Amazon finally allows non-Amazon book files
Also TP-Link forgot its password and Apple wants more money

The File Format That Took Two Decades to Approve

Amazon has finally decided that the ePub format is not a highly aggressive, proprietary attack vector, and will now permit users to upload their own DRM-free ePub and PDF documents for download onto Kindle devices in 2026. This move comes after what appears to be a twenty year long internal compliance meeting about whether or not to acknowledge that file formats exist outside of the Amazon ecosystem. The official memo, delivered via the Kindle Direct Publishing community board, frames the change as a customer experience improvement; a classic office blunder where a process that should have taken an afternoon instead required an entire corporate lifecycle of deliberation.

The change is a small, quiet concession from the company that essentially invented the modern eBook experience. One analyst noted that the only reason the change is happening now is because the original team that rejected the idea in 2007 finally retired, allowing the new team to approve the simple feature. The new ability to upload ePubs is just a matter of checking a box, but it is a monumental shift away from the previous strategy, which required users to convert files into one of several proprietary formats just to read their own content. The company tried very hard and failed very badly to control the flow of text.

IoT Security Awareness: The Password Is 'Password'

TP-Link, maker of the consumer-grade Tapo C200 security camera, appears to have forgotten the first slide of the mandatory IT security training. Researchers found that the camera comes with a combination of hardcoded keys, buffer overflows, and several other vulnerabilities that make it an exceptional target for anyone looking to watch you try to find your keys in the morning. This is not malice; it is simply benevolent incompetence.

The official explanation is likely that the keys were simply set to a very secure, non-guessable string like 12345 during the initial product run and then someone forgot to update the main branch before shipping. The fact that this consumer device handles sensitive video data makes the oversight an oopsie on par with "Steve from accounting filing the wrong million dollar receipt."

A Proactive Strategy for Monetization Opportunity

Apple is once again demonstrating its commitment to its investors by adding more ads to its App Store search results. Starting in 2026, the company will introduce new ad placements, a process that is essentially Apple finding new places to put a digital sticky note that says "Buy This." The goal is not user experience; the goal is maximizing opportunity in what they have delicately termed a "search results environment."

This is a classic corporate maneuver: everything, given enough time and enough pressure from the board, eventually becomes an advertisement. The iPhone used to be a phone; now it is an ad delivery platform that can also make phone calls. The tech giant's strategy confirms the cynical worldview of every Systems Administrator; if it moves, monetize it. The official help documents confirming the ad expansion are written with the straight face of an HR memo announcing a mandatory team building exercise.

Self-Loathing Is the New MVP

The top story on the entire news aggregator is a satirical recreation of the front page where the headlines are "honest," such as "I built a buggy internal tool I now have to support forever." The tech industry has apparently reached the point of critical self-awareness where its most important news story is a direct, witty attack on its own reporting habits. This is the collective unconscious of Silicon Valley taking five minutes out of its day to stare at its reflection and say, "Yeah, I probably should have gone into plumbing."

This moment of meta-commentary, which has garnered massive attention, proves the adage that the only thing worse than a self-serious tech pundit is a self-aware one. Simultaneously, another top story featured a clickbait version of the same front page; confirming the industry is stuck between being honest about its flaws and desperately trying to get you to click on something.

Briefs

• WebKit: Introduced CSS Grid Lanes. The browser team is still trying to get the front end developers to adopt features from two years ago; now they have to learn this, too.
• Object Store: The Garage S3 object store is now so reliable you can run it outside datacenters. It sounds like a new, hip way to get vendor lock-in without the convenience of a vendor.
• AI Review: Andrej Karpathy published his LLM Year in Review. It is a mandatory 2025 recap for all employees to prove they know the difference between a transformer and the thing outside the building that keeps blowing up.