Just Wait Until Meta Figures Out It Can Read Itself
Meta Wants To Read Your Brain. The Real Problem Is The Write Permission.
So, Meta is playing around with AI models that can, apparently, read a 'brain-wide signal'. I get it. It's the ultimate telemetry, and they've already got 80% of the world's eyeballs, so why not the last bit of wetware? But someone finally asked the obvious question: if a model can read the signal, why couldn't the brain? The thought process is that whatever protocol they are building for input will inevitably be discovered, reverse-engineered by the very system it's reading, and then you get a recursive feedback loop that makes every DDoS attack you've ever dealt with look like a polite conversation.
We’re sitting here debugging race conditions in databases, and these guys are trying to introduce one into the human consciousness for the sake of ad impressions. It's like rigging the steering wheel of a fully autonomous truck to respond to a TikTok filter. And then asking why the truck is trying to drive into a wall. Just write some clean documentation for once. Is that too much to ask?
Gnome Shell: Keeping AI Out Of The Sandbox, Literally
The GNOME Foundation has decided to forbid Shell Extensions that were made using AI-generated code. I’m not even mad. This is peak Open Source energy. While the rest of the industry is in a panic over how to jam more AI into everything, Gnome is quietly putting up a sign that says, "No shirt, no shoes, no synthetic code, no service."
It’s probably about legal liability, or licensing, or maybe just the sheer existential horror of merging a pull request where the contributor admits they haven't actually read any of the code. But mostly, I think they just want the errors to be honest, human errors. Because those you can fix. You try fixing a bug generated by a stochastic parrot; you’ll be there until the sun burns out. Respect the principle, anyway.
The Price of Churn
On the one hand, Intel is reportedly closing in on a $1.6 billion deal to acquire an AI chip startup called SambaNova. On the other hand, Apple just lost a contempt appeal in the Epic case, which means they're still being told off by the courts for how they handle their App Store. You got your old guard paying out big to look relevant and your other old guard losing in court because they can't stop being themselves. It's the same cycle every week. Everyone keeps playing the game, just with bigger numbers and slightly dumber legal arguments. I'm going to need another coffee... or maybe the one I have is enough. Who can tell.
Briefs: The Log Dump
- A study suggests that online piracy can actually boost box office revenue. Incentive structure broken. Carry on.
- China hit a $1 Trillion trade surplus for the first time. That's a lot of things leaving the docks.
- Someone wrote a post explaining that you should "never build a CMS." Good advice, ignored universally since 1998.
- The CIA lost a nuclear device in the Himalayas a few decades back. Sometimes the best systems administration is just admitting you lost the hardware and moving on.