Public Broadcasting Shuts Down Operations
Also AI money, bad interviews, and coffee computers.

Budget Cut Deactivates Office Radio, Now Everyone Has to Think

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced it is ceasing operations after the executive suite decided the federal budget no longer has room for what is essentially the nation's longest-running, open-source media project. The official announcement treats this like a standard bureaucratic reorganization; in reality, it is the equivalent of a massive corporate campus realizing that the subscription for the elevator music service has not been paid for forty years. Now, instead of calming jazz, there is only the sound of existential dread and the mechanical whir of the HVAC system.

This incident confirms that the only true Long Term Support policy is cash flow. It also reminds the public that if a service does not generate a venture capital level of return, it is ultimately just a liability to be audited out of existence, regardless of its 'public good' metric. The comments are full of people reminiscing about the old office perks, like how the IT department used to have a better coffee machine. It is a predictable farewell to the concept of non-profit infrastructure; the overhead was just too high for the new, efficient, quarterly-reporting organization.

HR's Favorite Stress Test Confirmed Not an Engineering Skill Metric

A new report confirms what every engineer who has ever been forced to debug a binary tree on a whiteboard while someone stares at them already knew: the live coding interview process primarily measures the interviewee's tolerance for stress, not their actual ability to ship code that does not crash the server. This hiring ritual is the corporate equivalent of asking a plumber to fix your sink while standing behind them with a clipboard, asking rapid-fire trivia questions about pipe-fitting regulations. The result is always a panicked mess and a poor hiring decision.

The post highlights the inherent absurdity of demanding perfect performance under surveillance, which is a state of mind the average developer only enters when the production database goes down at 3 AM. It is a good thing to finally have documentation to prove that the corporate gatekeeping ritual is completely broken, but everyone knows HR will file this under 'interesting findings' and continue the practice because it makes them feel like they are contributing to 'talent validation.'

The AI Money Printer is Stuck on 'B' for Billion

The infinite growth flywheel continues to spin, as OpenAI secured another $8.3 billion in funding, pushing its valuation past the three hundred billion mark. This much money is a concept that only exists in spreadsheets and seems to be solely earmarked for buying more GPUs and ensuring the lights stay on in Redmond. Meanwhile, the petty inter-office feud between the large language model providers continues, as Anthropic revoked OpenAI's access to its Claude API. This is the AI equivalent of two rival software companies fighting over who gets to use the good laser printer on the third floor.

The industry seems dedicated to proving that even the most complex technology simply reinvents the most tired office drama. The public is also now getting a look at Google's Gemini 2.5 Deep Think, which is essentially the new employee who spends a lot of time staring blankly at the ceiling and occasionally has a brilliant thought. The constant stream of 'breakthroughs' just feels like a mandated, daily corporate press release about a new, slightly better flavor of complimentary office seltzer.

Briefs

• Layoff Automation: Atlassian terminated 150 staff with a pre-recorded video. The HR department is clearly focused on achieving maximum 'efficiency' and minimum 'human decency' for its termination process.
• Liquid Cooling Innovation: The Coffeematic PC is a coffee maker computer that pumps hot coffee to the CPU. The developer finally achieved true energy independence by making sure their morning cup of ambition also thermally throttles their compiler.
• Digital Shelf Space Dispute: Belgium banned the Internet Archive's Open Library. The government has decided that the digital equivalent of an old attic is too much of a copyright liability, preventing the public from browsing the slightly dusty digital card catalog.