TORCHLIGHT, a research tool presented at USENIX Security 2025, discovered 29 zero-day exploits affecting 12.71 million IoT devices hidden on the Tor network by analyzing 26 terabytes of traffic over twelve months. These aren't just smart fridges—they're industrial controllers, security cameras, and network equipment controlling critical infrastructure, now potentially compromised by untraceable attackers. The programming language Frink treats units of measurement as first-class citizens in its type system, preventing the kind of unit conversion error that destroyed NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter in 1999. Created by Alan Eliasen in 2001, it's been quietly used by engineers for over 20 years when precise unit tracking is critical. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile activated the world's largest digital camera (3,200 megapixels), discovering over 2,000 new asteroids in just its first 10 hours of operation—representing only 0.05% of its goal to map 20 billion galaxies.
This week's episodes covered substantial ground in technical territory. We explored how open source evolved through distinct decades, culminating in the argument that Git fundamentally changed power dynamics by making forking trivial. We examined the legal complexity developers face with generative AI tools, including the gray areas around feeding output from one model into another. The passionate defense of code longevity challenged "rewrite culture," using examples of 1970s Fortran code still running today because it was validated and works. Dijkstra's 1972 Turing Award lecture proved eerily prescient about 2025 AI anxiety, predicting that better tools just let us tackle harder problems. The FinOps deep dive explained why utilization reports without context are useless—sometimes low utilization is a feature, not a bug. And the week ended with a nuanced take on DHH's cloud exodus, defending his decision while outlining the crucial complications most teams must consider.
Additional stories include Apple being found guilty of App Store dominance abuse in the UK, Myanmar's military shutting down a massive online scam operation seizing Starlink terminals, and California State University partnering with Amazon, OpenAI, and Nvidia to become America's "first AI-empowered university." The common thread throughout the week: technology decisions rarely have simple answers.
Links Main segment- Ken White's Serious Trouble Podcast - Referenced as an example of accessible expert content outside one's specialty
- Mike Loukides / O'Reilly Radar - Has been linking to related Medium stories
- TORCHLIGHT Exposes 29 Zero-Day Exploits in 12 Million IoT Devices
- Frink - A Programming Language for Physical Calculations
- Frink Documentation
- Frink Sample Calculations
- World's Largest Camera Finds 2,000 Asteroids in First 10 Hours
- Apple Found to Have Abused App Store Dominance in UK
- Myanmar Military Shuts Down Major Online Scam Operation
- Cal State Partners with Tech Giants for AI Integration
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