Sign up

Defector
Text • Giri Nathan

JD Vance Is A Hog That’ll Eat Any Slop

JD Vance Is A Hog That’ll Eat Any Slop
The operating principle of JD Vance's life in politics seems to be as follows: How can I serve every powerful person while appealing to literally no normal person? There is no boot he won't lick, no special interest he won't kowtow to, no family member he won't throw under t...

The New Stack | DevOps, Open Source, and Cloud Native News
Text • Akhil Verghese

Why 40% of AI Agents Might Fail (and How To Save Yours)

AI agents

In 2023, a Chevrolet dealership in California woke up to a viral nightmare: Its new AI chatbot had just agreed

The post Why 40% of AI Agents Might Fail (and How To Save Yours) appeared first on The New Stack.

Fresh Air
Audio

Jodie Foster

Foster was just 12 years old when she starred in Scorsese’s 1976 film ‘Taxi Driver.’ "What luck to have been part of that, our golden age of cinema in the '70s," she says. She talks with Terry Gross about the 50th anniversary of that movie, getting mauled by a lion on a set, and why she kept her sexuality private for most of her career. Foster’s latest film, ‘Vie Privée’ (‘A Private Life’), is in French, which she speaks fluently. 

See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.

NPR Privacy Policy

McSweeney’s
Text • Jack Loftus

Richard Scarry’s What Do People Do All Day in Fascist Busytown?

Welcome to Fascist Busytown. My, what a compliant, orderly town! In Fascist Busytown, everyone works. Working is important. Work makes everything run smoothly. When everything runs smoothly, no one has to ask questions. Working also keeps Fascist Busytown safe. Safety is imp...

WIRED
Text • Vittoria Elliott

Everything Is Content for the ‘Clicktatorship’

For the second Trump administration, the world of online conspiracies is shaping real-world policies like never before.

WIRED
Text • David Gilbert

Roblox’s AI-Powered Age Verification Is a Complete Mess

Kids are being identified as adults—and vice versa—on Roblox, while age-verified accounts are already being sold online.

Defector
Text • Drew Magary

A Belated Review Of ‘Stranger Things’ Season 5 (Which Sucked A Fat One)

A Belated Review Of ‘Stranger Things’ Season 5 (Which Sucked A Fat One)

Time for your weekly edition of the Defector Funbag. Got something on your mind? Email the Funbag. You can also read Drew over at SFGATE, and buy Drew’s books while you’re at it. Today, we're talking about football, e-shopping, lotion application methods, and more.

Your letters:

Raffi12:

WIRED
Text • Brad Bourque

Shortcut Your System With a Discounted Elgato Stream Deck+

Elgato's Stream Deck+ adds knobs and an LCD for even more info at a glance.

WIRED
Text • Zeyi Yang

China’s Hottest App Is a Daily Test of Whether You're Still Alive

Are You Dead Yet soared to the top of app store charts and became a magnet for investors. In an exclusive interview with WIRED, one of its creators says they’re changing the name anyway.

Daring Fireball Valid
Text John Gruber

Apple Announces Apple Creator Studio (Including Apple’s Take on Pixelmator)

apple.com/newsroom/2026/01/introducing-apple-creator-studio-an-inspiring-collection-of-creative-apps/

Apple Newsroom: Apple today unveiled Apple Creator Studio, a groundbreaking collection of powerful creative apps designed to put studio-grade power into the hands of everyone, building on the essential role Mac, iPad, and iPhone play in the lives of millions of creators ...

FrameLab Supports Webmention
Text • Gil Duran

Trump’s Dangerous ‘Morality’ of Absolute Power

Trump’s Dangerous ‘Morality’ of Absolute Power

Trump declared 'my own morality' is his only constraint on power, revealing the authoritarian logic at the heart of conservative ideology.

Manton Reece Supports Webmention Valid
Text

Meandering feature commits

Most features I work on are fairly small. I like to roll out improvements all the time, whenever they’re ready, rather than hold features for a big release. And I get nervous if there are Git branches sitting there, drifting away from the production code. Sometimes there rea...

The New Stack | DevOps, Open Source, and Cloud Native News
Text • Matthias Biehl

4 Core Principles for Scaling Your API Engineering Practice

"Scaling Your API Engineering Practice" featured image

It might seem easy to design and deploy an API by following the predictable API development life cycle pattern. Without

The post 4 Core Principles for Scaling Your API Engineering Practice appeared first on The New Stack.

AI and I
Audio • Dan Shipper

Vibe Check: Claude Cowork Is Claude Code for the Rest of Us

podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/how-do-you-use-chat-gpt/episodes/Vibe-Check-Claude-Cowork-Is-Claude-Code-for-the-Rest-of-Us-e3djl3h

Anthropic just dropped Claude Cowork—essentially Claude Code for everyone, not just engineers—and we got to chat about it with a product engineer at Anthropic who helped build it. In this live Vibe Check, Dan Shipper and Kieran Klaassen explore the new interface together, t...

The Brian Lehrer Show
Audio • WNYC

Changes to the Way the EPA Regulates Deadly Air Pollutants

Maxine Joselow, New York Times reporter covering climate policy, shares her reporting that found the EPA will no longer measure the lives saved by regulating two air pollutants, and what that might mean for how companies operate, how clean the air is and how it will negatively affect people's health.

 


Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

404 Media Supports Webmention
Text • Emanuel Maiberg

Instagram AI Influencers Are Defaming Celebrities With Sex Scandals

Instagram AI Influencers Are Defaming Celebrities With Sex Scandals

Fake images of LeBron James, iShowSpeed, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and even Nicolás Maduro show them in bed with AI-generated influencers.

Defector
Text • Lauren Theisen

The World’s Angriest Rangers Fans Might Be Right

The World’s Angriest Rangers Fans Might Be Right
The last-place New York Rangers hit a humiliating new low on Saturday, when the Boston Bruins demonized them with a 10-2 drubbing up in Beantown. Trudging back home in the Charlie Brown Christmas pose, the team that played the best regular season in all of the NHL just two s...

Defector
Text • Giri Nathan

Joe Mazzulla Reacts To Celtics Loss By Only Repeating Two Words: “Illegal Screen”

Joe Mazzulla Reacts To Celtics Loss By Only Repeating Two Words: “Illegal Screen”

After his Boston Celtics lost 98-96 to the Indiana Pacers on Monday night, head coach Joe Mazzulla delivered a tour-de-force performance as the character "Joe Mazzulla." While speaking to press, he answered all six questions with the same two words, then left.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbdk4OmBnRM

There's a lot to love about Mazzulla's line delivery. You think, just for a second, that he might provide an actual answer to the next query—nope. "Illegal screen."

The Brian Lehrer Show
Audio • WNYC

Betting On Everything

Jonathan Cohen, historian and the author of Losing Big: America’s Reckless Bet on Sports Gambling (Columbia Global Reports, 2025), talks about how prediction markets, where people bet on world events, elections or...almost anything, are rising in popularity, and the risks that may come with these lightly-regulated markets.


Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The New Stack | DevOps, Open Source, and Cloud Native News
Text • Arjun Iyer

Traditional Code Review Is Dead. What Comes Next?

Swirling image of ones and zeros.

I noticed a quiet shift in our engineering team recently that brought me to a broader realization about the future

The post Traditional Code Review Is Dead. What Comes Next? appeared first on The New Stack.