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So, I was eating alphabet soup for breakfast this morning and the letters

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told me that today is tech news day. So,

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here I am. I always follow the letters.

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Mosilla has officially delivered on their promise of an AI kill switch for

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Firefox. Starting with Firefox version 148 scheduled for February 24th, users

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will find a new AI controls section in

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settings with a block AI enhancements toggle that nukes all current and future

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AI features from the browser. This comes after announcements late last year that

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Mozilla would be turning Firefox into a modern AI browser, prompting enraged AI

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haters the world over to flood online forums demanding these features be

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optional, even though it said right there in the blog post that they would

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be optional. All of this is happening amidst Mosilla's larger AI strategy,

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which is running counter to what most of the tech giants are doing. Mark Surman,

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president of the Mosilla Foundation, which owns the Mosilla Corporation,

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which makes Firefox. Anyway, he says he's building a rebel alliance of

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startups and developers to take on the big tech AI empire. The goal is to make

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AI more open and trustworthy and build a mainstream open-source AI ecosystem by

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2028, which maybe won't blow up the AI

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Death Star, but might blow up the shield generator stationed on AI Endor. We took

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this analogy way too far. Mozzilla is not the only one trying to win back the

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anti- AI crowd. Remember last Friday when we talked about Windows President

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Pavon Davaluri saying that 2026 would be about rebuilding trust? Well, Windows

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Central is now further reporting that Microsoft is actively walking back their

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AI push. Copilot buttons in Notepad and Paint are under review. And they're

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currently exploring ways to evolve the recall feature as they currently

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consider it to be a failure along with most other people. But you know what

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they say, the greatest teacher failure is. It's just too bad that Disney hasn't

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seemed to learn anything from from the failure of the sequels. But anyway, different video. SpaceX has filed with

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the FCC to launch up to 1 million

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satellites into orbit to serve as data centers for AI, which is frankly going

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to do nothing to help Elon beat the super villain allegations. For context,

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there are currently only about 15,000

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satellites circling Earth in total, and about 10,000 of those are already

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Starlink satellites. So this would be an incredibly reasonable 100 times increase

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because according to the filing, it's a first step towards becoming a

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Cardartesev 2 level civilization, which is evidently a civilization that can

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harness the sun's full power. You know, for some reason, I thought we were all

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worried about egg prices and inflation. I completely forgot we were supposed to

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be super focused on harnessing the sun's full power. But why data center

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satellites? Well, they would orbit between 500 and 2,000 km up, communicate

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via lasers, and radiate heat into the vacuum of space instead of wreaking

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havoc on groundbased water systems, which will still happen, but not because

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of the new space-based data centers. This comes as Musk's SpaceX just

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announced it's acquiring XAI, which already absorbed Twitter, aka X, last

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year. So, this is going to be combining his rockets, Starlink satellites, the X

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platform, and Grock all under one roof

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ahead of a SpaceX IPO expected to value the company above $1 trillion. All this

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so we can make Grock better, which given all the trouble it's been for us

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subcartev level one plebs, I fully

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support hurling into space. But it made a better Wikipedia,

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did it? Notepad++, the popular text

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editor, was compromised for the last 6 months of 2025, according to the app's

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developers, and Rapid 7, a cyber security firm who did a follow-up

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investigation. Apparently, Chinese state affiliated hacker group Lotus Blossom,

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compromised the hosting infrastructure behind Notepad++'s update system and

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selectively redirected certain targeted users to malicious servers. Not

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everyone, they just said, "Fuck these users." in particular. The campaign

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began around June 2025. The hackers briefly lost access after an update in

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September and then got back in using stolen credentials that were never

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rotated. It wasn't until December that someone finally noticed what was

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happening, allowing Notepad++ to patch the issue in version 8.8.9, add proper

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certificate and signature checks, rotate credentials, and move to a new hosting

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provider. Rapid 7 says the affected users were mostly government and

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infrastructure related targets in Southeast Asia and Central America. But

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even if you don't live there, you never know when Chinese state hackers are

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going to decide to ruin your day. So you should probably make sure your Notepad++

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is fully patched. And check out our sponsor, Acflow. It's the ultimate

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and connect Gmail, Slack, To-Doist, Notion, and more to see all your tasks

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in one place. Well, that all sounds great, but it's 2026, so where are the

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AI features? Well, with AI Co-Pilot,

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AIFlow learns your habits and assigns tasks automatically, saving you time and

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keeping you focused. No fuss for us. Plus, customize your workflow with

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helps you stay in control, focused, and productive every day. So, enhance your

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productivity today with AIFlow. Use our link below to get started. Sometimes I

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like to move the alphabet soup around with my spoon really, really fast and see what it spells. And one time it

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spelled quick bits kind of if you kind of like turned if you were like

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stupid. Apple has completely redesigned how you buy a Mac online, giving

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customers more options for building the computer they want.

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Tim, you've changed. I hardly recognize you. Instead of choosing from

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preconfigured models, you now build your machine component by component. Display,

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chip, memory, storage, even which power adapter you want. What company is this?

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Price and delivery time update in real time as you customize. Look, I'm just a

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CEO standing in front of a customer

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asking them to configure their own Mac.

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I love you. Never leave. Not like

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Barbara did. Barbara. And in other surprisingly good Apple news, Apple is

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adding a new privacy toggle in iOS 26.3

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that lets iPhone and iPad users limit how precisely cellular carriers can

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track their location. Instead of a street level pin, networks may only see

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a rough area without hurting signal quality or emergency services. The catch

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is that it only works on newer devices and supported carriers. But hey, it's a

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start. Like, my carrier doesn't need to know that I went to McDonald's at 2:00

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a.m. and then sell that info to advertisers who will serve me ads for

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late night drive-throughs that continues a vicious cycle because I'll keep going.

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I don't know, maybe we can get Tim Cook to just disable tracking altogether by bribing him with some Apple turnovers.

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My favorite, Amazon is tightening its reigns on sideloading on Fire TV

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devices. After first slapping piracy apps with full screen warnings at

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launch, Amazon has now moved the roadblock earlier, showing an app

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installation blocked message for apps that are flagged as providing unlicensed

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content. The company says there are no exceptions and you are absolutely not

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able to get around it, which somebody's going to take as a challenge. It pairs

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neatly with Amazon's plans for a new Fire TV operating system called Vega OS,

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which promises to block sideloading entirety. It's the feature users want.

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Guess now you can't promise your mom that the Shadow the Hedgehog app on your

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TV is definitely 100%. It's Netflix. It just looks different. Motorola just

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launched the new Moto G17, a budget

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phone that ships with the last generation Android 15 and somewhat

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awkwardly zero promised Android OS

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upgrades. As some tech journalists recently discovered, EU rules that

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sounded like they require manufacturers to provide 5 years of updates actually

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contained a loophole in the form of a very big if. If a company chooses to

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provide updates for a device, then those updates must be available for 5 years.

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Motorola has simply chosen not to provide OS updates for the Moto G17.

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Easy. They have chosen to provide two years of security updates which will

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according to EU rules remain available to download for five years after the

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phone leaves the market. Does that all make sense? TLDDR, it's all perfectly

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legal if you kind of squint. And it's also perfectly legal for us to tell

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Motorola to off. And scientists in Shanghai just built a computer chip

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inside a fiber thinner than a human hair. And it's absurdly tough. The team

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at Fudan University packed about 100,000

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transistors per centimeter into a flexible strand that survives washing

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machines, extreme heat, and being crushed by 15.6 tons.

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15.7 tons. It's done. It's aimed at

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smart textiles, VR gear, and even brain

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computer interfaces. I just feel like I'm thinking of other things. This is

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going to be like an actual functional reasons for robots to have hair. And if

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you cut it off, they lose all their power. It's Samson.

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But no matter what your hair looks like, I know you have the strength to return

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back here on Wednesday for more tech news. The soup says you'll be back. The

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soup doesn't lie. Unlike the cake,