The much requested Zitron/Gerard crossover, at last — Hater Season: Openclaw with David Gerard!

I went on Ed Zitron’s Better Offline podcast talking about OpenClaw, Moltbook and how AI will doom us all (when the bubble pop takes out the economy).

It’s on iHeart, which I can’t get in the UK. But for you, I have the Apple Podcast and the raw MP3! [Apple Podcasts; MP3]

Microsoft has released earnings for Q4 2025! And the investors and analysts are going “what the?” [Microsoft]

CEO Satya Nadella talked up their AI buildout and “tokens per watt per dollar.” Specifically, he means tokens for GPT powering Copilot: [transcript; recording]

Microsoft 365 Copilot also is becoming a true daily habit, with daily active users increasing 10X year-over-year.

… All up, it was a record quarter for Microsoft 365 Copilot seat adds, up over 160% year-over-year.

Because you spent the past year forcing Copilot on Office users.

The report doesn’t break out AI earnings and AI expenditure either. Wonder why.

Investors didn’t buy it. Capital expenditure is up 66% from last year, and a lot of that is buying GPUs for the AI. The share price dropped 10% on Thursday, Microsoft’s worst day in five years. [FT, archive]

Also, 45% of the $625 billion that Microsoft has booked as future cloud contracts is … OpenAI! That’s purely imaginary money that OpenAI may not in fact be good for. And investors know that.

Analysts on the earnings call hammered on this future OpenAI deal, and that Microsoft is depreciating GPUs over six years instead of the likely lifetime of one or two years.

CFO Amy Hood waffled and dodged the questions, and Nadella dived in after Hood’s answers try to reassure the analysts.

Microsoft is making a ton of money. But the investors can read numbers, and they’re not happy.

Will Microsoft change course? Can Nadella get out of this one with his job intact? I sure hope not.

• Video — Podcast

The FBI has been unable to access a Washington Post reporter’s seized iPhone because it was in Lockdown Mode, a sometimes overlooked feature that makes iPhones broadly more secure, according to recently filed court records.

The court record shows what devices and data the FBI was able to ultimately access, and which devices it could not, after raiding the home of the reporter, Hannah Natanson, in January as part of an investigation into leaks of classified information. It also provides rare insight into the apparent effectiveness of Lockdown Mode, or at least how effective it might be before the FBI may try other techniques to access the device.

The power of sound is somewhat understated in our image-heavy culture, color and texture a huge part of how we understand design. Yet the tactile and audial are just as important, offering a depth of feeling – a responsiveness that is more than visual, it is somatic. A felt reverberation of sound, and the tactile qualities of it, are central to understanding Rhapsody, a new speaker from Canadian brand Sonoforma. Doubling as a guitar cabinet, founder Mike Nopper makes furniture for musicians, tuning in to the specific wants and needs of some of our most particular hobbyists and professionals. For audiophiles, speaker systems are a serious and complex issue. Rhapsody understands this importance: it’s built to work like gear, and live like furniture.

The solid teak body grounds the speaker in space, somewhat slender legs widening to flow across the side of the cover into the top of the cabinet. The warmth of the teak fits nicely with the warmth of sound – a 1 x 10 fits neatly inside, and also includes a soft-touch drawer for pedals, cables, and other accessories. Each one is crafted, tested, and tuned in Sonoforma’s workshop, to fully back their commitment to quality.

Nopper founded Sonoforma as a response to the usually clunky outer forms of sound equipment. A jumble of cables and pedals, all essential, gets visually overwhelming fast. This sets sound in a welcome home, complete with storage and a form language that alludes to speaker cabinets of the past, yet with a modern update. Rhapsody is available in three finishes, Oscuro, a darker walnut, Claro, a lighter beige, and Rosado, a deep red, each lending their signature grain to the finished pieces.

“Sonoforma exists to bring design discipline to the sound world — to make pieces that feel as intentional as the music played through them.” says Nopper. This furthering of music and design feels natural, a testament to a need for intentional pieces that last, similar to instruments. To Sonoforma, Rhapsody is considered with exactly the same care. From the moment the order is placed, the piece is treated like a commissioned instrument — tracked, tuned, and calibrated specifically for its new home.

To learn more about the Rhapsody speaker from Sonoforma, visit sonoforma.com.

Photography courtesy of Sonoforma.

RSS Disco auf dem letztjährigem Congress mit einer kleinen akustischen Zeitreise, die verdammt viel Spaß macht.

From crackling Kraut and Disco records to hyper produced Techno tracks – dance music has come a long way in the last six decades, and was always strongly influenced by evolving technology.

Dance music’s history is a feedback system between culture and circuitry. Each new invention, from the disco subwoofer to today’s neural-driven mastering tools, reshapes sound itself. RSS Disco’s timeline approach celebrates this continuum: a story of machines learning to groove, and humans learning to listen differently through them.

We take you on a trip through music history in a two hour DJ-set. Starting with music from the early 1970s and closing with tracks produced in 2025. Have a dance with us and get a feeling for the changing sound aesthetics, style and fashion the over the decades.
Not a lot of time to cover the sheer endless amount of music and information, you say? You are right! This can only be a tiny extract, filtered through our perspective and taste. We’ll focus on a selection that feels representative for its time – exciting, beautiful, obscure or interesting. And of course some dirty bangers.