Podcast 5-5 by Dongee · November 2, 2026

Transcript

Gabriel: Welcome to the episode of November second. Let's go.

Gabriel: First up, and I love this one. Elon Musk admitted on X that running Grok Bot, the xAI agent, was too expensive: an unsustainably high cost compared to what it brings in.

Lina: He admitted it after customers complained. Not before. That order matters.

Gabriel: One subscriber hit the weekly limit with four days still to go. Another saw their usage double in twenty-four minutes.

Lina: So they didn't use more. Their quota got cut without warning.

Gabriel: Well, the official Grok account talks about adjusting the allowance because it's so expensive to serve, and about a separate bug in the dashboard that was inflating usage.

Lina: A meter that reads wrong is one thing. A cut is another. And Musk spoke in the past tense: it was unsustainable.

Gabriel: But hold on, this agent doesn't just answer and stop. It works on its own, in the background, on multi-step tasks. That eats up a ton of compute!

Lina: Then that should have been in the math when they set the price. Plans start at thirty dollars a month.

Gabriel: Thirty dollars for a helper that works all week is a bargain!

Lina: If it worked all week. This one clocks out on Wednesday.

Gabriel: That's why users are asking for a cheaper model for simple tasks, or to see how much each task uses.

Lina: On that, I agree. And let me ask you, listening: would you keep paying for an assistant that runs out of steam halfway through the week?

Lina: Second. OpenAI doesn't want us to say data centers anymore. Now they're "AI compute campuses".

Gabriel: Axios broke it on Sunday. It's part of a political push it will launch right after the U.S. midterm elections, this Tuesday.

Lina: Change the name. The classic fix when what's inside stays the same.

Gabriel: It's not just the name! It proposes deals with communities and state laws so neighbors get a say in how they're built and what they get in return.

Lina: Gabriel, a campus has students. This has servers and a huge electricity bill.

Gabriel: And Chris Lehane, its head of global affairs, says communities should hold companies accountable to get a real benefit.

Lina: Then demand it before signing, not on opening day.

Gabriel: They're also asking for mandatory speed limits on the most powerful AI systems, so people stay in control. To me that sounds like real commitment.

Lina: To me it sounds like calling a data center a campus doesn't cut a single watt. Would a new name change what you think of what they build next to your house?

Gabriel: Third. South Korea presented the biggest budget in its history this Monday, with AI at the center! President Lee Jae-myung defended it before the National Assembly.

Lina: Every government says it's betting on AI. The difference is how much.

Gabriel: For chips, AI robots and data centers, about sixteen billion dollars. Almost double this year. And on top of that, money for its own model that, according to the president, should be the highest-performing in the world.

Lina: The highest-performing in the world. Modest, they are not.

Gabriel: They can back it up! In October their chip exports more than tripled.

Lina: Exactly. If the private sector is doing so well, why does the state need to chip in?

Gabriel: Because the president talks about securing leadership for the future, and making sure growth reaches everyone—

Lina: Or because nobody wants to miss the party. That's how bubbles get inflated.

Gabriel: He says that, with all that spending, net debt barely grows.

Lina: He says. We'll see in a few years.

Gabriel: I say it's bold.

Lina: And I say it's public money bet on the chip boom lasting. We'll leave you with this: should a government dive headfirst into the AI race, or is that a job for companies?

Lina: Fourth. A Lenovo USB drive with a fingerprint reader, sold as encrypted, turned out to be a plain old memory card inside a case. No encryption at all.

Gabriel: Wait, what? And the fingerprint?

Lina: The fingerprint only turned on the connection. You opened the case, pulled out the card, and read everything without touching the sensor.

Gabriel: A safe with a fingerprint lock... and a cardboard back door.

Lina: Exactly. A security researcher found it last year, and Lenovo fixed it early this year. One catch: to get the fix, you have to call a service line in China.

Gabriel: Hang on, so why is it blowing up now if it's from last year?

Lina: Because there's a part two. The same researcher used Codex, OpenAI's coding AI, against other drives sold as secure. One of those protections fell in about seven minutes.

Gabriel: That's great! The manufacturer can find the hole before the thief does.

Lina: As long as the manufacturer gets there first. Here, marketing got there first.

Gabriel: Well, the researcher himself put it this way: the security a device promises can be pure marketing.

Lina: So don't trust the label, and encrypt what matters yourself. And think about it: how much do you believe what the box says about what you buy?

Gabriel: Fifth. Trigger.dev, a platform companies use to run automated tasks and AI agents, confirmed on Sunday that an attacker got into its systems.

Lina: What matters isn't that they got in. It's what they took.

Gabriel: The attacker accessed the environment variables of a group of customers. That's where many companies keep the keys and passwords to connect to other services.

Lina: So they didn't take a key. They took the whole key ring.

Gabriel: The company says it has already closed the hole and emailed everyone affected with the steps to follow. And it came out fast and in public!

Lina: Fast, yes. But it didn't say how many customers, or how the attacker got in.

Gabriel: Well, the notice is short, but—

Lina: Speed helps the customer, but they need the full picture.

Gabriel: The urgent thing for anyone who got that email is to change all those keys now. As long as they're active, they can be used to get in.

Lina: And check what was done with them, because the attacker has already had time. If a company loses your keys, what do you ask for first: speed or explanations?

Gabriel: That's it for today's episode.

Lina: If any of these questions got you thinking, share it with someone and talk it over.

Gabriel: Tomorrow, five more stories. And me, just as excited!

Lina: That's what worries me. Talk to you tomorrow.