Hashtag Trending

A Microsoft 365 outage that began with Exchange Online spread across Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint, Copilot, Purview, Defender XDR and administrative tools. Microsoft traced the disruption to an authentication configuration error affecting shared infrastructure.
Linux kernel maintainers are being overwhelmed by automated and AI-generated bug reports, many of them duplicates or poorly validated. The problem has become serious enough that maintainers are using frontier AI models to help triage the reports and considering whether rarely used legacy code should simply be removed.
An AV-Comparatives test using 250 live phishing sites found major browsers blocking approximately 75 to 79 per cent. Several dedicated security products blocked between 94 and 96 per cent, demonstrating why browser protection alone may not be enough.
Amazon is also pouring money into AI and cloud infrastructure while reducing corporate employment. At the same time, US Government Accountability Office data shows a growing number of Amazon employees receiving SNAP food assistance during 2025.
Jim Love covers these stories on Hashtag Trending for Wednesday, September 2, 2026.
00:00 Today's tech headlines
00:26 Microsoft 365 outage spreads
01:41 How shared authentication widened the outage
02:07 AI bug reports overwhelm Linux maintainers
03:40 Linux uses AI to triage AI reports
04:22 Browser phishing protection tested
05:30 What IT teams should do next
06:27 Amazon's AI spending and labour divide
08:40 Wrap-up and where to reach us

Tim Cook leaves Apple with an unexpected AI success story as OpenAI reportedly buys tens of thousands of Mac minis and Mac Studios to train computer-use agents.
On Hashtag Trending for Tuesday, September 1, Jim Love looks at why Apple Silicon is finding a new role inside some of the world's leading AI companies, including OpenAI and Anthropic.
Also in today's show:
OpenAI says advertising in ChatGPT has reached a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate in less than 200 days. That's still tiny beside Google and Meta, but already about one-third the current size of Reddit's advertising business.
OpenClaw 2.0 arrives with its biggest update yet, involving 933 contributors and more than 16,000 pull requests. Installation is easier, security has improved and the agents can do more, but prompt injection remains a risk and sandboxing is still disabled by default.
And MapQuest suddenly becomes the number-one navigation app in the U.S. Apple App Store after refusing to rename Lake Ontario "Lake America." We look at what Google, Apple and Waze are doing, why MapQuest usage exploded, and the Indigenous origins of the name Ontario, which dates back at least to 1641.
00:00 Today's Headlines
00:31 Apple's Surprise AI Win
02:36 Why Macs Work for AI Agents
03:18 ChatGPT Ads Hit $1 Billion
04:49 OpenClaw 2.0 Arrives
07:18 OpenClaw's Remaining Security Risks
08:05 MapQuest Takes a Stand on Lake Ontario
09:47 The Indigenous Origins of Ontario
11:06 Wrap Up

OpenAI is cutting off Cursor's direct model access ahead of Astra, while IBM's claimed quantum advantage already faces a classical challenge.
Jim Love covers the technology headlines for Monday, August 31, 2026.
OpenAI will stop supplying models directly to Cursor on November 12 following Cursor's $60-billion acquisition by SpaceX. OpenAI cites its contract and concerns that model outputs could be used to help train competing xAI systems. Developers can still access OpenAI through standard APIs, Codex and cloud gateways including Amazon Bedrock and Microsoft Azure.
IBM says its quantum computer completed a difficult 70-qubit test in 16.1 minutes while detecting errors and validating its results. Researchers working with Nvidia then reported a classical method using 256 H100 GPUs and projected that a comparable workload could be completed in 10.6 minutes.
Also in this episode: Flock Safety faces 90 municipal cancellations in August; infostealer malware is hijacking authenticated Claude sessions; and New Brunswick introduces a bell-to-bell school phone ban, child-care screen limits and social-media blocking on school networks.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Headlines and introduction
00:47 OpenAI cuts Cursor off before Astra
02:53 IBM's 70-qubit quantum test
04:13 Classical computers challenge IBM
05:34 Flock Safety backlash accelerates
07:53 Infostealers hijack Claude sessions
10:22 New Brunswick's school phone ban
13:08 Wrap-up and credits

AI Hardware Arms Race & Humanoid Robot Olympics: Apple Chips, OpenAI 'Jalapeno,' Meta Models, and Robot Prices Plummet
Jim Love, Marcel Gagné, and retired John Pinard cover tech news and a deep dive on robots. They note Linux's 35th anniversary and how the name changed from "Freax" to Linux. They discuss Apple's AI-focused hardware advances (integrated CPU/GPU/neural processing and shared memory) enabling large local model inference, and OpenAI's "Jalapeno" inference chip built with Broadcom, developed in about nine months, delivering 1.5–1.9x more AI work per watt, raising questions for NVIDIA's CUDA moat. They touch on Meta's strong new Muse Glimmer/Spark models despite Reuters reporting failed internal AI rollout, morale issues, and metrics like 220% more AI-assisted coding with 40% reaching production alongside slower issue resolution. Bill Gates warns AI's growing capability could drive permanent job loss and dual-use security/bio risks. They then review China's World Humanoid Robot Competitions, rapid performance gains, autonomous team sports, and one-shot robot learning, plus falling robot price points—from $8K household task bots to Unitree's ~$5,900 humanoid and a ~$1,300 wheeled home helper—arguing autonomy is advancing fast.
00:00 Welcome and Introductions
00:48 Linux Turns 35
02:29 Apple Goes All In
06:18 OpenAI Builds Chips
10:41 Meta Models and Missteps
17:25 Why AI Rollouts Fail
20:33 Bill Gates Sounds Alarm
24:59 AGI and Persistent Agents
33:03 Humanoid Robot Olympics
34:56 Robot Sprint Breakdown
35:49 Humanoid Games Highlights
37:04 Soccer Bots And Teamwork
39:19 From Sports To Warfare
41:04 One Shot Robot Learning
46:33 Robots Making Robots
49:11 Home Robots Price Drop
52:14 MicroDuck And Cheap Bots
53:46 Unitree R1 Under 6K
58:55 Nori Budget House Helper
01:04:18 Autonomy And Price Point
01:05:55 Optimus 2027 Outlook
01:07:42 Weekly Wrap And Signoff

OpenAI has unveiled Jalapeño, its first custom AI inference chip, and the early results could challenge one of Nvidia's biggest advantages.
OpenAI says Jalapeño delivers between 1.5 and 1.9 times more AI work per watt than the systems it tested against. SemiAnalysis watched benchmark runs inside OpenAI's lab and reported strong performance-per-watt results against Nvidia Blackwell. But the bigger story may be software: OpenAI is using Codex to write optimized kernels, potentially weakening the nearly 20-year CUDA software moat that has helped protect Nvidia from competitors.
Also on this episode of Hashtag Trending:
A Reuters investigation reveals how Meta's ambitious AI-driven restructuring plan fell apart. AI-assisted code increased dramatically, but gains in actual product features were far smaller, while technical incidents increased and employee morale deteriorated.
Canada is investing more than $500 million in 64 new research chairs as it tries to turn decades of brain drain into brain gain. The real test will be whether Canada can keep the intellectual property, companies and economic benefits created by those researchers.
And Twitter is back. Sort of. Operation Bluebird has launched a new social network using the Twitter name and the familiar language of tweets and retweets. Elon Musk's X says it still owns the trademarks and is suing.
Hashtag Trending is hosted by Jim Love.
00:00 Headlines
00:27 OpenAI unveils the Jalapeño AI chip
01:39 Can OpenAI challenge Nvidia's CUDA moat
03:02 Meta's AI restructuring plan backfires
04:50 Canada makes a major brain-gain push
06:33 Can Canada turn research into Canadian industry
07:38 X battles a new company called Twitter
09:18 Wrap-up