Omarchy has already taken up plenty of our column inches, but a new tentacle is reaching into the hitherto untouched FreeBSD.

Daemonarchy brings Omarchy's Wayland-based desktop to the BSD world. It's an independent effort by Jordan Hubbard, one of the original founders of the FreeBSD project, and it's unaffiliated with the original Linux-based Omarchy.

We looked at Omarchy in August and didn't like it much. It isn't exactly a Linux distribution. That implies it's a coherent set of packages managed as a whole by uniform tools. Omarchy is a collection of apps and preconfigured settings, packaged up with the help of LLM bots and put up for download. You have to update it using its own special script, rather than the standard tools of the underlying Arch Linux - and in our testing, that update script fell over with error messages when running in a VM.

However, there's no such thing as a bad press, and Omarchy is popular and growing. It keeps on attracting sponsorship as well as new users migrating from Windows and macOS, who seem to relish its bizarre, inconsistent, and ad hoc UI as a challenge: trying to close a window in Hyprland, the tiling compositor that forms the core of Omarchy's UI. In Omarchy, windows don't have title bars, let alone anything as old-fashioned as window control buttons you can click. To close a window, you must use a keystroke. In most Linux windowing environments, that's the standard Alt-F4. Not here. Next, we tried Super+W - on a Mac, that's Command+W, which has meant "close the window" since 1984 or so. Still no. We found an answer on Reddit - it's Super + C.

Daemonarchy is not directly related. It's a collection of FreeBSD ports of the various tools and components that went into Omarchy, individually adapted to run on FreeBSD, and collected together into an installable ISO image. The current release is version 1.3.1.

Remarkably, in approximately 10 days, Daemonarchy has gone through 10 releases. Multiple packages are recent ports by jkh@freebsd.org - the email address of Jordan Hubbard. If the name rings a bell, he was one of the original founders of the FreeBSD project, and has had an interesting career in which he's worked at various companies.

The Register first mentioned him by name 25 years ago, when Wind River bought BSD/OS vendors BSDi. By the following year, Hubbard was at Apple, where he helped freshen up the BSD-based Unix layer underneath the new Mac OS X. In 2015, he helped launch the NextBSD project to modernize FreeBSD with Apple Darwin components, which as we reported in July was recently restarted.

The new NextBSD effort is being built with the help of LLM coding assistants. As you might surmise from 18 new FreeBSD ports of Linux tools in a month, as well as from ten releases of the new OS bundle in as many days, Hubbard too is using LLMs to assist in this rapid development process: Daemonarchy's GitHub repository contains both AGENTS.md and SKILL.md files, which point to Hubbard's own Literate AI project, whose repo describes it as a "A meta-harness for coding agents to follow proper Software Development Lifecycle practices", and says it is "Based on literate programming ideas from Donald Knuth".

There's quite a bit of documentation, including a project specification with a list of goals. Lots of formatted Markdown text is also something of an LLM bot hallmark, though, and it's not clear to us if this is intended for humans to read, or to guide the bots. Possibly, it's both.

It looks like the germ of inspiration was a LinkedIn post by UK IT consultant Sam Sheridan, in which he criticized the difficulty of configuring a new installation of FreeBSD 15.1 with an Nvidia card. He's right: we have written about how much work is involved ourselves. Sheridan's LinkedIn post provoked a comment from Ralph Kepper saying "I'm just gonna say it… omarchy for FreeBSD, its the ugly truth and no one likes it but there it is. omarchy will get us the youngsters and if we do it right we will inspire some great minds along the way". Hubbard had already commented in the thread, and it looks to us like that passing comment has prompted (if you will forgive us the obvious pun) this effort.

Daemonarchy is based on FreeBSD CURRENT, which means that it's built on top of what will become FreeBSD 16 - planned for December 2027. The intrepid can get run it now, though. Currently it targets the MacBookPro16,1, meaning the 2019 models of the 16-inch MacBook Pro - one of the final generations of Intel-based MacBooks. A couple of years ago, the Reg FOSS desk attended EuroBSDCon and we met several core project members. Apparently, running the development work-in-progress CURRENT branch is quite normal for hardcore FreeBSD types. If you need to ask how to get it or run it, then this is not the version of FreeBSD for you.

We do not personally like Omarchy much. We don't much like the visual design, or the choice of components - and we really didn't get on with the user interface. As mentioned, there are already established keyboard UIs for both macOS and MS Windows, and we're adept and comfortable with both. As Linux is an OS designed and built on the x86 PC platform, we feel that it should stick to the established Common User Access UI. Its core elements débuted in Windows 1.0, 41 years ago. It's quite a bit older than Linux itself, and led to widespread UI standardization across DOS, OS/2, all subsequent versions of Windows, and more or less all Linux GUIs… at least until the recent rash of Wayland compositors from young hackers who don't know how to drive windows efficiently. We are not saying it can't be improved upon, but re-inventing this particular wheel strikes us as a worked example of XKCD 927.

However, Kepper has a point: Omarchy is trendy, and a FreeBSD version - freed of the direct influence of its controversial creator - might win FreeBSD some new fans. Even if not, the Daemonarchy project could have wider impact.

For one thing, the effort could help the creation of an easy, graphical FreeBSD installer and a friendly desktop version. It's also very relevant to the ongoing debate about the use of AI coding assistants in the FreeBSD project. We mentioned this in September 2025 and there's been no public announcement of a decision yet.

In that article, we highlighted Sylve. The project GitHub describes this as a "lightweight GUI for managing Bhyve, Jails, ZFS, networking, and more on FreeBSD", but the project has even wider ambitions than that. The developers recently shared a video of their new graphical installer for FreeBSD, and we think it looks very good indeed.

We are less keen on the other impact that Daemonarchy seems likely to have. With the FreeBSD project's co-founder busily committing code to the project repositories that he is porting and developing with the assistance of Claude, then it seems highly unlikely that the core team will respond by banning AI contributions. ®

Our thanks to Register reader Graham Perrin for drawing our attention to Daemonarchy - and the thread that inspired it.

2026 might not be the Year of Linux on the Desktop, but it is certainly the Year of Linux on the Beachfront, judging by some digital signage at the Spanish resort of Lloret de Mar.

Snapped by Rich Skuse, an aficionado of automotive shonk, this sign skips the town's attractions or useful information entirely. Instead, it gives away its Ubuntu and Firefox roots with an update prompt and a perky "Welcome back," suggesting someone has turned it off and on again.

As this signage is likely connected to the Internet, that Ubuntu update is probably a good idea. 26.04.1 is the latest LTS version and contains a raft of tweaks and improvements. Sadly, we expect beachgoers are probably more interested in sun, sand, and sangria than in keeping a Linux installation in tip-top shape.

The sign is a recent addition to the Passeig d'Agustí Font. Behind the photographer stand palm trees, with a beach and the azure waters of the Mediterranean Sea beyond.

Lloret de Mar underwent several renovations ahead of the 2026 summer season, and we guess the sign was one of them, since it wasn't there in April 2025 (according to a well-known ad slinger). According to Lloret Gaceta, a publication for the region, "The goal is to continue evolving into a more modern, sustainable, accessible, and higher-quality tourist destination, adapted to the new demands of residents and visitors."

Readers might be interested to learn that part of this evolution includes a ban on selling alcoholic beverages in containers larger than one liter at beach bars.

A few too many adult drinks could explain the configuration that led to this bork, or perhaps an engineer took one look outside, at another balmy day, and decided "that'll do" when it came to configuring the signage.

Either way, this is a tourist destination, and the last thing the average administrator wants to be reminded of on their vacation is the need to keep code up to date. As such, we suspect many will simply ignore the distressed digital display and instead seek out somewhere shady to sit, where the seafront can be admired, beverages consumed, and the bork…? Well, it's somebody else's problem. ®

For many members of the C-suite these days, sustainability is a top three agenda item alongside technology and AI adoption, according to research from Deloitte.

In fact, the report says, technology is considered a vital means of hitting organizational goals here, with the implementation of IT solutions being the most common approach for doing so.

The importance of tech's role in this context is reflected in the views of IT decision-makers themselves. A recent survey, conducted by Barco ClickShare, revealed that 96 percent of the 500 US tech leaders questioned consider their sustainability activities to make a significant and positive global contribution to strategy here.

A further 98 percent feel their departments should lead the way in such activities. Indeed, more than four out of five felt so strongly about the situation that they would turn down a job offer at a new employer if it did not have a strong sustainability track record, they said.

Yannic Laleeuwe is Marketing Director Workplace Collaboration at wireless conferencing and collaboration platform provider, Barco ClickShare.

She believes IT functions have this central role to play in tackling sustainability issues because many of their "day-to-day technology choices directly influence an organization's environmental footprint".

"Sustainability is about practical decisions: buying reliable technology, extending product life, reducing complexity, and ensuring devices can be managed, repaired and responsibly recycled," Laleeuwe explains.

But given that technology-related decisions are rarely made by IT leaders alone, it is clear they cannot tackle sustainability challenges alone either. As Barco ClickShare's report indicates, a mere 6 percent of IT departments are the sole decision-makers on tech investments, which includes meeting room systems.

This means that collaboration with other stakeholders is vital. Such stakeholders include not only sustainability and environmental affairs teams. They also consist of procurement, finance, facilities management, operations, and executive leaders.

"Working together, it's possible to balance security, usability, cost, lifecycle impact, energy efficiency, repairability and end-of-life recovery before a purchase is even made," Laleeuwe points out.

In other words, by collaborating, it becomes much easier to embed sustainability considerations into day-to-day activities. This includes maintaining and upgrading equipment properly to extend its life. It is these everyday IT decisions that can make all the difference in shaping behavior in the digital workplace.

One example of this relates to the procurement process itself, which is often complex. But top of the list on any sustainable shopping list should be ensuring that technology in general, but meeting room equipment in particular, is secure, reliable, and easy to integrate with other systems. This is important because if kit is not durable and interoperable, it will come up for replacement sooner rather than later.

But such an approach not only generates waste, it also necessitates purchasing new items. These tend to have a high carbon footprint due to the required extraction of raw materials and high energy usage during both manufacturing and transportation processes.

As for the key questions prospective buyers should be asking their suppliers upfront here, these include which methodologies their products are based on and what certifications they hold. Valid certifications in this context include TCO Certified's global sustainability for IT products marque and the US government's Energy Star symbol for energy efficiency.

In fact, sustainability certifications ranked joint second with cost as the most important factor when purchasing hardware, according to participants in Barco ClickShare's survey. They were topped only by security.

However, it is essential to ensure that certifications and carbon-neutral claims offer "transparency, not just reassurance", Laleeuwe warns. As such, "they should show how the product performs, which lifecycle stages are covered, how claims are validated, and what concrete design choices reduce impact," he says.

In other words, it is essential to understand whether suppliers have taken environmental factors into consideration across their entire product lifecycle. Such factors include product design, which should ideally be modular so that individual components can be repaired or replaced as required.

They also include which materials have been used in the manufacturing process and whether they are recyclable or at least have a low environmental footprint. The same rules apply to packaging.

Other essential considerations for IT leaders during the procurement process, meanwhile, include the energy consumption of their chosen conferencing and communication platform during usage.

Just as important is whether individual vendors offer take-back programs or other responsible disposal routes for products at end-of-life, such as repair and recycling. The aim here is to ensure that old equipment does not pollute the environment by ending up in landfill.

As Laleeuwe points out: "Prioritizing repair and recycling extends product life, avoids premature disposal and turns ESG [environmental, social, and governance] goals into repeatable IT practices."

Unfortunately, though, such activities tend to be all too frequently overlooked today. For example, Barco ClickShare's research reveals that only 42 percent of IT leaders currently select equipment that can be repaired by their manufacturer to extend its life. Even fewer (16 percent) rank repairability as a top concern.

The figures are even worse in terms of recycling (11 percent) being prioritized. Unsurprisingly then, just over a third of respondents indicated their department does not always go down this route.

A key problem here, says Laleeuwe, is that such activities are often simply "less visible at the initial point of purchase", which means they are rarely front of mind.

The problem with hybrid working

Another common challenge, meanwhile, relates to the ongoing shift towards hybrid and remote working.

But according to the Barco ClickShare report, some 95 percent of IT leaders believe such practices have had an impact on their organization's sustainability efforts, ultimately making them more complex. This is at least partially due to meeting room equipment now being spread across office, home, and flexible workspaces.

On the downside, this means it has become more difficult to manage and recycle e-waste from remote locations (48 percent). The growing use of personal devices has also made it trickier to ensure the adoption of energy-efficient hardware (46 percent).

But on the plus side, there has been an increase in uptake of more energy-efficient cloud services compared to on premise systems (63 percent of respondents). Even here though, things are not always clear cut.

As Laleeuwe explains: "IT teams need to look at the full setup: utilization, energy performance, device longevity, security, manageability and end-of-life recovery. The most sustainable choice is the one that delivers the required experience with the least avoidable footprint."

The benefits of standardization

One approach that does produce much more reliable results in sustainability terms though is standardizing equipment across the organization, especially in a meeting room system context.

In the past, individual business departments all too often purchased such kit without consulting IT, leading to the deployment of fragmented, siloed systems. But standardization has shown it can offer various benefits.

On the one hand, Laleeuwe explains: "It limits the number of device types, spare parts, support processes and replacement cycles IT has to manage, while making updates, remote management and lifecycle planning easier."

On the other, organizations can benefit from economies of scale - although to what extent depends on how much e-waste or energy usage they can cut based on the size of their IT estate, usage patterns, refresh cycles, and recycling processes.

A further benefit of standardization is that it provides organizations with "the control needed to measure, manage and reduce impact consistently", Laleeuwe adds.

What this demonstrates is that when ensuring sustainability goals are translated into day-to-day IT decision-making, routine choices matter. In other words, sustainability must become part of procurement requirements, implementation checklists, and lifecycle management as standard.

"That means setting shared criteria for certifications, energy efficiency, durability, repairability, recyclability, vendor take-back, and lifecycle reporting," Laleeuwe says. "It also means giving IT, procurement, facilities, finance and sustainability teams joint ownership of the process."

One organization that successfully embedded just this kind of approach into its workplace strategy is the Flemish Government. When renovating its Marie-Elisabeth Belpaire headquarters building in Brussels, Belgium, the Agency for Facility Operations took a multi-layered approach to sustainability.

For instance, the building itself became the first in Flanders to conform to circular construction practices. This included using 68 percent reclaimed, reused, or recycled materials from the original site in its renovation activities.

The building is also close to operating at net zero. This is partly due to its Thermal Energy Storage system, which captures and stores thermal energy for later use. It is also partly because of the introduction of solar panels on its roof and side walls.

But another key consideration in ensuring a sustainable headquarters was the widespread adoption of green ICT. This included the introduction of a hyper-efficient Wi-Fi network to help the Government save the equivalent of 550 households-worth of electricity each year.

Just as important was the standardization of the Government's meeting room technology using certified sustainable technology. To this end, more than 1,000 ClickShare wireless conferencing and collaboration devices were implemented in more than 1,000 different meeting spaces. The aim of standardizing equipment in this way was both to cut energy usage and the meeting room infrastructure's overall carbon footprint.

As Laleeuwe concludes: "The lesson is clear: sustainable meeting rooms work best when technology, workplace design, user experience and lifecycle management are all planned for together and implemented in tandem."

Sponsored by Barco

Oxfam says investing by rich in disaster recovery widens inequality and gives incentive to delay climate action

The world's wealthiest people are not just profiting from the polluting causes of climate breakdown, they are also increasingly cashing in on the catastrophic consequences, according to a study by Oxfam.

The global equality organisation has found that the richest 0.1% of the world's population are heavily invested in disaster preparedness, recovery and reconstruction - a market that is projected to grow from $70bn to $92bn a year by 2029.

Letter to PM argues series of wrong choices on North Sea oil, Heathrow, EVs and heat pumps will scupper net zero plans

Andy Burnham will "sleepwalk" into climate disaster if he fails to get a grip on a series of important policies whose combined impact could scupper plans to reach net zero, campaigners have said.

Big decisions on North Sea drilling, the expansion of Heathrow airport, electric vehicles (EVs) and grants for heat pumps are awaiting decisions from ministers.

Investigation finds dozens of ministers and civil servants moved into AI roles as government developed datacentre expansion plans

The UK's policy on datacentres and AI was developed without any meetings with environmental groups, an investigation has found.

The nonprofit organisation Spotlight on Corruption said a "considerable revolving door" shaped the government's development of "AI growth zones", a central plank of the former prime minister Keir Starmer's AI and economic policy, with 38 ministers, senior civil servants and special advisers hired to positions in AI companies between July 2024 and September 2026.

Calf of Man, Isle of Man: Such is the wealth of Manx fungi, a map is being built to plot it all. We took a special trip as part of that project

The bird observatory on the Calf of Man was sulking under a low cloud base as we stepped ashore at South Harbour. The dank mist was perfect for our surprise visit to the island, as it was not for the birds we had come across, but fungi - in particular, waxcaps.

My wife, Liz, and I had taken the chance to accompany Nev Kilkenny, a visiting mycologist, who would help identify and study some autumn mushrooms and toadstools - and contribute to a map that is being assembled of Manx fungi.

The Club of Rome's discussion paper, Transformative Pathways towards Meaningful Collective Intelligence: AI in Service of People, Planet & Peace, asks a question that most AI discourse skips over: not simply how to manage the risks and potentials of artificial intelligence, but whether, for what, and for whom we need it at all.

It sets out the political economy behind current AI development — the concentration of computing power and data in a small number of corporations, the ecological costs of the infrastructure behind it, the uneven distribution of its benefits and harms, and the exclusion of pluriversal knowledge systems from how AI is designed and governed. It argues that a transformative approach is needed: one that questions the current trajectory of AI while building the conditions for its use in service of the common good of equitable wellbeing for all on a healthy and peaceful planet.

The Club of Rome is now opening a call for contributions to take this thinking further, test it against other perspectives, and surface ideas, evidence and voices that can shape a genuinely different direction for AI conception, design, co-creation and governance.

We welcome contributions in any format, including papers, policy pieces, blogs, videos and podcasts. To help structure the discussion, the discussion paper groups its analysis into a number of thematic clusters, and we ask that contributions relate to one or more of them:

1. The political economy and power structures behind AI
2. Data dispossession and sovereignty as a collective right
3. The ecological footprint of AI infrastructure
4. Labour displacement and its uneven distribution
5. Pluriversal and indigenous epistemologies as design principles for AI
6. Alternative, commons-led governance architectures

Contributions do not need to agree with the paper's arguments. Constructive challenge, counter-evidence and alternative framings are all welcome.

Contributions will feed into two kinds of outcome. First, they will inform a range of outputs: a Club of Rome publication planned for 2027, alongside blogs, podcasts, videos and other multimedia pieces published on the Club of Rome website and channels. Second, they will help develop concrete actions: proposals for policy, governance and practice that the Club of Rome, its members and partners can take forward. The publication and its accompanying outputs will be supported by a broader programme of outreach, including workshops, policy interventions and discussions at conferences and other events. This is so that the ideas gathered through this call reach audiences beyond the report itself and translate into practical steps towards AI in service of people, planet and peace.

This call is open to members, partners and our wider community. Alongside the open call, we are making targeted invitations to reach beyond our usual circle, in particular AI experts and Global South networks whose perspectives are often missing from mainstream AI debates.

If you know people or networks we should approach directly, particularly those working on AI ethics, AI governance or digital rights in the Global Majority, please send your recommendations to contribute@clubofrome.org.

Contributors may use AI tools for supporting tasks such as translation, copyediting or research assistance. The analysis, arguments and conclusions in a submission must be the contributor's own original thinking. Any substantial use of generative AI in producing the content itself must be disclosed in the submission. Submissions that are wholly or predominantly AI-generated, without meaningful human authorship, will not be accepted.

Please send contributions, or questions about the call, to contribute@clubofrome.org by 1 January 2027. Please follow the below guidelines for submissions:

Submit a 500 word abstract in a Word document, along with the contributor's name, affiliation (if any), and which of the thematic clusters above it addresses. Papers will be reviewed by a selection committee and successful contributors will be contacted in early 2027 with a request for a full paper.

Submit a word document with the full article which should be a maximum 800 words written in a non-technical style. Provide the author's name, affiliation and which of the thematic clusters above it is related to. Submissions will be reviewed by the communications team, and accepted submissions will be published on the Club of Rome website. Please consult our blog guidelines for more details.

Please submit a downloadable file and provide short summary of the contribution in addition to the contributor's name and affiliation. Submissions will be reviewed by the communications team on an ongoing basis.

A selection group will steer the process, reviewing contributions and helping shape how they feed into the organisation's ongoing work on AI governance. The selection committee is comprised of: Paul Shrivastava, Mariana Bozesan, Ryan Jackson, Petra Kuenkel, Liepollo Pheko, Douglas Rushkoff, Rica Viljoen and Junyi Zhang

For any questions about the call or the project, contact contribute@clubofrome.org.

The post Call for contributions: Transformative pathways towards meaningful collective intelligence appeared first on Club of Rome.

Foto: Heritage & Legends

All it took was one or two careless teenage girls giving the vermin a taste of their snacks and they became the most well-fed animals imaginable

I've written a fair amount about my boarding school years in Nigeria in the 90s, but never about the rats that accompanied my school experience. Picture it: thousands of girls from across the country, each bearing a suitcase or two of a term's worth of "provisions" - cornflakes, sugar cubes, powdered milk, hot chocolate powder, and so on. All it took was one or two careless girls giving the rats a taste of the exotic and they became among the most well-fed rats in the country, enjoying a steady stream of delicious teenage-girl snacks.

I will never forget the sight of rats - six or seven deep - congregating at dusk on the scraggly lawn next to my dormitory, like an illegal gathering of political dissidents. They were large (what with their rich diet), thick tails twitching, noses pushed together, damn near whispering. At first, they would scatter when humans approached. Then we had to clap and stomp to get them to shift. Like the proletariat, the rats began to understand their power, and stand their ground. They were no longer pests but now a sort of predator. If this sounds like the beginning of a highbrow horror, that's how it felt.

A supergroup of rights holders who own or control Elvis Presley songs have sued Anthropic for copyright infringement, alleging that the AI company stole The King's works to train its AI models.

"The Elvis Plaintiffs bring this action to enforce these exclusive rights against the Defendant that has built its entire business model based on copyright infringement at a scale never seen before," states a complaint [PDF] filed last Friday in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.

Despite owning 274 Elvis songs, the titles of which offer many apt metaphors to illustrate the plaintiffs' grievances, the lawsuit uses a Shakesperean allusion.

"Defendant Anthropic has essentially put to the test the adage of whether monkeys and typewriters could, provided enough time, recreate Hamlet," the complaint states. "However, rather than wait out the 'infinite' amount of time the infinite monkey theorem posits is necessary for said monkeys with typewriters to randomly, one letter at a time, string together that famous question of 'To be or not to be?', Anthropic found a workaround."

"Rather than training its monkeys from first principles, Anthropic found mimicry (i.e. copyright infringement) to be the much easier pursuit."

The lawsuit uses riffs that will sound familiar to anyone who has followed the many allegations that AI companies hoovered up any content they could find to train their models:

• Fair use doctrines don't apply to all content used to train AI models;

• Anthropic should have known that some of the torrents and datasets it used for model training were either licensed (and therefore not freely usable), or stolen;

• The AI company should know it needs a license before allowing its Claude products to do things like produce the lyrics to Elvis songs when prompted to do so;

• Chatbots cost rights-holders money when users prompt them to produce create content "in the style of" artists whose works are subject to copyright.

The plaintiffs want damages and a slice of Anthropic's profits, or $150,000 per work. The latter values damages at $41.1 million.

Anthropic has reportedly vowed to defend the matter, but has already resolved a similar case in which it was accused of training its models on books without seeking or securing permission from the authors. The AI upstart created a $1.5 billion fund to compensate writers to make that one go away.

The plaintiffs note that Anthropic has billions of cash on hand and plans a mega-float (which it announced today) so can afford to indulge in A Little Less Conversation, Don't Be Cruel, stop being The Devil In Disguise, and Patch It Up by paying up. ®

IBM touts its Z series mainframes as the most reliable and cost-effective environments for certain workloads, but on Monday also acknowledged that the platform can drift towards hard-to-manage complexity that reduces resilience and therefore needs some help from AI.

Big Blue admitted that not all mainframe estates exist in a state of perfect bliss in a Statement of Direction for a forthcoming product called "IBM Z Atlas" that the document describes as "an AI-native solution that uses system intelligence to ground AI skills and agents in the context of key workflows like planning and validating changes or modernizing applications and infrastructure."

"It intends to map a client's entire z/OS stack across infrastructure, middleware, and applications, and then use that system intelligence to reduce the manual effort of tasks like patch management, regulatory response, and sharing knowledge across every team, from systems programmers to application developers."

Big Blue also hopes the tool helps mainframe techs and ops teams "better understand how components connect, interact, and depend on one another."

"IBM Z Atlas intends to eliminate the leading cause of unplanned z/OS outages - changes that aren't proven to be safe - by mapping how a change impacts the z/OS stack, testing it, and validating it," the Statement of Direction adds. "This design accelerates clients' modernization efforts by keeping experts in control and giving every practitioner, in operations or development, the same shared Z system visibility to reduce risk."

IBM reckons Z Atlas will help mainframe shops do four things:

• Understand systems and dependencies before making decisions or initiating changes

• Assess potential impacts, risks, and operational considerations

• Accelerate planning for modernization, deployment, and provisioning

• Provide trusted context for AI-native experiences and automation

While IBM clearly sees AI has a role in helping its customers to manage mainframes, it appears not to be going all-in on AIOps - the emerging practice of allowing agents to either keep tech infrastructure humming, or autonomously find issues and develop proposed fixes.

"IBM intends for AI-assisted insights and recommendations to preserve appropriate human review and decision authority," the Statement of Direction reads.

The multiple mentions of modernization caught your correspondent's eye, because IBM's many rivals often suggest the best way to modernize mainframes is by trashing them and moving the applications they run to another platform. In recent years, vendors have suggested using generative AI to rewrite mainframe apps in other languages, an idea that analyst firm Gartner thinks is highly overrated.

IBM clearly wants modernization to mean making mainframes easier to live with so that customers persist with the platform, a critical outcome as the company's revenue spikes when each new generation of Z-series machines hits the market. Indeed, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna last week said the current Z17 generation of mainframes has outsold all others by $1 billion.

That kind of result well and truly puts to bed the "death of the mainframe" narrative that, like next year becoming the Year of Linux on the Desktop, is a prediction that never goes away and never comes to fruition. With Z Atlas, IBM seems to be trying to ensure rumors of the mainframe's demise are even more exaggeratedly false. ®

Provocative title? Also: maybe bullshit. Loaded term? Yea, probably. Let me explain.

Obligatory prologue-use of quote to attempt to cast a hypnotic spell on the reader:

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"Espionage, political intrigue, and the occult tend to come together in secret societies." - Richard B. Spencer, Prof. of History at U. of Idaho

It seems most people associate the term "useful idiot" with Lenin, or Republican writers in the US using it as an epithet to work in the formula: not a Republican = supporter of the Democrats = probably a socialist = communist = an enemy of the US; must be stopped! As if their own assumed position is the unquestionably correct one, and all others must be explained as stupid. A flagrant violation of the sociology of knowledge. Or: non-Republicans have been tricked into it! They're a useful idiot for the Bad Guys!1

I think of Jane Fonda's visit with the Viet Cong as Useful Idiocy, very public, but also: my biased point of view and that Jane actually had thought it out on her own, so how idiotic was it? Not at all? Very? I kinda wonder sometimes. And besides, I always had the hots for her, so my relationship with Jane Fonda? It's complicated. But that's the tricky part, isn't it? This definition of Useful Idiot seems epistemologically difficult. "Stupid fucking asshole sides with the wrong party!": no use arguing. "Poor dipshit actually thinks the rich ought to be taxed at a higher level! They've been duped!": you seem to care. Aren't you sweet? They've been led astray and it's a sad shame. We all make mistakes. The mistaken dupe is: a Useful Idiot! and unknowingly playing into the hands of the ominous and notorious Big Equality. (cue: Dragnet theme music)

(The maker of this documentary seems to think Ruth Paine was a Useful Idiot in the whole JFK thing. Paine died 14 months ago not far from where I currently live and she stuck with her position that Oswald acted alone; she seemed like a really nice lady to me.)

In Ian McEwan's 2025 novel, What We Can Know a character is a "useful idiot" who plays a part in a novel as a slotted, predictable role vis a vis another character.

Another semantic use: In reading books on how intelligence operations work in the field, the definition takes on a different meaning. You know how when you approach the TSA getting ready for your flight and you hear, "Did you pack your own suitcase?" Yes, some terrorist might have slipped into your house and planted a bomb in your overnight bag, then slipped out undetected, but this is also how intelligence agents - an acquaintance or friend of a friend, seems like a nice lady - could get you to do some work for them, all the while you're thinking you've only agreed to deliver a small envelope or book to an office building near your destination in Athens/London/Bueno Aires/Bucharest. Yes, you packed your friend of a friend's book, but what of it? I'm doing them a favor. It's nothing! Best to not even mention it. You're so oblivious that, why, you're the perfect mark, not having any idea you're passing military secrets (they're in code, on p.237 of Travel Tips For Romania) to some other intelligence agent whose mail drop is an antique store near where you're staying. Please give this to Kiki, and tell them I said hi. What? Oh just a book I borrowed and needed to give back. I bet Kiki will buy you dinner; that's just the kinda guy he is. Here's a little map of sites you really must see while in Bucharest, it's so charming! Me 'n Kiki? We go way back. Do you know your neighbor's father's friend Charles Smith? No? Great guy. Lived in the community for a hundred years. Glad I happened to hear you were going to Bucharest from a fellow at the last Friends of the Library meeting in our quaint little town here. When you get back, let's do lunch.

Once you board that flight with that book, smile, friend: you're a Useful Idiot. Sorry to break it to ya.

A stranger pops into your local bar, seemingly harmless, friendly, maybe buys a round of drinks while talking about sports or local news items. At one point they make a point about some person that's just wrong or mistaken, so a number of you and your friends correct him with the facts. In this way, sources don't know they're sources. In a sense, a large percentage of intelligence sources are Useful Idiots. Saying something wrong gets people to correct you; they get to feel smart and you get some possibly useful intel. Do you know anyone who seems to do this a lot? They make their erroneous statements so innocently! (Yea, but are they always doing that? Are they just that ill-informed? Probably no reason to get paranoid. They're probably Garden Variety Idiots, or, as Brother Theodore said, "Just Plain Folks"…)

How do you know the OG isn't a planted intel asset?2

Was Ruth Paine, who befriended Marina Oswald and let the Oswalds sleep in their Dallas-area house, a Useful Idiot? Paine was only interested Russian culture. How about Joanna Harcourt -Smith? How about Ted Kaczynski? Frank Olson? James Jesus Angleton?3

After World War I, the US disbanded international intelligence gathering; Henry Stimson, big-time Yankee influence, famously said "Gentlemen don't read other gentlemen's mail." Then, when the Nazis went on the march: Oops! The OSS, in concert with the Brits, scrambled to train new spies for hardcore field work. One tried 'n true way to inculcate the spy mindset: read espionage novels, mostly by old Brits: Assignment In Brittany, by Helen MacInness (1942); Rogue Male, by Geoffrey Household (1939), and John Buchan's The Thirty Nine Steps (1915). Teachers had to constantly remind recruits that "spies don't act like spies." That's part of why the Useful Idiot game works so well: these people don't even know they're assets or spies! Much of the public nowadays thinks of James Bond or Jason Bourne as how spies look/act like. But the truth is more 180 degrees from that: Super-spy bookworm Joseph Curtiss quoted CIA director William Colby circa 1970: the ideal spy is the kind of person who "has a hard time catching the eye of a waiter." That would also be, quite often, any one of us Useful Idiots.4

Have you ever caught yourself saying something only to think, Hold on…why do I think that? Do I actually believe it or did I just hear it said a lot by people who seemed to know the truth about this? This seems to me Useful Idiot-adjacent. Relax. We've all been there.

I seek to blur the worlds of useful idiots and the espionage game, secret societies, writers as spies, counter-espionage games and the different levels of such, ideology, the occult, drugs, academia, white collar crime, the multiform nature of "intelligence", the sociology of knowledge, and irony. Why? Because this shit desperately needs to be blurred in order to see it all more clearly.

I just watched Suburban Fury (2024 Robinson Devor), a stylish documentary about Sara Jane Moore, who took a shot at Gerald Ford in September 1975, three weeks after Mansonoid Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme tried to off Ford. They are the only two females who tried to assassinate the POTUS, and they did it 17 days apart, in Sacramento, and San Francisco, respectively. Moore appears as herself in the doc and she's quite the unreliable narrator about her own life. An FBI informant, Moore also seems to have had delusions that if she knocked off Ford people would finally think her Leftist sympathies were honest, Nelson Rockefeller would become POTUS, and suddenly the American people would realize: hey, we didn't elect Ford or Rockefeller; this is all a sham. And why were we in 'Nam? Let's overthrow the government!

(Sara Jane Moore as she appears in Suburban Fury.)

Here's Moore: hanging out with the Panthers in Oakland, and…while at the same time working with the Hearst family trying to get Patty freed. She was friends with Randolph Hearst at the same time she was friends with prison union organizer Wilbert "Popeye Jackson, and they were apparently both informing for the FBI while not telling each other they were. So Sara Jane Moore, a white, educated woman recently divorced from a doctor and owning a spacious home in conservative Danville in the East Bay area near San Francisco, appears to have been a double agent.

However, her background gives me significant pause, and the documentary - which seems heavily influenced by Errol Morris's style - is well worth watching, even though it pretty much glosses over Moore's drama queen fugue states, amnesiac fits, fainting outside the White House, hospitalization at Walter Reed, charges by an ex-husband5 (she was married five times) that she was a "nymphomaniac", her lax relationship with the truth about her own background, her sort of schizotypal-ish-seeming personality (to my eyes): ya gotta wonder. At some point, while she was at Walter Reed, I can easily see some intel asset marking her chart with "possible useful idiot." At any rate, she seems to have been a Useful Idiot in the style of many January 6th traitors.6 Only Moore did 32 years before being released. She could have had a decent, comfortable middle class life, but she never really got a life. Suburbia can do that to ya. My, how times change: she gets 32 years while the January 6ers? Nevermind…Did the FBI use Moore and it eventually got out of hand, kinda like some micro version of the CIA and LSD? I don't know. What's the value to elite monied interests if 47% of the American public already believe we've been invaded by aliens from another planet?7 I don't know. It feels ominous, but I don't know.

A brief note on suburbia and this mindset. Idle hands and devil's playground and all that, but the stultifying conformity of much of suburban life in general reminds me here of a passage from Warren Hinckle of Ramparts, when they decided to go after the Warren Commission Report, and then the news room at Ramparts in San Francisco began to see suburban housewives who were deeply into the JFK hit. One thinks of Mae Brussell, aye, but Hinckle doesn't name names:

With Turner on deck, I went looking for a rope long enough to string up Earl Warren. Some of the people who crashed our lynching party left me with ambivalent feelings about the sanity of our cause. There was a sudden input of bodies from a distaff circle of humanity known as the "sleuths" - volunteers who came out of the woodwork of society to finish the detective work the Warren Commission had left undone. They wrote an odd lot by any standard of measurement. Some were charlatans or publicity hounds, but most were honest and subdued; the typical "sleuth" was more the concerned suburban housewife than the big city hustler. Some were more paranoid than others, but all shared, to some degree, the paranoia which was the state of nature of their enterprise.8

I currently see the most interesting aspect around the admittedly loaded term "Useful Idiot" as that which is epistemological: how do we know we are acting in our own interests and not doing someone else's bidding? It's this question that Robert Anton Wilson had asked in his own self-interrogations. But, as we'll see: other counterculture figures wondered similarly about this, including Allen Ginsberg and Paul Krassner.

No doubt some non-Republicans have engaged in this too. I just can't name any off the top of my head. But safe bet: hardcore Democratic party apparatchiks. All my labels attached to large groups of people here are necessarily fuzzy.

RAW said he wouldn't deny being a CIA agent. Once someone suspects you, if paranoid enough, everything you do or say just further confirms the truth, and you're caught in a Strange Loop. Of course I'd deny it! And if I say I'm denying because it's the "truth" would you suspect me of lying?

I'll discuss these interesting figures at much more length in some future OG-spew.

Espionage novels that inculcated the spycraft game and quote about not being able to catch the eye of a waiter: Book and Dagger, Elyse Graham, pp. 40-45; 56-57. Interestingly, Thomas Pynchon, in the Introduction to his short stories, Slow Learner, said he read all these books in the local public library growing up around Oyster Bay and Glen Cove, New York. A further side-note: this bookish spy Joseph Curtiss, who Graham describes as a shy Yale professor who temporarily wound up running America's espionage bureau in Istanbul - which kept reminding me of the duplicitous world of Eric Ambler's Journey Into Fear and the 1943 RKO film of the same name, with Orson Welles as Colonel Haki - was an interesting writer. Curtiss's PhD thesis was on the 17th century esoteric figure William Lilly, who was a wealthy astrologer/detective/espionage artist. Aside from writing and imaginative literature, links between these other worlds still hold, I think, and among them: 1.) The desire to control what happens by gaining knowledge of the future; 2.) A fascination with reading personalities in order to better predict future actions; 3.) A reliance on special knowledges of initiation techniques and esoteric modes of acquisition of knowledge, and 4.) The use of ciphers and codes.

It appears this husband was John O. Aalberg, who was Head of Sound at RKO in the 1940s and who worked on Citizen Kane, and was nominated for ten Oscars.

Clearly, this is some other level of definition of "Useful Idiot": While it seems clear to me that committed racists and fascists were not what I'd call Useful Idiots on Jan 6, I've read too many stories about those - mostly white suburbanites whose families have money - who had no lives and who radicalized themselves by marinating in talk radio, Fox News and right wing chatrooms for years; they were used by the Trump Regime on Jan 6th. Of those brought up on charges and penalized, most expressed remorse, then recanted. Trump pardoned all traitors, and many have gone on to commit other crimes. A very small handful rejected pardons and expressed remorse, or denounced Trump…all of which is neither here not there vis a vis this topic. Once you've been exposed as a Useful Idiot quite publicly, you're now in some sort of club where it's cool to be a fascist traitor. It's really common to double down. Especially if now you're all in. In this I see quite a lot of overlap with cult psychology. I get the feeling Moore never really had a coherent politics, but seemed to understand that Vietnam was a huge mistake.

I got this from a YouGov poll published 11 months ago HERE. The ideas about Moore's schizotypy: that's merely my impression of her, based on others I've known who were educated people who seemed like compulsive liars born our of living in a fantasy-like dream world of their own making. It was impressionistic, and yet I've been wondering a lot about links between schizotypals, unreliable narrators, masterful con artists, and useful idiots in espionage. I have a hard time breaking away from the idea that these lost, suburban losers never developed a creative outlet, and, as "lost" as they were mentally, they stayed in circuits 1-4. You wanna weigh in here? After watching Suburban Fury I was surprised at the paucity of erudite conspiracy writing about Sara Jane Moore online, and by far the best thing I glommed onto was a long piece by "Lena Ajit" (an anagram?) HERE. Lena Ajit has a Brussell Sprout style: she/he/they remind me of Mae Brussell, Dave Emory, John Judge and maybe a few others: fantastic at connecting dots, even dots that might not be there. For Pynchon fans, especially of the California Trilogy, there's some links to shadowy northern California radical "counterculture" hippie groups that could also have been FBI or even CIA counterintelligence ops, but who knows. Sara Jane Moore was involved with these groups, too. I have yet to read Geri Spieler's Housewife Assassin (2023), which appears to be a retitling of her 2009 book Taking Aim At the President? Spieler had befriended Moore and communicated with her for a long time, and it was the basis of Suburban Fury.

If You Have A Lemon, Make Lemonade, Warren Hickle, p.208. It's with this quote that I must hedge my take on who Sara Jane Moore was, as I grew up in suburbia and knew that it just simply drove some women nuts at little bit, and the sexism of the culture can have a Medea-like effect on some suburban housewives. Not that they killed all their kids and their husbands' girlfriends, but still. Let's just say that neuroticism can assume many forms. Possibly the archetype on film is Gena Rowlands in A Woman Under The Influence (1974 John Cassavettes)?

The announcement by Andy Burnham that he wants an "honest discussion" about freedom of movement, but that he "can't imagine recommending" Schengen or the euro is the clearest insight yet into the British Prime Minister's thinking on what the eventual Europe-UK relationship will look like.

The support for free movement was heartening, and must be seen as a direct rebuke to the Brexiters, who made ending rights for Spaniards, Danes and Germans such a central plank of their agenda. While Mr Burnham has been careful not to be too proscriptive compared to previous British leaders, it is difficult to say that his distaste for two of the pillars of European integration can be considered orthodox.

It is for this reason that talk of a "Swiss deal" has resurfaced as either an intermediary or permanent destination for the UK. If anything, this seems underpriced.

What is meant by a Swiss-style arrangement? People are actually talking about two things. Firstly, we have the bilateral framework consisting of circa 120 agreements that grew organically from the 1970s. It came about owing to the practicalities of a country virtually surrounded by European Union states needing to find ways of making that work. That arrangement was not planned, as such, but instead new agreements were simply encrusted onto each other.

Overall it came essentially to replicate many of the facets of the European single market, including free movement of people. However, it was problematic owing to the agreements' being static and so needing constant negotiated updating, and the lack of an anchor treaty with solid governance.

The Union learnt from this and pushed very hard for the arrangement to be modernised. Although it did not get everything that it wanted, it did manage to get:

• "dynamic alignment" with European market rules (which are moving constantly), reducing the need for negotiation;
• a structured system for contributing to the European budget;
• improved governance, in particular with the Court of Justice of the EU as the final arbiter concerning European law; and,
• a consistent structure across those agreements that pertain to the single market (although not a single-treaty deal that the EU wanted).

The EU took this seriously: it was prepared to let the old agreements go into abeyance without these adaptations.

When we're talking about a Swiss deal then it is that latter paradigm that is being referred to: a central single-market treaty and some add-on deals (like defence). This might not be where some former remainers want to end up, but it is a workable arrangement.

For the EU, a properly constituted deal would give two key advantages. Firstly, it would keep control. Regulatory decisions remain inhouse.

Secondly, it would provide a cordon sanitaire with the UK - which has yet to fully regain trust - preventing it from, in particular, blocking common defence, financial support for Ukraine or 'Made in Europe'.

Equally though, there is a two-sided strategic element to this. Europe will want to show how cooperation can get you nice stuff in a way that aggravation won't, and in this arrangement, it can be more flexible and even supportive of pro-Europeans in the UK. That lays down a marker to the UK far right: here's the deal, it is popular with Britons, take it down at your peril.

Current geopolitical considerations also come into play, as a Swiss-style deal would commit the UK firmly to the EU, and keep it out of the Europhobic axis.

Lastly, if this arrangement were to fall apart, Europe could act much more swiftly and unilaterally rather than via Article 50.

For the UK government, while the economic arguments speak for themselves, the obvious advantage is not having to go through the accession process, which is liable to be painful. Instead of the Commission checking the UK's homework, the arrangement can be presented as a meeting of equals. And, of course, this could mean obtaining a very deep deal indeed without a messy referendum.

I imagine they'd also be delighted to avoid talk about the nuts and bolts of European integration, such as the euro, Schengen, CAP and CFP. In particular, taking fish out of any deal guts an emotional isolationist argument.

Avoiding these areas means settling a Swiss-style deal could also be quick, at least quicker than membership. However, that is down to the UK's cooperation. Quibbling every point will delay.

Nevertheless, politics will be tricky and may need massaging. Firstly, although Mr Burnham has spoken positively of free movement, he also wants youth visas strictly limited and unfree. Taking this into a Swiss-style deal seems politically unworkable for the EU and for relations with EFTA. One solution might be an emergency brake in the event of "societal difficulties", that everyone hopes will never be used.

Secondly, on the UK's current trade deals, it will seek exemptions on standards to preserve them. This frankly seems a non-starter, which would damage the single market irreparably.

Lastly, there are the standards themselves. The UK will argue for a say - in particular in financial-services regulation, even though not a member. It is difficult to see how that particular square could be circled.

Even if on a temporary basis, a Swiss-style deal may prove durable. The push to membership will be harder when the key economic benefits are already secure, for both the public and politicians.

The other issue is the 'Swissification' of the relationship won't necessarily lead to a more popular EU in the UK. Bickering is a more likely outcome.

I don't envy the Prime Minister. He has a lot to balance, and he can't take any real action until he has secured a new mandate. It may be that the search for a way forward ends up leading to the pretty meadows of the Alpine state for inspiration. Hopp!

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The post The Swiss route to a closer relationship with Europe? first appeared on East Anglia Bylines.

I've taken a lot of shots at Nintendo over the years, often times under various versions of headlines that start with "Nintendo Hates You". And those shots were well earned, given the company's apparent policy of being as anti-fan as it possibly can be on all matters related to intellectual property. Nintendo never misses an opportunity to choose IP protectionism over embracing fan culture and the creativity of its own customers and evangelists.

But once we get away from matters of IP, Nintendo can actually be quite attentive to its fan-base. Everything about the UX for its platforms, consoles, and first-party titles show genuine care for what Nintendo fans want and like. It's how this company has managed to remain so successful after all of these years. And that apparently extends to the latest console-war battleground, which is physical media. And on physical media, Nintendo appears to put a ton of weight on what a portion of its fans want as it plans to continue the use of physical media into the future.

Vice President and General Manager for Nintendo in Latin America Bill van Zyll spoke on the topic during a recent interview with YouTuber Coelho conducted during the Brazil Game Show. The Nintendo-focused YouTube channel asked about a number of topics related to Nintendo's activities in the region, including localized Nintendo Directs. That's when the question of physical games inevitably came up. Van Zyll was keen to emphasize the benefits of the format while assuring the company's continued plans to produce physical games.

"Historically, we haven't had a preference for a specific format," he explains. "We take consumer preferences very much into consideration. We also have a platform that was just launched. We've been around for a little over a year with the Nintendo Switch 2, and it offers both digital and physical games. Therefore, we have no plans to abandon physical media. We know how much fans enjoy it."

As Kotaku notes, consumer demographics are certainly playing a roll here. Nintendo gamers prioritize physical media games more than other console users. But in an industry that is quickly building a reputation for casting aside customer sentiment in favor of doing whatever the Copilot-created spreadsheet tells them they should do, seeing a gaming company actually take its own customers into account in this way is a good thing.

Nintendo's heavier reliance on physical sales makes any argument for a shift towards digital sales exclusively far weaker, making the choice to continue supporting physical sales an expected response from the company. Still, as Sony continues conversations with a number of companies over their decision, it is at least reassuring for Nintendo fans that the company has no plans to follow Sony's lead. At least for now.

There is a big enough percentage of the gaming public that likes to buy something physical, for all kinds of reasons. Ownership rights are far more robust that way (for now). Preservationists need physical media to truly do their preservation work. Treating these games and the media packaged with it as collectables is absolutely a thing.

So, those of you who want physical media games? Nintendo loves you is the only appropriate headline. I just wish that posture could infect all the other areas in which Nintendo has long treated its fans poorly.

The German automaker Audi has dialed back its full EV plans for the US market, but its strategy still include plug-in hybrids and a new factory in Georgia, too.

The post Wouldn't It Be Funny If Audi Manufactures EVs In The US? appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The new energy reality: 1 kWh of battery is cheaper than a barrel of oil The EU is fiercely debating the future of the automotive industry and how far the transition to battery electric cars will be slowed down. Last time we had this debate back in 2022, Europe was ... [continued]

The post From Barrel to Battery: What Will Europe's Clean Car Debate Decide appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Phoenix — The Sierra Club today published a new report, "Asleep at the Switch: How the ACC is Letting Utilities Fleece Ratepayers," that considers the power the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) has over the future of Arizona's energy landscape, public health, and utility bill increases. The report also examines the ... [continued]

The post New Report Keeps Tabs on ACC's Utility Bias that Ends up Hurting Wallets appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Carbon pricing in a global context In April 2025, governments at the International Maritime Organization (IMO) agreed on a historic global regulation, the Net-Zero Framework (NZF). It was designed to set global shipping on a course to net-zero by 2050 in a just and equitable way. Global shipping is responsible ... [continued]

The post The EU Is Showing How Regional Maritime Rules Can Support A Global Framework At The IMO appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Japanese ISP GMO Internet has warned customers the cloudy desktop service it offers as an ideal foreign exchange trading environment was compromised by an attacker, and that it had been slow to improve the service's security.

GMO runs a service called Onamae.com Desktop Cloud and last week admitted "a third party had installed malicious programs in the server environments of some customers." That's never welcome news but is an especially poor outcome because the servers host cloudy Windows desktops that GMO recommends customers use to host foreign exchange trading applications.

In later updates the company revealed that some customers reported "unauthorized operations were performed on their trading accounts" and advised that third parties had probably seen users' passwords for trading services.

The next day, the company advised users to immediately change passwords for their trading accounts, and to do so using a device that they don't use for trading.

The company has since admitted that its Onamae.com Desktop Cloud service's "systems had security vulnerabilities, that its environment was accessed without authorization, and that customer information was taken outside the Company."

"Some customers have also reported transactions in their trading accounts that they do not recognize."

Those transactions have GMO sufficiently worried that it contacted major trading services, asked them to forcibly terminate all active sessions, monitor for unauthorized transactions, and to block trade requests coming from the Onamae.com Desktop Cloud.

GMO said it has "received a demand for money from a person believed to be the attacker. We have also been told that, if we refuse, the attacker will take actions such as publishing information about the Company and our customers."

The attacker wants $50 million.

The company won't pay because it feels "complying would not guarantee that the obtained information is deleted or that its misuse is prevented."

Investigations into the incident continue, with GMO warning that 26,739 VDI servers may have been hit by the attack, and that users' personal devices may be at risk.

The company is offering all users a ¥5,000 ($32) condolence payment and promised to make good on any trading losses caused by the attack.

This incident may have quite a blast radius, as GMO has warned that some trading apps may keep sessions alive even after passwords change. "Check your securities or FX company's guidance or your account page, and either disconnect all active sessions or ask the company's support desk to disconnect them," GMO advised.

That ¥5,000 isn't going to get anywhere near paying for the work customers will do to sort this out.

GMO CEO Masatoshi Kumagai acknowledged that in a blog post in which he described the payment as "a token of our initial sincerity towards our customers who have experienced inconvenience and worry."

"We will dedicate the full resources of our group to providing a free alternative environment for six months, fundamentally overhauling our system infrastructure, and conducting a thorough investigation into the cause and preventing recurrence with the help of external experts," he added.

But he also admitted that GMO knew the service's security could be improved.

"Our in-house white-hat hackers had previously pointed out areas for improvement to the team," he wrote. "The team took these points to heart and was working on countermeasures."

"However, while we proceeded cautiously, considering the impact on service availability and prioritizing other issues, our response lacked sufficient depth and speed, allowing the attackers to exploit the vulnerability. I deeply regret that, despite having professionals on staff, we failed to fully translate their expertise into effective defenses as an organization."

The CEO also said GMO can't secure itself without government help.

"I've been involved in this world for 31 years, since the dawn of the internet industry," he wrote. "The cyberspace that I built with my colleagues, believing it would bring smiles to people's faces, is now on the verge of being completely destroyed by malicious actors."

"The ease with which open weight AI models can be combined and spread into countless attack tools has transformed cyberattacks, which once required advanced skills, into an era where anyone can easily carry them out," he added, before claiming that GMO Group's cybersecurity operation "has confirmed that the source of an unauthorized access attack targeting approximately 20 Japanese companies was the misuse of 'ARTEX,' an autonomous AI penetration testing tool originally intended for defense."

Kumagai thinks public/private partnerships are needed to improve infosec across Japan.

"Yesterday, we submitted a proposal to the government to 'apply proactive cyber defense,'" he wrote.

"We are by no means trying to shift the blame for our company's actions onto the government and beg for a bailout," he wrote, but argued that unless Japan implements national-level defenses, more such incidents are unavoidable. ®

Anthropic's IPO filing dropped on Monday morning, and the prospectus reads like a real estate agent desperately trying to sell a house of cards as an investment property:

The upsides are enormous. There are just a few disclosures you should be aware of. Sure, the foundation is cracked; it's in a flood plain, and you can only really afford it if you land that promotion, but there's a non-zero chance it'll work out eventually, and just look at the views.

Every S1's risk factors read a bit like a doomsday prophecy. Anthropic, like any other company that's going to trade on public markets, has to cover its butt. It doesn't change the fact that the company's success is built on a gamble that its revenues will grow fast enough to keep up with its rampant compute spend, for which its obligations now exceed half a trillion dollars over the next decade or so.

Going off the S1 filing's numbers, things don't look that bad for the Claudefather at first blush. Revenues in the first half of 2026 outpaced compute and infrastructure costs by nearly 2:1 and operating losses were a relatively paltry $693 million, compared with $2.14 billion in the first half of last year. The company is still burning money, but things are finally headed in the right direction.

Or, they would be if the company's compute spend were forecast to plateau over the next few years. That's very much not the case.

"Our ability to develop, train, improve, and deploy frontier models depends on our access to enormous and increasing quantities of specialized compute," the prospectus reads.

The continued development of Anthropic's models hinges on ever larger quantities of compute. Anthropic hasn't put a firm number on its compute commitments involving large cloud providers, neoclouds, and equipment providers, but the company's obligations over the next few years could be north of $800 billion, depending on how you wrangle the numbers.

According to the S-1, Anthropic entered into new or amended compute and infrastructure agreements after December 31, 2025, carrying roughly $417 billion in future minimum payment obligations. Since June 30, 2026, the company has entered into further new or amended agreements carrying approximately $245 billion in future minimum payment obligations, some of which are subject to contractual conditions.

But if you add up all the contracts listed, the total is even higher.

• Microsoft: "at least $44.9B" — 2026-2033

• Google: "at least $114.5B" — 2026-2033

• TPUs from Google and other providers: "approximately $125B to $150B"— 2028-2031

• Amazon: "at least $110B" — 2026-2036

• SpaceXAI: "up to $120.5B" — 2026-2029

• AMD: "to exceed" $20B — initial tranche starting in 2027

• Nscale: "up to approximately $44.6B" — through 2033

• Lambda: "approximately $41.3B" — through 2034

• Broadcom: "approximately $161.2B" — starting in 2026

That's a total obligation between $782 billion and $807 billion, though some aren't as airtight as others. According to the S1, Anthropic's deals with Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Broadcom are non-cancellable. In fact, the contracts with Microsoft, Google, and Amazon dictate payment regardless of usage.

Similarly, Anthropic's only way out of its contracts with Nscale and Lambda, which extend through 2033 and 2034 respectively, is if they fail to deliver on their commitments on time or breach them.

Anthropic does have some flexibility with regard to its widely reported collab with Elon Musk's SpaceXAI to lease capacity of its Colossus supercomputer in Memphis. The deal, worth roughly $120 billion through 2029, can be canceled with just 90 days' notice by either party beginning in early 2027. Meanwhile, Anthropic's agreement with AMD is expected to cost more than $20 billion for the initial tranche of compute capacity, provided it procures the full amount, but this can be satisfied by leasing capacity from the likes of Microsoft.

And while the timetable for Anthropic to meet those obligations remains unclear — several fields relevant to this remain blank at this time — it's safe to say the company's growth trajectory will need to be astronomical to keep up with its rampant spending, let alone ever turn a profit.

This spend is all predicated on the idea that more compute equals better, more desirable models that will grow the customer base and support higher-margin products, which is why the company is telling investors now that it's going to keep signing and amending compute contracts. At this rate, we wouldn't be surprised if the model dev's obligations through 2040 exceeded a trillion dollars before year's end.

Whether Anthropic will ever actually make good on those commitments is another matter entirely. "Our ability to meet the substantial and growing financial obligations of these requirements to secure compute depends on our ability to generate significant revenue growth," the filing reads.

If Anthropic's revenues can't keep up with its compute commitments, it could end up defaulting, which it notes could result in a cascade that takes the entire house of cards down with it.

Anthropic does have some backstops should it run into trouble paying its bills on its own. For example, "we have the ability to issue, if needed, up to $42.0 billion in aggregate principal amount of convertible promissory notes to Broadcom," the company's S1 notes. However, this only applies to Anthropic's commitments to Broadcom.

The company could also turn to equity or debt financing to pay its other debts. But if it can't make revenue targets, the company warns that doing so risks diluting shares and/or taking on additional debt on unfavorable terms.

Worse, Anthropic's biggest compute providers are not only some of its biggest customers, but also its biggest competitors. We're talking major cloud providers like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, which are far larger and actually profitable.

This poses a different problem for Anthropic. Cloud providers are convenient because Anthropic doesn't have to pay for the compute up front. But if the company can't get adequate compute from Google, Amazon, or Microsoft because they're using it for training or running their own or someone else's models, they may need to look at alternative options, including building out their own infrastructure.

"We may in the future finance a greater portion of our compute on an up-front basis, including through capital leases, prepayments, debt-financed purchases of equipment, or similar arrangements," the company explained.

In fact, to some degree Anthropic is already doing this through its lease deal with Broadcom. This appears to be tied to Google and Broadcom's collaboration with Anthropic to provide TPU-based compute earlier this year. Meta was also reportedly in talks to deploy Google TPUs in its own datacenters so the arrangement wouldn't be that unusual.

And then of course there are external threats, like conflict in the South China Sea severing supply chains for the vast majority of AI accelerators.

The only way to justify this kind of spend and risk is if you believe the upside is enormous. Like, the biggest economic transformation in the history of humankind.

As Anthropic puts it: "We believe this abundance of AI will rapidly transform every sector of the global economy in ways greater than the impact of industrialization, electricity, semiconductors, and the internet." ®

OpenAI has added a mid-range model to its GPT-6.1 family, offering strong performance at a lower price.

The AI business' general-purpose models span four tiers. Products named "Sol" or "Astra" are its high-end offerings and come with price tags to match. "Luna" models are its cheapest offerings. This new model gets the "Terra" treatment the company reserves for mid-range models.

"Terra continues to advance the cost-intelligence frontier across our model families, providing a new balance of speed, capability, and cost," OpenAI said. "Its standard API prices are 50 percent lower than those of GPT-5.6 Terra and GPT-6.1 Sol, making it practical for developers to automate high-volume work, like reading incoming invoices and entering their details into accounting software."

Artificial Analysis, a site that tracks model performance and cost, notes that GPT-6.1 Terra pushes the cost efficiency frontier. "It is the first Terra-class model since GPT-5.6, and is more intelligent for less than a third of the cost," the site says.

GPT-6 Luna ($0.10/M input tokens, $0.50/M output) occupies the lowest tier of OpenAI's model lineup in terms of cost and capability, followed by GPT-6.1 Terra ($1/M, $5/M), GPT-6.1 Sol ($2/M, $10/M), and GPT-6 Astra ($10/M, $50/M).

In a comment posted to Hacker News, Ted Sanders, a member of technical staff at OpenAI, framed the differences between the various GPT-6.1 models thus: "In the case of GPT-6.1 Terra, I'd say Terra is probably better than Astra and Sol at technical communication, similar on vision and computer use (but much faster!), and a bit worse on most other things. For API developers, it's a nice midrange option if you want something cheaper than Sol but a lot smarter than Luna (especially for vision/computer use/communication)."

"For subscribers, it's not a bombshell release - if you're hitting usage limits, maybe it helps you go a bit further, and if you want clearer communication or faster computer use, it can be a nice option to select."

Terra's knowledge cutoff date, June 1, 2026, means it is the most up-to-date of its model family. Perhaps that counts for something if you're asking questions about events after April 30, 2026 - the training data cutoff for Astra and Sol.

In terms of model safety, Terra handles harmful requests a bit less frequently than GPT-6.1 Sol but also avoids unnecessary refusals more often than its more capable sibling.

But as noted by Max Woolf, a data scientist, in a recent blog post, the real story here is the economics of AI models. Despite the widespread expectation that OpenAI and Anthropic will have to raise the cost of AI inference (or reduce the value provided via subscription) to bring revenue closer to the extravagant sums these companies are spending on model training, inference, and infrastructure, he notes that prices keep coming down and model performance keeps going up.

"The idea that token prices will suddenly rise is more a fantasy that is not supported by both behavioral economics and the actual trends of LLM prices going down significantly over the last few months for better models, and not just from OpenAI and Anthropic," he observes. "As long as scalers can price at a cost-per-token lower than the revenue-per-token, then those inference providers will reduce token costs to compete with each other to a point that OpenAI/Anthropic will have to lower their prices to compete too."

As to whether these price trends suggest that AI companies have a sustainable business, investors may soon be able to make that bet on the Nasdaq exchange after Anthropic floats. ®

A new Miasma-family npm worm, originally believed to be just a test with no victims, secretly armed 42 real GitHub repositories from 11 owners, hijacking accounts as early as July and using a stealthy payload built to stay hidden from GitHub and automated scanners, according to JFrog researchers.

Threat hunters at SafeDep, an open source supply chain security firm, first spotted the "testmetest" npm campaign last week, identifying 18 packages linked to the same operator between October 19 and October 25, including releases containing credential-stealing malware. As with earlier npm worms, the malware is self-replicating, steals credentials, and installs a wiper that deletes the home directory when the victim revokes the stolen GitHub token, the security researchers noted.

The new npm worm shares code with June's Miasma Phantom Gyp worm, and adds Mini Shai-Hulud's token-revocation wiper.

As of October 22, however, SafeDep had found no compromised third-party packages or victims. "All observed activity belongs to the operator's own test accounts," the team wrote.

As with most happy-ending security stories, that proved too good to be true.

In a Monday report, supply chain security company JFrog said its analysis proved otherwise, and found the testmetest campaign operator "had already armed real repositories belonging to established developers and organizations."

This isn't just about timing, either, according to JFrog researchers Guy Korolevski and Yair Benamou. "The payload blobs were large enough to evade the GitHub search and API paths normally used to find this kind of compromise," they wrote.

The attackers planted execution hooks for AI coding assistants and development tools, including Claude, Gemini, Cursor, and VS Code, alongside polymorphic wrappers measuring 12.9 to 13.7 MB that decode a hidden CI-publisher payload. Separately, the npm worm steals credentials, modifies repositories and CI configurations, and spreads through npm packages.

The malware also uses a compiled native add-on to decrypt and launch a separate payload. Before executing, the loader checks for CI runners, containers, sandboxes, debuggers, and other signs of automated analysis, exiting silently when it detects them to reduce the likelihood of detection by security scanners.

The researchers also found a second build that skips the encrypted file. "It forks, detaches and runs a hard-coded command that pulls a loader from a repository on the operator's own GitHub account," they wrote. That account - CementBeetleSteeple - hosted 17 campaign repositories in total.

JFrog connected this account to a shellpanel scanner, previously documented by Socket in a large-scale campaign that abused GitHub Actions in compromised repositories to exploit CVE-2026-41940 and steal server credentials.

CVE-2026-41940 is an authentication bypass affecting cPanel and WHM. CISA added it to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog in April, and cPanel has since published patched versions.

"C2 infrastructure were previously reported by Socket; our findings connect them to the testmetest GitHub victim cluster through artifacts and workflows on the same hijacked owners," the JFrog researchers wrote. They added that while they found 42 armed GitHub repositories and attempted internet-wide exploitation, they did not confirm any downstream cPanel compromises.®

New rail services can give Switzerland its first high-speed direct trains to the UK. Polling in Switzerland Total sample size was 1,048 adults. Fieldwork was undertaken between 11th-24th September 2026. Nearly half of Swiss people use rail for other international destinations at least once a year. When asked about journey ... [continued]

The post How the Swiss Want to Travel to the UK appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Report Shows How to Unlock the Full Potential of Distributed Energy Resources WASHINGTON D.C. — A new report released today by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Current Energy Group outlines how grid operators and regulators can deploy distributed energy resources (DERs) like solar and battery storage to boost ... [continued]

The post New Whitepaper Shows How Grid Operators & Energy Regulators Can Use Solar & Storage to Secure the Grid, Boost Reliability & Reduce Energy Costs appeared first on CleanTechnica.

More than twenty years have passed since my father died at this time of year and thoughts of mortality always enter my mind as the nights begin to draw in, as I prepare to face the spiritual challenge of another long dark winter ahead. So Luke Clennell's splendid DANCE OF DEATH engravings inspired by Hans Holbein suit my mordant sensibility at this season.

First published in 1825 as the work of 'Mr Bewick', they have recently been identified for me as the work of Thomas Bewick's apprentice Luke Clennell by historian Dr Ruth Richardson.

The Desolation

The Queen

The Pope

The Cardinal

The Elector

The Canon

The Canoness

The Priest

The Mendicant Friar

The Councillor or Magistrate

The Astrologer

The Physician

The Merchant

The Wreck

The Swiss Soldier

The Charioteer or Waggoner

The Porter

The Fool

The Miser

The Gamesters

The Drunkards

The Beggar

The Thief

The Newly Married Pair

The Husband

The Wife

The Child

The Old Man

The Old Woman

You may also like to take a look at

Luke Clennell's London Melodies

Luke Clennell's Cries of London

I remember how revolutionary the first web was, but then a series of tech companies took it over and "had their way" with it.

The first was Netscape and they added JavaScript to steal the thunder from "Sun" (a long story).

Then Microsoft crushed Netscape by cutting off their air supply, and they piled up all kinds of nasty insecure features with predictable results, they made the web a paradise of viruses, making it largely unusable until Firefox replaced Microsoft, and their web was nicer, and smaller and they left out the viruses.

Google came along and quickly replaced it with Chrome and all was good for a while, until they decided it was just another corporate platform like Android and threw out all the early sites, so boring, they couldn't make billions of dollars, and now what used to be the web is all but gone.

What's next? It's time for The Big Undo.