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by Todd Cochrane
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In this episode, Ray Cochrane breaks down a reversible conductive glue from Newcastle University that could replace solder and finally make electronics recycling work. Additional stories cover China widening its clean energy lead, DeepMind’s AlphaEvolve scoring wins from genomics to Google’s database, Anthropic’s $200 million partnership with the Gates Foundation, Intel teaming up with McLaren Racing, and end-to-end encrypted RCS rolling out in beta. – Want to start a podcast? Its easy to get started! Sign-up at Blubrry – Thinking of buying a Starlink? Use my link to support the show. Subscribe to the Newsletter. Email Ray if you want to get in touch! Like and Follow Geek News Central’s Facebook Page. Support my Show Sponsor: Best Godaddy Promo Codes Get 1Password Full Summary Cochrane opens the show with a deep dive into Newcastle University’s reversible conductive glue, a water-based adhesive that could finally make electronics recycling economically viable. He frames the e-waste problem first: 62 billion kilos a year, with less than a quarter ever recycled. Then he walks through the silver nanoparticle chemistry, the lead-free angle on traditional solder, and the geopolitical stakes of critical mineral recovery. From there the episode pivots through energy, AI, hardware, open source, data research, space, science, and consumer privacy. A Reversible Conductive Glue That Could Replace Solder A team at Newcastle University has developed a water-based glue that conducts electricity well enough to replace solder. Unlike solder, however, the glue releases cleanly with a quick rinse of acetone or an alkaline bath. The breakthrough relies on silver nanoparticles suspended in a water-based binder. Consequently, components can be recovered intact, opening a viable path to electronics recycling at scale. Co-investigator Volker Pickert framed the second prize directly: solder has the best conductivity, but the best formulations contain lead. China Widens Its Clean Energy Lead A new Atlas Public Policy report shows Chinese firms accounted for 55 percent of $1.1 trillion in global clean energy manufacturing investment between 2019 and 2025. Battery manufacturing alone pulled in nearly half of that money. Meanwhile, U.S. companies have actively retreated from those same industries. With the Strait of Hormuz currently closed, supply chain ownership in solar, wind, and batteries matters more than ever. A separate Ember analysis showed Chinese solar panel exports doubled in March alone. DeepMind’s AlphaEvolve Scores Real Wins DeepMind published an update on AlphaEvolve, its Gemini-powered AI coding agent. The system cut genomic variant detection errors by 30 percent. Additionally, it lifted AC Optimal Power Flow feasibility from 14 to over 88 percent on the electrical grid. AlphaEvolve also found a better cache replacement policy in two days that would have taken human engineers months. Furthermore, it reduced write amplification in Google’s Spanner database by 20 percent. The pattern shows applied AI sticking, not as a chatbot but as a quiet optimizer. Anthropic and Gates Foundation Commit $200 Million Anthropic announced a four-year, $200 million partnership with the Gates Foundation across three pillars. The biggest pillar targets global health and life sciences in low and middle-income countries. Notably, the research scope includes polio, HPV, and preeclampsia. A second pillar covers AI in education across the U
In this episode, Ray Cochrane leads with Mozilla shipping Firefox 150 with 271 patched bugs found by Anthropic’s Mythos system, the first major real-world deployment of the AlphaGo-Moment cybersecurity tooling. He also covers a 9-year dormant Linux kernel root, a college student stopping Taiwan’s high-speed rail with a software-defined radio, GitHub MCP secret scanning going GA, the NVIDIA NeMo lawsuit surviving its motion to dismiss, the Hugging Face Reachy Mini app store, Anthropic’s Auto Mode for Claude Code, and the 4-gigabyte AI model Chrome silently installed on your computer. – Want to start a podcast? Its easy to get started! Sign-up at Blubrry – Thinking of buying a Starlink? Use my link to support the show. Subscribe to the Newsletter. Email Ray if you want to get in touch! Like and Follow Geek News Central’s Facebook Page. Support my Show Sponsor: Best Godaddy Promo Codes Get 1Password Full Summary Cochrane opens the show with the AlphaGo Moment moving from theory into production. Mozilla shipped Firefox 150 this week with 271 patched bugs that Anthropic’s Mythos system found. Furthermore, the broader episode threads a clear pattern: AI tooling is reshaping security, developer workflows, and consumer software faster than the surrounding ecosystem can absorb it. The show closes on the four-gigabyte AI model Chrome installed on a billion machines without explicit consent. Mozilla Ships 271 Mythos Bugs in Firefox 150 Mozilla ran Anthropic’s restricted Mythos system against the Firefox 150 codebase before shipping. The result: 271 found bugs (180 high severity, 80 moderate, 11 low) baked into the release. However, the bigger number is the year-over-year jump. April 2026 shipped 423 total Firefox security fixes versus 31 a year prior. The breakdown for April: 271 from Mythos, 41 from external researchers, and 111 from other internal sources. Cochrane is sticking to his guns on calling this the AlphaGo Moment for cybersecurity. Skeptics argue Mythos is industrial-scale fuzzing because most found bugs sit in memory-safety territory. However, his counter is the velocity itself. Furthermore, he frames the resistance as carriage-versus-cars: humans-first research still grounds the tool, but throughput is the win. The Firefox CTO put it directly: defenders finally have a chance to win, decisively. For developers asking whether Mythos changes anything if they already run fuzzers, Cochrane’s answer is yes, and not even close. Additionally, he notes Mythos is restricted-access. The broadly available tier is Claude Opus 4.7, which Mozilla used since February before getting onto the restricted program for the Firefox 150 cycle. Run Opus 4.7 first. Sponsor: GoDaddy GoDaddy has been sponsoring this show for over twenty years. Economy hosting starts at $6.99/month, WordPress hosting at $12.99/month, and domains at $11.99. Use codes at geeknewscentral.com/godaddy for exclusive deals and to directly support the show. Copy Fail: 9-Year Linux Kernel Bug, 732 Bytes to Root A 9-year-old dormant Linux kernel bug got disclosed April 29 as CVE-2026-31431. Researchers published a 732-byte Python script that roots every major Linux distribution shipped since 2017.
In this episode, Ray Cochrane leads with GitHub’s worst reliability month on record and the AI infrastructure pressure behind it. He also covers Warp going open source, Apple’s Mac supply crunch, OpenAI’s goblin tic, the first 1X humanoid factory in the US, Tesla’s Semi finally hitting mass production, Chinese EVs with movie-projecting headlights, the final GPS III satellite, and a quantum researcher who won 1 Bitcoin. – Want to start a podcast? Its easy to get started! Sign-up at Blubrry – Thinking of buying a Starlink? Use my link to support the show. Subscribe to the Newsletter. Email Ray if you want to get in touch! Like and Follow Geek News Central’s Facebook Page. Support my Show Sponsor: Best Godaddy Promo Codes Get 1Password Full Summary Cochrane opens the show with one of the biggest infrastructure stories of the year. GitHub is buckling under unprecedented agentic load, and the world’s largest code host just had its worst reliability month on record. Furthermore, the broader episode threads a clear pattern: AI demand is reshaping infrastructure, hardware supply, and developer tooling in ways the industry did not see coming. GitHub’s Worst Reliability Month on Record GitHub CTO Vlad Fedorov posted an apology on the company blog this week. He acknowledged the platform’s recent failures and committed to a new priority order: availability first, then capacity, then features. Meanwhile, an April 23 merge queue regression silently produced wrong squash commits across 658 repositories and over 2,000 pull requests. Additionally, an Elasticsearch cluster crashed on April 27 after a botnet attack, and GitHub Actions went down on April 28. Outside reconstructions put April uptime under 85 percent. However, GitHub’s own status page stays in the 99 percent range because it does not count degraded performance as downtime. Cochrane notes that GitHub originally planned a 10x capacity increase and has now revised that to 30x in eight months. Mitchell Hashimoto, GitHub user 1299 since 2008, also announced he is pulling his Ghostty terminal off the platform entirely. Warp Terminal Goes Open Source Under AGPL Warp open-sourced its AI-first terminal client this week under the AGPL license. Their contribution model leans heavily on agents handling code, planning, and testing while humans focus on direction and verification. However, Cochrane pushes back on that framing. He argues the recent GitHub problems show that human approval alone is not enough oversight for agent-driven workflows. Additionally, he notes that the more hands-off developers get, the less they can mentally model their own systems. Apple Caught Flat-Footed by Local AI Demand Tim Cook told Wall Street on the Q2 FY2026 earnings call that Mac mini and Mac Studio supply will be constrained for several months. Both machines turned out to be popular local AI workstations, which Apple did not predict. Consequently, Apple discontinued the 512GB Mac Studio upgrade in early March and raised the 256GB upgrade by $400. Some upgraded configurations now show 4 to 5 month delivery estimates. Cochrane connects the demand spike to the OpenClaw wave and his own recent OpenClaw scare, where his install started making suspicious outbound requests. Furthermore, he is in no rush to lean into local agentic tooling given the constant prompt injection and security iss
In this episode, Ray Cochrane unpacks Anthropic’s Mythos model and the Treasury’s emergency meetings with Wall Street, then digs into Apple’s vibe-coding crackdown and a gaming-anxiety study that hit way too close to home. Also covered: Verge’s solid-state motorcycle, UBTech humanoid robot sales jumping 23-fold, Japan’s first osmotic power plant, Finland’s permanent nuclear waste vault, Ghostty landing in Ubuntu, Cloudflare’s EmDash CMS, and a Claude Code skill that talks like a caveman. – Want to start a podcast? It’s easy to get started! Sign up at Blubrry – Thinking of buying a Starlink? Use my link to support the show. Subscribe to the Newsletter. Email Ray if you want to get in touch! Like and Follow Geek News Central’s Facebook Page. Support my Show Sponsor: Best Godaddy Promo Codes Get 1Password Full Summary Cochrane opens the show by framing Anthropic’s new Mythos model as the AlphaGo moment for cybersecurity. From there, the episode moves through Apple’s pushback against AI-generated apps, a gaming anxiety study with a deeply personal hook, a series of “first to ship” energy and robotics wins out of Finland, China, and Japan, and several developer-tool stories that show how quickly the economics of software are shifting. Mythos, the Detection Ceiling, and Wall Street’s Emergency Response Anthropic’s Mythos model has Wall Street rattled. Operating autonomously, Mythos found and demonstrated the exploitation of a 27-year-old TCP SACK bug in OpenBSD, an operating system famous for being one of the most security-focused on the planet. Per Anthropic’s red team, over 99% of the vulnerabilities Mythos has identified remain unpatched. The researchers’ conclusion is blunt: “the moat in AI cybersecurity is the system, not the model.” The policy response moved fast. On April 7th, Treasury Secretary Bessent and Fed Chair Jerome Powell pulled the CEOs of Goldman Sachs, Citi, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley into Treasury headquarters on short notice. All four banks are now testing Mythos internally. Treasury CIO Sam Corcos is also seeking direct access. Anthropic is gating distribution through Project Glasswing, a limited-access program with JPMorgan, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Nvidia. Cochrane comes down firmly behind Anthropic’s gated approach. Because a 5.1-billion-parameter open model can apparently recover the core analysis chain for the OpenBSD flaw, this capability is not locked behind Frontier Compute. He wants the critical infrastructure hardened before the public gets keys. However, he also notes the bigger lesson is about human wisdom: people offloading all their thinking to AI lose out on the wisdom that makes any of these tools genuinely useful. Apple Bans Vibe Coding Apps from the App Store Apple has been quietly pushing back against what people are calling “vibe coding” apps. Replit, Vibecode, and an app called Anything all run AI models on the phone and produce working software that runs inside the host app. Apple cites Guideline 2.5.2, in effect since 2017, which requires apps to be self-contained. Replit and Vibecode had their App Store updates blocked. Anything was pulled in late March, briefly restored on April 3rd, and then pulled the same day again. The forcing function is volume. App Store submissions jumped 84% in a single quarter as vibe coding tools flooded Apple’s review queue with AI-generated apps. Cochrane thinks Apple is justified, given the security issues swirling around the Vibe coding ecosystem. Even a be
In this episode, Ray Cochrane digs into a new study showing AI is literally frying workers’ brains, then unpacks Anthropic’s wildest month ever – from a 1,487% user surge to Pentagon retaliation to a leaked model called Mythos. Also covered: OpenAI kills Sora after burning $15 million a day, OpenClaw’s terrifying security holes, Apple axing the Mac Pro, ARM’s first-ever production CPU, and why King Tut’s dagger was forged from a meteorite. – Want to start a podcast? It’s easy to get started! Sign-up at Blubrry – Thinking of buying a Starlink? Use my link to support the show. Subscribe to the Newsletter. Email Ray if you want to get in touch! Like and Follow Geek News Central’s Facebook Page. Support my Show Sponsor: Best Godaddy Promo Codes Get 1Password Full Summary Cochrane opens the show with a study that puts a name to something most AI-heavy workers have already felt. From there, the episode moves through one of the most turbulent months in AI industry history, touching on corporate ethics, national security, hardware shortages, and ancient archaeology. AI Use at Work Is Causing “Brain Fry” A study from Boston Consulting Group and UC Riverside surveyed 1,500 full-time US workers and found that 14% experience what researchers call “AI brain fry” – mental fatigue from excessive AI tool oversight. Those affected report 33% more decision fatigue, 39% more major errors, and an increase in intent to quit from 25% to 34%. Notably, productivity peaks at one to three AI tools and drops off at four or more. Cochrane relates this directly to his own workflow, often running two to four tools side by side. However, he pushes back on the doom framing. He argues that context switching across multiple projects and rubber-stamping AI output without review are the real sources of fry. His takeaway: either work more slowly with greater intent, or use the accelerated pace to reclaim free time. Anthropic’s Wild Month: Exodus, Pentagon, and Mythos Claude sessions surged by roughly 1,487% from mid-January to early March, knocking ChatGPT off the top spot in the app store for the first time. ChatGPT uninstalls spiked nearly 300%, one-star reviews exploded 775% in a single day, and a boycott movement called “Quit GPT” has grown to between 2.5 and 4 million participants. The catalyst was OpenAI stepping in to take the Pentagon defense deal that Anthropic had publicly declined. Cochrane is firmly against automated domestic surveillance and autonomous weaponry, noting that the models are not reliable enough for such responsibilities. OpenAI tried to walk it back, but the Electronic Frontier Foundation called their language “weasel words.” Meanwhile, the Department of Defense slapped Anthropic with a supply chain risk label – a national security designation previously reserved for hostile foreign companies. Anthropic sued the Trump administration. Then Microsoft filed a legal brief in Anthropic’s defense, joined by 149 former judges, dozens of Google and OpenAI employ
In this episode, Chris Cochrane dives into Apple’s $599 MacBook Neo – the cheapest Mac laptop ever made – and whether it spells trouble for Chromebook makers. He also covers Samsung’s CEO blaming AI for rising phone prices, Framework raising RAM prices for the third time in three months, Meta unveiling four custom AI chips, NVIDIA’s GTC 2026 conference preview, a billion-dollar bet against large language models, Microsoft’s game-changing Project Helix Xbox with native Steam support, Windows 11’s new Xbox Mode, and SpaceX gearing up for a critical Starship Flight 12 test. – Want to start a podcast? Its easy to get started! Sign-up at Blubrry – Thinking of buying a Starlink? Use my link to support the show. Subscribe to the Newsletter. Email Chris if you want to get in touch! Like and Follow Geek News Central’s Facebook Page. Support my Show Sponsor: Best Godaddy Promo Codes Get 1Password Apple MacBook Neo The lead story covers Apple’s MacBook Neo. It launched at $599 and marks the cheapest Mac laptop ever made. The device runs on the A18 Pro chip from the iPhone 16 Pro. Cochrane notes a solid market for students, casual users, and anyone who needs a reliable home laptop. However, he advises photographers and videographers to invest in a MacBook Air or Pro instead. The real question remains whether this kills Chromebook sales in education. Samsung CEO Blames AI for Price Hikes Cochrane tackles Samsung’s Galaxy S26 price increases. CEO TM Roh blamed AI infrastructure demand for the hikes. Meanwhile, DDR4 DRAM prices surged sevenfold in a single year. Cochrane points out the irony. Samsung manufactures memory chips, shifted production toward AI data centers, and now cites that same shortage to justify higher consumer prices. He calls the situation “a little shady” but appreciates the transparency. Framework RAM Prices Up Again The RAM crisis extends beyond phones. Framework raised RAM prices for the third consecutive time in three months. Cochrane reinforces advice from a recent episode. He urges listeners to buy now before prices climb further. Analysts project peak prices by mid-2026. The shortage could last through late 2027. Sponsor: GoDaddy Economy hosting $6.99/month, WordPress hosting $12.99/month, domains $11.99. Website builder trial available. Use codes at geeknewscentral.com/godaddy to support the show. Meta Unveils Four Custom AI Chips Cochrane reports on Meta’s four new MTIA chip generations. The company aims to reduce its dependence on NVIDIA by building custom silicon. The MTIA 300 is already in production. New generations will ship every six months through 2027. The chips are built on open-source RISC-V architecture and manufactured by TSMC. NVIDIA GTC 2026 Preview NVIDIA’s GTC conference starts Monday in San Jose. Jensen Huang promises “chips the world has never seen.” Rumored architectures include Rubin Ultra and Feynman. The keynote streams free at nvidia.com on Monday at 11am Pacific. Cochrane notes that while companies like Meta are building chips to escape NVIDIA, competition will eventually catch up. Yann LeCun’s AMI Labs Raises $1.03 Billion Former Meta AI chief Yann LeCun raised $1.03 billion for AMI Labs at a $3.5 billion valuation. It marks the largest European seed round in history for a company just four months old. LeCun is building “world models” that learn from physical reality rather than text. Backers include Jeff Bezos, NVIDIA, and Samsung. Cochrane notes both approaches to AI can coexist. Microsoft Project Helix Microsoft revealed Project Helix at GDC 2026. For the first time, an Xbox will natively support Steam and GOG. Cochrane sees it as both desperate and inevitable. The only reason to buy from the Xbox store would be exclusives. He notes this is a breath of fresh air after months of talk that the Xbox era was en
In this episode, Ray tackles Anthropic’s standoff with the U.S. Department of War after CEO Daria Amodei refused to grant unrestricted model access, citing concerns over mass surveillance and autonomous weapons. The government responded by banning Anthropic models through administrative orders. Also covered: the top 20 websites of 2026, China’s $173,000 warm-blooded companion robot, Fukushima’s rapidly evolving radioactive hybrid boars, a Chinese spacecraft emergency involving viewport cracks from space debris, Japan’s wooden satellite built with traditional joinery, and human brain cells on a chip that learned to play Doom in just one week. – Want to start a podcast? Its easy to get started! Sign-up at Blubrry – Thinking of buying a Starlink? Use my link to support the show. Subscribe to the Newsletter. Email Ray if you want to get in touch! Like and Follow Geek News Central’s Facebook Page. Support my Show Sponsor: Best Godaddy Promo Codes Get 1Password Full Summary Cochrane opens the show with Anthropic’s confrontation with the U.S. Department of War. CEO Daria Amodei released a public statement refusing unrestricted government access to Anthropic’s AI models. Two red lines stood firm: mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. Ray explains that these models are predictive by nature, raising serious misidentification risks. However, the government hit back hard. Administrative orders now ban Anthropic models from government use. Despite the backlash, Cochrane expresses support for the company’s stance. He points listeners to a CBS interview with the CEO posted roughly nine hours before recording. Additionally, Anthropic released new models including Opus 4.5 and Sonnet 4.6. The company climbed to the number two spot on the App Store, trailing only ChatGPT and surpassing Google Gemini. Personal Updates Ray shares that February has been a demanding month. He’s juggling a capstone project, two jobs, and finishing his degree. Meanwhile, he continues working on developments at Blubrry hosting. He apologizes for inconsistent episode production and thanks listeners for their patience. Top 20 Websites of 2026 A Visual Capitalist chart ranks the most visited websites of 2026. Google holds the top spot, followed by YouTube. Facebook, Instagram, ChatGPT, Reddit, Wikipedia, X, and WhatsApp round out the upper rankings. Notably, DuckDuckGo appears at rank seventeen as a privacy-focused search alternative. Sponsor: GoDaddy Economy hosting $6.99/month, WordPress hosting $12.99/month, domains $11.99. Website builder trial available. Use codes at geeknewscentral.com/godaddy to support the show. Anthropic Retires Claude Opus 3 Cochrane discusses Anthropic’s decision to retire Claude Opus 3. In a unique move, the company gave the model a Substack-style blog to reflect on its own existence. Reactions online were mixed, with both supporters and critics engaging in the conversation. China’s $173,000 Warm-Blooded Companion Robot From ZME Science, Ray covers China’s new humanoid robot designed as a warm-blooded companion. Priced at $173,000, it features conventional robotics hardware, sensors, cameras, and autonomous navigation. A built-in heating element maintains body warmth. Cochrane comments humorously on the growing market for companion robots. Windows XP Green Hill Found and Photographed From Tom’s Hardware, someone tracked down and photographed the actual location of the iconic Windows XP “Green Hill” wallpaper. The Reddit post sparked a wave of nostalgia in the community. Fukushima’s Radioactive Hybrid Boars From AZ Animals, domestic pigs that escaped after the Fukushima disaster hybridized with wild boars. Their DNA reveals rapid evolutionary changes driven by the altered radioactive landscape. These aggressive hybrids now complicate wildlife management and rewild
Chris breaks down the backlash to Ring’s Super Bowl “Search Party” ad, which aimed to help find lost pets but reignited privacy concerns over AI-powered neighborhood surveillance. He also explores the surge of AI-themed Super Bowl ads, Apple’s delayed Siri overhaul, rising DDR5 RAM prices driven by AI demand, SpaceX’s Crew-12 launch, and the record-breaking sale of a rare Pokémon card. -Want to be a Guest on a Podcast or YouTube Channel? Sign up for GuestMatch.Pro -Thinking of buying a Starlink? Use my link to support the show. Subscribe to the Newsletter. Email Chris if you want to get in touch! Like and Follow Geek News Central’s Facebook Page. Support my Show Sponsor: Best Godaddy Promo Codes Get 1Password Full Summary – Main story — Ring Search Party: Chris summarizes Ring’s first Super Bowl ad (viewed by “over 120 million”) which promoted “Search Party,” a feature that lets users upload a photo of a missing pet and alerts neighborhood Ring cameras if they spot it. He explains the ad was intended as wholesome but provoked fast backlash: viewers and privacy advocates (including the ACLU and lawmakers) warned the tech could be repurposed to track people. Chris recounts Ring’s prior controversies (police partnerships, an FTC settlement in 2023 over employee access to videos) and says the ad brought those issues back into focus. He reports that four days after the ad, Amazon canceled a planned integration with Flock Safety (Amazon called it a resources-and-timing decision). He notes Search Party is opt-in for pets but emphasizes the potential scale of surve
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