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Tech News Weekly 451: AI Is Eating Rare Books
20 August 2026

Tech News Weekly 451: AI Is Eating Rare Books

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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.

Hosts: Mikah Sargent and Abrar Al-Heeti


Guest: Emanuel Maiberg


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