'm actually writing* my language-learning app in Swift! Send an email expressing how proud you are of me to podcast@searls.co. Or if there's any news worth following that isn't about AI. Too much AI stuff lately. *And by "I'm writing", I admit Claude Code is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here. Hyperlinks: Girlfriend Reviews of Mario Kart World Mario Paint 2 for Nintendo Switch 2 Ben publishes NSScreencast, not NSCoder 🤦‍♂️ claude-discord-bridge Speeding up your Xcode tests Upside-down development There is no AI in Team Aaron's puns, ranked 7/24 - WaPo: This app lets women review their dates. Men are worried. (Apple News+) 7/25 - 404 Media: Tea hack exposed. Women Dating Safety App 'Tea' Breached, Users' IDs Posted to 4chan Security Breach at Tea Worsens, Revealing Users' DMs About Abortions and Cheating Tokyo prostitution ring members who targeted foreigners arrested Somebody's remaking Rebel Assault in UE5 Battlestar Galactica writer Ronald D Moore is showrunning God of War AppleCare One is a good deal Apple CEO Tim Cook Tells Staff AI Is 'Ours to Grab' in Pep Talk Thanks for Your $1 Billion Job Offer, Mark Zuckerberg. I'm Gonna Pass (Apple News+) Steve Krouse with a great tech debt analogy Christina Wodtke on what it means that early-days web developers are pumped about AI Orta: Six weeks of claude code System prompt updates to Claude 4 Opus tries to ward off mania Foundation Season 3 Halt and Catch Fire Saw that Family Guy musical, Music Man opencode.ai

Finally, a recommendation-heavy, full-mailbag show. Been a while. New to the pod are achievements—watch your BreakingScore™ increase each time you write in to podcast@searls.co. The winner will receive nothing, probably. Lynx: Coke BlāK My Full-breadth developers post When I discovered Claude is working for the weekend My latest newsletter that admits why I haven't started yet Aaron's puns, ranked Note taking AI is outnumbering participants on meetings Arkane founder slams Xbox Game Pass An unsubsidized Xbox could just do the special offers like Kindle, IMO Eyeball Dynamic Range FaceTime in iOS 26 will freeze your call if someone starts undressing xOS 26 betas expected on July 23 'Vibe Coder' Who Doesn't Know How to Code Keeps Winning Hackathons in San Francisco 'Coding is dead': UW computer science program rethinks curriculum for the AI era OpenAI's Windsurf deal is off — and Windsurf's CEO is going to Google Anthropic tightens usage limits for Claude Code — without telling users Honey, AI Capex is Eating the Economy People with higher cognitive ability have weaker moral foundations The Remarkable life of Ibelin Halt and catch fire Doom: The Dark Ages As Dusk Falls To The Moon Superman (2025) Expedition 33: Clair Obscur The Yakult Swallow guy died

Welcome to the first episode of 🔥Hotfix🔥! Breaking Change's first show-within-a-show, wherein I let somebody else talk for once. Each episode will show up as a patch release in the Breaking Change feed and feature guests with Hot takes about a relevant issue and a clear fix in mind for what we can do about it. That first guest is a long-time collaborator and top 5 all-time colleague of mine named Dave Mosher, who's here to drop some truth bombs labeled "agentic coding" on the unsuspecting populace. My secret mission on each of these is to lean into the show's E-for-explicit tag and try to get the guest to say something that could get them fired. I failed this time, but in fairness to me, Dave is Canadian. We'd love to get your feedback to podcast@searls.co — I'll read it all and flag relevant questions and comments for the next Breaking Change. You can follow Dave Mosher online at: GitHub Twitter/X Dave's personal blog The Test Double blog A handful of things we mentioned: Full-breadth Developers The "Double Loop" model to agentic coding Simon Willison's blog Claude Code

I have returned to the nation of freedom and tariffs and all my shit has stopped working! Which shit? Why? What did I buy now? Listen and find out. Remember, listeners who write in to podcast@searls.co will be spared on judgment day. Website stuff follows: Hirome Ichiba in Kochi City Japan's ocean whirlpool (渦) boats Indigo La End POSSE Party Tessie Tesla app Aaron's puns, ranked We finally may be able to rid the world of mosquitoes. But should we? (Archive link) Supreme Court allows Texas online porn age verification law Microsoft changes Windows in attempt to prevent next CrowdStrike-style catastrophe As AI Infiltrates Call Centers, Human Workers Are Being Mistaken for Bots AI and the Rise of Judgement Over Technical Skill What Google Translate Can Tell Us About Vibecoding The Meta AI app is a privacy disaster MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System The DMA forced apple to make a B2B price-to-features chart Apple Vision Series and Smart Glasses Roadmap (2025–2028) Sky app RIP Slide Over Street Fighter Movie: Jason Momoa cast as Blanka, 50 Cent as Balrog 30-minute Outer Worlds 2 deep dive Kojima uses Western actors b/c of our craggy, ugly fucking skin Comcast says all its new plans have unlimited data Pig movie Moana 2 (but really Lava) Witcher 4 + Unreal Engine 5 demo Death Stranding 2 is better as a video review Andor Season 2 Wrexham S4 Philips EP4444 coffee thing

Spoiler alert: I'm in the same country as I was for v37, but this time from a different nondescript business hotel. Also: I have good personal news! And, as usual, bad news news. I don't get to pick the headlines though, I just read them. This episode comes with a homework assignment. First, watch Apple's keynote at 10 AM pacific on June 9th. Second, e-mail podcast@searls.co with all your takes. I'd love your help by informing me where my head should be at when I show up on the Changelog next week. And now, fewer links than usual: The movie 父と僕の終わらない歌 Fukushima The Great East Japan Earthquake and Nuclear Disaster Memorial Museum Utsunomiya Fukui I got spicy about LLM neophytes Aaron's puns, ranked Entry-level tech hiring is down 50% AI Role in College Brings Education Closer to a Crisis Point Veo 3 marks the beginning of the end times (watch this supercut) If you're having an affair, don't use Claude Apple's turning it up to 26 My theory on what 2027's "all-glass" iPhone is really all about Nobody uses semicolons; they're pointless

Coming to you LIVE from a third straight week of Japanese business hotels comes me, Justin, in his enduring quest to figure out how to exchange currency for real estate in the land of the rising fun. [Programming note: apologies, as the audio quality at the beginning of the podcast suffered because I fucked up and left the hotel room's air conditioner on (I caught it and fixed it from the pun section onward)] Had a few great e-mails to read through this week, but now I'm fresh out again! Before you listen, why not write in a review of this episode? podcast@searls.co and tell me about how amazing it will be before it lets you down like your best friend and/or workplace mentor and/or parent figure. Href time: Craigmod's Kissa by Kissa book @koic works on RuboCop and inspired this issue of my Searls of Wisdom newsletter In Japan, you're not a BDFL, you're a 優しい終身の独裁者 Speaking of newsletters, this month's took me way too damn long All the prefectures I've been to so far (36 as of v37) The US Embassy in Japan's 10" x 10" bag limit Aaron's puns, ranked CRISPR babies! (Archive) GTA 6's trailer SteamOS is one step closer to being real Fortnite is back on iOS CarPlay Ultra is nice, but will it scale? visionOS 3 will let us scroll with our eyeballs Apple is considering an AI-based search tool for iOS Rumor: iOS 19 will let developers invoke its on-board local models Sam + Jony, sitting in a tree / pile of cash ChatGPT Diminishes Idea Diversity in Brainstorming, Study Finds Microsoft Engineers forced to dig their own AI graves muscle-mem solves a huge issue with "agentic" programs Naturalizing relevance realization: why agency and cognition are fundamentally not computational Chicago Sun-Times Prints Summer Reading List Full of Fake Books mid college towns are screwed (News+) The Quiet Collapse of Surveys: Fewer Humans (and More AI Agents) Are Answering Survey Questions The Nomad Universal Cable Junglia Okinawa opens in July and this ad is absolutely bonkers Saw the Yakult Swallows with Tatsuhiko Miyagawa from Rebuild.fm Loved World Order's new single until the guy got milkshake duck'd 5 minutes later This Workforce AI promo video is peak smug AI hustler shit The Bechdel Test (not to be confused with the Becky Test)

I'm going away on a trip for an unexpectedly long time, and you'll never guess why! (You might guess why.) Anyway, here's something to remember me by. If you've ever been worried about whether something you cared about would work out okay, email podcast@searls.co and tell me about it so that I can share your story with a bunch of strangers on the Internet. Video of this edition of the show is up on YouTube. References available upon request: Nobody knows how to turn on Vision Pro I released a new gem called searls-auth Aaron's puns, ranked CodeWeavers' founder's gracious post, Whisky's Legacy, and the Spirit it Leaves Behind DeX for iPhones? Finally! A menu bar for iPads? Finally! Backblaze: the only subsidized startup pricing schemes left are the fraudulent ones! Russia moves to seize World of Tanks developer over Ukraine support Amazon To Display Tariff Costs For Consumers, Report Says (Update: They Won't) Meta's Digital Companions want to have sex with you (News+) OpenAI's chat bot will tell you that you're really good at sex But they're fixing it But Reddit fixed it better Someone made an AI better by having it argue with itself, just like humans do Coding competitions are dead and gone forever The Coravin Pivot wine preservation system is great So is this pool skimmer robot that I talked about last week but forgot about and am talking about again A book! Landed: Japan. Everything you may not need to know about buying real estate