So, I was eating alphabet soup for breakfast this morning and the letters
told me that today is tech news day. So,
here I am. I always follow the letters.
Mosilla has officially delivered on their promise of an AI kill switch for
Firefox. Starting with Firefox version 148 scheduled for February 24th, users
will find a new AI controls section in
settings with a block AI enhancements toggle that nukes all current and future
AI features from the browser. This comes after announcements late last year that
Mozilla would be turning Firefox into a modern AI browser, prompting enraged AI
haters the world over to flood online forums demanding these features be
optional, even though it said right there in the blog post that they would
be optional. All of this is happening amidst Mosilla's larger AI strategy,
which is running counter to what most of the tech giants are doing. Mark Surman,
president of the Mosilla Foundation, which owns the Mosilla Corporation,
which makes Firefox. Anyway, he says he's building a rebel alliance of
startups and developers to take on the big tech AI empire. The goal is to make
AI more open and trustworthy and build a mainstream open-source AI ecosystem by
2028, which maybe won't blow up the AI
Death Star, but might blow up the shield generator stationed on AI Endor. We took
this analogy way too far. Mozzilla is not the only one trying to win back the
anti- AI crowd. Remember last Friday when we talked about Windows President
Pavon Davaluri saying that 2026 would be about rebuilding trust? Well, Windows
Central is now further reporting that Microsoft is actively walking back their
AI push. Copilot buttons in Notepad and Paint are under review. And they're
currently exploring ways to evolve the recall feature as they currently
consider it to be a failure along with most other people. But you know what
they say, the greatest teacher failure is. It's just too bad that Disney hasn't
seemed to learn anything from from the failure of the sequels. But anyway, different video. SpaceX has filed with
the FCC to launch up to 1 million
satellites into orbit to serve as data centers for AI, which is frankly going
to do nothing to help Elon beat the super villain allegations. For context,
there are currently only about 15,000
satellites circling Earth in total, and about 10,000 of those are already
Starlink satellites. So this would be an incredibly reasonable 100 times increase
because according to the filing, it's a first step towards becoming a
Cardartesev 2 level civilization, which is evidently a civilization that can
harness the sun's full power. You know, for some reason, I thought we were all
worried about egg prices and inflation. I completely forgot we were supposed to
be super focused on harnessing the sun's full power. But why data center
satellites? Well, they would orbit between 500 and 2,000 km up, communicate
via lasers, and radiate heat into the vacuum of space instead of wreaking
havoc on groundbased water systems, which will still happen, but not because
of the new space-based data centers. This comes as Musk's SpaceX just
announced it's acquiring XAI, which already absorbed Twitter, aka X, last
year. So, this is going to be combining his rockets, Starlink satellites, the X
platform, and Grock all under one roof
ahead of a SpaceX IPO expected to value the company above $1 trillion. All this
so we can make Grock better, which given all the trouble it's been for us
subcartev level one plebs, I fully
support hurling into space. But it made a better Wikipedia,
did it? Notepad++, the popular text
editor, was compromised for the last 6 months of 2025, according to the app's
developers, and Rapid 7, a cyber security firm who did a follow-up
investigation. Apparently, Chinese state affiliated hacker group Lotus Blossom,
compromised the hosting infrastructure behind Notepad++'s update system and
selectively redirected certain targeted users to malicious servers. Not
everyone, they just said, "Fuck these users." in particular. The campaign
began around June 2025. The hackers briefly lost access after an update in
September and then got back in using stolen credentials that were never
rotated. It wasn't until December that someone finally noticed what was
happening, allowing Notepad++ to patch the issue in version 8.8.9, add proper
certificate and signature checks, rotate credentials, and move to a new hosting
provider. Rapid 7 says the affected users were mostly government and
infrastructure related targets in Southeast Asia and Central America. But
even if you don't live there, you never know when Chinese state hackers are
going to decide to ruin your day. So you should probably make sure your Notepad++
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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
spelled quick bits kind of if you kind of like turned if you were like
stupid. Apple has completely redesigned how you buy a Mac online, giving
customers more options for building the computer they want.
Tim, you've changed. I hardly recognize you. Instead of choosing from
preconfigured models, you now build your machine component by component. Display,
chip, memory, storage, even which power adapter you want. What company is this?
Price and delivery time update in real time as you customize. Look, I'm just a
CEO standing in front of a customer
asking them to configure their own Mac.
I love you. Never leave. Not like
Barbara did. Barbara. And in other surprisingly good Apple news, Apple is
adding a new privacy toggle in iOS 26.3
that lets iPhone and iPad users limit how precisely cellular carriers can
track their location. Instead of a street level pin, networks may only see
a rough area without hurting signal quality or emergency services. The catch
is that it only works on newer devices and supported carriers. But hey, it's a
start. Like, my carrier doesn't need to know that I went to McDonald's at 2:00
a.m. and then sell that info to advertisers who will serve me ads for
late night drive-throughs that continues a vicious cycle because I'll keep going.
I don't know, maybe we can get Tim Cook to just disable tracking altogether by bribing him with some Apple turnovers.
My favorite, Amazon is tightening its reigns on sideloading on Fire TV
devices. After first slapping piracy apps with full screen warnings at
launch, Amazon has now moved the roadblock earlier, showing an app
installation blocked message for apps that are flagged as providing unlicensed
content. The company says there are no exceptions and you are absolutely not
able to get around it, which somebody's going to take as a challenge. It pairs
neatly with Amazon's plans for a new Fire TV operating system called Vega OS,
which promises to block sideloading entirety. It's the feature users want.
Guess now you can't promise your mom that the Shadow the Hedgehog app on your
TV is definitely 100%. It's Netflix. It just looks different. Motorola just
launched the new Moto G17, a budget
phone that ships with the last generation Android 15 and somewhat
awkwardly zero promised Android OS
upgrades. As some tech journalists recently discovered, EU rules that
sounded like they require manufacturers to provide 5 years of updates actually
contained a loophole in the form of a very big if. If a company chooses to
provide updates for a device, then those updates must be available for 5 years.
Motorola has simply chosen not to provide OS updates for the Moto G17.
Easy. They have chosen to provide two years of security updates which will
according to EU rules remain available to download for five years after the
phone leaves the market. Does that all make sense? TLDDR, it's all perfectly
legal if you kind of squint. And it's also perfectly legal for us to tell
Motorola to off. And scientists in Shanghai just built a computer chip
inside a fiber thinner than a human hair. And it's absurdly tough. The team
at Fudan University packed about 100,000
transistors per centimeter into a flexible strand that survives washing
machines, extreme heat, and being crushed by 15.6 tons.
15.7 tons. It's done. It's aimed at
smart textiles, VR gear, and even brain
computer interfaces. I just feel like I'm thinking of other things. This is
going to be like an actual functional reasons for robots to have hair. And if
you cut it off, they lose all their power. It's Samson.
But no matter what your hair looks like, I know you have the strength to return
back here on Wednesday for more tech news. The soup says you'll be back. The
soup doesn't lie. Unlike the cake,