Breaking Change

Today, we're joined by a very special guest, Len Testa! You might know him from The Disney Dish podcast or from his excellent theme park travel planning app Touring Plans. Or you might not know him at all! No wrong answers.

This episode is all about Disney's ill-fated Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser live action role-playing hotel—which we both had the opportunity to experience right when it first launched. It was a life-changing experience for both of us, so why did it fail? Is it true that the top Disney brass learned all the wrong lessons from that failure? And will the CEO-in-waiting Josh D'Amaro ever have the courage to attempt something so ambitious again? Listen to this episode, in which we speak with an unearned confidence that suggests we have all of these answers!

You can reach out to Len at [email protected] and you can write into the show at [email protected]. He'll read your e-mail and reply to it, but I may only skim it.

Sure feels like some combination of AI, the US military, and the AI military could bring an end to the world any day now, so I figured I'd better record one last show for posterity. Welcome me on this version's speedrun to the apocalypse!

So long as the EMP blasts don't nuke all our ham radios, write in to [email protected] and I'll read it on the next release of the program. Over.

Be sure to click all these links while the clickin's good:

Ninja Creami Deluxe

prove_it

Agents are ushering in the Antisocial Era

Brace for the Fuckening

Citrini Research fanfic

Would you like your AI singularity benign or extinction-level?

Original post by the Dallas Fed

Anthropic's Statement on the comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth

OpenAI's agreement with the Department of War

U.S. Strikes in Middle East Use Anthropic, Hours After Trump Ban

Human brain cells on a chip learned to play Doom in a week

Apple introduces a new video podcast experience on Apple Podcasts

Foveated Streaming for Apple Vision Pro

Huge Xbox shakeup: Phil Spencer retiring, Sarah Bond resigns, Microsoft AI boss becomes new Microsoft Gaming CEO

XCOM's Jake Solomon announces his new studio is closing, reveals now-cancelled AI-driven narrative game

Fan group makes Unreal Tournament 2004 available to play for free and in 4K

Video Games Are Losing a Brain Rot Race to Gambling and Porn (News+)

Netflix walks away from its deal to buy Warner Bros. after Paramount came back with a better offer (News+)

Why Netflix Actually Won Even Though It Lost Warner Deal (News+)

Aaron's puns, ranked

Your Friends & Neighbors

Rental Family

Halt and Catch Fire (again)

Paradise: Season 2

Star Trek: Voyager - Across the Unknown

xcbeautify

turbocommit

The double loop model for agentic coding

I feel like I'm getting saltier, and it's concerning. If you want me to tone it down and/or up, let me know. It'll go a lot better if you just write to [email protected] instead of yelling at your phone.

As usual, I brought the goods. Now here are the receipts:

prove_it is doing its job, mostly

Aaron's puns, ranked

Starsand Island studio confused by alleged 'praise-bombing' attack

Sony is considering holding back PlayStation 6 until 2028 or 2029

Southwest changes are infuriating fans (News+)

NYT: All the news that's fit to manspread

Gurman: Tesla CarPlay Held Back by Need for Wider Adoption of Apple's iOS 26 (Archive)

YouTube on Vision Pro (News+)

Apple Announces Special Event in New York, London, and Shanghai on March 4

Filed my first SwiftUI bug as feedback. It's FB21962656

Thoughtworks concludes TDD is good and billable juniors valuable

Ugh, Anthropic CEO was right about the timing of AI writing all the code

Peter Steinberger Chose OpenAI. The Code Was Never the Point

Eternity

Starfleet Academy

Your Friends & Neighbors

Elon has combined 3 of his 4 businesses and everything makes sense. Also, I went to Japan and all I came back with was another weird story about animal sperm. Other stuff happened too, but let's be honest, it's the typical AI schlock you've come to expect from this decade.

Write in with your own takes to [email protected]. Please. Really! Do it.

Citations needed?

白子揚げ = 🐟🍆💦🍟

scrapple scrapes Apple docs for agents

prove_it forces Claude to verify his shit works

Aaron's puns, ranked

A sane but extremely bull case on Clawdbot / OpenClaw

US Insurer 'Lemonade' Cuts Rates 50% for Drivers Using Tesla's 'Full Self-Driving' Software

Elon Musk's SpaceX acquiring AI startup xAI ahead of potential IPO

Amazon commingling practices will end effective March 31, 2026

UPS to cut additional 30,000 jobs in Amazon unwind, turnaround plan

Microsoft is experimenting with a top menu bar for Windows 11 (News+)

How DoorDash and Other Food Delivery Apps Are Reshaping Mealtime in the U.S.

Apple debuts 'Apple Creator Studio' subscription, here's what you get

Apple Sued by App Developer Over its Continuity Camera

Halide cofounder Sebastiaan de With joins Apple's design team

Inside Apple's AI Shake-Up, AI Safari and Plans for New Siri in iOS 26.4, iOS 27 (Archive)

Apple introduces new AirTag with expanded range and improved findability

Xcode 26.3 unlocks the power of agentic coding

Josh D'Amaro Named Next Chief Executive Officer of Disney

Everyone is stealing TV (News+)

Google's AI helped me make bad Nintendo knockoffs (News+)

Deepmind Genie

The sizzle reel

Angry gamers are forcing studios to scrap or rethink new releases (News+)

Xbox Developer Direct - Fable looks like they did the thing , Forza Horizon 6 is set in Japan

Valve confirms Steam Machine price and release details have been delayed by exploding component prices

Slow Horses

Hijack

Posturr - posture-correcting screen blurring app

Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes

Absolum

Blippo+

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