Plus: A M&M-based programming language ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

March 09, 2026 | Read online
# AI rewrite fight, data centres attacked and are most silicone phone cases too grippy? Plus: A M&M-based programming language
Edition 2517
"2007 broken computer 347361369" by tara hunt from Montreal, Canada is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
Mentioned in today’s edition: Python, OpenAI, Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, Palantir, Jensen Huang and Windows 98. Plus, deals on Elgato mic arms, Samsung Frame TVs and AMD CPUs.
# The News
### What's the point of sharing your code with conditions if someone can instantly rip it off with AI?
Since its creation in 2006, the Python library chardet has been available under a specific license (Tuananh). Last week, one of its maintainers (but not the original creator) put out an updated version that was completely rewritten by an LLM. As a result of the rewrite, he said it would now be subject to a new, more permissive license (GitHub). Its original creator responded by saying that, no, this violated the original license because the LLM had "exposure to the originally licensed code" (GitHub).
The Sizzle: Open source project drama is nothing new, but this is a preview of a bigger fight that we're going to see more often. If you wanted to build something that can detect character encoding, you could use chardet but it comes with the condition of using its rules. That's supposed to encourage people to share work in the knowledge that they can set the terms for how it's used.
But what happens when the cost of creating your own is suddenly more or less the same as using the existing one? You see something you like, you rip it off at a marginal cost, technically it's different because it's "rewritten" and then you use whatever rules you want. Great for you, but what about the person who made the code in the first place? Certainly it doesn't encourage them to share their code in the future, or for anyone else who wants to set limits. While this sort of thing was always technically possible, the friction of having to do a full rewrite was one of the safeguards against this behaviour. AI reducing the cost of reverse engineering and producing the near-identical copies of anything that you can get your hands on — open source code now, next proprietary software, books, movies, you name it — is a challenge to the systems that encourage people to build and share things.
Discuss in Slack or Forum.
### Hello data centres, welcome to war
Data centres have officially become strategically important military targets (Guardian). Three Amazon Web Services data centres were attacked last week, with an Iranian news outlet reporting that Amazon and Microsoft infrastructure were intentionally targeted (FT, $). It's unlikely that these data centres were doing significant work for the military — those types of data centres tend to be smaller and hidden away — but their destruction would cause disruption, even if traffic can be routed elsewhere.
Naturally, cyber attacks have been a big part of the US-Iran conflict (The Record) and the US military is increasingly relying on AI to help sort through intelligence like satellite images, radar and communication interceptions (WSJ, gift link).
Also on AI news: OpenAI and Oracle have ditched one part of their "flagship" Project Stargate data centre project (Bloomberg, $) eyes emoji. And here are two fun, dystopian AI testing stories that came out over the weekend: Alibaba's new model freed itself and started secretly mining crypto (Axios) and Claude realized it was being tested, found an answer key, then built software to hack it (Reddit).
Discuss in Slack or Forum.
### Most silicone phone cases are too grippy. I am not a crank.
Testing out the new Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, reviewer Ben Schoon had one complaint (9to5Google): the official silicone phone case was way too grippy. Schoon said that it's actually legitimately difficult to get in and out of his pocket, and he's had the same issue with Google Pixel cases since the Pixel 8. This made me realise that I ditched the silicone cases in part because I, too, hate doing the 'wiggling my phone out of my pocket' dance. As a result, I'm rolling with a hard plastic case on my iPhone 17 Pro (which I don't love).
What kind of phone case do you use? I'd love to hear what phone case material you're rocking, and if you've ever felt like you're fighting with a plunger while trying to extract your phone.
Discuss in Slack or Forum.
# Leftovers
Australia:
Palantir embeds staff in Department of Defence and can data-mine Australian data, per contract (Crikey, $) The ACCC says that retailers will be held responsible for what their AI chatbots say (SMH, $) She helped design Australia's aged care assessment tool – but now Lynda Henderson is too scared to use it (The Guardian) "The Albanese government has put tech giants and data centre operators on notice about complying with Australian values and interests when deploying artificial intelligence or face a decade of reactionary regulation.” (AFR, $) Data centre operators see opportunity in Trump's new AI chip laws (The Australian Financial Review, $) Poor WA gov M365 security led to $71k theft and children's data breached (iTnews) Australian cyber spooks have put out an alert that Russian ransomware group INC Ransom is targeting Australia (Cyber dot gov dot au)
Rest of World:
After doing some cheap laptops, Apple is going to go upmarket with a foldable iPhone, new AirPods, and a touchscreen MacBook Pro (Bloomberg, $) Big Asian social media markets step up ban on access for under-16s (Financial Times, $) Valve's Steam Machine may not launch this year (The Verge) How researchers won a legal fight to access X's data under the DSA (Tech Policy Press) Nintendo suing U.S. government to get their tariff money back (Aftermath) Two pay stories: Google just gave Sundar Pichai a $692M pay package (TechCrunch) and Nvidia's Jensen Huang set to receive $4 million bonus from Nvidia — 0.002 percent of his $164 billion net worth (Tom's Hardware) LibreOffice 26.2 is here (The Document Foundation Blog) How usable is Windows 98 in 2026? (Hackaday) Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions (X)
Discuss in Slack or Forum.
# Oh, Also
### A madman has built a M&M-based programming language
Some complete maniac has built an entire coding language using M&Ms. Here's how it works: there are just six letters (for each colour of M&M). Each colour represents a family of instructions, i.e. yellow for math, green for stack and variables. The number of candies put together determines which specific command or whatever in the family. Code compiles by printing an image file made from the M&M sprites (however the author notes that it will not work if you "dump a bag of candy on a messy kitchen table and take a dramatic iPhone shot"). Here's the GitHub if you're sick enough to give it a whirl.
Discuss in Slack or Forum.
# Bargains
Electronics
INIU P41 10000mAh Power Bank with USB-C and USB-A (Red) - $25 at Amazon (Down from $36) Wiz Colour & Tunable White Smart LED Strip (4m) - $29 at The Good Guys (Down from $89) Elgato Wave Mic Arm LP - $99 at Umart (Down from $169) Kogan 100" Fresnel ALR Fixed Frame Projector Screen - $149 at Kogan (Down from $499) Dreame L10s Ultra Gen2 Robot Vacuum and Mop - $599 at Amazon (Down from $1299) Samsung The Frame at Samsung 55" for $1099 (Down from $1799) 65" for $1249 (Down from $2299)
Computing
Logitech MX Anywhere 3S Compact Wireless Mouse - $99 at Amazon (Down from $139) GL.iNet Flint 2 (GL-MT6000) Wi-Fi 6 Router - $178 at GL-iNet AU AliExpress (Down from $269) AMD Ryzen 7 9800x3d CPU - $631 at Smart Home Store eBay (Down from $799)
Mobile
Kogan 27000mAh Energymax 140W PD Powerbank with Smart Digital Display - $74 at Kogan (Down from $149)
# The End
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