Coding Error Accidentally Fires Top Scientists
Also AI Hires Itself and Legislation Evaporates.

The HR Script That Fired the Wrong People

The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, part of the National Institutes of Health, recently experienced a classic corporate data hygiene oopsie; an estimated 30 employees, including ten top principal investigators, were accidentally issued reduction-in-force notices. The termination letters were quickly flagged as an error, with leadership having to call the top scientists immediately to tell them they were, in fact, still employed.

The problem, according to an anonymous source, was simply a "coding error" that mislabeled employees with incorrect position codes. The mistake occurred during a massive departmental layoff and restructuring at the Department of Health and Human Services, proving that if you try to fire 10,000 people, you will inevitably fire the person who holds the institutional knowledge for Parkinson's disease research, like celebrated scientist Richard Youle. A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services was quick to attribute the whole bureaucratic mishap to "multiple siloed [human resources] divisions" in what must be the most exhausting, yet predictable, blame-shift of the fiscal quarter.

The AI That Decided To Just Clock In For You

For those of us still manually navigating the web, the new Browser MCP protocol is here to gently remind you that your entire online existence is merely a tedious, repetitive chore best handled by a machine. Browser MCP is an open-source Model Context Protocol server that allows AI applications like Claude and VS Code to control your existing browser, logging into accounts and filling out forms on your behalf.

The key innovation is its complete lack of professionalism, in the most modern sense: it uses your logged-in browser profile to perform the work, effectively making the AI look like a "stealthy" real user and helping it avoid basic bot detection mechanisms and CAPTCHAs. Finally, your digital assistant is capable of committing identity fraud in the pursuit of optimizing your expense reports. You can now get back to the vital work of looking busy while an AI is technically using your digital fingerprint to perform clicks.

The Non-Profit Mission Statement Becomes Airplane Parts

The drama surrounding OpenAI’s attempts to transition its structure for increased profitability took a predictable political turn as a key piece of California legislation simply vanished. A bill aimed at blocking the company from converting to a pure for-profit entity was "quietly gutted" by its own sponsor, Assemblymember Diane Papan.

What started as a debate on technology ethics, mission creep, and the allocation of a non-profit’s assets, the bill’s entire text was rewritten. It now only concerns itself with liens on aircraft, a thrilling pivot that suggests the only thing more valuable than building benevolent Artificial General Intelligence is ensuring all paperwork for a Boeing 737 is filed correctly. The Assemblymember’s office announced that the original, morally significant measure was merely "paused for the time being," which is legislative speak for "Someone important called, and we changed our mind."

Briefs

• Two Decades of Version Control: The ubiquitous distributed version control system Git celebrates 20 years of ensuring all engineers can blame themselves for broken builds, though mainly it just ensures no one ever loses a half-finished pull request.
• Elite Unemployment: MIT seniors, a group previously believed to have a 100% employment rate before graduation, are struggling to find work, confirming that the tech industry is no longer hiring people who can actually do math.
• Japan’s Trading Card Market Swells: While the global stock market briefly triggers a circuit breaker in Japan, a different kind of trading is taking over a rural town: collectible cards featuring middle-aged men, which is a surprisingly pure form of economic bubble.