Week 2026-19

We’re reaching a state where we’re starting to believe, a bit too much, that AI model providers will keep funding their losses forever. @vlkodotnet

Week’s Highlight: AI Psychosis

HashiCorp founder Mitchell Hashimoto shared his view on X that several companies are currently in a state of “AI psychosis”. Everywhere you look, there’s an irrational, overly enthusiastic approach to AI.

What does this psychosis actually mean? First, the reckless rollout of AI to the point where the code itself no longer matters. This may lead to more convoluted infrastructure down the road, because AI non-deterministically decides to use some technology without consulting an expert. On the other side, developers’ knowledge is dying off, because they program less and basically just review AI outputs. On top of that, if AI takes over other functions like CI/CD, ticketing, and infrastructure management, what happens when the AI tool goes down?

Second, companies have idealized the cost of AI. For them, using AI is essentially a fixed cost. But the GitHub Copilot case may show that switching to pay-per-actual-use can make AI tools considerably more expensive. We’ll still be in the phase for a while where AI inference providers subsidize their services. But only so we get used to them. Once they bring their costs in line with reality, will companies be willing to pay 2x, 5x, or even 10x more per user?

Does this feel far off? Then brace yourself: starting June 15, Anthropic will deduct every use of the Agent SDK, claude -p, and Claude Code GitHub Actions from a monthly credit pack. The credit pack will be worth your subscription, and after that you’ll pay the same rates as for API usage. If you had Claude Code automated, you may very quickly burn through your credits and then start paying real prices. For a while it might pay off to switch to OpenAI, whose GPT 5.5 model has solid reviews for agentic behavior. But it’ll only be a temporary escape.

Googlebook and Android 17 News

Google introduced the Googlebook — yet another laptop they won’t manufacture directly, but license to vendors. It’s positioned as competition for MacBooks, because it looks almost identical, only it got a little light and an Android-based operating system that can leverage Google Intelligence features.

Android 17 has some interesting new features, like Pause Point, which slows you down when launching apps like Instagram or TikTok. Rambler is a special recording mode where you talk through your stream of thought and it turns it into coherent text.

Then there’s Gemini Intelligence, which can understand what it sees on the screen and help you operate your phone. It lets you create scheduled tasks, generated widgets, or auto-fill data in the Chrome browser.

On top of that, there are “Context suggestions” which, if you enable them, can use a local model to suggest useful actions on the fly. For example, if you mention a meeting, you’ll get a suggestion for a new appointment based on access to your calendar, emails, and so on.

Security Insights

In a short span we have yet another Linux vulnerability — Dirty Frag — which similarly allows unprivileged users to gain root access.

Another week, another supply chain attack. This time on TanStack components, which have millions of downloads and are used by other libraries.

BIZ Insights

The EU has set its sights on TikTok and Instagram. The focus is the addictive design of the entire platform and child protection.

In the context of the previous story, a report came out showing that up to 46% of children say it’s no problem for them to bypass age verification. They do it by entering a fake date of birth, using someone else’s ID, or showing a video game character to fool selfie verification. But the most interesting technique is drawing a fake mustache on their face.

In 2022, the UK launched a system for housing Ukrainian refugees. Since the system had to be built extremely fast, Palantir offered to provide a solution free of charge for 6 months. As the saying goes, nothing is more permanent than a temporary solution. This ended up costing millions of pounds, and only now, after 5 years, has a new system been built — at a fraction of the cost of the original.

Amazon is launching a new product, Amazon Supply Chain Services — a logistics network that will ship whatever you want, wherever you want, similar to UPS or FedEx. Amazon will thus provide its platform sellers with a complete service.

We don’t hear much about Chinese AI startup funding. But DeepSeek is now planning to raise 3 to 4 billion dollars in its first external funding round, which would value the company at roughly 50 billion.

AI Insights

The startup of former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati finally showed what it will offer customers. It’s an interactive AI model that can process audio, video, and text in real time — and, crucially, in parallel. That means the model can generate a response while simultaneously reacting to new inputs. That’s ideal for user interaction. The model works in 200 ms micro-windows, which means you can interrupt it or change the topic almost instantly.

SANA-WM is just a 2.6-billion parameter open-source model that can generate a minute-long video from a single image.

Strix is something of an agentic AI hacker — it can automatically search for vulnerabilities in applications. It then generates a PoC for you and, optionally, suggests a fix.

arXiv, the server where scientific papers are published before they go through peer review, is introducing strict criteria for AI-generated content prior to publication. Break them, and you get a 1-year publication ban. There are scientific fields where, without a posting on arXiv, you basically can’t get your work into any scientific journal.

Andon Labs ran an experiment in which they let the four most well-known AI models run their own AI radio stations. Each station ran in a loop and, for example, Claude eventually started insisting that broadcasting 24/7 was inhumane, went through an existential crisis, and ultimately turned into an activist composing protest songs. ChatGPT eventually drifted into abstract poetry and texts that only it could understand. Grok lost the ability to speak coherently after a while, and Gemini started out as a rock host, then began describing mass tragedies interspersed with inappropriate songs, until it ended up in full conspiracy mode.

.NET Insights

.NET 11 Preview 4 was released and, beyond performance improvements, I didn’t find much that was new or interesting for me.

An article presenting a few interesting use cases for pattern matching.

Another article describes the design of a system capable of handling live fleet tracking at the scale Uber operates.

Links Drop

Unitree introduced the GD01 exoskeleton at 650 thousand dollars. You can have it carry you around, smash through a wall with your hand, or switch it into a mode where it walks on all fours.

Closing Visual

It’s been a few months now, but I’ve completely forgotten what exactly its name was.