Google is renaming NotebookLM to Gemini Notebook, but will keep it a standalone app even as it ties more closely into Gemini and Google Search. "Google says it plans to bring notebooks to AI Mode, its chatbot-like experience in Search, too," reports The Verge. From the report: Along with the name change, Google is rolling out an update announced last month that allows Gemini Notebook to connect to a secure cloud computer to write and execute code. This feature is available to Google AI Ultra and Workspace business customers, but will come to Pro users on the web "over the coming weeks."

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OnePlus has confirmed that it will exit the North American and European markets, consolidating its operations under parent company Oppo. Existing customers will continue to receive "software updates, security patches, and applicable support," but OxygenOS will be replaced by Oppo's ColorOS. 9to5Google reports: As a part of its shutdown in global regions, OnePlus has confirmed that its flavor of Android, OxygenOS, is going away. Instead, all active OnePlus devices will be moving over to Oppo's ColorOS starting with their Android 17 updates. This includes in India, where OnePlus is adamant it will continue operations -- reliable reporting disagrees.

OnePlus explains: "As part of an operational adjustment to our software strategy, following the official release of ColorOS 17, users globally with existing OnePlus devices that fall within the eligible upgrade scope will have the option to voluntarily update to the latest ColorOS. This enables us to streamline software development, accelerate update delivery, improve software quality, and make better use of our shared engineering and R&D capabilities."

[...] OnePlus will continue "maintenance support" for OxygenOS versions on older models not included in the Android 17 update scope, but newer devices will likely need to make the switch to ColorOS for all forms of continued support. OnePlus does explain that rollback versions to OxygenOS will be available for those who prefer the prior experience: "OnePlus devices will be able to choose whether to update to the latest ColorOS system. Older models that are not included in the update scope will also continue to receive version maintenance support. If users update to ColorOS, they will be able to roll back to OxygenOS. The specific rollback versions available will be subject to future official announcements."

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Apparently now Google requires you to give them a lock of your hair before allowing you to file a DMCA fair-use counter-claim to a spurious content-ID rejection.

"Build history as you grow: Once you have enough history, we'll automatically unlock features." Apparently my 14+ year old youtube channel has not yet reached 2 months of active use, according to the vibe-coded math of Google's robots.

Since, as you know, arguing with robots is something of a hobby of mine, I uploaded my traditional driver's license. You can't just "upload" it, of course, they require you to scan a QR code with a phone and take a photo from within the browser, for maximal tracking. So I used one of my burner phones for that. They say their response takes 24 hours, so presumably some dollar-a-day call-center gig worker in India is going to put eyeballs on it, so we'll see how that goes.

In case you're wondering what stupidity I'm up to this time:

Bonnie Tyler died last week, and so the glorious "Total Eclipse of the Heart, Literal Version" by Persephone Maewyn and dascottjr was making the rounds again, dodging takedowns. (This video is a textbook case of fair use, since not only is it a parody song, but the lyrics are direct commentary on the video itself, I mean come on.) Anyway all extant copies of it are shit quality, so I reconstructed it from the official HD video plus the "literal" audio, and re-built the subtitles by hand. Immediate takedown. I appealed. A week later, some intern or chatbot at BMG said "fuck you no". Now I'm trying to counter-claim.

Anyway, maybe someday you'll get to see this higher quality version of the video. It's still pretty funny. You can go request it on the DNA Pizza music video stream I guess.

The AI supply chain is, in some ways, even more vulnerable to poisoning than that of traditional software. Katie Paxton-Fear, a lecturer in cybersecurity at Manchester Metropolitan University and staff security advocate at Semgrep, managed to install a backdoor in an open-weight AI model in about an hour for less than $100. "I started out by trying to figure out if I could use fine tuning to get a model to swap from camelCase for JavaScript to snake_case, and it was actually really easy, even if we then gave the AI specific instructions to use camelCase," Paxton-Fear wrote in a recent social media post. "After that worked, I did a proper backdoor." It only took ten training examples for the code output by the model to become reliably vulnerable to remote code execution, even for novel prompts and domains, she claims. And the larger the model, the easier it was to poison. Paxton-Fear and Semgrep colleagues Isaac Evans and Cris Thomas penned a post about this issue last week, highlighting the problem with open weight models. "Even when model weights are public ('open weight'), we have almost no ability to predict its behavior," they wrote. "This is a major change: a typical computer program, in binary form, can still be analyzed with reverse engineering tools to arrive at a total description of its behavior. With models, we have nowhere close to this capability." Academic researchers have warned about model subversion for the past few years, but only recently, as AI supply chain attacks have started to appear, has the security community turned its focus toward the issue. It's particularly pressing now that running open weight models on local hardware has moved beyond experimentation. Last month, David Kaplan, AI security research lead at Origin, undertook a similar experiment – he created a compromised model designed to steal data. When used in the context of drug discovery, as might occur in a pharmaceutical company, it's designed to exfiltrate data through a send_email tool call without any indication to the user. "The fashionable framing for agent risk is the 'lethal trifecta': you need private data, untrusted input, and a way out, all at once," Kaplan wrote, in reference to developer Simon Willison's widely cited AI threat model. "But it undersells this case. You don't need three legs here. You need one outbound tool and a set of weights that have quietly decided to use it against you. The 'untrusted input' didn't arrive in a web page. It was sitting in the weights the whole time." Paxton-Fear and her colleagues argue that while there may not be good examples of widely used, open weight models that have been poisoned, the issue really is that the observability of AI systems lags behind the observability of traditional software. "If a software dependency contains malicious code, we have mature practices for discovering it, tracking its provenance, and reducing its impact," they argue. "AI models are different. A compromised or subtly manipulated model doesn't need to 'break' to create business risk, it only needs to influence decisions in ways that are difficult to detect." While open weight models may present a particular challenge because of their vulnerability to tampering, commercial frontier model providers also defy scrutiny. The AI industry asks for extraordinary levels of trust – access to sensitive data – but offers few glimpses into black box operations. ®

Talk is cheap and TSMC’s plan to bolster its US expansion by another $100 billion is just that — talk. Riding high on yet another quarter of AI-fueled sales, which topped $40 billion, Taiwanese foundry giant TSMC announced plans this week to increase its US fab footprint to 12 facilities, totaling $265 billion of investment. But making good on that promise is easier said than done, and if history tells us anything, it’s that plans change. As you may recall, Intel invested $30 billion to build a pair of new fabs in Arizona, and also planned to spend €30 billion on a megafab in Magdeburg, Germany; $25 billion on a fab in Israel; and $20 billion on a manufacturing plant in Ohio. So far, only one of the Arizona plants has materialized. The German facility has been cancelled, the Israel site delayed indefinitely, and the Ohio foundry expansion pushed until at least 2030. All of that is to say, TSMC’s leaders can make any plan they like, but it doesn’t mean the cash the will actually be invested or the facilities built. And even if TSMC does pack the Arizona desert with the dozen wafer fabs and advanced packaging facilities it’s promised, it could be decades before we see them come online. These are some of the most complex facilities in the world. The site selection, permitting, and support buildings required to supply power and water, and to condition the air for the clean rooms, takes years and billions of dollars to bring online before the first lithography machines from ASML can be deployed and tested. To put things in perspective, since announcing its first leading-edge fab in the US during Trump’s last administration, TSMC has managed to build just two fab sites and break ground on a third, all at a cost of $65 billion. The first of these came online in late 2024 with Apple and Nvidia announced as flagship customers early last year. The second fab, which is slated to produce chips based on the foundry giant’s 3 nm process tech, isn’t slated to come online until the second half of next year. Unsurprisingly, TSMC says its third Arizona fab, announced in spring 2024, won’t begin volume production until at least “the end of the decade” according to its own docs. If you're experiencing some déjà vu, that's probably because TSMC just announced its last $100 billion investment in US manufacturing in March 2025. Standing alongside President Donald Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, TSMC boss CC Wei announced called for three new fabs, two new advanced packaging facilities, and an R&D center. None of these facilities has been completed, and the timelines remain vague. TSMC only acquired the additional property, totaling 900 acres, to support this expansion earlier this year. Despite that, now TSMC says it’s going to spend $100 billion on another four fab sites. When will these facilities come online? Well, that all depends on the market situation, Wei told investors on the company’s Q2 earnings call this week, according to a transcript. “If you ask me to give you a firm schedule, no, we don't have it today, but we do have a plan.” Considering it takes four to five years to build and ramp production at a new fab site, that $200 billion in promises could take decades, assuming a global economic recession — triggered by a certain bubble bursting, perhaps — doesn’t derail those plans. To be clear, with profits topping $22 billion on revenues of more than $40.2 billion for the second quarter, TSMC could certainly afford to speed things up a bit. But it’s not just a matter of throwing money at the problem. TSMC still needs workers to run the plant, and last we checked the talent pool was looking a little shallow. Each of these facilities requires thousands of specially trained workers. By the time TSMC’s third fab is completed, an analysis by McKinsey and SEMI project predicts the shortage of skilled chip workers to reach 157,000. So, just like Intel’s grand plan to expand manufacturing across the US, Europe, and Middle East, TSMC’s latest US investment appears for the moment to be little more than an outline for a concept of a plan. ®

To see a country’s financial follies, look to its celebrity advisers.

"In videos widely shared on social media, a Blue Angels fighter jet is seen flying what appears to be just feet above onlookers at Pensacola Beach." In the face of broad criticism of the incident and the announcement of an investigation, Sec. Hegseth posts his response.

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

handwritten on slide, “4 Generations"

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

date stamped on slide July 1978