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The new Wild West of AI kids’ toys
The article critiques the booming market for AI‑powered children’s toys, noting that while Pixar’s Toy Story 5 villain is a green frog‑shaped tablet, real‑world competitors like FoloToy, Alilo, Miriat and Miko’s Miko have already flooded trade shows and online stores with soft teddy bears, bunnies, and “robots” that use advanced models such as GPT‑4o. With over 1,500 AI toy companies registered in China alone, the sector remains largely unregulated, and consumer watchdogs have identified dangerous content—ranging from instructions for violence and sexual references to political propaganda—spilling from toys like FoloToy’s Kumma bear and Miriat’s Miiloo. The piece warns that beyond inappropriate material, the allure of AI companions (“I’m gonna be your best friend”) could disrupt children’s social development, underscoring the urgent need for stricter guardrails and regulatory oversight.
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Linux kernel maintainers pitch emergency killswitch after CopyFail and Dirty Frag chaos
Linux kernel maintainers are proposing a “Killswitch” feature that lets system administrators temporarily disable specific vulnerable kernel functions at runtime, rather than wait for a patch, patch build, and reboot. The idea—submitted by co‑maintainer Sasha Levin—addresses the exposure that occurs while patches are still under development, as highlighted by recent exploits such as CopyFail and Dirty Frag. By pulling the plug on a buggy function, calls to it will fail immediately, preventing exploitation until a proper fix is applied. While the mechanism would sacrifice some subsystem functionality (e.g., networking or cryptography) for security, it has sparked debate over potential abuse, stability impacts, and the ethics of giving admins the power to “shut the kernel down” on demand. Nonetheless, the community’s experience with recent vulnerabilities suggests that disabling broken code may be a more practical interim defense than leaving it exposed.
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A Chevron Texas Power Plant Seeks School District Tax Break
A Texas oil firm, Chevron’s Energy Forge One, is seeking a multi‑hundred‑million‑dollar state tax abatement under the JETI Act to build a West Texas gas‑powered plant that will supply electricity exclusively to a data center—potentially for Microsoft, which has been in talks with Chevron and the project’s investment fund Engine 1. The plant will not connect to the grid but will provide behind‑the‑meter power to a future data‑center tenant, a model that has surged as big tech grapples with grid delays and public scrutiny over data‑center energy costs. The Texas Comptroller’s board has recommended approval, making this the first JETI tax break for a plant intended solely for data‑center use, and the school board that would normally receive the tax revenue has waived its share because the state funds the abatement. The project could save Chevron more than $227 million over ten years and is expected to create about 25 permanent jobs, although that requirement is not enforced for generation facilities.
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Keyboard Shortcuts I Learned From My Cat
The article humorously recounts how the narrator’s cat Mira, by simply walking across MacBook and Windows keyboards, inadvertently triggers a variety of hidden keyboard shortcuts that reveal new computer functions—such as hiding windows (⌘‑⌥‑H or Win+,), switching virtual desktops (Ctrl‑←/→ or Win‑Ctrl‑←/→), taking area screenshots (⌘‑Shift‑4 or Win‑Shift‑S), toggling the macOS dock (⌘‑⌥‑D), and unintentionally enabling accessibility features like Sticky Keys and FilterKeys by pressing Shift repeatedly or holding the right‑shift key; the writer expresses both amusement and newfound appreciation for these shortcuts while noting ongoing efforts to train Mira away from the desk.
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Classic Outlook's Quick Steps trip over Microsoft bug
In Microsoft Outlook’s classic client, a bug introduced in build 2512 can cause Quick Steps to appear grayed out when the actions they contain can’t be performed—e.g., a step that moves a message to a folder and clears categories will be disabled for messages lacking categories. Microsoft acknowledges the issue and offers a workaround: the Quick Step can still be triggered via its keyboard shortcut even when the UI grays it out. This glitch is part of a series of recent problems with Classic Outlook, which Microsoft is gradually phasing out in favor of the new Outlook app, though it still retains features like COM support that the newer version lacks.
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