White House nixes NASA unions amid budget uncertainty
Summary The White House issued an executive order on 28 August 2025 adding NASA to the National Security Exclusions list, which removes many federal labour protections for agency staff. The…
Microsoft-backed boffins show mega speed boost with hollow-core fiber
Summary A Microsoft-backed team (linked to the University of Southampton and spinoff Lumenisity) published new research in Nature Photonics describing a refined double-nested antiresonant nodeless hollow-core fibre (DNANF) design. The…
Laravel inventor tells devs to quit writing ‘cathedrals of complexity’
Laravel inventor tells devs to quit writing ‘cathedrals of complexity’ Summary Taylor Otwell, creator and long-time maintainer of the PHP framework Laravel, urges developers to avoid over-engineering and “clever” solutions…
Alibaba Cloud reveals its uptime and efficiency secrets developed by in-house network boffins
Alibaba Cloud reveals its uptime and efficiency secrets developed by in-house network boffins Summary Alibaba Cloud has published papers (to be presented at SIGCOMM) detailing three in-house networking systems that…
Humans Are Being Hired to Make AI Slop Look Less Sloppy
Humans Are Being Hired to Make AI Slop Look Less Sloppy Summary Freelancers and creative professionals are being hired to fix and polish AI-generated work that falls short of client…
OpenAI Is Scanning Users’ ChatGPT Conversations and Reporting Content To Police
OpenAI Is Scanning Users’ ChatGPT Conversations and Reporting Content To Police Summary OpenAI has disclosed that it scans user ChatGPT conversations and routes potentially harmful chats into specialised review pipelines.…
400 ‘Tech Utopian’ Refuges Consider New Crypto-Friendly State
Nearly 400 students and entrepreneurs have gathered at Forest City, Malaysia, to attend “Network School,” a programme founded by Balaji Srinivasan that blends product sprints, coding, seminars on statecraft and…
First ‘AI Music Creator’ Signed by Record Label. More Ahead, or Just a Copyright Quandry?
First ‘AI Music Creator’ Signed by Record Label. More Ahead, or Just a Copyright Quandry? Summary British creator Oliver McCann — who says he has no musical training — is…
Lawsuit Says Amazon Prime Video Misleads When You ‘Buy’ a Long-Term Streaming Rental
Lawsuit Says Amazon Prime Video Misleads When You ‘Buy’ a Long-Term Streaming Rental Summary A plaintiff has sued Amazon Prime Video, arguing the service misleads customers by labelling time-limited streaming…
Blizzard’s ‘Diablo’ Devs Unionize. There’s Now 3,500 Unionized Microsoft Workers
Blizzard’s ‘Diablo’ devs unionise — 3,500 Microsoft workers now unionised Summary Over 450 developers from Blizzard’s Diablo team have voted to form a union with the Communications Workers of America…