Episode notes
Google removed remaining Manifest V2 extensions from the Chrome Web Store on 31 August 2026, including full uBlock Origin. Copies already on Chrome stay installed, get no updates, and cannot be reinstalled. Chrome 138 had already switched Manifest V2 off a year earlier.
Alex and Jordan look at Kaiser and Rogers clinicians who say automated intake is routing people to the wrong care; a multi-base commissary freezer failure the Pentagon will not explain; and Apple's early Mac mini and Mac Studio refresh, which recaps tie to AI labs buying desktops.
Hosts: Alex and Jordan. Show: Chief Skeptic Officer. Drop: daily 7:00 A.M. America/New_York. Episode date: 2026-09-01.
In this episode
The shelf, not the switch. Google took remaining Manifest V2 add-ons off the Chrome Web Store, including full uBlock Origin. Installed copies get no updates and cannot be reinstalled.
The queue was already filtered. Clinicians at Kaiser and Rogers say automated intake is routing patients to the wrong care. One triage desk went nine to three.
Nobody has to break in. Several military commissaries lost refrigeration. Fort Huachuca said every freezer went into defrost. The Pentagon calls it a possible disruption.
Your ten week wait. MacRumors, citing The Information, says Apple was caught short on Mac mini and Mac Studio by AI hardware demand.
Links
AI disclosure. This episode was created with artificial intelligence. Alex and Jordan are AI hosts; their voices and conversation are generated with AI. Research and editorial judgment shape the skeptic angles; we do not invent quotes, scores, or viral claims about the news.
Transcript
Alex and Jordan, turn by turn. Tap a line to jump in the player.
0:00
Alex
Jordan. Top of Hacker News, six hours old. Google finished pulling the last of the old add-ons out of the Chrome Web Store yesterday. uBlock Origin is in that pile.
0:10
Jordan
Pulled from the store, or pulled off my machine?
0:14
Alex
Store. It is on Google's own timeline page. August thirty-first, twenty twenty-six, all remaining Manifest V2 extensions removed from the Chrome Web Store.
0:23
Jordan
So the ones people already have...
0:26
Alex
Stay. They just never update again, and you can never install them from that store again.
0:31
Jordan
An ad blocker that stops learning about new ads is a museum piece.
0:36
Alex
Three more tabs.
0:38
Jordan
Capital and Main. Mental health workers at Kaiser and at Rogers say the software that sorts incoming patients is putting people in the wrong place. One phone desk went from nine people to three.
0:50
Alex
Navy Times. The Pentagon confirms military grocery stores lost refrigeration at several bases. A blogger says hacked. He has since written that he cannot prove it.
1:01
Jordan
And MacRumors. Apple got caught short on Mac minis, the small desktop, because AI labs are buying them by the truckload. Your ten week wait is somebody's training farm.
1:13
Jordan
What if there was an AI that researched the tech news, checked the sources, and asked what the tech news is not telling you?
1:21
Alex
That's us. I'm Alex.
1:24
Jordan
And I'm Jordan.
1:25
Alex
You're listening to Chief Skeptic Officer. The side of tech news nobody talks about.
1:30
Jordan
Every day at seven A.M. New York time. Wherever you get your podcasts.
1:35
Jordan
If this is useful, subscribe. We do this every morning.
1:39
Alex
Story one. An extension is a small add-on you install into your browser. Google gives the people who build them a rulebook. The old rulebook is Manifest V2, the new one is V3, and yesterday Google took every add-on still on the old one off its store. The full uBlock Origin was in there.
1:57
Jordan
Say what uBlock Origin is, for anyone who has never installed one.
2:01
Alex
An ad and tracker blocker. Free. Probably the most trusted one there is.
2:07
Jordan
Okay, but I keep seeing people post today like Google broke their browser this morning. Did it?
2:12
Alex
No, and that is the part I want to get right. Same page, one line up. July twenty-fourth, twenty twenty-five. Manifest V2 is disabled everywhere. Chrome version one thirty-eight switched it off inside the browser a year ago.
2:27
Jordan
So if my Chrome keeps updating itself, mine already stopped working.
2:32
Alex
Already stopped. The machines still running one are sitting on an older Chrome. The browser did the killing. Yesterday was the funeral.
2:40
Jordan
Then what actually changed?
2:42
Alex
How you get one at all. Google's own words for the copies still out there. Unable to receive any updates, and cannot be reinstalled.
2:51
Jordan
Cannot be reinstalled. So if my laptop dies...
2:55
Alex
You are not getting it back from Google. Not that version.
2:59
Jordan
Here is the part nobody leads with. Chrome is not the only browser built on Google's browser code, and the others point you at Google's store to install add-ons. When that shelf empties, their install button empties too.
3:12
Alex
Brave saw that coming. They keep four of the old ones on their own servers. uBlock Origin, AdGuard, uMatrix, NoScript.
3:21
Jordan
Four. Out of that whole shelf.
3:24
Alex
Four.
3:26
Jordan
I design tools for teachers. A classroom laptop gets shared by thirty kids, and it is Chrome, because half the school software only works in Chrome. If the blocker on it cannot pull a new list of ad servers...
3:38
Alex
It stops seeing this month's junk.
3:42
Jordan
And ads are how a lot of bad software gets on a machine in the first place.
3:49
Alex
Google's argument is honest, though. Under the new rulebook an add-on cannot pull down fresh code while it runs. It hands Chrome a fixed list of blocking rules up front. Real security gain.
4:00
Jordan
And the cost?
4:02
Alex
It sees less of the page, and that list has a size limit. Separate hole from the frozen copies, which just never learn a new ad server.
4:11
Jordan
Two holes.
4:12
Alex
One on purpose, one from neglect.
4:16
Jordan
There is a lighter version, right?
4:19
Alex
uBlock Origin Lite. Same author, same fixed-list limits, so it catches less. Firefox still runs the full one.
4:27
Jordan
So nothing is banned. The choice just got quieter.
4:32
Alex
The date was published years ago. Nobody read the calendar until the shelf was empty.
4:38
Jordan
Story two. Capital and Main talked to mental health workers at Kaiser in California and Rogers Behavioral Health in Wisconsin. Their claim is that automated intake is sending patients to the wrong level of care.
4:51
Alex
Define intake for me.
4:54
Jordan
You call because you are struggling. Somebody decides how urgent you are and where you go. A therapist, a psychiatrist, a group class, or a wait. That sorting is triage.
5:06
Alex
And the staffing number?
5:08
Jordan
One clinician says she is one of three people left doing that sorting. That desk had nine three years ago.
5:16
Alex
Nine to three.
5:18
Jordan
And a third of the calls that get through, she says, end up routed the wrong way.
5:24
Alex
Wrong how? Give me the worst one on the page.
5:28
Jordan
Self-harm, or a previous suicide attempt, missed in the sorting. Weeks of delay after that. And at Rogers, a worker describes someone at high risk of suicide put in the lightest kind of care. An appointment now and then, nobody watching closely.
5:44
Alex
Careful here. That is a worker telling a reporter, not a published study.
5:50
Jordan
It is not. And the outlet is funded in part by the two nurses unions in this fight. I would say that out loud on a witness stand.
5:58
Alex
Say it here too. What do the companies say?
6:01
Jordan
Kaiser's line is on the page. The tools support, not replace, clinical judgment. Rogers says only licensed clinicians decide admissions.
6:11
Jordan
Here is the part nobody leads with. Both of those sentences can be completely true and the harm still happens.
6:19
Alex
Because?
6:21
Jordan
Because a licensed person deciding is not the same as a licensed person seeing everyone. If the software already sorted who reaches that clinician, the clinician is choosing from a list somebody else wrote.
6:33
Alex
...the queue was already filtered.
6:37
Jordan
The queue was already filtered. Nobody has to overrule a doctor if the case never lands on the doctor's desk.
6:44
Alex
And do we know whose software?
6:47
Jordan
At Rogers, yes. They announced a partnership with a company called Limbic. A chat window that takes your intake, plus a voice agent that answers the phone. Kaiser's tool is never named in the piece.
6:59
Alex
Limbic's own case study calls that rollout a success. The floor staff describe people in crisis handed a group class.
7:08
Jordan
And a meditation app. Workers say people in mania got offered calm-breathing exercises.
7:16
Alex
The pitch word is easier pathways.
7:20
Jordan
The thing you have to do to get help is now the login, the hold music, and the twelve week app. When the illness is the thing that makes phone calls impossible.
7:31
Alex
California has two bills sitting in the legislature. One protects a worker who overrides the software. One bans a care decision made only by a computer, with no person in it.
7:42
Jordan
Sitting. Neither passed.
7:45
Alex
Neither passed. Which tells you somebody already thinks this is happening.
7:51
Alex
Story three. Commissaries are the grocery stores on U.S. military bases. Late last week, several of them lost refrigeration at the same time. Navy Times, August twenty-eighth.
8:02
Jordan
How many bases?
8:04
Alex
Named ones include Fort Irwin, Holloman, Newport, Little Rock, F.E. Warren, Robins, Fort Huachuca. Newport and Irwin went dry goods only.
8:14
Jordan
Wait. Huachuca is the bad one, right?
8:18
Alex
Their own post says it. All freezers went into defrost mode. All frozen food spoiled.
8:24
Jordan
Defrost is the normal cycle that melts ice off the coils. So the power stayed on.
8:31
Alex
The power stayed on. The freezers were told to warm up.
8:35
Jordan
Told by what?
8:38
Alex
That is the whole argument. A blogger writes it up under the headline I think the military commissary freezers were hacked. That is the version going around.
8:48
Jordan
And further down the same post?
8:50
Alex
He writes that he does not have evidence the Defense Commissary Agency was hacked.
8:56
Jordan
He wrote his own correction and everyone shared the title.
9:01
Alex
The Pentagon's words are thinner than either. A possible refrigeration disruption at some Defense Commissary Agency commissaries. No cause.
9:11
Jordan
What is the thread saying?
9:13
Alex
The best pushback comes from a guy with twenty years in the field. His guess is a setup mistake, or a bad software update pushed out to all of them at once.
9:23
Alex
Which is the part nobody leads with, and it is not a comfort.
9:28
Jordan
Say why.
9:30
Alex
Look at what the blogger and the guy correcting him both assume. That these freezers are watched and steered over a network, from one place, across a lot of bases. Neither of them argues about that part. And if a bad update can defrost seven stores, then the reach was always there. Somebody just has to want it.
9:48
Jordan
So the boring answer and the scary answer use the same wire.
9:54
Alex
Same wire. And I keep thinking about the phrase equipment failure. I am mid-migration on our logging at work. I would not close a ticket that says equipment failure across seven sites on one Tuesday.
10:07
Jordan
Because that is not a cause.
10:10
Alex
That is a shrug with a ticket number on it.
10:14
Jordan
What actually gets eaten here?
10:17
Alex
A junior enlisted family with a food budget shops there because it is cheaper. The freezer aisle is empty and nobody has said why yet.
10:26
Jordan
And officials called the speculation inappropriate.
10:30
Alex
They did. Speculation is what fills a room where nobody will name a cause.
10:36
Jordan
Last one, quicker. MacRumors, Sunday. Apple was caught off guard by AI demand for Mac mini and Mac Studio. Both are small desktop computers, the ones without a screen attached.
10:48
Alex
Off guard how?
10:50
Jordan
They are quoting The Information, which is a paywalled site that breaks a lot of company leaks. Apple refreshed both machines unusually early because business AI buyers wanted them, and Apple had no sales team set up to sell to those buyers. The versions with the most memory have been out of stock for months.
11:07
Alex
Buying them to do what? Those are desktops.
11:11
Jordan
That is the fun part. The same reporting says OpenAI and other labs bought tens of thousands of minis and Studios, to train software that uses a computer the way you do. Opening apps, clicking buttons, typing, working through the steps.
11:26
Alex
And software learning to drive a Mac needs...
11:30
Jordan
A real Mac. It has to practice on the actual screen and the actual apps, and Apple's software only runs on Apple's hardware.
11:38
Alex
So it is a rack of desktops.
11:42
Jordan
A rack of desktops.
11:45
Alex
The thread is split on this, and fairly. Half of Hacker News thinks it is real demand. The other half calls it marketing dressed as a leak.
11:54
Jordan
Where do you land?
11:56
Alex
On what is confirmed, which is thin. Tens of thousands is one outlet nobody else can check. Apple has not said it. OpenAI has not said it. The empty shelf is the only thing I can see with my own eyes.
12:09
Jordan
Here is the part nobody leads with. Apple sells that machine as the computer that keeps your AI work on your desk, away from the cloud.
12:19
Alex
And the buyers are the cloud.
12:22
Jordan
The buyers are the cloud. The labs are stocking their farm with the box marketed as your independence from them.
12:31
Alex
You wait ten weeks for the small computer that was supposed to make you self-sufficient, because it is inventory for the people renting you the big one.
12:40
Alex
So, today. Google removed the last of the old Manifest V2 add-ons from the Chrome Web Store, including the full uBlock Origin. Copies people already have keep running, get no updates, and cannot be reinstalled. The browser itself turned that old kind off a year ago in Chrome one thirty-eight. Brave keeps four of them on its own servers. Mental health workers at Kaiser and Rogers say automated intake is putting patients in the wrong kind of care. One phone desk went nine to three. Both companies say licensed clinicians still decide, and two California bills are still waiting. Several military commissaries lost refrigeration. Fort Huachuca says every freezer went to defrost and the food spoiled. The Pentagon calls it a possible disruption, and the blogger who wrote hacked now says he cannot prove it. And Apple ran out of Mac minis because AI labs are reportedly buying them by the tens of thousands to train software that drives a computer.
13:31
Jordan
The one I cannot put down is the phone call. Somebody works up the nerve to ask for help once, and the thing that decides what happens next is a form.
13:40
Alex
That's our audit for today. Find us wherever you get your podcasts. Chief Skeptic Officer, every day at seven A.M. New York time.
13:49
Jordan
Tell us what you're skeptical about. Drop it in the comments. The angle you can't stop chewing on.
13:55
Alex
Stay curious. Stay skeptical.
13:58
Jordan
Doubt both.
