Alvaro Lopez Ortega / 2026-10-18 Briefing

Created Sun, 18 Oct 2026 15:47:00 +0000 Modified Sun, 18 Oct 2026 15:47:35 +0000
3712 Words

Gen Z is the first modern generation to score lower than its parents on standardized tests, with declines in attention, memory, literacy and IQ; a neuroscientist urges less screen time and more rigor. Social-media bans for minors are being evaded and may push kids to darker corners. Germany counts 17 million foreign-born residents, led by Poland. Open-source micro-manipulation projects now reach micron precision.

🤖 AI & Emerging Tech

DeepSeek search and fetch – $0.75 per 1000 successful requests

DeepSeek’s Search and Fetch APIs provide live web access through JSON endpoints at https://api.deepseek.com using Bearer authentication. Search returns ranked web results with options such as count, localization, need_content, and query operators, while Fetch retrieves a single web page as Markdown. The service costs $0.75 per 1,000 successful requests.

America’s $10T AI infrastructure boom is starting to fray

America’s $10tn AI infrastructure boom is starting to fray Save 50% on Standard Digital was €540 now €269 for your first year.Save now on essential digital access to trusted FT journalism on any device. Savings based on monthly annualised price, offer ends 28th October. Explore more offers. Trial Then €69 per month. Complete digital access with exclusive insights and industry deep dives on any device. Cancel anytime during your trial. Premium Digital Complete digital access with exclusive…

500 clocks in one 6.3 MB HTML file by Opus 5.5

The author tests frontier models by asking them to create self-contained web pages that display clocks, a personal take on Simon Willison’s “pelican-on-a-bicycle” metric. They were especially impressed by Claude Opus 5.5, which built 500 clocks over several Claude chat sessions into a single 6.3 MB HTML file. A summary of the prompting process and page design is available on GitHub.

Anthropic consults law firms on AI agents negotiating for humans and AI peers

Anthropic is consulting law firms on deal negotiation tactics as it develops AI agents designed to negotiate on humans’ behalf and interact with AI counterparts. The move reflects broader pressure on tech companies to establish rules for negotiations conducted by machines.

đź”’ Security & Privacy

The One Question I Can’t Stand at Restaurants (“What’s your phone number?”)

The One Question I Can’t Stand at Restaurants I know why they ask, but I still wish they didn’t need my phone number. A man walks into a restaurant. He doesn’t have a reservation, but that shouldn’t be a problem; there are ample seats at the bar, visible just over the hostess’s shoulder. “Of course,” she says, smiling. “We can seat you right away.” As she gathers menus, he absorbs the pleasant hum of a busy dining room, breathes in the tantalizing smells from the semi-open kitchen. Then, the…

A Mole Infiltrated the Highest Ranks of American Militias (2025)

A wilderness survival trainer spent more than two years undercover in right-wing militias, rising to a top state command while secretly recording meetings and gathering documents without telling police, the FBI, or his family. He sent ProPublica a large trove of evidence on militia leaders, law-enforcement ties, and surveillance operations, then fled after fearing his cover was blown; the reporting examines a new generation of militia leaders and their possible resurgence under Donald Trump.

Ukrainian drones hit VK data center and Ozon warehouse near St. Petersburg

Ukrainian drones hit VK data center and Ozon warehouse near St. Petersburg The attacks also damaged electrical distribution infrastructure in the Leningrad region.

  • Ukrainian drones struck VK’s data center and Ozon’s fulfillment center near St. Petersburg overnight.

  • Ozon confirmed a fire at its Kolpino facility; VK said its services were operating normally.

  • Power infrastructure damage left about 20,000 residents without electricity in the Leningrad region.

  • Russia said it downed 1,015…

  • Ukrainian drones hit VK data center and Ozon warehouse near St. Petersburg — cybernews.com

It Turns Out Intel TDX Doesn’t Need So Much Cache Flushing

Intel TDX had assumed software-driven cache flushing was needed when transitioning memory between MKTME KeyIDs, but finalized TDX hardware handles this itself and Intel’s documentation was outdated. Linux kernel patches are pending to remove the unnecessary cache flushes, simplifying the code. The patch messages do not mention any expected performance impact.

Oh no, what happened to my OOHPod? Windows command prompt puts in a surprise appearance

A Windows command prompt unexpectedly appeared on an OOHPod, apparently after someone left a command shell logged in. The incident raises the security question of what to do when a public-facing system is found with an exposed shell.

🛠️ Software & Development

Parser Combinators

The article explains that parsing converts less structured input such as text into structured data. It argues that regex becomes messy for complex tasks and tree-sitter is often overkill, making parser combinators a useful middle-ground approach. The author aims to introduce parser combinators because they are not widely known.

Notes on the Complex Roots of Unity

The article explains roots of unity, starting with real solutions and extending to complex numbers, where n-th roots are calculated using polar coordinates as evenly spaced points on the unit circle. It describes how multiplying these roots corresponds to rotations, how connecting them forms regular polygons, and how reciprocals/conjugates of roots are also roots of unity.

Sphinx – A hook that quizzes you on your AI’s code before shipping

Sphinx is a free and open-source hook that plugs into existing coding agent workflows. When code is pushed to production, it presents a questionnaire to check whether developers understand how the code they are shipping works.

Servo Adds CSS Grid and Speed Improvements

Servo 0.6.0 includes 417 commits from August and enables CSS Grid by default, significantly improving website rendering. It also ships new web platform features such as touch-action, animation-composition, color-scheme, and additional text-transform values, plus updates to SpiderMonkey 153 and an optional disk-backed HTTP cache. An experimental “Threadboost” feature is reported to improve Speedometer benchmark scores by 50%.

Omarchy Gets The Web Browser Launching Faster By Avoiding XDG Overhead

Omarchy 4.0.5 has been released as the latest Arch Linux-based distribution built around the Hyprland desktop, bringing the Linux 7.2 kernel with BORE scheduler, Qt 6.12 updates, and other improvements. It speeds up default web browser launching by replacing the roughly 72 ms xdg-settings lookup with a new helper that takes about 10 ms. The release also improves Omarchy shell bar performance in a six-monitor setup from about 20 seconds to roughly 15 seconds.

Synchronous Queues For VirtIO-FS Show Huge Performance Potential

Sergio LĂłpez is developing experimental synchronous queues for VirtIO-FS so the host vCPU thread can complete I/O requests before returning to the guest rather than always relying on asynchronous behavior. Early tests show major gains, including cutting libkrunfw build time from 7 minutes 43 seconds to 5 minutes 34 seconds, plus significant random I/O improvements and lower file deletion latency. A pending experimental libkrun pull request would add optional VIRTIO_FS_F_SYNC support.

Using timers to perform weekly tasks

The article describes automating a weekly review in Emacs by using a weekly timer to set up an idle timer on Sunday mornings, which then updates Org-mode clock tables after the user has been idle for a minute. This avoids manually running an Elisp block to update all clock tables, though the approach assumes the laptop remains on or asleep so the scheduled timer is not skipped.

A New Way to Think About Borrow Checking (In Reverse)

The article describes Valen’s borrow checker, which performs its memory-safety checking phase backward—walking functions from the last statement to the top—rather than forward like typical borrow checkers. It explains this unconventional approach and argues it offers practical benefits related to convenience, loops, and speed, while also supporting optional shared-xor-mutable semantics and memory-safe mutable aliasing.

Algorithmic Sound Design with L-Systems and Granular Synthesis

The article presents EvoGrain, a more ambitious system for generating audio using L-systems and granular synthesis, revisiting the author’s earlier work on the topic. It provides a detailed walkthrough of EvoGrain’s construction, includes audio samples, and notes that the source code is available on GitHub. The author also discusses inspirations such as Iamus, a rule-based algorithmic composition project using L-systems and evolutionary algorithms.

🏗️ Hardware & Infrastructure

RepRapMicron

The RepRapMicron project aims to bring RepRap-style open fabrication to the micron scale using a precise, compact CNC-like system. Its current recommended PIKA V0.02 hardware provides repeatable positioning of about 1 ÎĽm and reliable 10 ÎĽm or better accuracy over an approximately 8 mm cubic volume. Using fine probes, it has deposited UV resin droplets as small as 4 ÎĽm and cured 9 ÎĽm resin lines.

Open MicroManipulator – A sub-micrometer 3D motion control plattform

Open Micro-Manipulator

This project contains an open source low-cost, easy-to-build motorized XYZ Micro-Manipulator motion control platform achieving submicron precision. It’s designed for applications such as optical alignment, probing electronic components, and microscopy.

Check out the YouTube video for more information about the device and how it is built: An Open Source Motorized XYZ Micro-Manipulator - Affordable sub µm Motion Control

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OpenPrinter

OpenPrinter is an upcoming open-source, modular, repairable inkjet printer built from standard components for users avoiding throwaway hardware. It supports standard sheets or paper rolls, refillable black or color cartridges, desktop or wall use, and works across major platforms via CUPS without proprietary drivers or cartridge DRM. Its electronics, mechanical design files, firmware, and bill of materials will use the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license, and campaign updates are available by sign-up.

RegLayer: 47+ US data center projects delayed/withdrawn/blocked in 2026; Bernstein: ~35% credible

In 2026, more than 47 large US data center projects were delayed, withdrawn, or blocked, according to RegLayer. Bernstein estimates that only about 35% of the planned US data center pipeline is credible, as ambitious technology bets run into the hard economics of the physical world.

Interview: Nadella on RTX Spark Surface Laptop Ultra and safer Windows for AI agents

In an interview, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella discussed the new Nvidia-powered Surface Laptop Ultra, a $2,600 machine designed to run advanced AI models locally, and Microsoft’s push to make Windows safer for AI agents. Nadella said Microsoft treats AI agents as insider risks and is reengineering Windows to give agents separate identities, isolated environments, restricted permissions, and monitoring, including via Windows Defender.

High performance policy routed IPsec mesh SD-WAN

ranet3 is an open-source high-performance policy-routed IPsec mesh SD-WAN built on standard IKEv2, ESP-in-UDP, Babel, and SRv6, with interoperability tested against strongSwan, BIRD, and Linux. It uses Babel RTT metrics to route around slower or lossy links and SRv6 source/destination-prefix policies to steer traffic through specified waypoints and exits. Benchmarks compare its userspace ESP/AES-256-GCM dataplane with wireguard-go, kernel WireGuard, and kernel IPsec across throughput, CPU cost, and p99 latency.

ARP! Tell your network to explain itself

The article explains how ARP lets devices on a local network discover the MAC address associated with an IP address by broadcasting a request. It highlights the tool arp-scan for listing network devices with their IP, MAC address, and manufacturer, and notes risks such as ARP spoofing and broadcast storms.

Un-hanging the HP Envy 17-DA0013dx for OpenBSD

An OpenBSD user trying to install the OS on an HP Envy 17-DA0013dx encountered a boot hang during device probing, traced via a debug kernel to a panic indicating “cpu at apic id 0 already attached.” After suspecting a defective ACPI/AML implementation, updating the laptop’s 2024 BIOS to a 2026 version resolved the issue, allowing OpenBSD to boot from USB. The user then swapped in a 4TB OpenBSD NVMe drive and set the Windows 11 drive aside for future BIOS updates.

🌍 Society & Culture

Gen Z Is the First Generation Dumber Than Their Parents

Neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath says Gen Z is the first modern generation to score lower than the previous one on standardized academic tests, with declines across attention, memory, literacy, numeracy, executive function, and general IQ. He attributes the trend to heavy screen exposure and technology-focused schooling that reduce sustained attention and depth of learning. Horvath recommends dialing back screens in schools and restoring rigor and focused study.

Germany’s 17M Immigrants: Where They Come From

Germany’s 17 Million Immigrants: Where They Come From See more visualizations like this on the Voronoi app. Save to Inbox Where Germany’s 17 Million Immigrants Were Born Key Takeaways:

  • About 17 million people living in Germany were born abroad, compared with 4.3 million German-born people living overseas.

  • Poland is the largest birthplace among Germany’s foreign-born population, while the U.S. is the leading destination for German-born emigrants.

  • Germany has expanded skilled-worker…

  • Germany’s 17M Immigrants: Where They Come From — visualcapitalist.com

Kids are outsmarting social media bans. That’s not a problem we need to solve

Kids are outsmarting social media bans. That’s not a problem we need to solve. Age gates can be staggeringly counterproductive, pushing kids to darker corners of the web. Closing loopholes will only make things worse. Social media bans are stacking up. In July, France joined Australia in restricting minors from accessing social media—barring children under 15 from major platforms, before the ban was blocked by the country’s top court on human rights grounds. The UK aims to forbid kids under 16…

A Princeton PhD Applied to 2,300 Jobs. He Still Can’t Get One

Jack Weis, a 2024 Princeton chemical engineering Ph.D. graduate, has applied to more than 2,300 jobs and remains unemployed. After pursuing corporate science roles and postdoctoral fellowships, he expanded his search to software engineering and food-preparation jobs but was ghosted. A temporary job training AI in his expertise also ended.

Dogs Seem to Agree with Humans That ‘Bouba’ Is Round and ‘Kiki’ Is Spiky

A new study found that domestic dogs, like humans, tend to associate the made-up sound “Bouba” with rounded shapes and “Kiki” with spiky shapes. In two experiments with 70 dogs, researchers tracked the animals’ gaze and found they looked more at rounded shapes during “Bouba” and spiky shapes during “Kiki,” even when owners wore headphones to prevent cues. The findings suggest dogs may share a cross-sensory bias linking sounds and shapes, though more research is needed.

It’s enough - vibecoding tag crossed from useless to harmful

The author argues that the “vibecoding” tag has become useless and now harmful due to overbroad tagging that filters out valuable technical content and drives away community members. While supporting filtering of LLM-generated or LLM-centric posts, they say the current tag provides no signal and benefits no one. They call for the tag to be split or eliminated.

đź’° Business & Entertainment

The Zelda timeline to catch up before the Ocarina of Time remake

Ahead of the Ocarina of Time remake, releasing in 17 days, the author built a Zelda timeline to catch up on the story. Using Nintendo’s official Hyrule Historia and chronicle timeline, the project visualizes Ocarina’s three branching eras—depending on whether Link wins or loses—before the threads reunite much later with Breath of the Wild. The author says Claude provided significant help in creating the visualization.

The game industry is broken – can we fix it?

The video game industry is facing a severe downturn, with projections of more than 58,000 jobs lost from 2022 to 2026, hundreds of studio closures, runaway budgets and schedules, and rising console prices despite only modest revenue growth. Industry experts say layoffs are concentrated in Western hubs such as the UK, Europe, and North America—especially California—and discuss possible remedies including Japan’s leaner teams, high staff retention, and lower executive pay.

Matthew Prince on why Cloudflare offers a free version and always will (2016)

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How the Elizabeth Holmes documentary “You Can See Everything” is deceiving

The article recounts the author’s reaction to the Elizabeth Holmes documentary You Can See Everything, arguing that its brilliance lies in manipulating viewers’ perceptions in real time through framing and editing. It notes that Holmes was acquitted of patient-fraud charges but imprisoned for knowingly misleading investors, using the film to illustrate how emotional impressions shape beliefs more than facts do.

How to Watch Nottingham Forest vs Arsenal for Free (October 18, 2026)

How to Watch Nottingham Forest vs Arsenal for Free (October 18, 2026) Our in-house cybersecurity experts and journalists, renowned for major reports like The Mother of All Breaches, conduct transparent, unbiased VPN testing and in-depth analysis. With 750+ articles crafted based on real-world research, we empower readers to make informed purchasing decisions through first-hand expertise. Learn more- Match information: Nottingham Forest vs Arsenal takes place on Sunday, October 18, 2026, at the…

How to Watch Leeds United vs Manchester United for Free from Anywhere

How to Watch Leeds United vs Manchester United for Free from Anywhere Our in-house cybersecurity experts and journalists, renowned for major reports like The Mother of All Breaches, conduct transparent, unbiased VPN testing and in-depth analysis. With 750+ articles crafted based on real-world research, we empower readers to make informed purchasing decisions through first-hand expertise. Learn more- Match information: Leeds United vs Manchester United is on Sunday, October 18, 2026, at Elland…

How to Watch Houston Texans vs Jacksonville Jaguars for Free (October 18, 2026)

How to Watch Houston Texans vs Jacksonville Jaguars for Free (October 18, 2026) Our in-house cybersecurity experts and journalists, renowned for major reports like The Mother of All Breaches, conduct transparent, unbiased VPN testing and in-depth analysis. With 750+ articles crafted based on real-world research, we empower readers to make informed purchasing decisions through first-hand expertise. Learn more- Game information: Houston Texans vs Jacksonville Jaguars is a Week 6 NFL…

Interview: Apple App Store VP Carson Oliver on gaming vision, Arcade, indie tools

In his first interview as Apple’s new head of App Store Worldwide, Carson Oliver said gaming has always been central to the App Store and that Apple aims to let indie titles compete alongside major franchises. He cited continued investment in Apple Arcade, developer tools, and hardware technologies, with initiatives like Indie Games Week signaling a broader push to make the App Store a home for premium indie games.

Holyvolt raises $45M at $245M valuation for AI battery materials tools

Holyvolt, a Stockholm-based battery-materials startup developing AI tools for making and testing new battery materials, raised $45 million in an all-equity round from Zone II, CC.VC, and angel investors, valuing it at $245 million according to a source. The company aims to develop alternative battery chemistries outside China’s dominance, arguing the West cannot outcompete China in existing NMC and LFP materials.

GTCR and Elliott to take CCC private for $4.6B, valuing it at $6.1B including debt

GTCR and Elliott Investment Management have agreed to acquire and take private Nasdaq-listed car-insurance software provider CCC Intelligent Solutions for about $4.6 billion, valuing the company at $6.1 billion including debt. CCC stockholders will receive $7.75 per share in cash, a roughly 44% premium to the July 9 closing price when reports of a deal surfaced.

Disney to hire 60+ Character.AI staff, pay ~$180M/3 yrs + $30M retention; bankruptcy judge must OK

Disney has agreed to hire more than 60 staff from bankrupt chatbot company Character.AI and pay about $180 million over three years, plus $30 million in retention awards. The arrangement requires approval from a bankruptcy judge.