• Had a thunderstorm roll through last night and some of the lightning strikes came pretty close, but it passed without event.  Or so I thought.
  
  When I went to turn off the lights in the kitchen, it got very dark and very quiet.  The only light remaining was the clock on the oven; everything else had lost power.  And when I went downstairs to reset the breaker, it wasn't having it.
  
  Put the fridge on an extension cord overnight - the rest of the house had power - and left it for the morning.
  
  This morning I unplugged absolutely everything, reset the breaker - which now accepted its fate - and plugged things in again one at a time, waiting for it all to go phut.
  
  Got down to the bar fridge and the dishwasher, which are on the same plug somehow.  Took a deep breath, and plugged them in.
  
  They work.  Everything works.
  
  I dunno.
  
  
  
• Operation Bluebird wants to steal Twitter's trademark from Twitter.  (The Verge)  (archive site)

  We have built a social platform that will look familiar to those that used legacy Twitter, but with new tools that provide a safer experience and empower the user to decide what types of content they engage in.

  It's a hugbox for crazies.
  
  Like Bluesky.  But we already have Bluesky.  For now; it's dying pretty swiftly.

  Intellectual property attorney Douglas Masters says he is doubtful that Operation Bluebird’s claims will be successful. "I don’t know that the record ultimately will show that even though they [X Corp.] switched to X, that they intended to give up all of their commercial use and rights in the word Twitter," Masters tells The Verge.

  Well, yeah.  You can go to twitter.com right now and it works.

• Is it a bubble?  (Oaktree Capital)
  
  A whole lot of words to say "yes".
  
  
  
• Cryptographers have proved that AI security will always have holes.  (Quanta)

  In a recent paper, researchers found one of the more delightful ways to bypass artificial intelligence security systems: Rephrase your nefarious prompt as a poem.

  It's a bit like saying colanders will always have holes.  Yes.  We know.
  
  
  
• Amazon has changed the way DRM is applied to self-published ebooks...  For the better.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  If you choose not to apply DRM, Amazon now allows the author to select open formats like EPUB and PDF
  
  
  
• Meet the world's smallest AI supercomputer.  (WCCFTech)
  
  It's pocket-sized - or at least coat pocket sized - and has a custom 12 core ARM processor, an NPU capable of 190 trillion operations per second, and 80GB of RAM.
  
  It will be shown off at CES.  No pricing yet, but 80GB of RAM suddenly costs a fair bit of money.
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

Posted by: PatBuckman at Thursday, December 11 2025 11:42 PM (rcPLc)

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