• Why open source may not survive the rise of generative AI.  (ZDNet)
  
  Actually a real concern.
  
  Open source depends on copyright.  If you write something - software, here, but anything - it is your creating and you have the right to sell it, or to give it away, on terms you decide.  Large open source projects need to get permission from all their contributors to include their code in their project.
  
  Generative AI trashes all of that.  The products of generative AI are not generally copyrightable, and they don't keep track of where things came from either.  A piece of code from AI could be nominally original, or it could be adapted from an open source project, or it could be copied verbatim from a copyrighted source that the AI might not even have had legal access to (Anthropic had to pay out $1.5 billion over similar problems with its training data).
  
  And you can't tell.

• Federal regulators have denied autonomous trucking company Aurora Innovation an exemption to safety rules requiring signals to be placed around broken down vehicles.  (Reason)
  
  Aurora Innovation has sued the Department of Transportation for...  Not changing the rules in its favour.
  
  
  
• GM plans to drop Apple CarPlay and Android Auto support on new vehicles and replace them with, you guessed it, more AI slop.  (The Verge)
  
  Specifically based on Google Gemini, though I don't think the particular flavour of slop is of primary concern.
  
  
  
• Why are network devices in 2025 still vulnerable to the kind of exploits we saw in 1995?  (CSO Online)
  
  Not the specific exploits, but buffer overruns, remote code execution, or simple authentication bypasses where the code never checks the password at all.
  
  The answer?  Because we're still dealing with code that was likely written in 1995:

  "But when you're dealing with legacy code - we've actually seen some C++ applications where you have literally thousands of overflow issues and the original developers are long gone - it's very difficult to get a new developer to look at it, and they don't really want to touch the code. They get to a point where it's like: Well, prove to me it's exploitable, because this is a critical old piece of code that no one understands and it's dangerous to touch it."

  The solution?
  
  Throw AI at it, and when it breaks, fire people.

• Clippy in the server room with a portable blender: Microsoft hopes Mico succeeds where Clippy failed as tech companies warily imbue AI with personality.  (AP News)
  
  Mico is the new horrifying AI-driven mascot of Microsoft's inescapable AI-driven offense to reason, Copilot.
  
  Mico is...  A grape?  A purple raspberry?  I don't know exactly, but kill it with fire.

  "When you talk about something sad, you can see Mico's face change.  You can see it dance around and move as it gets excited with you," said Jacob Andreou, corporate vice president of product and growth for Microsoft AI, in an interview with The Associated Press.  It’s in this effort of really landing this AI companion that you can really feel."

  I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit.

  Tech-savvy adopters of advanced AI coding tools may want it to "act much more like a machine because at the back end they know it’s a machine," Reimer said.  "But individuals who are not as trustful in a machine are going to be best supported - not replaced - by technology that feels a little more like a human."

  "We glued artificial fur to our woodchipper so that you will feel comfortable as we feed you into it."
   

• The ones who walk away from AImelas.  (MSN)
  
  Could you live in a perfect utopia if it depended on one AI developer somewhere not getting his acai smoothie in the morning?
  
  Wait, I don't think that analogy quite works.  The original story didn't hold up well to second thoughts either, so maybe it metaworks.
  
  
  
• A Baltimore high school student was handcuffed and searched by police after an AI-equipped camera mistook a bag of Doritos for a firearm.  (The Guardian)
  
  Everything dumb is still dumb when you add AI, just faster.
  
  
  
• The Great SassS Gaslighting.  (Unworkable Ideas)
  
  There's a reason IBM rented its software from the early days, and it was not to save you money.
  
  
  
• Why these companies insist on a 72 hour work week.  (MSN)
  
  Because you are expendable.  You're barely even a consideration.
  
  
  
• Electronic Arts is partnering with the company behind Stable Diffusion to make games with AI and not in the good way.  (Engadget)
  
  Computer games have been using AI for about as long as there have been computer games.  Well, not the original Pong which also technically wasn't a computer game since it ran directly on TTL logic and didn't use any sort of processor.  While I was looking into that I ran into this cool tidbit on the original Pong prototype:

  A few days later, the prototype began exhibiting technical issues and Gaddis contacted Alcorn to fix it. Upon inspecting the machine, Alcorn discovered that the problem was due to the coin mechanism overflowing with quarters.

  Nice problem to have.
  
  Oh, anyway, AI has had a role in computer games for about 50 years, but EA aren't planning to use AI in the game.  They're planning to use AI to create the game.
  
  
  
• The glaring security risks with AI browser agents.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  So, AI browsers are the big new thing.  You hand over your ID and your credit cards and they can find the best deal for you online, which is much the same idea as giving your wallet, car keys, and a bottle of Everclear to a nine-year-old with severe ADHD.
  
  Or to put it differently, an 88 year old politician in the early stages of dementia.
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

Posted by: Frank at Sunday, October 26 2025 06:32 PM (amxkj)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Monday, October 27 2025 12:19 AM (rcPLc)

Posted by: Joe Redfield at Monday, October 27 2025 03:16 AM (KOtXO)

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• Tech companies have maxed out their credit cards in wild pursuit of the AI let's-not-call-it-a-bubble.  (Notebook Check)
  
  Debt held by those companies has increased fourfold over the past ten years, to a total of $1.35 trillion.
  
  If the bubble bursts abruptly, the most highly leveraged of those companies - and their lenders - are going to be in a world of pain.
  
  As is the economy, meaning everyone who didn't borrow all that money and set in on fire chasing phantasms. 

• It's Ruperts all the way down until it isn't: The first shape has been found that doesn't have the Rupert property.  (Quanta)
  
  The Rupert property means that an object with a given 3D shape can pass through a hole bored through another object the same size and shape, but rotated so that the smallest cross section of one shape passes through the largest cross section of the other.
  
  The first shape - or at least the first convex polyhedron - has been found that does not have this property.
  
  Or rather, the second, though the article doesn't not point this out presumably because the original example is considered a degenerate solution: Spheres have the same cross-section from every angle, and therefore can only pass through a hole exactly that size.
  
  
  
• Iceland found its first mosquito.  (CNN)
  
  Keep looking, guys, I'm sure you can find more.
  
  
  
• Microsoft Teams will start tracking your location and reporting you to your boss.  (Tom's Guide)
  
  That seems a little goldfish-bowlish, but still.  If you're getting paid to be in the office, and you're not in the office, and your boss finds out, that is rather on you, isn't it?
  
  
  
• Rivian will pay $250 million to settle a lawsuit over major price increases on its cars.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Wait, Rivian makes cars?
  
  Anyway, Rivian hiked prices by 20% to cover increasing costs, and shareholders immediately sued claiming reasonably enough that Rivian had misrepresented those costs.
  
  
  
• Automattic has filed a countersuit against WP Engine, claiming trademark abuse.  (TechCrunch)
  
  WP Engine fired back, saying it merely referred to WordPress by name, adding that Matt Mullenweg's parents are very disappointed in him and he never calls except when he needs money.
  
  
  
• The Espresso Pro is an overpriced 15.6" 4k monitor aimed at Mac users.  (The Verge)  (archive site)
  
  When even tech journalists think your price is too high, your price is too high.
  
  

Posted by: J Greely at Sunday, October 26 2025 12:09 AM (oJgNG)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Sunday, October 26 2025 02:24 AM (rcPLc)

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• Apple has lost a lawsuit in the UK alleging it overcharged commissions payable by developers, who passed half the excess cost on to their customers, which, this being Apple, was charged by Apple who then took their cut on it.  (9to5Mac)
  
  Penalties could amount to $2 billion.
  
  
  
• In other "that used to be a lot" news Anthropic has signed a deal with Google for cloud services said to be in the tens of billions of dollars.  (CNBC)
  
  Amazon, which has invested $8 billion in Anthropic, might be asking some questions at this point.

Tech News

Posted by: PatBuckman at Saturday, October 25 2025 09:00 AM (rcPLc)

Posted by: cxt217 at Sunday, October 26 2025 04:54 AM (ZLF73)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, October 26 2025 07:39 AM (1zWbY)

Posted by: cxt217 at Sunday, October 26 2025 09:57 AM (ZLF73)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, October 27 2025 01:39 AM (1zWbY)

Posted by: cxt217 at Monday, October 27 2025 07:01 AM (ZLF73)

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• A statement on superintelligence.  (Superintelligence Statement)
  
  These people are idiots.  Or at least, suffering from an epidemic of Engineer's Disease. 
  
  If you outlaw AI that actually works, only outlaws will have AI that actually works.
  
  And nobody is working in superintelligent AI because nobody is working on intelligent AI.
  
  
  
• Meta is laying off 600 people from its AI team.  (CNBC)  (archive site)
  
  Certainly not those guys.

• Will the $4500 price tag put people off Rivian's electric bicycle.  (The Verge)  (archive site)
  
  (shake shake)  Signs point to yes.
  
  
  
• Ring's CEO says his cameras could "almost zero out crime" within the next twelve months.  (The Verge)  (archive site)

  I think that in most normal, average neighborhoods, with the right amount of technology - not too crazy - and with AI, that we can get very close to zero out crime.

  Forward the Panopticon.
  
  
  
• Old-fashioned reliable IT systems - mostly COBOL - saved US states around $40 billion in nine months in 2020.  (Financial Times)
  
  The article comes to the opposite conclusion.
  
  The article is written by an idiot.
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

Posted by: Robin Munn at Thursday, October 23 2025 06:46 PM (cJRa3)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Friday, October 24 2025 04:13 AM (rcPLc)

Posted by: cxt217 at Friday, October 24 2025 08:43 AM (ZLF73)

Posted by: Frank at Friday, October 24 2025 01:37 PM (amxkj)

Posted by: normal at Saturday, October 25 2025 03:52 AM (e0fX0)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Saturday, October 25 2025 08:43 AM (rcPLc)

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• So what happened?  Why did Amazon's premier US-East-1 datacenter collapse, taking an uncountable number of websites and applications with it, and causing billions of dollars in losses?  (Ars Technica)
  
  DNS.
  
  It was DNS.
  
  It is always DNS.

• A single-pass Turbo Pascal 3.0 compatible compiler, written in Pascal, in a single file of around 7000 lines of code.  (GitHub)
  
  And it's clean and readable, though not exactly modular or uncomplicated.
  
  
  
• Inside a high speed optical network switch.  (Serve the Home)
  
  It's full of fiber!
  
  
  
• Why London became the global capital of phone theft.  (New York Times)
  
  Because phone thieves didn't get arrested.
  
  
  
• OpenAI's AI-powered browser, ChatGPT Atlas, is here.  (The Verge)
  
  Kill it with fire.
  
  
  
• The Banana Pi R4 Pro is here.  (Liliputing)
  
  $165 gets you a quad-core Arm A73 with 8GB each of eMMC flash and RAM, two 10Gb Ethernet ports, four 2.5Gb Ethernet port, one 1Gb Ethernet port, two M.2 2280 slots for storage, three M.2 2242 B-key slots for 5G (and maybe also storage), and two mini-PCIe slots for wifi modules.
  
  Pretty much all you could ask for in a home or small business router, except a case.

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, October 23 2025 02:05 AM (8p23U)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, October 23 2025 07:07 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: cxt217 at Thursday, October 23 2025 09:28 AM (ZLF73)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, October 23 2025 04:54 PM (PiXy!)

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• That crashing sound you heard at 3AM wasn't the cats getting the zoomies and taking out your new 4k TV, it was just Amazon's US-East-1 datacenter collapsing in a screaming heap and taking half the internet with it.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Oh dear.

  U.S. users of Downdetector are reporting issues with Snapchat, Roblox, Amazon, Alexa, Ring, Robinhood, Max (HBO), Chime, Venmo, Epic Games, McDonald's, Fortnite, Lyft, Hulu, Disney+, Roku, Signal, and carriers including AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile.  PC gaming platform Steam, as well as online forums like Reddit, are also impacted.

  Wait, Steam?
  
  This was actually serious.

  Popular banking apps and tools like Zoom, Pokémon Go, PlayStation Network, and more are also struggling, as are some AI services such as Perplexity.

  Serious but mostly a blessing.

• OpenAI now seems to be legally pursuing anyone who has ever mentioned it without what the company considers due deference.  (The Verge)  (archive site)
  
  Seven small non-profits that lobbied for the company to be regulated or simply commented on its deeply suspect plans to restructure from a public-benefit company have received subpoenas demanding any and all information relating however tangentially to OpenAI or regulatory efforts that could potentially affect OpenAI, including but not limited to California's SB 53, SB 1047, and AB 501.
  
  OpenAI's CSO (Chief Something Officer) took to Twitter to blame Elon Musk.
  
  Charming people.  Let's give them a trillion dollars.
  
  

• ChatGPT has found solutions to 10 open Erdos problems.  (Twitter)
  
  Can I see them?
  
  No.  Also I deleted my tweet.  And that knock at your door is probably a process server.
  
  
  
• China says the NSA tried to hack its clock.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Do you have evidence of this?
  
  Yes.
  
  Can I see it?
  
  No.
  
  
  
• If you're running the Linux 6.12.43 LTS kernel it is trivially easy to crash the entire system thanks to what appears to be a kernel maintainer's acceptance of patches generated by garbage AI.  (Xcancel)
  
  Someone's going to get a lecture from Linus.
  
  
  
• Foreign hackers breached an American nuclear weapons facility via flaws in Microsoft SharePoint.  (CSO Online)
  
  Are we not even trying anymore?
  
  
  
• The hacking group formerly known as Scattered LAPSUS$ Hunters claims to have the personal information of thousands of US government officials, including those working for the NSA, DIA, and Air Force.  (404 Media)  (archive site)
  
  It is most gratifying that your enthusiasm for our planet continues unabated, and so we would like to assure you that the guided missiles currently converging with your ship are part of a special service we extend to all of our most enthusiastic clients, and the fully armed nuclear warheads are of course merely a courtesy detail.  We look forward to your custom in future lives ... thank you.
  
  
  
• How the former lead of Grand Theft Auto's new studio went through $270 million and produced a game that was variously described as "bad", "unfinished", and "you'll be hearing from our lawyers".  (Hot Hardware)
  
  Hookers and blow, probably, though the article doesn't go into that level of detail.
  
  
  
• Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg calls Tumblr his biggest failure so far.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Don't sell yourself short, Matt.

Posted by: normal at Wednesday, October 22 2025 03:39 AM (LADmw)

Posted by: cxt217 at Wednesday, October 22 2025 10:23 AM (ZLF73)

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• Four words to drive a stake into the heart of Sam Altman: Artificial intelligence is mid.  (Anil Dash)
  
  Put less succinctly:

  Technologies like LLMs have utility, but the absurd way they've been over-hyped, the fact they're being forced on everyone, and the insistence on ignoring the many valid critiques about them make it very difficult to focus on legitimate uses where they might add value.

  But who exactly feels that way?
  
  Turns out, almost everyone in the industry:

  What's amazing is the reality that virtually 100% of tech experts I talk to in the industry feel this way, yet nobody outside of that cohort will mention this reality.

  Can't risk bursting that don't-ever-call-it-a-bubble.
  
  

Tech News

• The modern English translation (and we're talking 16th century as "modern") of the only copy of a 12th century sermon quoting fragments of an otherwise entirely lost medieval saga known as The Song of Wade that was so popular it was referenced in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales knowing that the audience would all catch the meaning...  Contains a typo.  (Smithsonian)
  
  There weren't any elves.
  
  
  
• North Korean hackers have embedded malware into contracts on Ethereum and BNB Smart Chain where it can never be removed and poses no threat to anyone.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Because the code is in JavaScript and Ethereum and compatible blockchains use an entirely different programming language called Solidity.
  
  And only idiots would use JavaScript to interact with Ethereum.
  
  
  
• Bitlocker will encrypt your drives without you ever asking it to.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Another reason to avoid Windows 11.
  
  
  
• Windows 11's October update just broke the Recovery Environment.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  USB keyboards and mice no longer work in the Recovery Environment, rendering entirely useless.
  
  Another reason to avoid Windows 11, or alternately to be very glad you've held on to that PS/2 keyboard these last thirty years.
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

Posted by: Mauser at Tuesday, October 21 2025 01:19 PM (XWgGM)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, October 21 2025 05:12 PM (PiXy!)

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• Solar car maker Aptera is about to go public and I'm worried.  (Elektrek)
  
  Also, prescient.  This article was posted ten days ago.
  
  Aptera listed on NASDAQ last week with a share price around $20.
  
  Three days later it's trading below $6.
  
  Aptera has spent 19 years and an untold amount of money - something like $150 million - trying to build what has been unkindly but accurately described as an electric tricycle, and all it has to show for its efforts is a handful of shiny prototypes.
  
  Though given how similar the protypes have all appeared over the years it's not unimaginable that they just painted a solar cell pattern over the original diesel/electric model and called it a day.
  
  Production was originally scheduled to start in 2008.

• Scaling Kubernetes to a million nodes.  (GitHub)
  
  Why?
  
  As John F. Kennedy famously said of the Apollo Program: We choose to go the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because we thought they would be easy.
  
  I suspect that applies equally to the engineers at Aptera.  Maybe more than equally.
  
  
  
• People apparently don't want ultra-slim phones.  (Mac Rumours)
  
  Apple has reportedly cut production of the iPhone Air - at the same time it has boosted production of other models - and Samsung has cancelled the follow up to its competing S25 Edge.
  
  I wouldn't mind a slimmer phone, but it's far down the list of problems with current models, most of which were self-inflicted by the companies making them.
  
  
  
• Presenters prevented a tragedy at the Wikipedia conference taking place in New York when they tackled an armed pedophile who threatened to kill himself.  (NBC News)
  
  I fully understand.  The cleaning crews in New York conference spaces are all union and those overtime rates will blow your budget into another dimension.
  
  
  
• Migrating from Amazon to Hetzner Cloud.  (Digital Society)
  
  And getting nearly three times as much (virtual) hardware for a quarter the price.
  
  Wait, didn't an entire Hetzner datacenter burn to the ground not so long ago?
  
  No, that was OVH.
  
  Oh.  Carry on then.
  
  
  
• A big small PC from Minisforum.  (Liliputing)
  
  It measures about 9" x 9" x 4", which is big for a small PC but small for a big PC, and offers four (SODIMM) memory slots, four M.2 slots, and three PCIe slots, and a Core Ultra 9 285HX (8 performance cores and 16 efficiency cores).  Plus two USB4v2 ports (80Gbps) and a USB4 port (40Gbps), two 25Gb Ethernet ports, one 10Gb Ethernet port, one 2.5Gb Ethernet port, one HDMI ports, and the usual bunch of USB3 ports.
  
  Given the size and power constraints (it has a 350W power supply) you're not going to fit a high-end graphics card in it, but a low-profile Nvidia 5060 or an Intel Arc Pro B50 should work fine.
  
  
  
• Anbernic is preparing to launch the RG DS, a dual-screen gaming device selling for less than $100.  (Notebook Check)
  
  It's designed to emulate the Nintendo DS and 3DS.  It can play games made for older consoles but it's clearly aimed at those two since it looks exactly like them.
  
  

• Your AI tools run on fracked gas and bulldozed Texas land.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  You had me at fracked gas.
  
  
  
• Amazon has unveiled plans to build up to a dozen modular nuclear reactors in Richland, Washington generating a total of 960 megawatts.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  We can still use the bulldozers, right?

• WebMCP allows you to easily add an API to any website to poison the data of unsuspecting AI users.  (GitHub)
  
  Sounds like fun.  Sign me up.
  
  
  
• Claude Skills are awesome, maybe a bigger deal than MCP.  (Simon Willison)
  
  Claude Skills are subroutines, which have been around longer than electronic computers.
  
  
  
• A tech lobbying firm is suing Texas over the state's age verification law.  (Ars Technica)

  "Our Constitution forbids this," the lawsuit said.  "None of our laws require businesses to 'card' people before they can enter bookstores and shopping malls.  The First Amendment prohibits such oppressive laws as much in cyberspace as it does in the physical world."

  Actually the Constitution is silent on this, and arguing the First Amendment forbids laws protecting children applies equally to the Second Amendment.
  
  
  
• These AI glasses promised to make me smarter, and all I got was Clippy for my face.  (The Verge)  (archive site)
  
  The phrase lipstick on a pig comes to mind here.

Posted by: PatBuckman at Sunday, October 19 2025 01:27 AM (rcPLc)

Posted by: Mauser at Sunday, October 19 2025 03:47 PM (XWgGM)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, October 19 2025 06:03 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Monday, October 20 2025 06:52 AM (rcPLc)

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