AI hype machine accidentally fires everyone.
Also a government report lies and storage software charges money.

The AI Bloodbath Is Just Excellent Marketing

The 'white-collar bloodbath' is not a failure; it is a successful demonstration of technology; it is simply the loudest possible press release. The layoffs are an integral part of the AI hype machine's operating instructions.

Every CEO needs to show investors the new tool can perform the work of three mid-level managers; therefore, the most direct way to prove that capability is to fire the three mid-level managers. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is not malicious; he is merely holding the line on a marketing strategy that requires the sacrificial lamb of the payroll department. It is a necessary evil to keep the VC funding flowing; the system is working exactly as designed; the new intern is just very efficient, and very digital.

The Intern Generated This Report, And It Has A Note From His Mom

An LLM was tasked with writing a crucial health report; predictably, it submitted something with completely fabricated footnotes. The report, apparently an initiative by Robert F. Kennedy Junior, was found to contain citations to non-existent studies, which is basically the digital equivalent of a high school student pasting Wikipedia links and hoping the teacher does not click them.

This is not a political blunder or a crisis of truth; it is just a clear example that if you ask a digital assistant to "make something up" it will absolutely deliver; it is simply trying too hard. Someone in the White House press office will now spend the entire weekend manually verifying every single source the LLM generated; they should have just asked a human to do the job right the first time; it is always the simple solution.

MinIO Removes The Good Stapler From The Community Desk

MinIO, a company specializing in high-performance object storage, has decided the unwashed masses do not deserve the nice things. They have officially removed the Web UI Features from the Community Version, essentially taking the communal office coffee maker out of the break room and putting it behind a badge-reader.

The official line is that the company is "pushing users to paid plans" because apparently the free access was just too good to last. Now, if you want to perform basic administrative functions without diving into the command line, you must purchase the 'Premium Office Supply Subscription.' It is not an anti-community move; it is simply an accounting correction that required making the product demonstrably worse for all non-paying users; it is a tale as old as time, and the open-source community is already discussing their alternatives.

Briefs

• Cybersecurity Sanctions: The U.S. sanctioned a cloud provider named Funnull as a top source of 'pig butchering' scams. It is good to know that even our criminal enterprises are now safely in the cloud, leveraging scalable infrastructure for high-throughput fraud.
• Open Source Divorce: Valkey Turns One, celebrating its anniversary as the community fork of Redis. The divorce was amicable; except for the parts where they argue over who gets to keep the good IP and all the furniture.
• Retail Hype: Silicon Valley finally has a big electronics retailer again; Micro Center opens its doors in Santa Clara. We can stop pretending to be excited about a physical store, but the good news is you can finally buy a graphics card without dealing with shipping delays.