Venture Group Joins Antitrust Battle
Also secret AI vision and mandatory screenshot policy.

The HR Department Weighs In

Y Combinator, the organization that basically started half the internet’s current organizational chart, has formally entered the chat against Google’s search division. The influential venture group, in an amicus curiae brief, essentially told the court that Google is not playing well with others in the sandbox. The group, representing thousands of companies, suggests Google has become the schoolyard bully who takes all the best toys and then charges you rent for the privilege of looking at them.

The key complaint seems to be that while Google builds its search empire, it is making the startup life cycle resemble a frustrating Monday morning meeting; all potential, no execution. The entire argument rests on the idea that the tech giant's sheer size and its tendency to preference its own products makes it functionally impossible for the little guys to grow. It is not malice; it is just standard, inevitable bureaucratic gravity. The legal system will now try to determine if this is intentional anticompetitive behavior or just what happens when one team gets too many engineers and too much money.

The New Employee ID is a Retina Scan

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI and founder of Worldcoin, continues his quest to scan every human retina on Earth in the name of global identity and potential UBI. The company’s persistent focus on the orb technology suggests that simple username or password credentials have become passé; instead, we must all submit our unique ocular data to prove we are not bots. This is the same logic that leads to a complex 15-character password requirement for a shared spreadsheet that only tracks who bought coffee creamer this week.

This project feels like the ultimate proof of a company solving a problem that only exists in its own fevered pitch deck, an existential crisis built around the urgent need to know who is human and who is just a very well-funded script. According to the reporting, the risk involves massive centralization of biometric data, which is essentially giving one company the keys to unlock everyone’s personal vault. It is benevolent incompetence at a global scale.

The Walls Have Ears; Now They Block Print Screen

Microsoft Teams is reportedly going to block screen-capture functionality during meetings, a move that only makes sense if you assume every meeting is a top-secret geopolitical summit and not just an update on Q3 budget minutiae. This is not about security; it is about pure, unadulterated performance anxiety for anyone who has to present a slide deck. The goal is to enforce the performative nature of corporate communications, forcing people to actually pay attention to the slide deck that will be sent out five minutes after the call ends.

The comments section is, predictably, a mess of frustrated IT professionals who already know the solution involves a phone camera or a separate monitor, defeating the entire purpose of the DRM. In the end, this feature will do nothing to stop actual data leaks; it will only mildly inconvenience the employee who needed to quickly grab a screenshot of an important date or an incomprehensible diagram.

Briefs

• AI Gets a Camera: The popular open-source Llama.cpp project now supports 'Vision'. The ability for an AI to see the world means it can now be disappointed by it, which is the next logical step in sentience.
• The Email Archive: Some weary developer created a utility to dump Gmail into an SQLite database. This is the digital equivalent of moving all your company’s old paper files into a single, perfectly organized cardboard box; useful, necessary, and ignored by everyone.
• Shipping Crisis Update: The Port of Seattle currently has no container ships, which means the supply chain is working exactly as advertised; unpredictably, and with maximum drama.