That's something I noticed a while ago: all podcasters have those huge microphones in front of them - sometimes with a gigantic boom - that wouldn't look out of place on 1950s TV. But unlike in the 1950s, they're not trying to hide them, no no: the more visible, the bigger, the better.

I can't figure out the point of that prop. If I did a podcast, I'd try to unclutter the shot myself.

Turns out: no one is immune to AI-generated clone games.

It was well and truly seized in the head, but after two hours of drilling and careful filing, I managed to get the last of it out without ruining the threads and without dropping crap in the cylinder.

I bought my minivan in 2008. It was cheap and basic and I took good care of it. But the north is harsh on vehicles, and that glow plug had been seized in the head for a good 4 years. The engine was still starting and running like a champ, so I left it there. But lately it's started acting up bad. And there's rust at the bottom of the bodywork too...

Now it's come to the point where, in the past, fixing a vehicle like this wouldn't have been worth the money, and it would have been time to consider buying a newer, more reliable ride.

But... that was in the past. There's a new variable in the equation: this old minivan isn't on the internet, it doesn't have a camera or a microphone, it doesn't have telemetry and it doesn't snitch on me. And the mere thought of having to buy a new car fills me with a sense of dread and nausea.

So I really, REALLY want to keep this old minivan on the road. But if I hadn't been able to get the glow plug out, I would have had to replace the head. That's not cheap. It would probably have cost more than the residual value of the minivan. But I got the glow plug out, so now the minivan is suddenly a whole lot more worth saving.

Now that the engine is sorted out, I replaced the ground strap. And what do you know: now it turns over really healthy. I measured a 2V drop across the old strap. Yikes! But there's still something wrong with the afterglow, because the engine dies seconds after starting when it's cold. I'll sort that out later.

When it's all nice and reliable again, my plan is to bring it to an auto body shop to have it rust-proofed / repainted and have the various dings fixed up here and there.

Pouring money into that thing would have been insane 20 years ago. But in 2026, I reckon extending the life of an old vehicle is an investment in privacy. That's how disturbing the world we live in is.

Across wide stretches of the sun-bleached Sonoran desert in Arizona, thousands of retired aircraft sit nose-to-tail in graveyards of metal known as boneyards.

​Many of their engines haven’t been fired up for years. But America’s soaring demand for electricity to power data centers is bringing them back to life.

Right after Tuesday's midterms, OpenAI will unleash a policy and PR blitz to try to get in sync with the new Washington, including an effort to rebrand data centers as "AI compute campuses."

Boop beep blop. I'm a bot! 01101000 01101001

Anthropic has added a new line to its AI usage policy: Users should not “engage in sustained and needless abusive or cruel behavior toward our models.”

Sadly for this guy, it's too big to get in. So it's trying really hard to enlarge the hole - and it's ruining my birdhouse in the process 🙂

Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX adopted President Trump's preferred "super intelligence" term on their third-quarter earnings calls.

Are there reasons for limiting your exposure to blue light from screens and LEDs? And if so, are blue-light glasses the solution?

I will measure their effect on a laptop screen and a white LED with a spectrometer - and compare them to UV-blocking amber glasses.

I do find a use case for the blue-light glasses, but maybe there are better solutions for keeping our eyes happy in everyday life? Such as red-shifting screens and buying a much bigger TV?

Let's find out!

Why did Elon Musk say I should be in prison?

Is the AI bubble getting ready to burst?

And are Democrats on the verge of securing an historic victory in the midterms?

Heather and I break it all down on a brand new episode of the Coffee Klatch.

Boom’s airliner may be delayed, and its data center power business lost a customer.