DNS update bypasses mandatory ID check.
Also LinkedIn made it official and the EU saw your messages.

The IT Department Found a Shortcut Around Compliance

DNS provider NextDNS announced the launch of its "Bypass Age Verification" feature, a technical workaround to a growing political problem: mandatory digital ID checks. Companies, facing new regional regulations like the UK's Online Safety Bill, are increasingly requiring users to submit personal documents such as government IDs or selfies to access content. NextDNS decided this was essentially a massive, distributed corporate data harvesting initiative and, like any good SysAdmin, found a way to not do the paperwork.

The feature works by utilizing DNS level geo spoofing, which is a surprisingly elegant name for the IT equivalent of hanging a towel over the security camera. When a user in a country with strict ID requirements attempts to access a blocked site, NextDNS intercepts the domain request and routes it through a proxy server in a location that does not require the user to upload their driver’s license to a random server farm today. It is positioned as a privacy protection measure against handing over sensitive government documents to third party websites, which is completely reasonable, if slightly chaotic. The feature is manually enabled, a classic corporate CYA move that confirms users acknowledge they are, in fact, adults, so the service does not have to ask again.

HR Confirms Algorithm Incentivizes Vapid Engagement

The professional networking platform owned by Microsoft, LinkedIn, has finally had its internal reward structure laid bare: mediocrity is a feature, not a bug. An analysis from entrepreneur Elliot C. Smith detailed how the engagement driven algorithm prioritizes low effort, high visibility content; the kind that makes users feel comfortable, rather than challenged. It is the digital version of a manager only praising you for a project you finished five years ago. This reward cycle favors shallow content, such as generic motivational quotes and self congratulatory updates about minor wins, over genuine professional discourse or substantive technical work.

The system successfully creates a destructive feedback loop where users must chase viral appeal to stay visible, resulting in an endless stream of performative posts that one could describe as "toxic mediocrity." LinkedIn wants you on LinkedIn, not getting valuable work done, because engagement correlates directly with ad clicks and premium conversions. Professionals are simply gaming the new corporate soft skills matrix, and everyone is too afraid to post anything truly insightful for fear of upsetting a current or future employer, cementing the platform as a marketplace of superficial self marketing.

The EU Is Installing AI In The Company Chat Application

The European Union, determined to prove that regulatory bodies can also execute an enormous, technically complex surveillance program, is moving ahead with its "Chat Control" regulation. Formally known as the Child Sexual Abuse Regulation, the proposal would effectively mandate that all messaging platforms, including Signal and WhatsApp, implement government mandated scanning technology. This technology would use AI to analyze every private communication, photo, and email before transmission, turning every device into a mandatory government surveillance tool.

The entire operation is the largest IT security failure imaginable, essentially rendering the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) irrelevant because a new, separate law simply supersedes the privacy protections. The most critical feature of this mandatory internal review is that the accounts of political figures are reportedly exempt from the surveillance, making the project a perfect case study in benign, bureaucratic incompetence that only impacts the lower tiers. Internal EU legal warnings have already been ignored, noting the measure "highly probably" constitutes the general and indiscriminate surveillance the EU Court of Justice has repeatedly rejected.

Briefs

• Automotive Compliance: Hyundai wants customers who bought the Ioniq 5 to pay for their own cybersecurity patch. This is what happens when you let the subscription service team near the firmware department; expect a prompt pop up requiring $10.99 for airbag updates.
• Legacy Tech: ArchiveTeam has finally finished archiving all the old goo.gl short links. This enormous effort saves all the abandoned project documentation and ancient blog posts that Google lost interest in a decade ago; a true victory against digital decay.
• Infrastructure Failure: Microsoft's latest Windows 11 24H2 update is reportedly breaking SSDs and HDDs, which may corrupt user data. This is not a bug; it is a feature that encourages cloud migration and discourages keeping important documents on your local machine.