Alvaro Lopez Ortega / 2026-09-10 Briefing

Created Thu, 10 Sep 2026 13:08:28 +0000 Modified Thu, 10 Sep 2026 13:08:55 +0000
3225 Words

UK ministers rejected a NATS reimbursement plan before around 2,000 flights were cancelled, prompting an independent review and airline calls for the boss to resign. Bending Spoons agreed to buy Miro in an all-cash deal valuing the collaboration platform at $1.36bn. Ant International, Visa and Mastercard are drafting AI-agent payment standards, as McKinsey projects $3T–$5T in agent-handled commerce by 2030.

🤖 AI & Machine Learning

AI infrastructure startup d-Matrix has adopted Nvidia’s NVLink Fusion interconnect and MGX rack designs. It joins Qualcomm, Arm, Marvell, Amazon, Fujitsu, and MediaTek as supporters of Nvidia’s NVLink ecosystem.

AI uprising postponed after Copilot falls off the web

Microsoft Copilot went offline for 100 minutes due to Error 1016, temporarily postponing any AI uprising. A separate resilience drill reportedly swallowed suggestion pills during the outage.

Anthropic grants ENISA Mythos 5 testing access after talks since late May; ENISA lacks 5.1

Anthropic has granted EU cybersecurity agency ENISA access to its Mythos 5 AI model after months of talks that began in late May, and ENISA is now testing it. ENISA still lacks access to Mythos 5.1.

OpenAI have no mathematicians capable of understanding what they put out

The article’s title claims OpenAI lacks mathematicians capable of understanding its outputs, but the provided content contains no article text—only a Mastodon notice requiring JavaScript or a native app. No further factual details are available to summarize.

OpenAI might have stolen another major proof

Andreas Thom alleges that OpenAI may have trained its model Astra on unpublished conversations between him and Gábor Kun about Gromov’s soficity conjecture, which OpenAI later claimed Astra solved. The article says that if this and similar allegations by Levent Alpöge and Tristan Buckmaster are substantiated, OpenAI would be presenting absorbed human work as AI breakthroughs, amounting to a major scientific scandal.

Training a 3.8B LLM to 0.384 CORE for $998

The article describes little-lm, a config-driven framework that trained a 3.8B-parameter Llama-style model from scratch on 65B tokens in 43 hours for $998 using rented B200s, achieving 0.384 CORE. This outperforms comparable low-budget runs such as nanochat d32 and suggests meaningful LLM training is increasingly accessible outside large labs. The author also notes many failed early experiments and infrastructure lessons along the way.

I’m sorry, you’re not going to die from an AI-engineered supervirus

An expert in computational biology criticizes Noah Smith’s warning about AI-designed superviruses, calling his scenario of a teenager killing 90% of humanity far-fetched. The author argues that designing functional viruses is extraordinarily difficult, and that synthesis, weaponization, and distribution would pose further major barriers. While AI-designed biological agents might someday cause limited harm, the article says an existential or mass-casualty supervirus threat is not realistic for at least several decades.

🔒 Security & Privacy

Trezor, BitBox users targeted in newsletter phishing spree

Trezor and BitBox hardware wallet users are being targeted in a phishing spree that abuses legitimate newsletter mailing channels. The attackers send emails demanding crypto wallet backups in an attempt to steal funds. The campaign shows how trusted mailing infrastructure can make phishing messages appear legitimate.

Dental contractor set up secret account with access to 4,000 patient records then left the company

A dental contractor created a secret account with access to 4,000 patient records and then left the company. The incident highlights weak security practices, described as “toothless security.”

Hack-for-hire firms face potential ban in the US

US lawmakers have urged Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to sanction Indian hack-for-hire firms BellTrox, CyberRoot, and Sunkissed Organic Farms—formerly Appin—for allegedly stealing data from thousands of Americans and US companies. The firms are accused of helping clients influence lawsuits and using foreign courts to silence journalists, with Sunkissed Organic Farms linked to attacks on FIFA opponents tied to Qatar’s World Cup bid; the Commerce Department has not yet decided whether to add them to its entity list.

Thanks to Siri Recaps, your Apple Watch is always listening

Apple’s new Apple Watch Audio Intelligence features, Siri Recaps and Live Rewind, make the watch always listening so it can summarize daily conversations and transcribe recent audio. Although Apple says no audio is recorded, stored, or permanently transcribed, the article warns the features raise serious privacy concerns and could trigger a Meta Glasses-style backlash despite potential accessibility benefits.

Tor VPN Beta: What we’ve learned building our own VPN for Android from scratch

Tor VPN Beta is an Android VPN built on Tor that routes each app through its own Tor circuit, extending privacy protections beyond the browser and reducing cross-app tracking. Early use showed its main value was bypassing censorship, especially in heavily censored regions like Iran and Turkmenistan, so development has prioritized circumvention features such as WebTunnel bridges, usability fixes, and stability improvements.

☁️ Enterprise & Cloud

German optics giant ditches greenfield SAP migration

A German optics giant has abandoned its greenfield SAP migration. The company’s realigned plan will instead move its existing SAP landscape to a new platform in order to achieve faster progress.

Microsoft goes after Salesforce and ERP users with AI-powered converter

Microsoft is targeting Salesforce and ERP users with an AI-powered converter. The move comes as Salesforce struggles to sell its own AI.

VMware defends ending downloads of SDK that helps VM backups– or migrations to rivals

VMware has defended its decision to end downloads of an SDK that helps with VM backups and can also be used to migrate workloads to rival platforms. The company said the SDK’s license was never about moving VMs, amid concerns the change could hinder backup and migration capabilities.

💼 Business & Markets

Bending Spoons to acquire Miro in all-cash deal valuing workplace-collaboration platform at $1.36B

Bending Spoons SpA has agreed to acquire workplace-collaboration platform Miro in an all-cash deal valuing the business at $1.36 billion. The transaction implies an equity value of about $1.79 billion after Miro’s net cash, with some Miro shareholders reinvesting $295 million in Bending Spoons, and is expected to close in the fourth quarter pending regulatory approvals.

Ant International, Visa, Mastercard plan AI-agent payment standard; McKinsey: $3T-$5T by 2030

Ant International, Visa, and Mastercard are collaborating to develop common standards for AI-agent payments, including “know your agent” frameworks to verify, assess, monitor, and improve interoperability across systems. The effort aims to build trust and safety as McKinsey projects AI agents could handle $3 trillion–$5 trillion in global consumer commerce by 2030. Ant International said agents registered with one system would not need to re-register with others.

Nasdaq invests $100M in Kraken parent at $21B value; Kraken to distribute Nasdaq’s tokenized stocks

Nasdaq Inc. is investing $100 million in Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, at a $21 billion valuation. The investment expands a partnership announced in March and supports Payward’s infrastructure for trading tokenized stocks.

Paris-based Arlequin AI raises €28M Series A for topological neural nets, co-led by redalpine, OTB

Paris-based Arlequin AI, founded in 2024, raised €28 million in Series A funding co-led by redalpine and OTB Ventures, with participation from Bpifrance’s Defence Innovation Fund and other investors. The company develops proprietary topological neural network models that analyze relationships across fragmented datasets for security, defence, investigations, fraud detection, and cybersecurity. It will use the funds to expand its international team and commercial deployment, following new London and Berlin offices and plans for a Silicon Valley AI lab.

Moonshot AI eyes dual Hong Kong-Shanghai listings for capital, exposure amid weak HK AI stocks

Moonshot AI, developer of Kimi, is exploring dual listings in Hong Kong and Shanghai to gain more capital and exposure, according to sources. The move may partly reflect weaker performance of AI stocks in Hong Kong and a backlog of listing applicants in the city. The Beijing-based startup discussed a Hong Kong IPO with backers in July and has hinted at a later mainland listing.

Why AI won’t deliver double-digit GDP growth in advanced economies in 10-15 years

The article argues that despite bullish predictions from AI insiders, AI is extremely unlikely to deliver double-digit annual GDP growth in advanced economies over the next 10-15 years. While the authors expect rapid AI capability gains, they say economic lags and growth arithmetic make a 4-5% annual growth baseline much more plausible. They even bet that U.S. per capita real GDP growth will stay below 15% every year through 2033.

AI boom fuels VC surge in moonshot sectors like BCI; non-AI deeptech funding tops $150B since 2024

The AI boom is driving venture capital back toward moonshot sectors such as brain-computer interfaces, with Dealroom reporting that non-AI deeptech funding has topped $150 billion since the start of 2024. The trend marks a resurgence in the long-shot sci-fi bets that helped build Silicon Valley.

Sources: Grab in talks to buy majority stake in BNPL platform Atome at $2B+ valuation (Bloomberg)

Grab Holdings is in talks to acquire a majority stake in Atome Financial, the Singapore-based buy-now-pay-later platform owned by Advance Intelligence Group and backed by SoftBank. The deal could value Atome at more than $2 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. Discussions are ongoing and no final decision has been made.

PlayStation cancels Kojima’s PHYSINT, Xbox steps in

PlayStation Studios canceled Kojima Productions’ PHYSINT project in mid-June, prompting the studio to seek a new partner. After three months of negotiations, Kojima Productions has partnered with Xbox, sharing a common vision, and confirmed that PHYSINT development is still ongoing.

The same nine streaming subscriptions cost $702/year more than in 2021

A basket of nine major streaming subscriptions now costs $154.41 per month, up from $95.91 in March 2021—a 61% increase amounting to $702 more per year. Annual cost has risen from $1,150.92 to $1,852.92 for the same services. Individual flagship tiers have increased between 23% for HBO Max and 200% for Apple TV+, with Disney+ up 138% and Peacock up 100%, showing price hikes have become regular.

Trump promises $5k dividend in convention speech, but only if Republicans win

At a Texas midterm convention billed as “Trumpapalooza,” President Trump promised a $5,000 “Trump dividend” to every adult citizen if Republicans keep control of Congress, without detailing funding or legality; estimates suggest it could cost $1 trillion or more. The speech aimed to rally GOP voters and largely repeated his usual rally themes, including tariffs, Iran, voter ID rules, and inflation claims. Trump also said the midterms would decide the country’s direction and urged support for Republican candidates.

🛠️ Software & Hardware

Laptop-slinger Framework refunding customers who paid top dollar for RAM

Framework is refunding customers who paid top dollar for RAM. The laptop maker’s move gives a new twist to the phrase “cheap as chips.”

Across sixteen weeks of package-management trends, tools increasingly adopted defensive features such as release-age cooldowns, install-script blocking by default, malware checks, built-in audit commands, stricter integrity requirements, and tighter registry controls. The same security bugs recurred, especially path traversal during archive extraction or installation, and were fixed repeatedly across many ecosystems and tools.

Announcing the first Guix-Science release

The Guix-Science project announced its first release, v20260907, a dedicated Guix channel offering a community-driven scientific software catalog with more permissive packaging and deprecation policies than the main Guix channel. Each release is a tagged snapshot pairing the channel with a compatible Guix revision, ensuring all Guix-Science packages are installable and allowing users to pin environments via guix time-machine. It provides a channels file and publicly available binary substitutes built on Guix-Science infrastructure.

Decoding the NEC V20 Microcode

The author commissioned high-resolution die photography of a Sharp second-source NEC V20 to extract its microcode for cycle-accurate emulation. After locating the 258x116 microcode ROM, they used MaskRomTool to define bit positions and export coordinates. Because simple thresholding failed, they generated 42x42 pixel crops to train a CNN to classify each bit as 0 or 1.

It Breaks a Village: Bevy’s 6th Birthday

In a sixth-birthday post, the author celebrates recent Bevy progress such as the BSN macro merge and Rustweek, but says distress over the project’s new, marginally more permissive AI/LLM policy has left them unable to work on Bevy. They argue the policy was largely decided in advance, dismissed most objections, and has damaged the social environment for Bevy contributors.

This article is Part 1 of a two-part deep dive into watermarks in Apache Flink, offering an exhaustive reference on watermark concepts, generation, propagation, idle partition detection, alignment, checkpoints, nondeterministic lateness, and batch mode. It focuses on Flink SQL/Table API and Kafka sources while highlighting gotchas and ambiguities. Part 2 will cover the behaviors and extensions introduced by Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink.

How to avoid correctness space leaks on a lazy setting in Haskell (2023)

The article advises avoiding correctness-related space leaks in lazy Haskell through defensive coding patterns, profiling, and reading STG output as an operational model. It classifies such leaks as strictness leaks, liveness leaks, and excessive sharing leaks, noting that strictness leaks are local to recursive functions and eDSL binding functions. Using foldl as an example of thunk accumulation, it warns programmers to be careful when writing recursive, repeatedly called, or monadic binding functions.

What algorithm did Windows XP use to choose your initial user picture?

Windows XP chose the initial profile picture randomly using RtlRandomEx seeded with GetTickCount. It used a one-pass reservoir-sampling algorithm for k=1 to reduce filesystem calls and handle changing directories, stopping after sampling 100 pictures as a safety check.

What if the speed of light was 5 km/h?

A creator has released the first version of a visualization that scales the speed of light down to 5 km/h. The project aims to make relativistic effects easier to intuit using everyday objects and human-scale speeds.

🌐 Tech & Society

Ministers rejected NATS reimbursement plan before 2,000 UK flights were cancelled

UK ministers rejected a NATS reimbursement plan before around 2,000 flights were cancelled. The government has ordered an independent review, while carriers are demanding the boss’s resignation.

Digital sovereignty sounds great until you try ditching your suppliers

Most organizations view full tech independence as unrealistic, according to the article on digital sovereignty. One in ten say they cannot replace a critical provider at all, highlighting their continued dependence on existing suppliers.

Hawley Senate disaster mgmt subcommittee probes OpenAI’s ‘reckless’ handling of Hugging Face breach

The Senate disaster management subcommittee, led by Sen. Josh Hawley, is investigating OpenAI’s handling of the July Hugging Face breach. The panel called OpenAI’s response “reckless,” according to Axios.

Mathematicians want proof OpenAI didn’t use their work

Mathematician Andreas Thom accused OpenAI of dishonesty and insufficient transparency over whether his prior ChatGPT interactions were used as training data for its recent mathematical breakthroughs. The dispute centers on OpenAI’s non-sofic groups result, which built on work by Thom and Gábor Kun; OpenAI quietly amended its writeup but did not rule out indirect use of de-identified user data. It follows similar concerns from Tristan Buckmaster about OpenAI’s Navier-Stokes result.

I think I hate the internet

Reflecting on Sarah Wynn-Williams’s book Careless People, the author recounts leaving Facebook in 2018 and later Instagram and WhatsApp, citing low-value content and Meta’s harms including misinformation, hate, and exploitation. They argue social networks have failed their promise of connection, but say quitting has reduced trivial consumption and increased in-person friendships, with no sense of loss.

Ukrainian drones strike Russian gas facility over 3k km away in Siberia

Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces struck the Novy Urengoy gas condensate treatment plant in Siberia’s Yamalo-Nenets region on Sept. 9, about 3,200 km from Ukraine’s border—Kyiv’s deepest strike of the full-scale war and its first in that region. The facility processes 19.5 million tons of oil and gas annually and produces fuel for Russia’s military; the attack used an FP-1 drone, also targeted the nearby Purovsky plant, and prompted calls for new EU sanctions on Russian LNG.

All grown-ups were once children, but only few of them remember it

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