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from the _which-way-are-they-going_ dept

Thu, Oct 14th 1999 11:03am - Mike Masnick

The Standard has an interesting article on AT&T and the fact that they can’t seem to make up their minds on what they’re doing. Brings up some good points. I’m still waiting to see if they go and sell Excite off, so soon after @Home purchased them.

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![Ctrl-Alt-Speech](https://ctrlaltspeech.com/ "Ctrl-Alt-Speech Podcast")

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Ctrl-Alt-Speech

FAFO: Claude Goes High Brow With Its Super Bowl Ad & "Constitution"; OpenAI Scrambles

Feb 10, 2026Season 1

Dan Blumberg & Kwaku Aning

In this special bonus for Ctrl-Alt-Speech listeners, we're cross-posting an episode from the _Future Around And Find Out_ podcast hosted by Dan Blumberg with guest Kwaku Aning.

This week Dan and Kwaku dig into:

The uncanny valley that is AI agents and Moltbook—the "Reddit" that agents built for themselves to complain about humans, create a religion, and behave in ways that freak humans out

Anthropic takes aim at OpenAI with a Super Bowl ad that's spicy (for cubs and cougars alike)

We read Claude's "Constitution" and ask: Should AI do what you ask it to do—or what it thinks you really want long-term?

Why Dan switched from OpenAI to Claude (and what he learned about tone, capability, and custom projects)

OpenAI scrambles; the market stumbles; Jensen Huang acts like Sam Altman is "just someone I used to know"

How AEO (AI Engine Optimization) becomes critical in an AI-agent world—and what that means for brand, marketing, and search

Why social media is already past (dark social won)

Elon's pivot to humanoid robots, data centers in space, and other cool things we definitely need

Are we setting higher ethical standards for machines than for tech leaders?

Subscribe to FAFO wherever you get your podcasts, or at futurearound.com

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast from Techdirt and Everything in Moderation. Send us your feedback at podcast@ctrlaltspeech.com and sponsorship enquiries to sponsorship@ctrlaltspeech.com. Thanks for listening.

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Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

John Roddy:One of these days, I'll complete my pet project of making a group of "textualist" or "originalism" judges read some influential writings on the subject...

Except the catch is that some of them will just be barely-edited excerpts from astrology books.

If they can't successfully identify which ones, they need to retire.

Leah Abram:Thoughts? [\[article\]\\

https://www.theverge.com/tech/875309/discord-age-verification-global-roll-out](https://www.theverge.com/tech/875309/discord-age-verification-global-roll-out)

One of my trans groups is panicking over this

And that's my fear: that it will impact LGBTQIA+ groups

(of which I am part)

intelati:It is \`the point\` after all

John Roddy:Next month, I turn 36. Literally twice the age of becoming "an adult."

If I have to "prove" that I'm over 18 to access certain features, I am just going to lose all of those features.

Leah Abram:Shit, didn't know you were younger than I

John Roddy:THANK GOD.

Leah Abram:We just can't have nice things

John Roddy:I constantly feel like I'm a rickety old man in every other community.

Leah Abram:I'm 43

I straddle the line between Gen X and Millennial

John Roddy:People in their mid-20s keep acting like they're "old" because they're tired after hitting the gym or whatever.

Leah Abram:I'm a millennial

An ELDER millennial

John Roddy:Like, bitch, I've had a sore back for like three weeks straight because last month, I stood up too fast.

Leah Abram:And I just got my first gray hairs last year

John Roddy:Sooo...you're a Child Of The 80's?

Leah Abram:I'm an 80's baby 90's child

1990 happened when I turned 8

I thought it was "the future"

John Roddy:The sad part is: it was.

Leah Abram:Now it's the past

John Roddy:The 90's was 10 years ago, and anyone declaring otherwise is lying.

Leah Abram:LOL

John Roddy:That's the curse of being born \in\ 1990.

When I turned 20, I figured I'd get over it eventually.

Leah Abram:Well, I'm grateful that my favorite Progressive Rock albums of the 1970's got awesome semicentennial re-releases

John Roddy:By the time I turned 30, I'd just accepted that I'm like this forever.

Leah Abram:(They were Pink Floyd's \_Wish You Were Here\_ and Genesis' \_The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway\_)

Also, the year before, I got the semicentennial version of King Crimson's \_Red\_

Mike Masnick:As someone who was born in 1974 and grew up in the 80s I have thoughts about the two of you pretending to be old

aabsurdity:I've been having thoughts recently about the oldies who had Internet for a while, then got bored and mostly went away.

I feel like the oldest members of the permanently-online generation who don't give it up, and are going to spend the next few years dying in public instead of being shut away in the "forget about old people" boxes are going to prompt interesting discussions. 🤔

Well, once they've completed their age verifications, obviously. :P

John Roddy:I remember the day that mIRC proudly introduced their ground-up overhaul to support...Unicode

Something the Internet in general (glances toward a bunch of not-that-old news articles, yes even from here) still struggles to handle.

aabsurdity:I wonder if I could still recover my mIRC key...

It's only been about twenty years...

John Roddy:Probably. That key is pretty reliable.

Certainly aged a lot better than my slysoft anydvd "lifetime" key. >.<

aabsurdity:I kinda want to go off on one about it but... This is Techdirt, and Mike's in the actual room, so... I think we all already know. :P

The one place on the Internet where I'm pretty dang sure I don't need to explain any of it. :P

John Roddy:Oh I have opinions too. Believe me. >.<

BentFranklin:Maybe TechDirt could have Super Bowl ad next year:

[\[article\]\\

https://www.404media.co/watch-404-medias-super-bowl-ad/](https://www.404media.co/watch-404-medias-super-bowl-ad/)

aabsurdity:There was something floating around earlier about how Nintendo bought a Super Bowl ad for a Pokémon game, and it cost more than the entire development of one of the main-line entries in the series. But still, gotta cut down that developer/artist salary overhead... x\_x

tr\_d:It was actually a good ad though

Cathy Gellis:Low bar, though. The best ads were all for products I wanted nothing to do with, and the rest were disappointing.

aabsurdity:I think Guinness's "The Surfer" ad is still one of the best. I don't think it was shown in the USA though.

bode000:oh just you wait!

BentFranklin:Whoops, "Whoops" has a whole new meaning now.

John Roddy:Yeah, I realized by the end of my 20s that it would never be appropriate to make fun of anyone old again. And boy was that an understatement

Leah Abram:@Mike Masnick's British partner in CTRL+ALT+Speech (forgot his name) pronounced your family name as "Bo-dee". Is that how it's pronounced? I always pronounced it "Bowed" (rhymes with "crowed").

bode000:Yep! His pronunciation is correct!

Mike Masnick:Only because I told him how to pronounce before we began...

bode000:lol, thank you

Leah Abram:Ah.

Well, now I know, Mr. Karl Bodë

(Sorry, the linguist in me demands I put in a dieresis à la Brontë)

John Roddy:No. I'm sorry, but \you\ are the one who's been pronouncing your name wrong this entire time, not me.

aabsurdity:I read the comment about "Bo-dee", then read "Bodë", then got confused it wasn't "Bodé", then had to go back and reread "Bod-ee" to realise that I'd registered \an\ alternative pronunciation, but had changed it to suit my preconceptions of what an 'acceptsble' alternative pronunciation should be. :P

Spelling in 'three languages in a trench coat' English is an ordeal.

Cathy Gellis:Like the protagonist in the old western Cheyenne.

Mike Masnick:Literally here is the note in our run of show doc that he wrote down after I told him.

Leah Abram:And then there’s the English pronunciation of names like Cholmondeley, Featherstonehaugh, Menzies, and Cockburn.

aabsurdity:OOOOH! OOOOOOOOH! I get to link the thing! https://ncf.idallen.com/english....\\

https://ncf.idallen.com/english.html

Leah Abram:(Which are “Chumbley”, “Fanshaw”, “Mingus”, and “Coburn”)

I ❤️ you for linking that!

aabsurdity:It's more "Min'iss". When Menzies Campbell was leader of the Liberal Democrats, you rarely heard the "g" pronounced.

Leah Abram:Ah.

aabsurdity:It's definitely not "Miniss" though. There's definitely \something\ in there, but it's not quite a hard "g". 🤔

Leah Abram:It’s an “eng”. https://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~kr...\\

https://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~krussll/phonetics/transcription/english-symbols/eng.html

aabsurdity:\Ooooh\

Leah Abram:It’s usually transcribed as “NG” and is a velar nasal

aabsurdity:"Compare singer \[ˈsɪŋɹ̩\] (no \[ɡ\]) with finger \[ˈfɪŋɡɹ̩\]." Yes, exactly this.

Leah Abram:(I have a degree in linguistics)

(And I’m really happy I could help!)

aabsurdity:Thank you. I absolutely don't know enough to know what's going on when people start writing stuff like "\[ˈsɪŋɹ̩\]", but I find it absolutely fascinating that we have words that describe sounds. :D

Leah Abram:The International Phonetic Alphabet is fortunately not context-dependent.

bode000:Random question: I managed to lock myself out of my Mastadon account because I can't find my 2FA codes. As the website suggests, I've emailed (stux@masto.ai) twice with no answer. Does anybody know if he just doesn't answer requests for help?

Mike Masnick:i don't know stux, but i know some folks who might. i can ask them

bode000:that would be amazing. I would prefer not having to start over

BentFranklin:New York Times should recuse themselves from covering Epstein, including anything about any of his co-conspirarors.

tomacamot:Any idea what will happen to the TD chat room when discord begins to require ID uploads to keep using the service?

Leah Abram:BTW, keep in mind that this is a rhotic North American dialect of English, which is present in Canadian and many non-Southern American accents.

(rhotic = pronounced the "r" at the end of a syllable or word, like "maker" or "nerd" which in a non-rhotic accent (like an English accent) would be "MAY-kuh" or "Nööd")

Mike Masnick:We were talking about that internally yesterday. We don't know yet. But we're considering options if we need to move.

aabsurdity:ATProtoChat, when? :P

Mike Masnick:I mean, people are building this: https://roomy.space/ but not sure it's ready for prime time yet

BentFranklin:The age verification is only needed for accessing age-restricted servers. Is TechDirt's server age-restricted?

aabsurdity:We do not drink at the Nazi Bar even if they have all the good beers.

Mike Masnick:Yeah, I don't think it'll directly impact us in this chat, but i am worried both about the indirect issues as well as the fact that what starts out narrowly tailored doesn't always remain that way

John Roddy:I'm more interested in what happens when the real old services start implementing something

My Steam account is almost old enough to drink. Surely there's no valid reason to subject me to any kind of age verification on \that\, right?

candescence:For what it's worth, I don't think you need to use IDs to actually use Discord, you just can't access NSFW channels, that's how it's been working so far with the age verification stuff

Leah Abram:Discord is either walking back or clarifying their new policy: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attac...\\

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1098789535439134770/1471165046636806308/Screenshot\_2026-02-11\_at\_14.29.23.png?ex=698df0b8&is=698c9f38&hm=fc5ec92e2efff10468791b280dabf73510c99015ca33d916d415860ea07f732d&

Mike Masnick:A lot of sites are basically using account age as an age verification tool

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