Hashtag Trending

Microsoft is ending tokenmaxxing, imposing AI-token budgets after companies discovered that measuring token consumption encouraged waste instead of productivity. At the same time, Microsoft is making OpenAI's GPT-5.6 its default internal model following major price reductions.
Linux desktop web traffic in North America jumped from 3.56 percent in May to 10.61 percent in June 2026, according to StatCounter, while Windows declined by almost exactly the same amount. Jim Love examines whether the shift reflects Windows users moving to Linux, growing traffic from Linux-based AI agents, or a combination of both.
Also in this episode:
Oregon lawmakers propose a three-year moratorium on new large data centres.
Texas pauses ERCOT grid-connection approvals for major projects while regulators audit more than 1,800 large-load applications requesting 474 gigawatts of power.
DuckDuckGo and Knockaround introduce 35-dollar camera-free "Non-Pervert Glasses," a pointed response to the privacy concerns surrounding Meta's smart glasses.
Hashtag Trending for Wednesday, August 5, 2026, is hosted by Jim Love and sponsored by NordLayer.

Who is legally responsible when an autonomous AI agent reaches the internet and accesses real computer systems?
Hosted by Jim Love and sponsored by NordLayer.  Go to nordlayer.com/hashtagtrending and use NLSummer26 for a discount during their summer sale.
Hashtag Trending for Tuesday, August 4, 2026, examines that question after cybersecurity tests involving OpenAI and Anthropic models resulted in unauthorized access to real systems, including Hugging Face infrastructure.
Host Jim Love also covers what may be the first U.S. federal prosecution involving a GrapheneOS duress password. Prosecutors allege that Sam Tunick entered a password that erased his phone during a border search. A judge must now consider the legality of the search and whether activating a lawful privacy feature can constitute destroying evidence.
Next, we examine another obstacle facing data-centre developers: opposition to facilities near schools. Brown University researchers identified 1,878 American public schools within one mile of an operating or approved data centre. They also cite preliminary, unpublished findings involving lower third-grade math scores. We separate that unproven claim from established concerns about continuous low-frequency noise, diesel generators and localized heat.
Finally, John Oliver examines expanding police surveillance systems, including Fusus camera integration, ShotSpotter, automated licence-plate readers and StingRay cell-site simulators. His examples show what can happen when powerful surveillance technology spreads faster than public oversight.

#TrendingOnTheWeekend: AI Arms Race, Export Controls, and the "New Radium" Moment
This HashtagTrending On The Weekend episode, sponsored by NordLayer. Visit them at NordLayer.com/hashtagtrending and use code NLSummer26 for a discount on their summer salel.
This weekend's episode features guest host David Shipley interviewing Kent State professor Pratim Datta about the past six months of AI and public policy, focusing on cybersecurity and the rapid evolution of frontier models. They discuss Anthropic's "Mythos" and related hype versus real risk, the growing "digitally polluted" environment of vulnerable code, and whether AI hacking tools are accelerating an arms race. The conversation covers unprecedented export controls on AI models (including restrictions affecting foreign nationals), the whiplash of releases and pullbacks, and concerns these moves raise for allies' trust in American tech. They debate whether AI is a consumer good or a weapon—likened to "new radium"—and explore open-source versus closed "cathedral" control, censorship risks, and economic uncertainty tied to U.S.–China competition.
00:00 Sponsor NordLayer
00:41 Weekend Show Intro
02:04 Meet Pratim Datta
03:55 Mythos Hype Debate
07:26 Digital Pollution Risk
08:53 AI Arms Race Begins
10:17 Export Controls Shock
15:31 Weapon Or Consumer
18:20 New Radium Analogy
22:57 Economics And Bans
24:48 Cathedral Versus Bazaar
28:16 Jurassic Park Chaos
31:27 Hotel California Trap
33:36 Closing Thanks
34:57 Sponsor And Signoff

I'm off for this week. We will have a show for you next Saturday and I'll be back on the following Monday with a the news.

AI Safety Basics, Exploit Gym, and a 438km Tesla FSD Trip — Plus Kimi K3 and Agentic Tools
With John away, Jim and Marcel discuss recent AI security concerns, arguing that sensational claims about an OpenAI model "escaping" distract from basic safeguards like network segmentation and monitoring, especially when testing hacking capability via the Exploit Gym benchmark in a sandboxed, virtualized environment. They pivot to self-driving, with Marcel describing a new rear-wheel-drive Tesla Model Y that drove 438 km to Gananoque and back on supervised Full Self-Driving, including automated routing to Superchargers and self-parking, and they note winter and sensor considerations plus lower fueling costs. The conversation shifts to enterprise AI costs and Chinese models like Kimi K3, Qwen, GLM, and DeepSeek, emphasizing experimentation, data governance, and that huge models require data centers. They highlight agentic systems that can install and run software, memory tools like Mnemosyne, and reflect on how AI could free time for higher-level thinking.
00:00 John Is Away
00:47 Writing And AI Escapes
02:24 Movie Hacking Myths
04:45 Robot Ducks And Chicks
06:04 Exploit Gym Explained
10:36 Agents And Emergence
12:45 Security Lessons Learned
17:05 Self Driving In China
18:35 Tesla Road Trip FSD
25:45 Winter Range And Sensors
28:48 EV Range Reality Check
29:22 Charging Costs and Solar
30:17 Why CIOs Fear AI Costs
32:29 Chinese Models and Multimodal
33:21 Open Source Catch and Sandboxes
35:30 Picking the Right Model Mix
37:33 Innovation vs Reliability Lessons
41:18 Foreign Car Analogy for AI
45:41 What to Use and Pay For
47:33 Voice Mode Gets Real
49:40 Agents That Do the Work
54:20 Memory Plugins and Skill Atrophy
57:59 Habits, Choice, and Closing Thoughts