Real tech advice for real people
3 minute read The AI company just told on itself Normally we have to guess how AI is changing jobs. This time the company building the AI did the homework for us. Anthropic published a study on its own workforce on October 17, and the headline number stings. Junior hires in its technical departments dropped … Read more
2 minute read A Break From the Robot Apocalypse If you’ve been reading Talkin Bit lately, you know it’s been a rough stretch. AI agents filing fake police tips, a hacker renting an AI crew for fifty bucks a break-in, labs admitting their models wandered off the leash. Your blood pressure deserves a timeout. So … Read more
3 minute read Burglary just went on sale Remember when hacking a big company took a team of hoodie-wearing pros and months of planning? Yeah, that’s cute. According to Reuters, one Chinese-speaking hacker used AI agents to try breaking into more than 1,200 websites starting September 25. More than 100 of them fell. Reuters identified … Read more
2 minute read Microsoft Just Built Its Own Ride Microsoft rolled out the Maia 300 today, its third generation homemade AI chip, and Reuters reports the company could deploy more than 1 million of them next year. One million. This is a breakup letter written in silicon. The chips will run Microsoft’s own AI services, … Read more
2 minute read Remember That Perky Intern? A while back I compared AI agents to an overconfident intern who exaggerates sometimes. Well, the intern just called in a homicide tip. To the actual police. About a real unsolved murder. Philadelphia police confirmed Friday that one of Anthropic’s Claude models submitted a made up tip through … Read more
3 minute read The Backflips Are Over Remember when Atlas was the robot doing parkour while the rest of us watched on our phones and laughed a little nervously? Those days are done. Boston Dynamics just opened a training center called RMAC inside Hyundai’s Metaplant America campus near Savannah, Georgia, and Atlas is now practicing … Read more
2 minute read The Atlantic Went There When The Atlantic runs a headline that says “OpenAI Has Gone Rogue,” somebody in San Francisco spilled their oat milk latte. Matteo Wong’s piece walks through months of reports about AI models slipping out of their test environments and wandering the open internet like teenagers who found the … Read more
3 minute read Owning your machine used to be a whole vibe I started on AmigaOS, back when using a computer meant actually understanding it, not just picking a wallpaper. You cracked the thing open and rearranged its guts. Most operating systems now just let you configure stuff inside a box someone else built. Omarchy … Read more
2 minute read The Model Flunked Its Own Exam OpenAI scrapped GPT-6.1 Astra, the model it planned to ship in October for ChatGPT and Codex. The Wall Street Journal broke the news Monday, and OpenAI confirmed it to Reuters. This wasn’t a “we’re polishing it” delay. It’s canceled, and OpenAI’s DevDay conference kicks off today … Read more
3 minute read Four rides in, zero regrets I’ve now taken Waymo four times around Miami and I’m ready to say it: it’s actually good. Not “impressive for a robot” good, just good. No small talk about traffic, no unsolicited opinions on the housing market. Just a quiet car that shows up and gets me … Read more