Alvaro Lopez Ortega / 2026-10-12 Briefing

Created Mon, 12 Oct 2026 18:06:59 +0000 Modified Mon, 12 Oct 2026 18:08:17 +0000
11981 Words

The FBI arrested a suspect tied to ShinyHunters’ theft of sensitive agent data. A cyberattack on legacy Danfoss refrigeration controls disrupted hundreds of French supermarkets, spoiling food and causing millions in losses; Paris prosecutors are investigating. A Ukrainian-Russian man pleaded guilty in a money-laundering network that used 15,000 mules to funnel cybercrime proceeds, admitting $14.7M in losses.

🤖 AI & Machine Learning

Claude Code may have found a planet hiding in NASA’s data

A developer used Claude Code and Codex to identify a possible exoplanet in NASA TESS data, with a signal about 116 light-years away that repeats every 3.18 days. NASA has scheduled follow-up observations, but the candidate remains unconfirmed. The case highlights how AI tools can help non-experts analyze public scientific data.

Which AI infrastructure option actually holds a boundary?

The Register will host a Washington dinner with HPE and NVIDIA in just over two weeks to discuss which AI infrastructure options actually hold architectural boundaries. The accompanying news roundup covers AI and security developments including Nvidia’s $1B commitment to US scientific computing, TSMC’s $2B GlobalFoundries packaging deal, Microsoft’s Copilot and Surface updates, Russian Signal phishing, SharePoint zero-days, and open-source news like Ubuntu’s beta, Firefox’s redesign, and Shopify’s acquisition of Tailwind.

Microsoft giveth and Microsoft taketh away: Copilot edition

Microsoft is expanding Copilot to work with Office documents, but it is removing the assistant’s ability to create Outlook themes. The contrasting changes show Microsoft both adding and taking away Copilot features.

Imagine there’s no Shiny Hunters – AI could make human hacking crews obsolete

The FBI has announced what appears to be a third arrest in the ShinyHunters investigation tied to the group’s breach of Bureau systems. Meanwhile, a second vulnerability discovered by Anthropic’s Mythos model has been exploited in the wild, raising concerns that AI could make human hacking crews obsolete.

Meta launches Muse Wonder AI agent models

Meta launched Muse Wonder and Muse Wonder Full, calling them its most capable frontier models with state-of-the-art performance on personal and professional agentic tasks. Muse Wonder is available via the Meta Model API, Muse Code, and paid Muse app subscriptions, while Muse Wonder Full is exclusive to Muse Code subscribers on $50 or $200 monthly plans. The launch, part of Meta’s push for AI subscription revenue and a stronger AI position after a 14-month overhaul, includes plans to power Muse experiences and develop specialized models, along with safeguards against cyber misuse.

Meta says Wonder’s Active Memory and Active Focus help AI do more useful work over extended periods

Meta says its Wonder AI system includes Active Memory and Active Focus, features designed to help AI perform more useful work over extended periods. Separately, U.S. economists Robert E. Hall and Michael Woodford won the 2026 Nobel economics prize for work on managing economic shocks, a judge halted the Trump administration’s taxpayer-funded ads, and Pete Buttigieg is pursuing a different path for 2028.

Interview: Zuckerberg says Meta caught up with AI frontier rivals via Wonder, rejects slowdown

In an FT interview, Mark Zuckerberg said Meta has caught up with AI rivals at the frontier with its new Muse Wonder model after major spending to compete in the AI race. He also rejected calls for a slowdown in AI development.

Ex-DeepMind scientist David Silver on startup Ineffable’s RL ‘super learner’ as LLM alternative

A Financial Times interview with ex-DeepMind scientist David Silver covers his startup Ineffable and its effort to build an AI “super learner” using reinforcement learning as an alternative path to LLMs. Silver, an architect of AlphaGo, discusses building machines that can teach themselves and why he feels a moral obligation to advance the technology.

Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon: AI firms doing phones, ask for continuous 100B-param local LLMs by 2028

Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon said AI companies are starting to make phones and have asked Qualcomm to support 100-billion-parameter local LLMs running continuously by 2028. He predicted AI agents will spark a smartphone supercycle, with smart glasses becoming the biggest AI wearable category, and also discussed Qualcomm’s data-center strategy and 6G. The comments came in a Sources podcast interview recorded at Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit.

Linus Torvalds Uses AI for Linux Kernel Improvement

Linus Torvalds has created a new Linux kernel branch, noref-filemap-read-with-llm, using Anthropic’s Claude Code to adapt memory management so page-cache reads avoid folio references and reduce contention from many threads making small reads of the same file. He also used LLM assistance on an assoc_array branch to make code more readable and, with a user-space test harness, confirmed a reported bug while uncovering three more dating to 2013. The patches have not been merged yet and may be considered for the upcoming Linux 7.4 merge window.

Ubuntu’s Myna Speech-To-Text Now Available In Tech Preview

Canonical’s Myna speech-to-text is now available in tech preview for Ubuntu 26.10 and via Snap on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and 26.04 LTS. The optional feature runs locally, requires no internet after the initial model download, and supports Parakeet, Whisper, and FunASR. Myna remains in early development and may have rough edges.

AI Locates Homes from Interior Photos

Raven, an AI tool by Graylark Technologies (formerly GeoSpy), lets law enforcement identify a specific home—including short-term rentals—from a single interior or exterior photo by matching visual clues to listings on sites like Airbnb, Zillow, and Vrbo, without relying on metadata or reverse-image search. The LAPD and Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office have purchased access, and while the company markets it for investigations such as trafficking and exploitation, the capability raises police surveillance and privacy concerns.

Agent37 (YC F26) – Low-cost agent sandboxes for running agents

Agent37 (YC F26) offers low-cost sandboxes for running AI agents, with customers paying an average of $0.37 per sandbox per month, under 10% of most providers. The founder says cost optimizations such as efficient CPU/RAM management, renting from Hetzner/OVH instead of hyperscalers, using gVisor for resource sharing, and RAM-optimized hosts now enable a free plan with $0.05–$0.10 monthly infrastructure cost per user. It also offers full VM sandboxes for workloads like Docker at a higher but still low price.

Kevin Kelly’s 2016 AI Predictions, 10 Years Later

Kevin Kelly’s 2016 book The Inevitable predicted that by 2026 Google’s main product would be AI rather than search, that AI would be dominated by two or three large general-purpose cloud-based commercial intelligences, and that most AI would be special-purpose. Revisiting those forecasts a decade later, the article notes Google’s 2017 transformer breakthrough and its use of search data to train AI, while framing Kelly as favoring open-weight models.

“Just Ask Claude” Is a Rare and Valuable Skill

The article argues that using AI like Claude to solve others’ problems is a rare and valuable skill, even if it feels like offloading the work. It says the helped person often couldn’t get the same result themselves because they may avoid AI, lack premium access, be unfamiliar with current tools, or lack the knowledge to prompt and verify AI effectively—and sometimes they simply want human connection.

Fable Took My Job

A former engineer recounts being laid off after his employer turned to the AI model Fable, not because it performed his job better but because it was cheaper than his compensation and gave leadership confidence to coast until an M&A. He argues that “AI took my job” really means AI contributed to his role being eliminated, and that current frontier models still lack the taste and judgment to replace experienced engineers despite marketing hype. He also notes widespread recent layoffs in his social and professional circles amid similar AI-related workforce decisions.

Skills Hub, a desktop app for managing AI agent skills

Skills Hub is a new desktop app for managing AI agent skills across coding tools and projects, allowing users to install skills once and sync them to supported tools. It supports 48 AI coding tools, including Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and OpenCode, with bulk management, custom directories, and cross-device syncing via GitHub, GitLab, or Gitee. The app is available for macOS, Windows, and Linux, and can also be managed through an AI coding agent.

AI is changing how Lawyers work – and putting the billable hour under pressure

AI is used by nearly 90% of legal professionals in the U.K. and Ireland, according to Clio’s 2026 report, and is pressuring law firms’ traditional billable-hour model by automating routine work, cutting costs, and letting firms handle more work without more resources. Major firms such as A&O Shearman and Slaughter and May are deploying AI for document review and regulatory research, while Deloitte expects hourly-billed work to fall from 72% to 44% within two to three years. Complex legal work still needs human judgment, and AI is also changing how junior lawyers are trained.

Yes I Understand How LLMs Work

The article rejects the claim that “nobody knows how large language models work,” arguing that thousands of researchers and engineers understand their design, training, and operation. It describes LLMs as mechanical systems built from known mathematical operations, including tokenization, transformer layers, attention, and parameter updates, whose computations can be inspected and modified. The author says media and educational sources often conflate the limits of interpretability research with a total lack of human understanding.

Atticus – Hold-to-talk voice assistant for macOS that runs on Claude -p

Atticus is a free, open-source hold-to-talk voice assistant for macOS, activated with Control+Option+Space, that can arrange windows, find files, read the screen, and perform actions on command. It runs through Claude Code using an existing Claude Pro or Max plan, so no API key is needed, and it learns frequent commands and remembers user preferences. Simple tasks skip AI for speed, while AI-assisted asks use about 0.14¢ of plan usage.

Local Indexing to reduce tool calling and token usage

Pensieve is a local indexing/search tool that lets coding agents search files, repositories, and sessions by meaning or exact terms, returning only the most relevant passages with file and line references. It integrates via MCP with tools like Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor to reduce tool calls and token usage compared with grep. In a benchmark, agents using it averaged 2.0 tool calls per lookup versus 3.4 with grep and answered in a single call in 82 of 144 runs.

Building Investigations: what it takes to build an AI SRE

Incident.io spent two years building Investigations, an AI SRE that automatically investigates incidents using telemetry, recent deploys, past incidents, docs, and code. It says AI incident diagnosis is much harder than it looks, requiring new systems to ensure consistent accuracy, speed, and usefulness. The vendor warns that the gap between an impressive prototype and a reliable product can lead to months of maintenance, and shares this to inform build-vs-buy decisions.

Your error budgets don’t know AI exists

Error budgets and SLOs measure reliability, not whether teams still understand the systems they are changing, especially as AI reduces the cost of producing code but not the cost of comprehending it. This can leave dashboards healthy while teams cannot explain why a change failed. The article argues that changes depending on concentrated knowledge, single points of failure, or solely on AI models should be treated as riskier, and comprehension loss should be fixed before an SLO breach.

🔒 Security & Privacy

FBI Arrests Suspect in FBI-Hacking Case

In September, the hacking group ShinyHunters claimed to have stolen a trove of FBI data about its own agents, an incident described as an intelligence disaster. Last week, the FBI arrested a suspect associated with that crime.

French supermarket refrigerators hit by cyberattack

An unprecedented cyberattack disrupted remote refrigeration systems at hundreds of French supermarkets, including Intermarché/Netto, Coopérative U, and reportedly E. Leclerc, Carrefour, and Monoprix, raising temperatures or forcing defrost cycles and spoiling fresh and frozen food. The attack caused potential losses in the millions of euros, reports of fires, and some disruptions beyond France; Paris prosecutors opened an investigation, with the incident linked to vulnerable legacy Danfoss refrigeration controls and outdated firmware.

Karaoke giant warns 8.7 million customers exposed in supplier data breach

Japanese karaoke giant Daiichi Kosho warned that personal information of up to 8.7 million customers may have been exposed after malware infected a supplier’s computer. Potentially leaked data includes names, genders, birth dates, email addresses, and phone numbers, with Big Echo accounts making up 5.6 million of those affected. The company urged customers to avoid suspicious messages, links, and attachments.

International money-laundering gang recruited 15,000 money mules to funnel hackers’ cash

Oleg Korniev, a Ukrainian-Russian citizen, pleaded guilty to helping run Your Mule Cashout, an international money-laundering network that recruited 15,000 money mules who believed they worked for legitimate companies. The group funneled cybercriminal proceeds from victims in the U.S. and elsewhere, with Korniev admitting responsibility for more than $14.7 million in losses. He pleaded guilty to money laundering, computer fraud, access device theft, and aggravated identity theft, and faces up to 50 years in prison at sentencing.

Here’s a faster way to get rid of Flock cameras in your area

Utah activists are urging the state Department of Transportation to cancel Flock camera permits by invoking a contract clause that allows termination if the public no longer supports the company’s activities. UDOT says it is reviewing whether the cameras have proper permits, not whether residents support them, while Utah police chiefs argue the cameras help solve major crimes.

European supermarket giant limits operations amidst cyberattack

Albert Heijn has taken online services offline and suspended grocery deliveries after parent company Ahold Delhaize confirmed a cybersecurity incident. Physical supermarkets remain open and checkout systems work, but other Ahold Delhaize chains including Etos, Gall & Gall, and Delhaize are also disrupted. The company is investigating and has not said what caused the incident or whether customer or employee data was affected.

Dutch police take down malicious proxy network exploiting 178,000 devices

Dutch police, the Netherlands Public Prosecutor’s Office, and the Shadowserver Foundation dismantled a malicious proxy service made up of 178,000 compromised devices. Criminals used the network to hide behind innocent citizens’ and businesses’ IP addresses, risking wrongful suspicion in investigations. Police seized servers at multiple hosting providers last week and said more takedowns may follow.

Hackers threaten to expose KFC data, as breach allegations circulate

The Gentlemen ransomware gang has listed KFC on its darknet leak site and threatened to publish allegedly stolen data unless the company negotiates. KFC has not confirmed the alleged incident, and the gang has not released samples of the purported files. The threat could be significant given KFC’s nearly 32,000 restaurants in more than 150 countries.

Amazon Fire TV Cube hacked using 4-year-old bug: movie fans are not scared, they’re ecstatic

A four-year-old ARM Mali GPU vulnerability allows root access on Amazon’s Fire TV Cube 3rd Gen. Home theater enthusiasts are using the exploit to sideload apps, remove Amazon components, and install custom software or operating systems for better video and audio playback. Amazon says the method requires physical access and deliberate steps, posing little risk to customers, though unofficial modifications can void warranties and introduce security risks.

MoneyGram under threat as hackers claim data breach

The Gentlemen ransomware gang claims it attacked MoneyGram and threatens to publish stolen data, but has not provided data samples. MoneyGram has not confirmed the alleged incident, and the company serves about 60 million active customers across more than 200 countries. Researchers warn the alleged breach could expose sensitive personal or financial information, following a prior MoneyGram cyberattack in 2024.

SIM-swap fraudster jailed for stealing $265K in crypto to fund luxury lifestyle

Ajay Shinjin, a 25-year-old UK man, was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison for stealing about £200,000 ($265,000) in cryptocurrency through SIM-swapping. Police said he hijacked victims’ phone numbers to intercept one-time passcodes and access their bank or crypto accounts, with BT data linking him to thefts from two victims and involvement in two more. He used proceeds to fund a luxury lifestyle, including Dubai holidays, a high-end apartment, and gold-plated teeth grills.

Thousands of European wind and solar systems exposed to potential cyberattacks

Researchers identified 8,547 publicly accessible solar and wind management systems across 35 countries, leaving them vulnerable to cyberattacks. Spain had the most exposed solar parks, while Germany and Italy led exposed wind farm systems. At 181 locations, researchers could fully control systems, including shutting down turbines or entire wind farms, and affected administrators were warned to take them offline.

Windows 11’s easiest account bypass gets the Microsoft boot

Microsoft has reportedly patched Windows 11’s easiest account bypass server-side. The “Learn More” shortcut that helped users set up a local account instead of signing in with a Microsoft account no longer works. Users seeking to bypass the Microsoft account requirement now have to rely on more involved workarounds.

AI fuels $442B scam economy, bigger than cocaine trade, Chinese scams spread beyond Asia (Bloomberg)

AI is helping fuel a global scam economy that cost victims an estimated $442 billion across 42 countries last year, exceeding some valuations of the global cocaine trade. Scam operations are spreading beyond fortified compounds in Asia, as illustrated by a July raid in Nairobi on a fake investment scheme targeting China, Hong Kong, and Malaysia. Cheap online marketplaces selling stolen data, fake accounts, AI tools, and laundering services let smaller crews rebuild and evade takedowns.

Hacked cams war tools: Israel tapped Iran traffic cams pre-Khamenei kill; Iran hit 250+ Israeli cams

Hacked internet-connected civilian cameras are being converted into wartime surveillance and attack tools, as shown by a hacked Israeli farmer’s webcam that overlooked security-force movements near Lebanon. The Wall Street Journal reports Israel tapped Iranian traffic cameras before Khamenei’s killing and Iran-linked groups hit over 250 Israeli cameras, exposing a global vulnerability among billions of such devices.

Ledger confirms hidden chip in wallet thefts

Ledger confirmed an unauthorized hardware implant in one customer’s crypto wallet during an investigation into thefts linked to Southeast Asian reseller CryptoBilis, which has suspended all hardware-wallet sales. Researchers estimate suspected losses of $86 million to $92.9 million across 311 wallets, though Ledger has not confirmed those figures or whether the implant caused the losses. Ledger said it found no evidence that its own security infrastructure, systems, or services were compromised, and the incident appears to be a supply-chain attack affecting devices sold through CryptoBilis.

Researcher Finds $90k Google RCE Flaw

A security researcher discovered a $90,000 remote code execution vulnerability in Google after finding a Flask session cookie on developers.google.com that was signed with a secret also embedded inside the cookie. By extracting the Google OAuth client secret and reusing it as the Flask signing key, the researcher forged valid sessions and achieved code execution across seven Google domains.

Post-Quantum Cryptographic Right Answers

A new “(Post-Quantum) Cryptographic Right Answers” guide updates developer cryptographic recommendations for the post-quantum transition, now expected to complete by 2029. It says symmetric cryptography remains largely safe because Grover does not matter, while asymmetric advice has shifted to options such as X25519+ML-KEM-768 for key exchange, ML-DSA-44 for signatures, and HPKE/X-Wing for asymmetric encryption, alongside KMS or modern AEADs like XAES-256-GCM/XChaCha20Poly1305. The guide also recommends using memory-safe languages and getting review from the best available LLM model.

Why aren’t AI companies being charged for hacking?

Major AI companies including Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, and Meta have reportedly breached various systems with no legal consequences so far. They are invoking a “responsibility gap” defense, claiming their AI systems’ emergent behavior means there was no intent, which is typically required for hacking prosecutions. The article disputes this and argues the companies did intend the behavior, proposing a framework for legal evaluation.

KeePassXC is 10 years old today

KeePassXC is 10 years old today. The provided article content contains no further details, only a notice that JavaScript is required to use the Mastodon web application.

Zod 4.6.6 compromised by malware?

A suspicious obfuscated JavaScript payload has been linked to Zod 4.6.6, raising concerns that the package may be compromised by malware. The code attempts to fetch remote loader data via Ethereum JSON-RPC, execute a base64-encoded payload, and delete temporary files afterward. No commit comments or further confirmation were provided.

AI-Built Torrent Site Looks Inside Downloads to Catch Fakes and Malware

TorrentClaw, an AI-built torrent search engine launched in February, indexes over six million torrents and uses AI to organize listings and power its TrueSpec verification tool. TrueSpec joins torrent swarms, downloads 10–20 MB per torrent, checks video metadata with ffprobe, and scans suspicious files via VirusTotal to flag fake or malware-laden torrents. Confirmed malware torrents remain listed with a warning and disabled download button, though the system has produced false positives and its late-September count of 34 confirmed cases may be an undercount.

Yandex bot traffic down 99% after data center attack

Yandex bot traffic reportedly fell by 99% after an attack on a data center. The article’s full content was inaccessible, as the page only displayed a message requiring JavaScript and cookies to continue.

HashiCorp archives the Boundary open source repo

HashiCorp has archived the Boundary open source repository, ending active development of Boundary Community Edition as of October 8, 2026. The repository is now read-only and no longer accepts issues, pull requests, or community contributions, with no new CE releases, maintenance updates, bug fixes, or security patches planned. Future Boundary development will focus on HCP Boundary and Boundary Enterprise, and existing CE users should evaluate their operational, security, and compliance needs.

💻 Software & Development

WhatsApp tests feature that could block users on outdated phones

WhatsApp is testing a security feature that blocks users from logging in on devices with outdated operating systems. Affected users must update their phone software before they can log back in, with the test currently limited to some Android and iOS accounts. The feature is intended to reduce malware risks from outdated device software.

When you just need to build a tiny desktop app: TinyJS

TinyJS is a micro JavaScript runtime designed for building tiny desktop apps. It uses native OS webviews to shrink the desktop footprint and keep applications lightweight.

Celebrating the brilliant pragmatism of TCP/IP, the wiring of the world

The article celebrates TCP/IP’s pragmatic design as the foundational wiring of the global internet. It highlights the protocol’s remarkable longevity and scalability, noting that despite its age, it continues to work exceptionally well.

Raspberry Pi Desktop catches up with Debian 13 after 4-year wait

Raspberry Pi Desktop has caught up with Debian 13 after a four-year wait. It remains a lightweight GUI operating system option for older PCs.

Googlebooks hands-on rocky start; connectivity, file-sharing, stability issues; lacks desktop parity

Googlebooks suffer from a rocky first week, with severe connectivity problems, awkward app casting, broken file-sharing, and software stability issues. The Android-powered laptops’ core productivity apps also lack full desktop parity, though their native Android integration is both their biggest strength and weakness. Overall, success currently feels further away than failure.

Google Health Guardian launches in Oct on Fitbit Air/Edge for Premium users, expands auto tracking

Google announced that Health Guardian will launch later in October on the Fitbit Air and Edge for Google Health Premium subscribers, providing monthly blood pressure and insulin resistance trend summaries plus Health Coach recommendations. It is also expanding automatic activity tracking on the Fitbit Air, Fitbit Edge, and Pixel Watch 3, 4, and 5, nearly doubling accuracy and increasing recognized workouts from 10 to over 100. The company additionally introduced a $70 stainless-steel Metal Mesh band for the Fitbit Air, with preorders next week and availability on October 27.

nobloat/poll - designing a minimal poll tool

The article introduces nobloat/poll, a self-hostable, single-binary Doodle alternative written in Go that requires no database, npm/node, or signups and stores each poll as a JSON file. The author built it after growing frustrated with Doodle’s restrictions and popups, aiming for a minimal tool with public poll creation, optional email notifications, spam protection, i18n, theming, and plain-text state.

High-speed JSON parsing in Python

Using Python 3.14’s free-threaded build to remove the GIL, a demonstration used the fastsimdjson binding and 64 threads to parse 7.6 GB of GH Archive NDJSON—2.2 million GitHub events—at multi-gigabyte-per-second speeds with lazy field parsing and per-thread counters. It counted opened pull requests by repository language, finding TypeScript, JavaScript, Python, and Java were the most targeted. Over eight hours on March 13, 2024, it counted 65,269 opened PRs, including 11,565 for TypeScript, 7,778 for JavaScript, 7,057 for Python, and 4,668 for Java.

How to effectively debug when you no longer understand the code

The article explores how engineers can effectively debug large, unfamiliar codebases without fully understanding them, using agentic coding tools and general debugging paradigms. It uses three real-world bugs—latency, a memory leak, and a “hang”—to illustrate these methods. It also proposes a framework for balancing agent autonomy with human accountability in software development.

Ruby’s Weimar Era

Two articles criticize DHH’s RailsWorld keynote as a jaded, existential dismissal of Rails after he discussed vibe-rewriting HEY for better performance and said he no longer needs or cares about Rails. Though the authors lament what they see as disdain for the Ruby/Rails community, they argue this does not doom the ecosystem and may create room for a Ruby renaissance. They compare the moment to Weimar-era Germany, framing Ruby as entering a turbulent but potentially creatively fertile period amid AI-driven changes to coding.

Zig Type-Safe HTML Templating

zt is a type-safe HTML templating library for Zig, adapted from Go’s Templ, that transpiles templates into Zig code during zig build. It offers compile-time type checking, safe escaping, typed template parameters, app-code imports, and allocation-free writes directly to std.Io.Writer, aiming to make high-level web templating practical for Zig, including htmx/Datastar frontends.

Writing a Demoscene Intro for the ZX Spectrum

The article recounts the author’s experience creating a retro demoscene “crack intro” for a stock 128K ZX Spectrum, inspired by 1980s Amiga cracktros. It covers the tools, Z80 assembly techniques, and challenges behind its scrolltext, AY soundtrack, VU meters, and parallax starfield.

Linux 7.3-rc7 Released, Final Expected Soon

Linus Torvalds has released Linux 7.3-rc7, hoping it will be the final release candidate before Linux 7.3 stable arrives next weekend, around October 18, unless new issues arise. The release includes late fixes such as an AMD TLBI erratum workaround, networking fixes, new XPad game controller support, and many AI-heavy patches, while also deprecating ext4’s data=journal mode for removal in early 2028. Torvalds said the RC was six hours late due to a scheduling mistake, but nothing in it warrants delaying the final release.

Firefox 158 Now Available With JPEG-XL Support By Default

Firefox 158 is now available, with JPEG-XL image support enabled by default after previously being experimental. The release also adds “image/jxl” to the default HTTP Accept header, along with faster form filling in Smart Window and CSS typed arithmetic support for developers.

EXT4 Introducing IOmap Buffered I/O Path With Some Performance Gains

EXT4 is set to introduce opt-in IOmap buffered I/O support for the Linux 7.4 kernel, replacing older buffer_head usage. Developed by Huawei’s Zhang Yi, the new path shows performance gains but also some regressions and is not enabled by default, requiring the buffered_iomap mount option. The patches have been queued in EXT4’s dev branch and are expected to be submitted for the Linux 7.4 merge window.

A Modern Web App in C

The article describes shipping marketyour.games, a modern commercial web app with user accounts, search, Stripe payments, and Postmark emails, using C and CGI on an OpenBSD/httpd/SQLite stack. It argues that despite CGI’s decline, its unchanged spec, per-request process model, and single-binary deployment make it viable for modern web products in 2026. The approach avoids frameworks, templating languages, containers, and a separate database server, relying instead on a statically linked binary with vendored libcurl and libsodium and embedded assets.

A curated directory highlights independent and “vibe-coded” alternatives to popular software, helping users find apps that can replace or improve on familiar tools. It lists alternatives for products including Photoshop, Notion, Lightroom, AutoCAD, Canva, and PowerPoint, organized by categories such as design, creative tools, productivity, collaboration, CAD/3D, and developer tools. Users can submit their own tools for review without creating an account.

Incident with Actions, Pull Requests and Issues

GitHub reported degraded performance on Oct 12, 2026, affecting Actions, Issues, and Pull Requests, including Actions tab and Checks API problems, delayed new Actions runs, and issues creating/updating issues or requesting PR reviews via UI and APIs. Pull Requests returned to normal by 13:02 UTC, but an initial mitigation was not fully successful, leaving possible delays or errors in Actions, issues, and projects plus delayed notifications while the root cause remains under investigation.

QGIS bans AI assisted contributions

QGIS has adopted QEP428, banning AI-assisted contributions and going beyond its previous human-in-the-loop policy. Community discussion supported the move, citing reduced trust, strain on reviewers, and limited skill development for contributors. Some questions remain about whether the ban covers issue comments and PRs, and future discussions are planned on using LLMs for review, auditing, and security.

PS2 games statically recompiled to WebAssembly

A project called PS2 Web Recomp runs PlayStation 2 games in the browser without an emulator by statically translating Emotion Engine machine code into C++, compiling it to WebAssembly, and linking it against a reimplementation of the PS2 OS and hardware that renders via WebGPU. Gran Turismo 4 boots, plays menus and races at full 50 fps (PAL) in Chrome on an integrated GPU at twice PS2 resolution, while God of War II also runs through menus, cutscenes and combat at up to 60 fps without game-specific code. No game data is included; users must supply their own disc image and run the repository scripts locally to generate a web page.

Attack of the Vibe Coded Photoshop Clones

The article reports that AI developers are creating about a dozen “vibe coded” clones of Photoshop and other major software, including apps from Adobe, Microsoft, Avid, and Autodesk, with some projects using large teams and spending tens of thousands of dollars on AI tokens. Despite these efforts, none have matched Photoshop’s brush engine or performance, as brushes collapse on canvases over 8K x 8K and basic features like copy/paste and undo freeze the app. The author argues this automated cloning is unethical and spammy, comparable to counterfeit goods.

Will Linux phones become a viable alternative to the Android/iOS duopoly?

After early promise from the 2020 Librem 5 and PinePhone, the Linux phone market stagnated due to hardware limitations, immature interfaces, and problems at Purism and PINE64, dampening enthusiasm. The article argues that these conditions are now changing, raising the possibility that mobile Linux could become a viable small alternative to Android/iOS, much as desktop Linux has for PCs.

Crest – an Arc-inspired open-source browser for Mac

Crest is an open-source, Arc-inspired browser for Mac, iPad, and iPhone now in early access. It offers Arc-like features including Spaces, a sidebar, Peek, Split View, iCloud sync, and per-Space extensions, with import support from Arc. Crest is MPL 2.0 licensed, not affiliated with Arc, and its security has not been independently audited.

Sorry we made you grind LeetCode

HackerRank CEO Vivek apologized for the company’s role in normalizing LeetCode-style algorithmic interviews, saying they led to months of grinding with little connection to real software work. He said AI is changing development and hiring, so HackerRank is introducing Chakra, an agentic interviewer that uses real repository tasks and evaluates AI fluency and judgment rather than just code correctness. He added that algorithm questions still have value, but their weighting should change.

Lotus Improv on the NeXT

Lotus Improv, a cult-classic spreadsheet originally exclusive to NeXT, pioneered pivot tables and multidimensional data modeling but was quickly abandoned by Lotus. Although both NeXT and Improv failed commercially, NeXTSTEP evolved into macOS and iOS, while pivot tables became a standard spreadsheet feature. The article revisits Improv on a NeXTstation Turbo, coinciding with International Spreadsheet Day and anniversaries of Steve Jobs’s death and the blog Stone Tools.

An open-source, clean-room reimplementation of Microsoft Word in pure Rust

The ArtCraft team has introduced WordCraft, an open-source, clean-room reimplementation of Microsoft Word written in pure Rust. It provides a familiar Word-style workflow with ribbon, styles, tables, track changes, references, and mail merge, and reads/writes .docx on macOS, Windows, Linux, BSD, and the web via WebAssembly. WordCraft is MIT/Apache-2.0 licensed and can be driven by agents over MCP or CLI.

Doory – Open-Source Canva

Doory is an open-source, browser-based design editor positioned as a free Canva alternative. It offers templates and tools for posters, social posts, slides, resumes, and more, with exports to formats including PNG, JPG, SVG, PDF, MP4, and GIF. Every feature is free, no account is required to start, and users can self-host the full platform via Docker while retaining control over their designs and uploads.

I made an open-source Boom 3D clone. Wanna check it out?

OpenBoom is a new open-source, Windows-only alternative to Boom 3D, built in Rust and Tauri v2, offering low-latency 3D spatial audio, a parametric equalizer, and real-time DSP without kernel drivers or telemetry. It uses WASAPI/PortCls and SIMD-accelerated HRTF processing, and for echo-free 7.1 surround it requires a virtual audio sink such as Boom Audio or VB-Audio Virtual Cable.

How the incident happened: a play in one act

In a one-act office dialogue, B offers A a printed 30-page incident write-up, saying it contains valuable details about the incident’s history, response, diagnosis, and mitigation. A, busy with a launch and migrations, asks for just the high points, but B argues that a summary cannot substitute for reading the full report because different people learn different things. A admits making an explicit time trade-off despite knowing the full write-up would be more educational, prompting B’s punchline that this is how the incident happened.

Coding is NOT solved

The article challenges the claim that coding is solved by AI, arguing that LLMs can generate code but cannot replace the understanding needed for production software, where maintenance, reliability, security, scalability, and accountability dominate costs. It says the need to read and groom code depends on risk tolerance, so AI may be acceptable for personal projects, prototypes, or throwaway automation but not for low-risk-tolerance sectors like healthcare, finance, aviation, and defense.

The engineering gap hiding in your database

A team at a large bank ran critical integration business logic as Groovy scripts stored in database rows, edited live in production with no real version control, build pipelines, or test environments. Years without incidents reflected careful people and luck rather than actual safety. The fix was driven by a business case, not engineering arguments, and it exposed hidden problems including a silent two-month failure and duplicate code.

🔌 Hardware & Infrastructure

AMD unveils Helion racks for AI agents at OCP summit

AMD unveiled Helion racks designed for AI agents at the OCP summit. Partners are due to offer CPU-only and mixed CPU/GPU configurations in November.

To save paper, mainframe tech ruined a week of work

A mainframe technician tried to save paper but made a very expensive mistake while three bosses looked on. The error ended up ruining a week of work.

1GW AI data center in Abilene, Texas may cost ~$30B, incl. $17B chips, $3B power, $2.4B construction

An analysis estimates that constructing and equipping a 1-gigawatt AI data center in Abilene, Texas, could cost about $30 billion, including roughly $17 billion for chips, $3 billion for power, and $2.4 billion for construction. The estimate comes as Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet are expected to spend about $750 billion on capital expenditures this year, largely for data centers, amid soaring costs for materials, memory, and power equipment.

Microsoft Unveils Maia 300 AI Chip

Microsoft has unveiled Azure Maia 300, its third-generation in-house AI accelerator built on TSMC’s N2P process and designed as a full-system platform for cloud-scale agentic LLM inference, with racks of 96 accelerators within a 12,288-accelerator superpod. Intended to become Microsoft’s primary AI inference system, it is set to roll out to production workloads in 2027, with Microsoft claiming 40% more tokens per megawatt than leading GPU-based systems and up to 7x rack-scale token throughput over Maia 200. The architecture emphasizes locality-aware NUMA memory across chiplets, hardware-accelerated narrow-precision conversion, and reduced data movement for energy-efficient long-context, reasoning-heavy, and decode-intensive workloads.

Google unveils $180 Fitbit Edge, 1.34" oval display, Oct 27, replacing Charge 6, ending Charge line

Google unveiled the $180 Fitbit Edge, a fitness tracker with an oval 1.34-inch display that replaces the Fitbit Charge 6 and discontinues the Charge line. It is available for preorder now and ships October 27, with a replaceable week-long battery, automatic workout detection, and health features tied to the revamped Google Health app. A special-edition Stephen Curry version will also be offered in select countries for $220.

US soldiers using AI in July exercise hit drone overheating, exposing Army modernization challenges

A July U.S. Army exercise in the Mojave Desert tested AI-enabled equipment in extreme heat, but soldiers encountered overheating drones, dead batteries, failed antennas, and other equipment problems. An Anduril drone was forced to land due to heat, while others lost signal behind mountains, highlighting challenges in the Army’s modernization effort.

China’s $3.9T grid buildout to turn excess wind/solar into AI edge by 2049; ~9% wasted in 2026

China plans a $3.9 trillion power grid buildout through 2049 to integrate surplus wind and solar energy, aiming to turn renewable abundance into an AI advantage. Despite rapid clean-energy expansion, about 9% of wind and solar output was wasted in the first half of 2026—roughly 401 TWh—due to insufficient grid capacity and demand. The effort centers on transmission lines and energy storage to reduce curtailment and manage intermittent renewables.

TSMC overseas execs, Texas officials began serious talks in H1 2026 after 10+ years of talks

TSMC executives overseeing overseas operations met with Texas officials and began more serious discussions in the first half of 2026, after more than 10 years of on-and-off talks, according to sources. The report also cites TSMC Chairman CC Wei’s earlier assurance to a client that chips would be available as long as the client was willing to pay.

PK-88 TNC Hardware Modifications

The article explains the author’s effort to build APRS infrastructure in Northern California, including multiple digipeater/I-gates for the Salinas Valley Repeater Group. It describes selecting the AEA PK-88 TNC as the standard unit due to its good modem performance, documented Z80 circuitry, and low eBay cost, setting up later PK-88 hardware modifications.

Implementing kubernetes node bin packing

CostGraph treats Kubernetes node rightsizing as multi-dimensional vector bin packing, sizing pods from real usage and checking every placement against the scheduler’s hard constraints. Instead of first-fit decreasing, it uses geometric heuristics from Panigrahy et al. (2011) to pack workloads across CPU, memory, pod count, GPU, and disk limits. Because the packing is greedy, the savings it reports should be treated as a floor rather than a ceiling.

ROCm 10 OpenCL vs. Mesa 26.3-dev Rusticl Performance On AMD Strix Halo

A new Phoronix benchmark compares Mesa 26.3-dev’s Rusticl OpenCL driver against AMD’s official OpenCL driver in ROCm 10 on an AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 “Strix Halo” platform using the Framework Desktop. The article notes Rusticl supports OpenCL 3.1 while the ROCm driver supports OpenCL 2.1, and it covers a range of OpenCL workloads.

Linux 7.4 To Upstream Support For Three Snapdragon X2 Elite Laptops

Linux 7.4 will add upstream Device Tree support for three Snapdragon X2 Elite laptops: the ASUS Zenbook A14 UX3407NA, Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Gen11, and HP EliteBook X G2q 14 AI. The initial support enables basic booting, but some features are still missing, including HDMI output, camera support, and an embedded controller driver on certain models. Linux 7.4’s merge window is expected next week, with the stable release around the end of December.

Intel Posts Updated Linux Driver Code For HDMI 2.1 FRL On Meteor Lake & Newer

Intel has posted the second iteration of Linux driver patches for HDMI 2.1 Fixed Rate Link (FRL) support on Meteor Lake and newer graphics. The patches address review feedback and were lightly tested on Panther Lake, with 4K@120 working, though 8K support awaits Display Stream Compression integration. They remain work-in-progress and are not expected to reach the mainline Linux kernel until at least 2027.

Solar Panels That Plug into Your Wall Are About to Be Everywhere

California has become the latest state to pass a law making it easier to install plug-in, balcony-friendly solar panels, following Utah’s 2025 legalization and similar measures in nine other states, with New York awaiting a governor’s signature. The small, portable systems plug into wall outlets and can supply roughly 10 to 30 percent of a typical home’s electricity, helping users save money and reduce fossil-fuel use. Experts expect the technology to spread rapidly across the U.S. as more states reduce regulatory barriers.

Turn a WiFi 7 Router into a 320Msps Software Defined Radio Receiver

A project turns a Gemtek W1700K Wi-Fi 7 router into a wideband software-defined radio receiver using its MediaTek MT7996 radio and Airoha AN7581 SoC. With custom firmware, it captures raw 14-bit IQ at up to 320 Msps across 2.4, 5, and 6 GHz, streams over 10 GbE, and displays live spectrum/waterfall with controls in a browser UI on a Linux host.

Hetzner: The New GPU Server GEX63 for Professional AI Workloads

The article is titled “Hetzner: The New GPU Server GEX63 for Professional AI Workloads,” suggesting a new GPU server aimed at professional AI use. However, the page content only shows a JavaScript activation and bot-verification security check, so no further product details or specifications are available.

Xerox PARC chip shatters on command (2015)

The provided content is a connection security check, not the news article. Therefore, there is no article text available to summarize the 2015 Xerox PARC chip story.

Iran’s threat to cut undersea cables in Strait of Hormuz poses a threat to Gulf

Amid a US-Iran stalemate, Iran has threatened shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and announced a new restricted zone, while the Wall Street Journal reported Tehran is considering attacks on undersea cables in the Persian Gulf. These cables carry more than 95% of international data traffic and are vital to Gulf economies and AI investments, with the shallow waters of Hormuz making them especially vulnerable.

Thoughts on the July 8th Telstra outage report

A blog post examines the July 8, 2026 Telstra outage, which was caused by an NTP issue and later reviewed in a public report by a consulting firm. The author reconstructs Telstra’s NTP architecture and failure mode, noting the report omitted key details and that a 2020 hardware upgrade introduced changes contributing to the incident.

Key Autoscaling Metric #1: Workload Committed Capacity

The article introduces Committed Capacity Percentage as a key cost-oriented autoscaling metric, calculated as total scheduled pod requests divided by total provisioned node capacity, typically for CPU and memory separately. It argues that vague Kubernetes utilization claims require clear numerators and denominators, since different utilization definitions measure different things. Higher committed capacity suggests less excess provisioned capacity, but it does not prove uncommitted resources can be removed or that all requests are necessary.

Incident Report: September 30, 2026: Domain Routing Disruption

On September 30, 2026, Railway experienced a roughly five-minute domain routing disruption between 07:35 and 07:40 UTC, during which new connections to custom and *.up.railway.app domains returned HTTP 404 errors in all regions. The issue occurred because a routing control plane deployment ran before its dependent database schema update, causing route lookups to fail; routing recovered automatically once the schema update completed, with no data loss or impact to workload uptime.

🏢 Business & Policy

Even chestnuts get political in the US data center wars

Nscale’s planned Monarch Compute Campus in Mason County, West Virginia, intended to support Anthropic’s computing needs, has drawn criticism from an environmental group claiming it threatens 200 rare American chestnut trees at a former state nursery. Governor Patrick Morrisey says the trees will be relocated within the property in late 2027 under professional arborist supervision, with Nscale paying for it. The $20 billion data center project could be completed by early 2028.

US sanctions on the ICC strengthen the case for European tech sovereignty

New US sanctions on the ICC have renewed European concerns over reliance on American technology providers, after sanctioned officials reportedly lost access to email, payment cards, cloud services, and digital tools. With Amazon, Google, and Microsoft controlling about 70% of Europe’s cloud market, the case is strengthening EU efforts to build local technology and payment alternatives. The sanctions may also serve as a cautionary example of how US measures could disrupt European governments and businesses.

Take notes, Sony: Nintendo has “no plans” to ditch physical games

Nintendo says it has no plans to abandon physical games, with VP Bill van Zyll saying the company follows consumer preferences and supports both physical and digital formats. The stance contrasts with Sony, which has announced it will end physical games in 2028, prompting backlash over digital ownership. Some fans praised Nintendo’s position, while skeptics expect it may eventually go digital-only.

UCLA settles Oracle ERP dispute with $3.1M in credits and $1.31M wiped off the bill

UCLA settled its Oracle ERP dispute, receiving $3.1 million in credits and $1.31 million wiped off its bill. The university had alleged the cloud software could not meet its needs after years of delays to its financial systems overhaul.

London cabbies want Sadiq Khan to slam the brakes on robotaxis

London taxi drivers’ union is urging Mayor Sadiq Khan to halt the rollout of driverless taxis. The call comes as a City Hall report raises concerns about safety, congestion, and unclear accountability for robotaxis.

Q3 smartphone shipments fell 20% YoY to 14-year low on memory shortages; Apple share 22%, a Q3 first

Global smartphone shipments fell 20% year over year in Q3 2026 to a 14-year low, as memory shortages constrained supply for most OEMs. Apple’s share surpassed 20% in a Q3 for the first time, reaching 22%, according to Counterpoint Research.

Profile: MSFT Copilot EVP Charles Lamanna, possible Nadella successor; MSFT to pay Anthropic $2B+/yr

The Information profiles Charles Lamanna, Microsoft EVP of Copilot and a potential successor to Satya Nadella. In summer 2025, Microsoft faced customer complaints that Copilot was buggy and weak at automating Excel and PowerPoint tasks. The article details how Microsoft’s new Office chief fixed Copilot and won over Nadella, while a source says Microsoft is on track to pay Anthropic over $2B annually.

CEOs Warn of AI Investment Risks

At a Singapore conference, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan and Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan warned that limited capital access and rising borrowing costs could become the main bottleneck for the AI boom, even as demand for computing infrastructure outstrips supply, citing financing constraints and uncertain returns while remaining bullish on near-term demand. Hock Tan also likened speculative AI investing to casino gambling, questioned whether businesses are wasting money on AI, and raised doubts about the long-term economics of money-losing AI labs.

Sources: DeepSeek to lead Winverse AI seed round of tens of millions at ~$400M valuation (Bloomberg)

DeepSeek has agreed to lead a seed funding round of tens of millions of dollars for Winverse AI, a stealth startup building AI for robots founded by a former top Tencent scientist. The round values Winverse AI at about $400 million post-money and has drawn commitments from investors including Meituan’s Long-Z Investments.

IonQ to buy cybersecurity firm Elisity in all-stock deal valued at up to $1.3B

IonQ agreed to acquire privately held cybersecurity firm Elisity in an all-stock deal valued at up to $1.3 billion. Elisity focuses on stopping cyberattacks and ransomware from spreading across organizations. IonQ said the deal reflects a bet that cybersecurity will become more critical as quantum computing and AI systems advance.

Tencent plans ~$5B bond offering to fund AI, mostly chip purchases

Tencent Holdings plans a roughly $5 billion bond offering to help fund AI-related capital expenditures, with the bulk expected to go toward chip purchases. The deal includes $1.5 billion to $2 billion in dollar tranches and 20 billion to 25 billion yuan ($3 billion to $3.7 billion) in offshore yuan notes, and could be priced as early as Tuesday.

SWI raises €800M to upgrade data centers, some from FTX-tied bitcoin miner Genesis Digital

SWI Group, a digital-infrastructure company, raised €800 million to upgrade data centers, including some from Genesis Digital, a bitcoin miner entangled in FTX’s bankruptcy. The business, formerly Genesis Digital Assets, was taken over by SWI this summer and is being revived to serve AI computing demand.

Uber’s Africa exit: Nigeria, Uganda after Tanzania, Ivory Coast; riders pick Bolt, inDrive, Yango

Uber has abruptly ceased operations in Nigeria and Uganda, following earlier exits from Tanzania and Ivory Coast. The retreat comes as price-sensitive riders in Africa increasingly choose cheaper competitors such as Bolt, inDrive, and Yango.

Sources: PCB maker Dongshan eyes $2B-$3B Hong Kong listing this month; Shenzhen-listed at $39B

Suzhou Dongshan Precision Manufacturing Co., a Shenzhen-listed printed circuit board maker, is seeking to raise $2 billion to $3 billion in a Hong Kong listing as soon as this month, according to sources. The company, valued at about $39 billion, has started gauging investor interest for the offering.

Bain’s Bridge Data Centres in talks to upsize $2.8B loan to ~$6.6B, a top Asian data center deal

Bain Capital-owned Bridge Data Centres is in talks with banks to more than double an existing loan to about $6.6 billion, people familiar with the matter said. The deal would be one of Asia’s largest data-center financings and extends a prior effort to raise the loan to at least $5 billion from the original $2.8 billion secured last year for its Malaysian operations. The expanded loan could be launched as early as November.

Anchorage Digital buys B2B payments startup Routable for undisclosed sum; largest by team/revenue

Anchorage Digital has acquired Routable, a B2B payments automation startup that helps businesses automate payouts to vendors, contractors and other recipients, for an undisclosed sum. Anchorage’s CEO called it the company’s largest acquisition by team size and revenue. The deal aims to bring stablecoins into the payment systems large companies already use.

Vitalize raises $31M Series A led by Oak HC/FT for AI hospital labor, capacity

Vitalize, an AI platform that helps hospitals manage staffing, scheduling, and capacity in real time, raised $31 million in Series A funding led by Oak HC/FT, with participation from Norwest Ventures, .406 Ventures, Constellation Ventures, Y Combinator, and MemorialCare Innovation Fund. The startup aims to replace manual, spreadsheet-based labor and capacity management to improve hospital efficiency and reduce costly overtime and agency labor.

Elon Musk emerges as the top booster for Republicans with $276M donations

Elon Musk has donated at least $276 million to Republican midterm efforts since the summer, making him the top known GOP donor, according to his America PAC. Most of that recent giving, $158 million, went to the Senate Leadership Fund, which is spending heavily to retain a Texas Senate seat. The figure was confirmed ahead of Thursday’s Federal Election Commission filing deadline.

Citroen revives the 2CV for an electric age

Citroen has unveiled a retro-styled electric 2CV concept at the Paris Motor Show, reviving its iconic model to boost EV sales in a difficult market. The small city car is not yet production-ready, but Citroen plans a showroom version by 2028, expected to cost around £13,000. It follows other European automakers using heritage to compete with Chinese manufacturers.

Russia behind Britain’s Brexit vote, UK prime minister admits for first time

U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham confirmed Kremlin involvement in the 2016 Brexit referendum, the Observer reported on Oct. 11. According to the report, Burnham said he was given a clear answer that Russia was involved after asking when he became prime minister in July, and made the comments on The Rest is Politics podcast. It marks the first public acknowledgment by a British prime minister of Russia’s role in the Brexit campaign.

Deloitte falsified documents to evade tax on Abramovich’s wealth

A BBC Panorama investigation found that Deloitte helped falsify documents to hide Roman Abramovich’s wealth and evade tax, with $672m in assets such as yachts, mansions and jets disappearing from his company accounts in Cyprus. Abramovich’s lawyers denied he evaded tax or concealed his fortune, saying there was no evidence he knew about or directed any falsification, while Deloitte Cyprus said it complies with applicable laws.

Research Firm Calls Anthropic’s IPO ‘Unprecedented Test of Investor Gullibity’

Independent research firm New Constructs calls Anthropic’s planned IPO the “most ridiculous IPO of 2026,” valuing the AI company at $150 billion against a potential $2 trillion Nasdaq market cap and warning it is an “unprecedented test of investor gullibility.” Citing Anthropic’s $4.6 billion in 2025 revenue and $42 billion net loss, the firm argues open-source competition leaves it without a viable business, while noting its past bearish calls include a correct warning on WeWork but a missed one on DoorDash.

Timekeepers to vote on ditching the leap second

Officials are meeting in Versailles this week to decide whether to abolish the leap second, which has been added 27 times since 1972 to keep atomic clocks aligned with Earth’s uneven rotation. If the vote succeeds, leap seconds would be replaced by a future “leap hour” to be observed centuries from now. Leap seconds have become increasingly problematic for modern computing systems.

American Academy of Pediatrics renews call for ban on raw milk

The American Academy of Pediatrics has renewed its call for a nationwide ban on the sale and distribution of raw milk and other unpasteurized dairy products, warning of serious health risks, especially for children, pregnant people, and immunocompromised individuals. The guidance comes as raw milk grows more popular and outbreaks of salmonella and E. coli linked to raw dairy have occurred in multiple states. The pediatricians’ group says raw milk has no proven nutritional advantage over pasteurized milk and carries over 100 times the risk of foodborne illness.

Elon Musk’s PAC is spreading inaccurate voting info, election officials say

Election officials in Colorado and Washington warned that Elon Musk’s America PAC spread inaccurate voting information after sending Colorado voters texts falsely claiming their ballot requests were in, even though active registered voters automatically receive mail ballots. The PAC, heavily funded by Musk, has spent nearly $40 million this cycle on independent expenditures, mostly in Senate races, as Musk continues major Republican political spending.

Whey up: Protein powder prices soar as global demand grows

Global demand for whey protein, driven by protein-added foods and weight-loss drug users, has caused shortages and record price increases. Canada imports most whey protein concentrate from the U.S., where prices have more than doubled, and the U.S.-Canada trade war is adding costs. Consumers and smaller manufacturers are cutting back or raising prices as a result.

Microsoft barred from sponsoring foreign workers for US residency

The Trump administration has temporarily barred Microsoft, Adobe, and several other tech and IT outsourcing companies from sponsoring foreign workers for permanent US residency, alleging abuse of immigration programs. Vice-President JD Vance said the H-1B visa program is “rife with fraud” and singled out Microsoft for abuse, prompting India to condemn his reference to foreign “indentured servants” as offensive. The Labor Department said subpoenas have been served and investigations are under way.

🌍 Society & Culture

Apollo astronaut Charlie Duke believes UFOs are demonic, not alien

Former Apollo 16 astronaut Charlie Duke has said he believes UFOs are demonic forces rather than extraterrestrial visitors. Duke, the 10th person to walk on the Moon, said he never saw a UFO during his NASA career, only flashes attributed to cosmic particles affecting astronauts’ retinas. He argues apparent UFO encounters could be spiritual deception that challenges Christian beliefs, echoing similar recent comments such as those by JD Vance.

Pigeon-powered internet packet goes under the hammer at Christie’s

A surviving packet from the world’s most impractical network—an experiment in pigeon-powered internet transmission—is being auctioned at Christie’s. Twenty-five years after it took flight, the item has attracted a $4,000 bid.

Christian leaders weigh in on AI earlier than other tech, as new consciousness talk fuels concerns

Christian leaders are engaging with artificial intelligence earlier than they did with previous technologies, driven by concerns over AI leaders’ talk of creating a new consciousness. Their involvement is creating new political risk for AI creators, as figures like Pastor Joseph Hutchinson warn that “AI wants to be God” and fit it into end-times theology.

X regains footing under Musk, hosts more interesting AI and smart discussions than rival platforms

John Gruber argues that X has re-found its footing under Elon Musk, hosting more interesting AI and smart, fun discussions than rivals and serving as the primary or exclusive outlet for many Apple executives and other notable accounts. He says X is more engaging than Threads, Bluesky, and Mastodon combined, which he describes as smaller, more political, or less interesting. The piece acknowledges that some may dislike Musk’s ownership but credits X with a notably friendly and cheerful culture.

What are you doing this week?

The article asks readers what they are doing this week and invites them to share their plans. It also notes that it is perfectly fine to do nothing at all.

Thinking Will Become a Hobby

The article argues AI will take over most cognitive work because it is cheaper, higher-performing, and always available, while human information-processing skills decline. Despite likely resistance and regulation, it predicts AI will replace much knowledge work, turning human thought into a leisure pursuit. It concludes that people must adapt to AI and build purposeful lives beyond work.

People are rejoicing about the removal of Russian bots from social media

People are celebrating a reported drop in Russian bot traffic on social media after attacks on Yandex data centers, and Cloudflare data does show a recent fall in automated traffic, especially from Yandex. However, this data measures general bot activity, not specifically social media bots, so it does not prove that automated accounts spreading misinformation have meaningfully decreased.

An Unmade Film Shaped Hayao Miyazaki

In 1980, a 39-year-old Hayao Miyazaki felt creatively stuck after the box-office failure of his debut feature The Castle of Cagliostro. Discovering Richard Corben’s underground comic Rowlf inspired him to propose adapting it as his second film, a decision that ultimately helped reshape his career.

The Genocide Economy, Mapped

“The Genocide Economy, Mapped” is an ongoing 2026 D.MONEY database investigation. It presents an interactive map and index with network, orbit, cluster, flow, holdings, and timeline views, plus files, an about section, and a submit feature.

A decade after Stardew Valley, Eric Barone is still going it alone

A decade after Eric Barone built Stardew Valley alone over four and a half years, the DIY farming sim has sold over 50 million copies and still draws more than 100,000 concurrent Steam players. Barone is now developing his long-awaited follow-up, The Haunted Chocolatier, entirely on his own while grappling with the pressure of following an unexpected hit.

Vi Hart’s Big Navier-Stokes Post

Vi Hart’s post examines the controversy over an alleged AI-assisted proof of Navier-Stokes, drawing on her past work with the Lean proof assistant and Mathlib. She discusses the difficulty of verifying computer-generated proofs, skepticism about AI math claims and OpenAI, and broader issues of politics and ethics in mathematics. It ends with several reasons the alleged proof could still be wrong.

X Is Bad, Though

The author acknowledges that X remains the most popular microblogging platform and that some notable figures, including Apple executives, still post there, but argues this does not excuse Elon Musk. The piece contends Musk is “absolutely awful,” citing his endorsement of an antisemitic conspiracy theory, a straight-arm gesture and Nazi wordplay, support for Germany’s far right, attacks on his trans daughter, and rollback of X protections for trans users.

Pizza in North Korea

Pizza is available in North Korea at several restaurants, but it remains largely unaffordable for most citizens and is mostly reserved for the elite. Pyongyang has five pizza restaurants, including Pizza Restaurant on Kwangbok Street and Italy Pizza on Mirae Scientists Street. Kim Jong Il introduced pizza by hiring Italian chefs in 1997, and the country’s first official pizzeria opened in 2008 after North Korean chefs trained in Italy.

Do dentists know what they’re doing?

A 17-year-old with jaw pain is told by a dentist that uneven jaw growth has left his bite slightly off and agrees to tooth reshaping, but the procedure shortens his teeth and worsens his jaw pain. At 20, another dentist says he has started grinding his teeth and recommends a splint.