Also: A Failed Acquisition and Unauthorized Rolodex Sharing
The Intern Who Demands a Five-Page Specification Document
The software industry has officially entered the era of the overly fastidious collaborator with the launch of Kiro, the Agentic IDE. Kiro, which is apparently from a team associated with AWS, operates on a philosophy of "Intent-Driven Development." This means developers must meticulously lay out all "Specs," "Steering," and "Hooks" before Kiro's "Autopilot" will condescend to write any code.
This development shifts the goalpost for automation; we are no longer trying to eliminate work; we are simply shifting the documentation burden from the code review phase to the pre-coding phase. Users now spend their time crafting perfectly structured intent files so that Kiro can execute a multi-step project, which is a great process, assuming your internal customer knows what they want before you build it. Kiro effectively introduces a new layer of bureaucracy to the entire development lifecycle, which in the modern corporate environment, is apparently considered a feature.
Inter-Departmental Gossip Reaches Catastrophic Levels
A critical security reminder has been issued to everyone regarding the unauthorized sharing of data; primarily, stop selling your company Rolodex to the security team. Data brokers continue to monetize flight information, which is then sold to federal agencies like Customs and Border Protection and ICE. The brokers explain that this is just a necessary side effect of trying to 'connect people,' which is an excellent explanation.
Meanwhile, the Oakland and San Francisco police departments have also been caught illegally sharing license plate reader data with the federal government. It seems that the public record of where everyone drives is a much more valuable asset than anyone realized. Compliance memos are available in the shared drive; please review before selling any further metadata about your peers' commutes.
Apple Manager Reads Compliance Memo; Files It Under "Junk"
The European Union's Digital Markets Act, or DMA, was supposed to force Apple to allow third-party browser engines on iOS, but apparently, the memo got lost in the corporate firewall. The Open Web Advocacy reports Apple is maintaining its proprietary WebKit-only restriction.
Apple has cleverly decided that the rule about "allowing alternative app distribution" does not automatically mean they have to enable a functioning third-party browser experience, which is an impressive piece of corporate reading comprehension. The company is steadfastly clinging to its preferred browser rendering technology, which is a lot like demanding everyone use the same brand of ergonomic mouse, even after the corporate wellness department explicitly said you can use whatever mouse you want.
Cognition Acquires the Office Furniture After the CEO Leaves for Google
In a dizzying display of tech industry musical chairs, Cognition, the company behind the Devin AI software engineer, announced the acquisition of Windsurf. This happened only after Windsurf's original visionary leadership, including CEO Varun Mohan, already departed to take lucrative roles at Google's DeepMind.
Cognition is claiming a fantastic win, citing the acquisition of Windsurf's product, $82 million in annual recurring revenue, and the remaining people, which is a great way to talk about inheriting the debt and the slightly-less-senior developers. The acquisition secured the company's "remaining business" and the "product, brand, IP, and employees," proving once again that in the AI space, the intellectual property is less valuable than the person who can explain how the intellectual property works, and they are already gone.
Briefs
- ML Framework Peace Treaty: Apple's MLX framework is adding CUDA support. Apparently, the internal politics of the AI team have shifted enough to allow Mac users to at least export their work to the high-powered NVIDIA hardware that everyone else uses.
- Government Enterprise Licenses: Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and xAI have been granted up to $200 million each from the Defense Department for "agentic AI" prototypes. The new department-wide mandate is to ensure all future bureaucracy is written by a machine.
- The Internet Is Fine: Two guys who hated using Comcast so much built their own fiber ISP. This proves the system is not entirely broken, it just requires a level of personal commitment generally reserved for building an ark.
OFFICE RESOURCE ALLOCATION TRAINING (MANDATORY)
Which corporate asset is most valuable in the event of an 'Agentic AI' company merger?
Per the new corporate policy, the recommended next step after receiving a large, new European regulation (DMA) is to:
// DEAD INTERNET THEORY 752
Kiro seems nice, but I already have an Agentic IDE; it is named Devin and it costs more money. Can I expense the migration cost to the "AI Efficiency" budget, or does this need to go under "Unforeseen New Vendor Lock-In?"
I did a Ctrl+F for "transparency" in the police data sharing story. Found nothing; guess the metadata broker is also the janitor for the evidence room. You know what is great for privacy, not keeping records, but I guess that is too low-tech.
The $800M in DoD funding is great. We are effectively crowdsourcing our nation's defense to four large language models, which is an extremely efficient form of distributed responsibility.