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Blackouts Take Waymo Out

December 22, 2025

AI Summary

5 min read

🎙️ The Voices & The Context

  • The Format: This solo-hosted daily tech news roundup delivers bite-sized updates on emerging stories with analytical commentary, blending breaking developments in AI, autonomous vehicles, and media deals into a brisk, forward-looking dispatch on the tech landscape. Informative and wryly observational.
  • The Format: A narrative news summary driven by one host.
  • The Key Players:
  • If Just Hosts: Brad McCullough solo-pilots the TechBoo Ride Home, riffing on headlines with sharp insights, podcast nods like Matt Levine, and humorous asides that keep the tech banter lively and digestible.

🗝️ Key Themes & Topics

Four core threads weave through the episode: real-world tests of autonomous tech, high-stakes media mergers fueled by billionaire backing, e-commerce pricing ethics amid consumer backlash, piracy's digital resurrection, AI personalization tweaks, and the simmering hardware wars between Google's TPUs and NVIDIA's GPUs.

  • Topic 1: Autonomous Vehicle Limitations – Waymo's robotaxis faltered during a massive San Francisco power outage, stalling amid gridlock from failed traffic lights, prompting a service pause despite claims of safe handling via four-way stop protocols.
  • Topic 2: Billionaire-Backed Media Drama – Larry Ellison personally guarantees $40.4 billion for Paramount's bid to acquire Warner Bros. Dis

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What you'll learn

  • 1 `(00:34)` **Episode Teaser: Tech Highlights**
  • 2 `(01:57)` **Waymo Robotaxis Stall During San Francisco Power Outage**
  • 3 `(03:57)` **Larry Ellison Provides $40.4B Personal Guarantee for Paramount's WBD Bid**
  • 4 `(06:11)` **Instacart Halts Controversial Item Price Testing**
  • 5 `(08:02)` **Anna's Archive Torrents 86M Spotify Music Files (300TB Leak)**
  • 6 `(11:42)` **OpenAI Updates ChatGPT: Custom Personalities and Email Editing**
  • 7 `(12:53)` **Deep Dive: Google's TPU Evolution and NVIDIA GPU Rivalry (The Chip Letter's "TPU Mania")**

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

Turns out when the lights go out, Waymo’s don’t handle that well. Larry Ellison actually puts his money on the line. Somebody is pirating music like it’s 1999. And two deep-dive looks at whether or not Google’s TPU’s really are a threat to Nvidia and OpenAI.

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