• A bipartisan gaggle of US senators is looking at blowing up DMCA Section 230, the law that makes modern social networks - and to a certain degree, blogs and forums - possible.  (The Verge)
  
  Section 230 shields website operators from lawsuit over the behaviour of commenters.  But it also serves as a shield for website operators that deliberately inculcate certain behaviours in their users - or that censor users to block behaviour they find undesirable.
  
  It's a people problem, basically.  There is not single technical or legislative answer to this mess.

• Federal cybersecurity experts thought Microsoft's cloud service offering to the government was "a pile of shit".  (ProPublica)
  
  They approved it anyway.
  
  
  
• Apple dropped the Musi app - which streams music from YouTube, apparently without paying anyone or making ads visible - from its app store.  A judge ruled they can do that.  (Ars Technica)
  
  And sanctioned Musi's lawyers for making shit up.
  
  
  
• AI job losses aren't particularly high, unless you're writing for a fourth-tier news outlet that prevents people from reading your articles, in which case you're boned.  (404Media)
  
  Sign up to access this post?
  
  No, I don't think I shall.
  
  
  
• SK Hynix says memory shortages will last until 2030.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Production currently only covers 80% of demand, and nobody is rushing to fill the gap because everyone who behaved that way went bankrupt in previous memory boom/bust cycles.
  
  
  
• Remove your Ring camera with a claw hammer.  (How Things Work)
  
  From the same tertiary syphilis patient who brough us such hits as The Subway Is Not Scary, Quit Your Evil Job, and Things You Can Lie About.
  
  
  
• A new font-rendering trick hides malicious commands from AI tools.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  That is, the commands are visible to humans but invisible to AI agents.
  
  I'm more concerned about the opposite approach, where invisible-to-human instructions are fed to AI agents, but I see no reason why this couldn't be used that way as well.

Musical Interlude

Posted by: Frank at Thursday, March 19 2026 06:26 PM (zCiG7)

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