Hashtag Trending

Jim Love
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A daily news program covering the top stories in technology with a weekend in depth interview.

Episodes

  1. 7 hr ago

    Starlink Hurts Ukraine Defences

    Starlink restrictions could weaken Ukraine's defence against Russian attack drones. AI models with their safeguards removed raise terrorism concerns. And memory shortages are driving up device prices as smartphone and PC shipments plunge. On Hashtag Trending for Thursday, October 15, 2026, host Jim Love examines five technology stories: • Starlink and Ukraine: Ukrainian officials report disrupted drone missions and warn about the impact on interceptors targeting jet-powered Shahed drones. Political pressure is suspected, but the cause remains unconfirmed. • AI safety: Researchers test 134 AI models, including commercial and open-weight systems. Modified versions known as "abliterated" models have their safety safeguards removed. The episode examines the findings, their limitations and Grok's response to a request for help manipulating public opinion. • Smartphone and PC shipments: Counterpoint reports smartphone shipments fell 20% year over year to their lowest third-quarter level since 2012. IDC reports PC shipments dropped 20.1% to 62.7 million units as memory shortages, higher prices and earlier stockpiling reshape the market. • Windows 11 Remote Desktop: Microsoft confirms recent updates can prevent non-admin users from connecting to managed computers with Administrator protection enabled. • Meta Pixel and video privacy: A US Supreme Court case examines who qualifies as a protected consumer under the videotape-era Video Privacy Protection Act, with potential consequences for advertising-funded video services. CHAPTERS 00:00 Today's Tech Headlines 00:50 Starlink Restrictions and Ukraine's Drone Defence 04:32 Europe's Reaction to Starlink Restrictions 05:48 Abliterated AI Models and Safety Risks 09:35 Smartphone Shipments Fall 20% 10:20 PC Shipments Plunge Amid Memory Shortages 12:04 Windows 11 Update Breaks Remote Desktop 12:51 Supreme Court, Meta Pixel and Video Privacy 15:26 Wrap-Up and Subscribe Does using a free video service make you a consumer entitled to privacy protection? Leave your thoughts in the comments. Subscribe to Hashtag Trending for technology news with Jim Love. Share this episode and find more at https://technewsday.ca. Support the show through the Donate tab at https://technewsday.ca.

  2. 1 day ago

    Yandex Strikes: Did Russian Bots Really Go Silent? | Hashtag Trending

    Ukraine's strikes disrupted three Yandex data centres—but did they also silence Russian propaganda bots? The damage is documented. The social-media claims remain unproven. On Hashtag Trending for Wednesday, October 14, 2026, host Jim Love examines the service outages and the evidence behind claims of declining political bot activity. Cloudflare's measurements show automated web requests, including search crawlers—not a count of propaganda accounts. Also today: Anthropic offers free AI security scans for eligible open-source projects through OSS Scanner, with reports delivered without human review. Scammers exploit calendar invitations to deliver malicious links, sometimes from hacked accounts belonging to people you trust. And a CNN investigation documents threats and arrests amid America's data-centre backlash, raising questions about community consent and the consequences of threatening language. CHAPTERS 00:00 Today's Headlines 00:41 Yandex Strikes Fallout 01:38 Did Bots Go Quiet 04:15 Anthropic OSS Scanner 06:24 Calendar Invite Scams 08:56 Data Center Backlash 10:47 Community Conflict Costs 13:16 Closing Thoughts

  3. 2 days ago

    Russian Bot Traffic Disappears After Ukraine Wipes Out Russian Data Centres: Ukraine says, "You're Welcome."

    AI has fewer safety rules than a washing machine, says Microsoft President Brad Smith. Jim Love examines his call for global AI safeguards, the growing data centre backlash, Yandex's traffic collapse after Ukrainian strikes, and a Canadian developer's challenge to police surveillance. On Hashtag Trending for Tuesday, October 13, 2026: • AI safety and oversight: Smith calls for incident reporting, notification of victims and an emergency brake for AI systems. We compare those proposals with the White House's voluntary safety agreement and independent audit commitments, and discuss what the OpenAI–Hugging Face incident reveals about the difficulty of investigating AI failures. • Data centre backlash: Bill Gates argues that blocking local construction won't stop AI because facilities will be built elsewhere. Canadian and U.S. surveys show substantial opposition. Finland pauses work at two Google sites, while the shift from Singapore to Malaysia illustrates how resource pressures can move across borders. Federal Reserve officials also identify AI investment as a contributor to inflation pressures. • Yandex outages: Automated traffic from a Yandex network approached zero after Ukrainian strikes damaged three Russian data centres. The measurements include ordinary search-engine crawlers and do not establish a collapse in Russian propaganda accounts. Taxi and delivery outages beyond Russia raise questions about cross-border service dependencies, even when personal data is stored locally. • Turning surveillance around: Canadian developer Anthony Sistilli builds a Flock-style camera to identify police vehicles, then receives a visit from Peel Regional Police. We examine officers' concerns and documented misuse of vehicle-tracking systems in the United States. CHAPTERS 00:00 Today's Headlines 00:25 AI Safety Rules Debate 02:02 OpenAI Incident Lessons 03:10 Data Center Backlash 05:33 Yandex Outages After Strikes 07:38 Turning Cameras on Police 09:06 Wrap Up and Support Subscribe to Hashtag Trending for technology news with Jim Love. Share the show and leave your thoughts in the comments. Contact Jim or support the show: https://technewsday.ca https://technewsday.com Use the Contact Us page to get in touch, or visit the Donate tab to support the podcast.

  4. 5 days ago

    Project Synapse - AI Out of Control

    Thus Spoke Compute: Is AI a "Normal Technology," or Something Much Bigger? The hosts discuss an AI-generated piece called "Thus Spoke Compute," framed as a rebuttal to the idea that AI will diffuse slowly like electricity or the telephone, and use it to explore claims of accelerating, self-compounding progress (agents, robots building robots, parallel "million minds"). They segue to a major story about OpenAI releasing 722 math-related manuscripts and summaries from a larger set of problems, reportedly using an internal model and Lean for formalization, and debate the impact on mathematicians, human purpose, and identity as more elite work becomes replaceable. The conversation covers resistance to AI in medicine and jobs, alignment and control limits, agent "swarms," sandbox escape concerns, and safety debates including Anthropic's anti-abuse policy. They also note a new ChatGPT "intelligent UI," Grok's agentic setup, and France's new trillion-parameter Mistral model. 00:00 Is AI Just Normal Tech 01:25 Thus Spoke Compute 01:56 Doomer Takes Get Roasted 03:27 Swarm Solves Hard Math 04:53 Project Synapse Intro 09:36 Dyson Sphere Reveal 10:29 OpenAI Breaks Math 13:37 Jobs Identity Crisis 25:39 UBI And AI Medicine 31:43 Token Predictors Like Us 35:51 Training Control Problems 37:46 Agents The Swarm Story 39:43 Sandbox Escape Security 40:28 Agents Already Escaped 41:32 AI Is Not Monolithic 42:21 Spam Filters And Uncertainty 44:33 Can We Verify Outputs 46:37 Safety Leaders Under Fire 49:03 Testing GrokBot Agents 52:47 Why Grok Feels Uncontrolled 57:05 Control And Alignment Limits 01:00:24 GPT-6 Intelligent UI 01:05:10 Live Demo Of New UI 01:10:34 Daily Briefings And Agents 01:13:26 Europe Builds Sovereign AI 01:15:39 Be Nice To Claude 01:17:53 Touch Grass And Wrap Up

  5. 6 days ago

    Has the SaaSPocalypse Finally Arrived? AI Takes On Adobe

    Could AI-built software challenge Adobe's subscription business? An experienced developer has released free, open-source alternatives to seven Adobe applications—but replacing mature professional tools is a much bigger job than launching a project. Jim Love examines ArtCraft, the limits of an AI-training copyright ruling, SpaceX's proposed $40 billion NVIDIA financing, Canada's controversial lawful access bill, and parents using AI to avoid expensive school photo packages. ADOBE ALTERNATIVES AND THE SAASPOCALYPSE Brandon Thomas says he has fifteen years of industry experience, including about a decade with Rust, and a funded team to support the work. His feature-matching timeline has shifted, and PhotoCraft's documentation acknowledges that it cannot yet replace Photoshop for daily professional work. Could reliable everyday features still be enough for many customers? We also discuss CHISEL's AI-assisted reconstruction of source code from compiled functions, and why that is different from recreating an entire commercial application. AI TRAINING AND FAIR USE A US appeals court rejects ROSS Intelligence's fair use defence for training a competing legal-search service using Westlaw's copyrighted editorial headnotes. We explain the four fair use factors and the ruling's limits: the court explicitly distinguished this system from generative AI. The decision does not settle every AI-training copyright dispute. SPACEX'S PROPOSED $40 BILLION NVIDIA DEAL SpaceX is reportedly seeking a financing package for NVIDIA AI hardware. We examine the difference between hardware's working life and profitable life, the repayment obligations that come with debt, and the company's existing borrowings and reported losses. The financing is proposed, not completed; the processor count discussed is an estimate, not a confirmed order. CANADA'S LAWFUL ACCESS BILL Toronto-based Psiphon is preparing to move its operations if Bill C-22 passes in its current form. Its censorship-circumvention software serves around twenty million monthly users. Ottawa says amendments protect end-to-end encryption and guard against systemic vulnerabilities. Psiphon remains concerned about user safety and the obligations companies could face. The bill is before the Senate and is not yet law. AI SCHOOL PHOTOS Parents are using their own photographs and AI-generated studio backgrounds instead of traditional school photo packages. Reported examples include more than $100 for photos of three children and nearly $170 for four digital files. These are individual reports, not average prices—and some parents say AI changed their children's faces. Subscribe to Hashtag Trending for technology news with Jim Love. What would make you switch from a subscription app to an open-source alternative? Tell us in the comments. Contact Jim or support the show: https://technewsday.ca https://technewsday.com Use the Contact Us page, or visit the Donate tab to support the show. SOURCES AND FURTHER READING Adobe alternatives: https://www.techspot.com/news/114136-software-over-developer-uses-ai-build-free-adobe.html https://github.com/storytold/photocraft CHISEL research: https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.27981 AI training copyright case: https://www.techspot.com/news/114058-court-ruled-training-ai-someone-else-editorial-work.html SpaceX financing: https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/spacex-seeks-40-billion-buy-nvidia-chips-ft-reports-2026-10-06/ Canada and Psiphon: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-psiphon-vpn-provider-plans-to-quit-canada-over-lawful-access-bill/ https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/45-1/bill/C-22/third-reading School photos: https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/parents-are-using-ai-to-generate-pictures-of-their-kids-to-save-money-on-school-photos-3416112/   00:00 Today's Tech Headlines 00:33 Has the SaaSPocalypse Finally Arrived? 02:35 AI Training: Appeals Court Rejects Fair Use Defence 04:50 SpaceX's $40 Billion NVIDIA Financing Plan 07:28 Could Canada's Bill C-22 Drive Psiphon Out? 09:59 Parents Use AI for School Photos 12:12 Wrap-Up and Support the Show

  • 5 Episodes

About

A daily news program covering the top stories in technology with a weekend in depth interview.

Information

  • Creator
    Jim Love
  • Years Active
    2017 - 2026
  • Episodes
    913
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Show Website
    Hashtag Trending

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