SEC approves new satellite branch office.
Also your VPN reports to the same parent company.

The New Dallas Branch: Where The Compliance Paperwork Is Optional

The Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, officially signed off on the Texas Stock Exchange; the first new national exchange in the US in decades. TXSE will be based in Dallas, not New York, which is apparently the financial equivalent of moving your entire department from the suffocating, cubicle heavy main campus to a smaller, newer office park where the coffee is actually decent. The new exchange is designed to be fully electronic and aims to attract companies that are maybe a little tired of the corporate atmosphere of the old guard, or perhaps just interested in avoiding certain non-core business requirements like filling out the correct expense report forms.

The underlying goal seems to be providing an alternative for companies wary of the costs and regulations of the established New York entities; which is a very polite way of saying the new office will have fewer middle managers constantly checking to see if your monitor is locked. The HN commentariat noted the push to attract energy and infrastructure listings, which is a subtle hint that the new branch will prioritize the departments that bring in the big revenue, not the ones who spend all day arguing about the correct font in the mandatory quarterly memo. The fact that anyone still thinks a new exchange will be more efficient or less corrupt than the last few dozen is truly an inspiring testament to human optimism, or maybe just a sign that someone is desperate to avoid the NYC rush hour traffic.

Everyone In This Department Reports To Three Managers

The question of who really owns Express VPN, Nord, and Surfshark finally has a color coded org chart; and the answer, as always, is far less interesting than the brand names would suggest. It turns out that many of the major Virtual Private Network providers are actually consolidated under a few holding companies, which is like finding out that the aggressive young startup, the reliable old utility, and the quirky boutique firm all actually share the same accounting department. Kape Technologies, for instance, owns a handful of the biggest names in the privacy space, despite having a history that is less than sparkling; an interesting tidbit the HN comment section pointed out as a key element of the irony.

When you realize the person running your secure tunnel also owns the person running the secure tunnel next to yours, the concept of a 'private' network starts to feel less like a hidden room and more like a shared, slightly uncomfortable bus ride. Everyone is very concerned about privacy; which is why the department tasked with protecting our privacy is secretly run by a handful of people who specialize in acquiring things and then rebranding them. It is a classic tale of corporate efficiency; why maintain thirty separate chains of command when you can just funnel all the requests for anonymity into three separate, but ultimately identical, HR departments.

Microsoft's Copilot Fails Commercial Landing

Microsoft 365 Copilot, the AI assistant designed to automate the soul crushing drudgery of the modern office, is reportedly experiencing a commercial failure, mostly due to low adoption and a general inability for companies to figure out what, exactly, the thing is supposed to be doing. This is not a story of the AI being wrong; it is a story of the AI being expensive and requiring a non-trivial amount of management overhead to justify its license cost. Microsoft tried very hard to build the office intern that actually knew what it was doing, but instead they built the expensive, complex, custom espresso machine that requires a maintenance contract and still manages to leak lukewarm water onto the power strip.

The entire endeavor highlights the "benevolent incompetence" of the modern tech giant. Microsoft is not maliciously trying to fleece people; they are sincerely trying to solve a problem that only truly exists at the scale of their balance sheet. The consensus from the business side is that spending money on the flashy AI helper is still less critical than hiring an actual human who can be relied upon to not file a purchase order for five thousand pencils after asking for a quick draft email.

Briefs

• Discord Security Mishap: The customer service data breach at Discord involved leaked user info and scanned photo IDs, all via a third party support provider. This is why you never let the outsourced cleaning crew have the master keys to the server closet.
• UK Continues to Ask Nicely: The UK Government is still attempting to force Apple and others to implement a form of backdoor access to encryption; a perennial corporate request, like asking the network team if they can just "unblock one website, just for a minute."
• Nvidia's Telecom Bubble Encore: An analysis suggests that Nvidia's reliance on large vendor financing deals with its customers may echo the circular financing of the dot com/telecom bubble. Apparently, all good financial drama deserves a sequel with a bigger budget.