OpenAI released models to the public.
And Microsoft Hides the Good Stapler

The Corporate Memo Titled "Open" is Now Public

OpenAI, a company famous for its aggressive policy of having two doors, one marked 'Open' and the other marked 'Profit', has finally unveiled its suite of open models. This initiative, referred to internally as "Operation Please Stop Calling Us Closed", is the logical next step for an organization that has mastered the art of simultaneous competition and collaboration with its own user base. The models are open, but only in the sense that the break room is open; you can look, but do not touch the fancy new espresso machine.

The announcement is accompanied by the debut of Harmony, a new response format developed by OpenAI that is essentially the corporate equivalent of dictating how one should file their expense reports. Harmony aims to provide a standardized output structure for the open-weight models, ensuring that even when the underlying data is accessible, the final product still looks exactly like something an expensive San Francisco startup designed. The goal is to maximize utility, or perhaps just to minimize the chance that someone uses the model to write a coherent, non-optimized business email.

DeepMind is Building a Simulation to Prove Our World is Boring

Google DeepMind's latest project is Genie 3, a new "world model" that is supposedly a frontier in generalized video generation. DeepMind Vice President Dr. Scott Jenson has been tasked with creating a highly realistic, interactive simulation of the observable universe, or at least a highly realistic interactive simulation of what happens when you accidentally reply-all to a sensitive email. The new world model aims to generate coherent, realistic video from single images and text prompts.

This is not just about making better movie trailers; this is about teaching an AI to understand the tedious, complex mechanics of reality. DeepMind is patiently working to build a digital sandbox where the AI can practice the critical life skill of attending a meeting that absolutely could have been an email. Meanwhile, Anthropic, not to be outdone in the AI race, released its own update, Claude Opus 4.1, which presumably fixes whatever existential dread was baked into version 4.0.

Mandatory Office Marriage Aims to Save Chip Department

In a move that feels less like market economics and more like a forced marriage at a medieval trade summit, the United States government is reportedly pressuring TSMC to acquire a significant 49 percent stake in Intel. This corporate matchmaking is apparently an attempt to secure tariff relief for Taiwan, proving once again that global supply chain resilience often boils down to a messy, heavily regulated custody battle.

TSMC, a leading manufacturing expert, is being asked to subsidize and partner with Intel, a company currently struggling to deliver key product roadmaps. This is the equivalent of a perfectly organized colleague being told they must now share their immaculate desk with the office slob as a condition of receiving their Christmas bonus. The drama is compounded by the news that TSMC is already dealing with internal security issues, with employees allegedly attempting to steal trade secrets related to the iPhone 18 chip process. Apparently, everyone wants to steal the recipe, but no one wants to do the dishes.

The Paperclip Blocker Finally Clears Security Checkpoint

After years of being told to wait outside by the corporate security guard, uBlock Origin Lite is now officially available for Safari. This is a massive win for the weary web browser user, a person who has spent the last decade staring at popups and auto-playing video ads that sound like a garbage disposal eating a microphone. Apple's ecosystem finally permits a lightweight tool designed to block the worst excesses of the modern web.

The battle for ad blocking on Apple's platform has been long and arduous, mostly because Apple is very protective of what kind of software gets to share the break room fridge. The arrival of uBlock Origin Lite means the average internet user can now enjoy a faster, cleaner browsing experience, or at least a browsing experience where they are only tracked by two dozen companies instead of three dozen. Progress is progress.

Briefs

• Budgeting Oversight: Anthropic's paid credits now expire after one year. Remember to use all your prepaid cloud compute before the annual financial review, or the money evaporates, like your motivation on a Friday afternoon.
• Big Pharma's Fountain of Youth: The drug Ozempic, originally designed to help with diabetes, is now showing anti-aging effects in trials. The tech industry can now pivot from trying to achieve digital immortality to actual, physical immortality, provided they are willing to take a weekly shot and stop eating entire pizzas after every product launch.
• New Industry Title: An analysis finds that scientific fraud has officially become an 'industry'. This is great news for the consultants who specialize in 'Research Integrity Auditing'; they finally have a thriving market to exploit.