Aug 20th 2026
Tech News Weekly 451
AI Is Eating Rare Books
Hosted by
Mikah Sargent,
Abrar Al-Heeti
Rare Books Gutted for AI Training
New episodes every Thursday.
Guests:
Emanuel Maiberg
Abrar Al-Heeti of CNET joins the show to talk about her review of the Pixel 11 Pro Fold, Meta's smart glasses are slowly becoming a concern in the workplace, and Amazon is destroying rare books & utilizing them as AI training data.
- Abrar Al-Heeti shares her review of the Pixel 11 Pro Fold, noting how foldables have become nearly indistinguishable in size from standard phones like the iPhone 17 Pro Max, and shares a look at its camera, battery, and new software features like Pause Point.
- Mikah shares an article published by The Verge that looks into how retail workers, tourism employees, and comedians describe being secretly recorded by Meta Ray-Ban wearers on the job.
- And 404 Media's Emanuel Maiberg joins the show to share his investigation into Amazon buying and shredding rare, out-of-print books to scan them as AI training data, and how a legal ruling in Anthropic's book-piracy case made destroying the originals advantageous.
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