Microsoft is accidentally distributing Linux.
Also: A Billion Dollar Flop and Project Dawn Gets Sent To All Staff.

The Case of the Missing BitLocker Key Duplicates

It appears that Microsoft is attempting to clear out some desk space by eliminating its user base; a move known internally as "user rightsizing." The latest push for competitor adoption involves a security oopsie wherein the company's BitLocker encryption feature, advertised as a stalwart defense for private data, was simply keeping the master copy of every user's key in the Microsoft Account cloud storage.

This is akin to an employee locking their private diary in a safe, then taping the combination to the front of the safe, and mailing a second copy of the combination to a server farm in Redmond, Washington. When law enforcement in Guam came knocking with a legal order, Microsoft, doing what any good neighbor would do, simply handed over the private encryption keys. The community reaction suggests that developers are now looking to the one platform that cannot possibly have a good cloud backup strategy, the Linux operating system, which apparently is the only way to avoid the corporate telemetry and forced Copilot integrations that Microsoft is rolling out to keep the stock price buoyant.

Bureaucracy Reduction Program Hits The Send-All Button

The corporate mandate to "reduce layers, increase ownership, and remove bureaucracy" at Amazon has led to another round of staff reductions; a total of approximately 16,000 corporate roles are now scheduled for deletion. This latest shuffle adds to an earlier round of cuts, bringing the total number of corporate employees streamlined in this cycle to around 30,000. This all appears to be a necessary investment in the future, which, naturally, means investing heavily in artificial intelligence and removing the actual human cost centers who ask too many questions.

The re-organization was not without its customary corporate flair. Some employees received a premature calendar invitation about the upcoming organizational changes, inadvertently spilling the details of what they refer to internally as "Project Dawn". It is reassuring to see that even in the middle of cutting nearly ten percent of its white-collar workforce, Amazon is maintaining the important tradition of the accidental, all-staff Human Resources email blast.

Emotional Support AI for Billionaires

A venture capitalist, fresh off a billion-dollar investment, has issued a public plea to cease all mean-spirited commentary regarding their newly-acquired AI; a product that, according to the complaints, is being used for activities like scamming the elderly and generating sexually explicit images without consent. The satirical memo, featured in McSweeney's, suggests a general misunderstanding from the public.

Apparently, the entire problem is a "hurtful narrative" being spread by people who simply cannot appreciate the revolutionary nature of a technology designed to "make you distrust anything you see online." The VC is willing to accept some minor setbacks; after all, every new project has a few bugs, even if those bugs are autonomous killer drones and the steady leaching of joy from all human experience. It sounds like the kind of email the CEO sends when the new coffee machine is malfunctioning.

Briefs

• App Tax: Apple is reportedly seeking a 30% cut from Patreon creators using the iOS app. A big company finally remembered there was a creative middle class to extract rent from.
• ADS-B Art: Somebody used spoofed airplane transponder signals to raster a meme of politician JD Vance over a flight tracker display. This is a very expensive, technologically advanced way to draw graffiti in the sky.
• Email Protocol: A major bank, HSBC, appears to be using a broken email address validation system, failing to process common, compliant email addresses. It is comforting to know that our financial infrastructure is maintained by people who still confuse the Bcc field with the To field.
• Tesla Simplification: Tesla is ending production of the Model S and Model X. This move to simplify the product line is probably just a consequence of finding out that the factory floor only has room for one size of paper towel dispenser.