<h2>Must know</h2>
<ul>
<li><strong>AI infrastructure race heats up with massive investments and power demands</strong>: The global race to scale AI infrastructure is seeing unprecedented investment, with a consortium including BlackRock, Microsoft, Nvidia, and xAI acquiring Aligned Data Centers for a staggering $40 billion. This comes as data centers face severe power bottlenecks, leading to innovative solutions like repurposing retired aircraft engines into gas turbines, as reported by ProEnergy. OpenAI’s ambitious plans for 33GW of data center capacity by late 2026, requiring $400 billion, are being called physically impossible by analysts, highlighting the immense financial and logistical challenges in meeting AI’s insatiable energy demands. Meanwhile, Meta is debuting Disaggregated Scheduled Fabric (DSF) for large-scale GPU interconnects and partnering with Arm for energy-efficient AI, while Nvidia proposes an 800 VDC ecosystem for AI factories to improve efficiency, as seen at OCP Summit 2025.</li>
<li><strong>Vulkan API adoption accelerates across gaming and AI</strong>: The Vulkan API is rapidly gaining traction across software and hardware ecosystems, becoming a cornerstone for high-performance graphics and AI workloads. Open 3D Engine 25.10 now features Vulkan rendering bug fixes and enhanced Linux support. Ollama 0.12.6-rc0 is rolling out experimental Vulkan API support for local language models on AMD and Intel hardware, while Autodesk VRED 2026 integrates a Vulkan-based renderer for automotive visualization. Notably, a Valve engineer achieved NVIDIA DLSS upscaling on the open-source NVK Vulkan driver, bringing proprietary upscaling to Linux, and Blender is testing Vulkan ray queries for more efficient ray tracing, as reported by various technical sources.</li>
<li><strong>Android vulnerability Pixnapping exposes sensitive data</strong>: A critical new side-channel attack dubbed Pixnapping (CVE-2025-48561) affects nearly all modern Android devices, allowing malicious apps to capture sensitive on-screen data like 2FA codes and messages without special permissions. Researchers demonstrated the attack on Google Pixel and Samsung Galaxy/S25 devices running Android 13 through 16, stealing Google Authenticator codes in under 30 seconds. While Google released an initial mitigation, it has already been bypassed, and a full patch isn’t expected until December 2025, leaving millions of users vulnerable, according to security researchers.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Good to know</h2>
<ul>
<li><strong>Unreal Engine 5 showcases visual and animation FX</strong>: Game developers are pushing the boundaries of Unreal Engine 5 with dynamic impact frame effects, custom glitter shaders, and realistic procedural animations for creatures, demonstrating the engine’s advanced graphics and animation capabilities.</li>
<li><strong>GOG faces preservation challenges for classic games</strong>: GOG’s efforts to preserve classic video games are hampered by difficulties in locating intellectual property rights holders, sometimes requiring private investigators, and by technical hurdles in making old games run on modern systems.</li>
<li><strong>AI-powered tools reshape WordPress and web app development</strong>: Vibe by 10Web is an AI-native WordPress builder generating production-ready websites from natural language, while Vibe Code Kit offers prompt-driven development for applications using AI agents and Vue 3 templates, both aiming to streamline web creation.</li>
<li><strong>AMD releases ROCm 7.9 technology preview with new build system</strong>: AMD launched ROCm Core SDK 7.9 as a technology preview, integrating a new build system called TheRock for faster, more reliable build cycles and expanding support for Ryzen AI Max 300 Series APUs and MI350 Series GPUs.</li>
<li><strong>Kohler launches Dekoda, a toilet-mounted waste analysis camera</strong>: Kohler’s new Dekoda camera, priced at $599 with a subscription, analyzes human waste for hydration, gut health, and blood presence using computer vision and spectroscopy, delivering insights via a mobile app.</li>
<li><strong>SpaceX concludes Starship V2, advances to V3</strong>: SpaceX successfully completed the final test flight of its Starship V2 rocket, deploying mock Starlink satellites and validating a new engine landing sequence, marking a transition to the V3 Starship for more advanced missions.</li>
<li><strong>Google DeepMind partners with Commonwealth Fusion Systems for AI in fusion energy</strong>: Google DeepMind is collaborating with Commonwealth Fusion Systems to advance fusion energy using AI, focusing on optimizing plasma stability and maximizing energy output in the SPARC tokamak through reinforcement learning and real-time control systems.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Bullshit police</h2>
<ul>
<li><strong>AI-powered productivity: the 5X dream meets technical debt reality</strong>: Meta’s VP of Metaverse is demanding ‘5X’ productivity from employees using AI tools, targeting 80% adoption. Meanwhile, developers are quietly worrying about the technical debt and maintenance nightmares AI-generated code creates. It seems executives are still chasing the ‘AI magic bullet’ while engineers are left to clean up the ‘workslop’—meaningless AI-generated content that degrades quality and productivity, as highlighted by various developer surveys. Because nothing says ‘innovation’ like forcing your team to rubber-stamp AI’s questionable output.</li>
<li><strong>ChatGPT’s e-commerce ambitions: 1.8 billion queries, 95% non-paying users</strong>: ChatGPT is making a big splash in e-commerce, processing 1.8 billion commercial queries monthly and partnering with Walmart for direct shopping. Yet, 95% of its 800 million users are non-paying, and its mobile app is seeing slowing downloads and reduced engagement, according to recent analysis. OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman confirmed ChatGPT will soon allow verified adults to access erotic content, a bold move that might just be a desperate attempt to boost those subscriber numbers. Because when your trillion-dollar valuation is built on a $50 billion market, you gotta do what you gotta do.</li>
<li><strong>AI in game development: expensive mistake or creative savior?</strong>: Revolution Software’s Charles Cecil admitted that AI upscaling for Broken Sword backgrounds was an ‘expensive mistake,’ forcing artists to manually redraw everything despite initial promises of 80% cost reduction. Apparently, AI is great for audio enhancement but still sucks at artistic nuance. This comes as the UK tech industry sees a 46% drop in graduate hiring, with AI tools replacing junior roles. So, AI is simultaneously too dumb for game art and too smart for entry-level jobs. Pick a lane, AI.</li>
</ul>
