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 [email protected] 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 [email protected].

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 [email protected] 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 [email protected].

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: [email protected].

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