Breaking Change

Latest Episodes:

v42 - Free as in Remodel Aug 16, 2025

Show notes

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:

v41 - Liquid Glasshole Aug 03, 2025

Show notes

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:

v40 - Go home Claude, you're drunk Jul 19, 2025

Show notes

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

v39.0.1 - Dave Mosher: Use AI in Anger Jul 13, 2025

Show notes

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:

A handful of things we mentioned:

v39 - Broken Home Jun 30, 2025

Show notes

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:

v38 - Searls HQ2 Jun 06, 2025

Show notes

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

v37 - Whose bone is this? May 22, 2025

Show notes

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)

v36 - Hedgelord Apr 30, 2025

Show notes

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

v35 - GPT Casserole Apr 20, 2025

Show notes

Your favorite podcast about nothing continues to find things to talk about.

Whatever you do, DO NOT e-mail me at podcast@searls.co or else I will read it on air and tell everyone how smart you sound and how good you look.

Video of this edition of the show is up on YouTube.

Links to follow:

v34 - Bait and Switch 2 Apr 06, 2025

Show notes

Nothing like a peaceful Sunday morning at the end of an exhausting, historically-volatile week to pour a hot cup of coffee and spew absolutely scalding takes in all directions. If you get burned, don't say I didn't warn you. Read the message on the lid.

We've done 34 of these now and my mailbag is getting full of old e-mails that don't make sense anymore. Please email new stuff to me at podcast@searls.co and we, like civilization, will start fresh next time!

Video of this edition of the show is up on YouTube.

You can read more about things on other websites below:

My "new" podcast, Merge Commits
Announcing TLDR 1.0
Late to the party on this: it's good that Siri is bubbling up to Craig, finally
Aaron's puns, ranked
Ethically sourced "spare" human bodies could revolutionize medicine
OpenAI releases 4o Image Generation
ChatGPT Users Are Creating Studio Ghibli-Style AI Images
How OpenAI's Ghibli Frenzy Took a Dark Turn Real Fast (Archive)
An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip
Go to Truant Studio for all your branding and advertising needs
Anthropic released their research into how LLMs "think"
The 500 million worker problem
India's domestic stock bubble
Remember 15 years ago when we cared who would buy TikTok? Amazon might, still
Eddie Burback's "No Phone" video
College students are worse now, says professor, as always
Ubisoft reportedly has lawyers ready to fight Assassin's Creed Shadows harassment
Nintendo just carried out a major test of its reach in a post-Twitter world
The Nintendo Switch 2 Direct
- Virtual Game Cards
- By "anti-scalping", they meant "for Japan"
- Third-party developers say Switch 2's horsepower makes them 'extremely happy'
- Switch backwards compatibility is emulation
- Nintendo delays US preorders because tariffs
Saturday Night film
Titanic
Still playing Avowed
Not playing Inzoi
How to change the oil on a Tesla
Roguelike/Starfoxlike, Whisker Squadron: Survivor
How SNL manages cue cards

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