Posts Tagged ‘Claude Cowork’

LinkSwarm For April 3, 2026

Friday, April 3rd, 2026

Happy Good Friday! More Democrat voting fraud, Iran manages to shoot down a couple of planes, more California fraud under Governor Hairgel, Commies gonna commie, Microsoft behaving (and performing) badly, Pakistan’s nefarious actions backfire (yet again), the best rifle for a militia, and a list of bad actors in the job market.

Also: We’re going back to the freaking moon!

It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • More of that Democrat voting fraud Democrats claim doesn’t exist.

    A hidden-camera 🔥🔥 bombshell:

    This is Democrat Joel Caldwell of the “Coalition for the People’s Agenda,” a Fulton County ballot-harvesting NGO chief—caught on tape admitting it all.

    Democrats are stuffing ballot drop boxes with fraudulent votes, and it’s all caught on videotape. He also admits this is how they rigged the 2020 election and why Democrats fight to the death against voter ID.

    • They pay people to illegally ballot-harvest.
    • They bribe ballot counters and election officials.
    • They forge and falsify ballots.

    And the Atlanta mayor straight-up stole the election.

    He says it all himself—on tape.

    Joel Caldwell:
    “That’s what happened in 2020, ’cause that’s when the ballots—they started stuffing them ballots and people stuffing them ballots, and they got videotape of them, but nobody talks about it. That’s why Trump was making that big deal about it, because you see it on videotape. It’s like, come on. We see the man pull up and put a hundred ballots in this box. You know? You can’t do that sh*t.

    So groups were paying people to do just that—drop off ballots.”

    He continues: That’s why Democrats fight to the death against voter ID laws.

    Joel Caldwell:
    “That’s why the Republicans are always trying to fight the ballot—you know, that’s the whole argument, because Republicans are the ones who put out that kind of stuff, so they want voter IDs and stuff. Democrats are fighting voter ID laws. It’s a two-sided thing. That’s what they’re fighting over. Republicans are trying to say, ‘Hey, look, we got proof of this sh*t.’

    And the Democrats are like, well, we don’t want voter ID laws, and we want to make it where you can just drop your ballot off—online voting and different things they try to come up with.”

    (Hat tip: Small Dead Animals.)

  • Iran manages to shoot down both an F-15 and an A-10 on the same day. Two of the three downed airmen have already been rescued. It’s worth noting that neither of those planes are remotely stealthy.
  • Fetterman Blasts Democrats After Illegal Immigrant Murders College Freshman.”

    Earlier this week, Jose Medina-Medina, an illegal immigrant whom the Biden administration caught and released at the border, murdered Loyola University freshman Sheridan Gorman. Medina-Medina had previously been arrested at least twice in Chicago, yet was released by local authorities, thanks to their sanctuary policies. According to reports, he approached her, raised a gun, and opened fire as she tried to flee. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

    The Democratic Party’s response has been nothing short of horrific.

    Snip.

    The reaction from Democrats to Gorman’s death has been so despicable that Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) unloaded on his own party over it.

    “Why can’t we just talk about that life lost?” Fetterman told Fox News’s Bill Hemmer. “Why can’t we just acknowledge that this is serious, serious failure?”

    Fetterman also invoked the Laken Riley Act, the legislation requiring the detention and deportation of illegal immigrants who commit crimes. Fetterman was one of only a handful of Democrats to vote for it — a fact he’s clearly not going to let his colleagues forget.

    “I think only seven or eight Democrats even voted for [the] Laken Riley [Act],” he said. “Why can’t you just agree that if you’re breaking the law and you’re already here illegally, deport them? I just don’t understand.”

    He continued, “Tragedies like what happened to that young woman, they are gonna continue to happen,” he said. “That’s beyond common sense.”

    Hemmer pressed him on why Democrats can’t seem to get there, and Fetterman gave an honest, if uncomfortable, answer.

    “I guess they’re afraid of the base,” he replied.

  • Singham uses extensive CCP-aligned network in China as he finances global Marxist influence efforts.”

    A Just the News investigation has detailed how a wealthy Marxist activist best known for the funding of a global financial network both inside the U.S. and around the world has extensive ties to Chinese Communist Party-linked organizations inside of China.

    China-based entrepreneur Neville Roy Singham lives and works in Shanghai, — which the American businessman now calls home — where he runs his network of pro-CCP news sites and other China-linked endeavors. Singham, who sold his ThoughtWorks tech company in 2017, has used the money to fund openly communist endeavors worldwide. Just the News can show that inside of China, Singham and his network collaborate with an array of Chinese propaganda sites, Chinese universities, and other Chinese groups committed to advancing the CCP.

    Singham leads and funds a global financial and activist network that operates inside the U.S. and many other countries, and while he rarely grabs the spotlight for himself in public speeches, he did so in November through the Chinese release of a report that sought to denigrate U.S. and Allied Power contributions to WWII.
    Helping the CCP and its longtime strongman Xi Jinping to create a “new world order”

    Singham admitted during a CCP-backed forum in Shanghai in November that he had written the 174-page report to combat the U.S.-backed “international rules-based order” — which he called a “lie” — and to help the CCP and its longtime strongman Xi Jinping achieve a “new world order” more favorable to China. This report and the conference where it was introduced helped expose the extensive CCP-linked network in which Singham is ensconced within China.

    Just the News reviewed hundreds of pages of Chinese business documents and U.S. tax records, English and Chinese language news sites, Chinese government websites, and more in an effort to provide the most comprehensive look yet at Singham’s operations from his perch in Shanghai.

  • Also: “Singham colludes with CCP to rewrite history of WWII to advance Xi Jinping’s ‘new world order.'”

    The wealthy Marxist businessman behind a sprawling far-left network is collaborating with the Chinese Communist Party to denigrate the Allied actions in World War II in an effort to upend the U.S.-led international system and to advance Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s “new world order.”

    China-based businessman Neville Roy Singham leads and funds a global financial and activist network that operates inside the U.S. and many other countries, and while he rarely grabs the spotlight for himself in public speeches, he did so in November through the release of a report that denigrates U.S. and Allied Power contributions to WWII.

    Singham directly admitted during a CCP-backed forum in Shanghai in November that he had written the 174-page report to combat the U.S.-backed “international rules-based order” — which he called a “lie” — and to help the CCP and its longtime strongman Xi achieve a “new world order” more favorable to China.

    The wealthy communist activist summed up the crux of his WWII argument thusly: “As we commemorate the 80th anniversary of the victory in the World Anti-Fascist War (WAFW), the Western powers spin their familiar tale: U.S. industrial might and British resolve saved the world from fascism. This is a lie. The truth burns in the numbers: while the Western powers calculated their economic advantage, the Soviet and Chinese peoples paid in blood. Fascism was defeated not by Anglo-American capital but by socialist leadership and mass heroism – a brilliant strategy from Moscow and Yan’an, unbreakable resilience from workers and peasants who refused to surrender, and a sacrifice that saved humanity from slavery.”

    Commies gonna commie…

  • “California has lost 25% of state budget to fraud under Gavin Newsom.”

    Multiple senior HHS officials estimate that, under Gavin Newsom, California’s state Medicaid program has lost 25 percent of its budget to fraud. This would mean it is currently losing $50 billion a year to scammers, fraudsters, and organized crime rings.

    Snip.

    We conducted interviews with public officials, fraud experts, and political figures, and reviewed hundreds of pages of government reports, state audits, criminal indictments, and other public records on California fraud. From unemployment insurance and Medicaid to failed homeless initiatives and welfare programs, seemingly every state program has been compromised by criminals. The best estimates suggest that, on the governor’s watch, fraudsters, scammers, and organized crime rings have stolen at least $180 billion from taxpayers.

  • In this firehose torrent of news, less attention than is proper has been paid to the fact that we’re finally going back to the moon. Or, technically, around it, since they’re doing the figure flyby of the dark side. They’re already halfway there…
  • “Scenes of Communist Flags, Riots, and Violent Clashes With DHS During ‘No Kings’ Protests.”

    Though the mainstream media will undoubtedly portray them as “mostly peaceful,” much of what we saw at the “No Kings” protests Saturday was anything but, whether through actions or symbols used during the demonstrations.

    We’ll start off with New York City, where the Communist flags were in full effect:

    BREAKING: Leftists in NYC chant “There is only one solution, Communist revolution” at the No Kings rally.

    They’re really going mask off. pic.twitter.com/JY3yvFXzf2

    — Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) March 28, 2026

    Communist flags at the NYC ‘No Kings’ protest pic.twitter.com/bIh2UiwkDI

    — NJEG Media (@NJEGmedia) March 28, 2026

    Snip.

    Meanwhile, in Minnesota, Gov. Tim Walz (D) was pledging solidarity with the Somali community:

    “We will never leave the side of our Somali Minnesotans. Here’s our pledge to you, our Somali Minnesotans, your grandchildren will still be here when that orange clown is in the dustbin of history.”

    I guess its too much to ask a Democrat governor to stand with actual Americans. Plus rioting in Denver.

  • “Democrat Mail-In Ballot Strategy At Risk From SCOTUS Election Day Case.”

    Earlier this week the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in a case challenging a Mississippi statute allowing mail-in ballot received up to five days after Election Day to be counted.

    The law appears to defy three federal laws that require that federal elections be held the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November. The question is what did Congress mean by Election Day. Was it a day, five days later, a month later. Does Election Day mean election season.

    The 5th Circuit ruled against Mississippi, which brought the case to SCOTUS. It could have profound impact on Democrats’ mail-in ballot strategy if ballots must be received by election official by Election Day.

    I discussed the case and oral argument, plus redistricting and the Equal Protection Projects challenge to discriminatory NY State education practices, with Jesse Kelly, who tweeted out the portion regarding NY State: “It appears Kathy Hochul is defying the Supreme Court.”

    If they can’t cheat they can’t win…

  • “Trump Fires Attorney General Pam Bondi.”

    Pam Bondi is out as attorney general, President Trump announced Thursday, and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche will serve as acting attorney general.

    “Pam Bondi is a Great American Patriot and a loyal friend, who faithfully served as my Attorney General over the past year,” Trump said in a statement on Truth Social. “Pam did a tremendous job overseeing a massive crackdown in Crime across our Country, with Murders plummeting to their lowest level since 1900.”

    “We love Pam, and she will be transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector, to be announced at a date in the near future, and our Deputy Attorney General, and a very talented and respected Legal Mind, Todd Blanche, will step in to serve as Acting Attorney General,” he added.

    The announcement came just one day after Bondi was at the White House to attend Trump’s address to the nation on the Iran war. She had also accompanied Trump to the Supreme Court to watch oral arguments in a birthright citizenship case.

    The handling of the Epstein files and the lack of progress on indicting anti-Trump conspirators like James Comey were suggested as reasons for Trump letting her go.

  • Behold the sub-$100, 3D printed manpad.

  • Target has gone from pushing the radical transsexual agenda to being boycotted by Randi Weingarten for not condemning ICE. I haven’t shopped there once since they started boosting the tranny agenda, but maybe it’s time to go back again…
  • “As Chicago and other blue cities move toward reparations for African Americans, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D, Wa.) wants reparations for illegal immigrants for the trauma caused by immigration enforcement.” because of course she does.
  • In a blast from the past, I missed this news that Gavin Newsom admitted to an adulterous affair with his chief of staff’s wife.
  • Pakistani is enjoying a nice, rich dinner of blowback.

    For decades, the Islamabad establishment has played a dangerous game, nurturing the Taliban as a strategic depth agent against India. Today, this plan backfires, and the resulting explosion of violence threatens to send a fresh wave of illegal immigration toward the already strained borders of the European Union.

    The “open war” declared by Defence Minister Khawaja Asif marks the end of a thirty-year illusion. The apprentice has not only left the master. He has now turned openly against him. The March 16 strike on Kabul was the moment masks fell. When Pakistani warplanes hammered a rehabilitation centre in the heart of the Afghan capital, the “Islamic brotherhood” of the two neighbours officially ceased to be.

    Islamabad claims it is hunting the TTP — the Pakistani Taliban who find sanctuary under the wings of their Afghan cousins. Kabul denies it. The result is a cycle of diplomacy-in-name-only, where the only language spoken is the language of the air strike, the AK-47 and the suicide vest. This is the reality of the post-American vacuum.

    Critics of the Biden presidency, watching from America and Europe, see the vindication of their most cynical instincts. They warned that the vacuum left by the 2021 withdrawal would be filled by chaos. They were right. Just look at Bagram Airfield. It once was the crown jewel of American power. It has now become a trophy in a war between two states the West can no longer control.

    While the world’s eyes are fixed on the Iranian plateau, South Asia is burning. The region’s most volatile border is no longer Kashmir. It is the frontier where the Taliban’s jihadist agenda meets Pakistani nuclear-armed desperation. How safe is the world when a nuclear power goes to war with a ghost? The answer is terrifying. Pakistan’s military capacity dwarfs that of the Taliban, yet the Taliban have time, resolve and a complete lack of accountability.

    While the Pakistani economy teeters and its domestic security implodes with a second insurgency front up against Baloch separatists in the south, the Afghan Taliban are playing the long game. They see a Pakistan that is overextended and a West that is exhausted. They are not interested in ceasefires brokered by Qatar or Turkey. They are interested in survival and the expansion of their ideological reach.

    Almost nobody talks about it, but we are witnessing the “Gaza-fication” of the Durand Line. The same knowhow of displacement and grazing the land is being applied to the tribal areas. Millions of thousands of people have already been displaced. But the humanitarian cost is only a footnote in a larger, more brutal calculation.

    For Islamabad, this is an existential fight against the TTP thorn in its side. For Kabul, it is about defending the sovereignty they fought for twenty years to reclaim. Neither side can afford to blink. The light of the old order is fading. The era where the Pakistani military could manage Afghanistan like a colonial fiefdom is over. The trust is dead.

    Trump’s “America First” doctrine means that if Pakistan wants to fight this war, it will do so without a blank check from the Pentagon. The bitter truth for the region is that old security guarantees are gone. We are entering an era of fluidity, where borders are written in fire. The “special relationship” between Islamabad and Kabul has become hatred. The Taliban have proven they can survive an American occupation. Surviving Pakistan’s aggression should not be that hard.

    And then there are all of those “refugees” Euroelites seem bound and determined to import. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • A recap of last week’s Ukraine strikes on Russia’s Primorsk and Ust-Luga oil terminals.

    The attack involved a sophisticated mix of long-range unmanned systems, likely between eight and fifteen primary strike drones supported by smaller decoys designed to saturate Russian air defenses. These drones traveled approximately one thousand kilometers from Ukrainian territory, penetrating deep into Russian airspace and reaching the Gulf of Finland near the Estonian border. Evidence suggests the use of fixed-wing kamikaze drones optimized for endurance and precision. Ukrainians also utilized small prop-planes modified to fly as unmanned aircraft, mounting droppable Fab bombs on the bottom, which could be dropped on target, in addition to the craft being used as a kamikaze platform.

    Also:

    Ukraine has delivered a decisive strategic blow just as Russia expected to capitalize on soaring oil prices driven by the Iran war, but got its export system crippled instead. With unimaginable 40% of its oil export capacity wiped out, ports burning for days, and follow-up strikes continuing, the question is no longer whether Russia can recover quickly, but whether Ukraine will strike again before Russia has the chance to do so.

  • Ukraine is testing exoskeletons in actual combat.

    After over four years of war, Ukraine’s military says it’s testing an exoskeleton in the field that can help soldiers more easily load artillery and run at speeds of up to 12 mph over sustained periods. The tests would mark one of the first known examples of exoskeletons used on the front lines of an active military operation.

    A Facebook video shared late last week by Ukraine’s 7th Air Assault Corps shows a handful of soldiers putting on the device while inside of a muddy artillery trench. The device itself wraps around a soldier’s waist and legs and is supported by a back brace. The military claims that it can reduce overall load on leg muscles by 30 percent. In practice, that means the devices should make it easier for soldiers to pick up and load heavy artillery rounds. Each round can weigh upwards of 100 pounds, depending on the particular caliber used. Since a soldier on the battlefield may load several dozen of those runs every day, all of that weight adds up and can increase the odds of injury or fatigue.

    Not quite Heinlein’s powered armor, but we’re getting there…

  • “Paxton Unveils Rules To Enforce Texas Ban on Hostile Foreign Land Ownership. The new law targets countries such as China, Iran, Russia, and North Korea.”

    Paxton’s office has now proposed detailed rules to implement the statute. The proposal was submitted to the Secretary of State on March 16 and published in the Texas Register on March 27, triggering a public comment period before the rules can be finalized.

    The draft rules flesh out how SB 17 will work in practice, with the Office of the Attorney General as the central enforcement hub for the ban.

    One of the most significant features is a new duty to report suspected violations.

    Under the proposal, anyone involved in facilitating a real estate transaction—such as mortgage lenders, title insurance companies, property insurers, appraisers, and licensed real estate professionals—would be required to report any suspected SB 17 violations to the attorney general.

    Complaints would have to be submitted either through an online complaint form on the OAG’s website or by mail to a designated address. Failure to report may subject entities to enforcement action once the rules are in place, potentially deputizing the real estate industry to help police foreign adversary land deals.

    The rules would also place a tight lid on information that reaches Paxton’s office.

    All complaints, civil investigative demands, and related materials submitted to or issued by the OAG would be treated as confidential and not subject to public disclosure, except when disclosure is required by law. That means Texans may see enforcement actions and lawsuits, but not necessarily the complaints and background investigation files that triggered them.

  • “Seniors who eat more meat have lower risk of developing dementia.” Between this and the caffeine news, I’m evidently going to live forever…
  • Wither Canada? “The 177,000 signature threshold has now been passed, officially clearing the requirement for an Alberta independence referendum on October 19th.”
  • John Cleese: “The British do not like the kind of diversity that intends to take over Britain and kill any infidel who does not convert to Islam.”
  • “Apple pulls the plug on its high-priced, oft-neglected Mac Pro desktop.”
  • Some TVs now require a Walmart account for all smart features to work.
  • Microsoft screws up a Windows 11 update yet again, pulling it after users encounter install errors.
  • Weirdly, Microsoft is also saying that “Microsoft says Copilot is for entertainment purposes only, not serious use — firm pushing AI hard to consumers and businesses tells users not to rely on it for important advice.” Which is ironic, since right now its website touts Copilot as “AI built for work.”
  • Stephen Green: And the first piece of software to break on the moon mission? Microsoft Outlook.
  • And speaking of Microsoft woes, “Microsoft closes worst quarter on Wall Street since 2008 on AI concerns.”
  • Speaking of AI follies, “Anthropic on Tuesday confirmed that internal code for its popular artificial intelligence (AI) coding assistant, Claude Code, had been inadvertently released due to a human error.” Oh sure, Clankers, blame the humans…
  • Bad actors in the job market.
  • Speaking of bad actors in the job market: “Outrage as Oracle makes thousands of foreign-worker requests amid layoff bloodbath.”

    As thousands of Oracle employees awoke on Tuesday to an email informing them they were being laid off, the workers likely didn’t know the tech company had been busy trying to hire foreign staff.

    According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services data, Oracle filed for roughly 3,126 petitions to employ H-1B workers in fiscal years 2025 and 2026. Employers must submit the paperwork when seeking to hire foreign workers in specialty occupations like technology. Some 436 of those petitions were filed this year alone.

    Amazon, which in January said it would axe 16,000 corporate employees, has filed for some 2,675 H-1B petitions during the same two-year fiscal period. That came on top of news in October that the retail giant was axing 14,000 corporate workers.

  • What’s the best gun for a militia? No surprise that three different gun experts (including Ian McCollum) all pick the AK-47.
  • Bush Intercontinental Airport’s $4 billion expansion project.
  • Critical Drinker finally watches Mr. Inbetween, and really likes it. It’s been on my radar for a while, but there doesn’t seem to be a US DVD or Blu-Ray release of it, and I don’t have any streaming service. 
  • Talk about narrow-cast April 1st humor: The Chieftain reviews Warhammer 40K vehicles.
  • “Trump Begins Negotiating With Iranian Leadership Via Ouija Board.”
  • “49 States Enact Legislation Banning Immigrants From California.”
  • “‘Good News, You’re Finally Useful,’ Says Trump As He Sends Aquaman To Strait Of Hormuz.”
  • “‘AI Will Kill Us All! We’re Doomed! DOOMED!‘ Says AI Company CEO In Latest Pitch To Investors.”
  • “Get in mah belly!” “I’m not dead yet!”

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • I’m still between jobs. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





    AI News Roundup For February 5, 2026

    Thursday, February 5th, 2026

    A bunch of AI-related news has popped up this week, so let’s do a roundup.

  • Some AI companies are complaining that TSMC is killing the AI boom by not expanding rapidly enough:

    Asianometry notes that TSMC’s caution at expanding is amply justified by the boom-and-bust nature of the semiconductor industry:

    • “I’m hearing many similar views in the Silicon Valley Borg that TSMC is the break or limiter on the AI boom, as if they’re the reason why we don’t have AGI yet. Because they didn’t and still don’t believe.”

    • “If we can ever say that a company that spent $41 billion on capital expenditure in 2025, with another $53 to $56 billion in 2026 planned, is sitting on its hands, doing nothing.”
    • “TSMC having 90% share of the AI chip market looks pretty unhealthy. That should go down and it will. Samsung seems to be doing well so far.”
    • “The cold, hard reality is that shortages are a fact of life in semiconductors, as are horrific gluts.”
    • “What we are flippantly labeling as TSMC we really mean is the AI supply chain. And that supply chain is as complicated as you can possibly imagine. Like an iceberg, it looks big enough on the surface of the water, but goes way far deeper underneath. TSMC has thousands of suppliers in two categories: Equipment like the famed ASML lithography tools and materials like photoresist, silicon wafers, acid etch gases and so on. These are not generalized tools and materials. They are not fungeible like AWS compute units.”
    • “And then there are the memory guys. You cannot ship an AI system without memory. DRAM and NAND. Nvidia’s AI chips use a special form of DRAM called high bandwidth memory, and they use quite a lot of it. The memory industry is just as consolidated as the logic industry, with the major players being Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron.”
    • “The chip guys are last to know when the party is getting started, but first they get batoned in the face when the police shut things down.”
    • He points out that semiconductor manufacturers have log supply chains. He uses a different metaphor (the beer distribution game, or a bullwhip), but back when I was working at Applied Materials, it was described as trains linked together with slinkys. First software takes off, then hardware gets yanked along, then the chip manufacturers get yanked, and then, finally, semiconductor equipment manufacturers get yanked into motion, and shortly after that happens, the bust hits the front of the train, and the trailing cars all crash into each other. It’s a regular boom/bust cycle.
    • “From 1961 to 2006, electronics consumption in the United States grew positively but with wild volatility swings between 0 to 20%. But for the semiconductor makers, that translates to swings anywhere from 20% to 40%. And for the equipment makers, it is amplified even more, plus or minus 60%. The whip hits particularly hard in the semiconductor industry because of the industry’s long lead times. It takes 4.5 months to fabricate and package a chip. It takes 18 months to 2 years to build a fab. Meaning from shovels down to producing chips, and it takes 12 to 18 months to produce and install something like an EUV machine into the fab. Another 6 months before that machine actually starts patterning wafers.”
    • “Long lead times mean having to make very long demand forecasts, which leads to extreme volatility swings during up and downturns even if those up or downturns are relatively small.” People forget that in 1998, during the time we now think of as the DotCom Boom, there was a small semiconductor downturn that had Applied Materials forcing employees to take unpaid leave.
    • “ASML just reported 2025 earnings, and we see the bullwhip in full effect. TSMC raised capital expenditure 35% but ASML announced €13.2 billion of net new bookings. Analysts had expected just €6.32 billion. This is because ASML collected orders not just from TSMC, but also Samsung, Intel and the memory guys. When it rains it pours, right? Again, this is why I fear that another AI foundry would not mean our compute shortage is solved, because ultimately, when those foundries start scaling their capacity, they all go to the same suppliers.”
    • He goes over how car manufacturers cancelled orders during Flu Manchu, and then scrambled when the economy took off afterwards. “TSMC was trying to discern between double booked orders and real demand, which is not an uncommon experience for them. Customers lie about their own demand all the time, or at least we can say that they are eternally optimistic. TSMC tried to respond in 2022. The Taiwanese giant poured $36 billion into capital expenditure. They went to their suppliers and pushed like no tomorrow.”
    • “It turned out those customers really were double booking orders and artificially inflating demand. When the macro environment turned in 2022, the automotive, smartphone, and PC chips that were so hot during the COVID era fell out of vogue and customers started cutting orders.”
    • “Meanwhile, deeper down in the supply chain, TSMC and the rest of the semiconductor industry were getting bullwhipped by COVID hangover. Utilization at TSMC’s multi-billion dollar N7 fabs crashed, Semi analysis wrote in April 2023. Now, Semi analysis data indicates that the 7nm utilization rates were below 70% in Q1. Furthermore, Q2 gets even worse with 7nm utilization rates falling to below 60%. This is primarily due to weakness in both smartphones and PCs, but there is a broader weakness in most segments. A fab’s break even utilization rates are about 60% to 70%. So those N7 Taichung fabs were taking financial losses potentially on the order of hundreds of millions, maybe even billions. The financial burdens of low utilization are another reason why I’m skeptical another AI foundry could have rushed into the AI chip fray to save the day.”
    • He says that Intel incurred losses during this period due to an unnecessary fab expansion, which is probably true, but that was a secondary factor next to their longer running problem of getting their process wrong.
    • “ChatGPT was released in November 2022, and that kicked off a massive increase in capex amongst the hyperscalers in particular, but it sure seems like TSMC didn’t buy the hype. That lack of increased investment earlier this decade is why there is a shortage today and is why TSMC has been a de facto break on the AI buildout/bubble.”
    • “I recall news in mid 2024 of TSMC struggling with CoWoS capacity bottlenecks and yield problems, including one design issue that caused cracks in the Nvidia chips packaging.” CoWoS is Chip on Wafer on Substrate, which involves fabbing an interposer as a substrate for faster connections between your processing chips and memory.
    • “I also recall news in late 2024 noting how the vendors in charge of making the server racks for Nvidia’s Blackwell servers struggled with overheating, liquid cooling leaks, software bugs, and connectivity issues. Such technical difficulties delayed server deployment until early to mid 2025, creating a weird situation for several months where TSMC was pumping out chips that just went into storage. So that gated things, because you don’t scale until you first fix the technical problems.”
    • Then there’s the power-scaling issue, which is a whole ‘nuther can of worms.

  • There’s a lot of talk about a SaaSpocalypse going on thanks to a new AI tool. (SaaS is “Software as a Service.” Instead of hosting your own payroll or sales-tracking or whatever servers, you hire a company that already has cloud software setup to do it and you just tie into that, which can considerably reduce startup costs. A whole lot of successful new tech companies over the last decade plus have been SaaS companies.)

    The software sector was jolted overnight with what analysts are calling a “SaaSpocalypse” — a sudden and severe selloff triggered by new artificial intelligence tools unveiled by US AI startup Anthropic. The episode has sharpened investor fears that AI is no longer merely helping software companies but may now begin replacing them.

    Anthropic has expanded its enterprise AI platform, Claude Cowork, by launching 11 new plugins aimed at automating a wide range of professional tasks. Claude Cowork is an agentic, no-code AI assistant built for corporate users, allowing companies to automate workflows without writing software. The new plugins are designed to handle tasks across legal, sales, marketing and data analysis functions. The most recent addition is Anthropic’s Claude Legal agent, which can perform routine legal work such as document and contract review, and compliance checks.

    Anthropic has said that the tool does not provide legal advice and that all AI-generated outputs must be reviewed by licensed attorneys. Even so, the breadth of automation signals a step change in how much white-collar work AI systems can now perform.

    Here are the current plugins for Claude Cowork:

    • Productivity — Manage tasks, calendars, daily workflows, and personal context
    • Enterprise search — Find information across your company’s tools and docs
    • Plugin Create/Customize — Create and customize new plugins from scratch
    • Sales — Research prospects, prep deals, and follow your sales process
    • Finance — Analyze financials, build models, and track key metrics
    • Data — Query, visualize, and interpret datasets
    • Legal — Review documents, flag risks, and track compliance
    • Marketing — Draft content, plan campaigns, and manage launches
    • Customer support — Triage issues, draft responses, and surface solutions
    • Product management — Write specs, prioritize roadmaps, and track progress
    • Biology research — Search literature, analyze results, and plan experiments

    A lot of those are already automated elsewhere, but I suspect a lot accountants and paralegals just felt a goose strut across their grave. On the other hand, who is really going to turn over, say, Accounts Payable to an AI? One glitch, and your entire bank account is drained…

    If it works (a big if, give so many AIs are prone to hallucinations), this is potentially good news for Anthropic and the companies using their tools, and bad for SaaS companies and the employees currently doing those jobs.

    I note there’s no plugin for technical writing…yet.

  • Google/Alphabet just reported $400 billion in earnings in 2025. CEO Sundar Pichai:

    And Google Cloud ended 2025 at an annual run rate of over $70 billion, representing a wide breadth of customers, driven by demand for AI products.

    We’re seeing our AI investments and infrastructure drive revenue and growth across the board. To meet customer demand and capitalize on the growing opportunities we have ahead of us, our 2026 CapEx investments are anticipated to be in the range of $175 to $185 billion.”

  • Remember how Nvidia was going to invest $100 billion in OpenAI? Yeah, not so much.

    In September 2025, Nvidia and OpenAI announced a letter of intent for Nvidia to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI’s AI infrastructure. At the time, the companies said they expected to finalize details “in the coming weeks.” Five months later, no deal has closed, Nvidia’s CEO now says the $100 billion figure was “never a commitment,” and Reuters reports that OpenAI has been quietly seeking alternatives to Nvidia chips since last year.

    Reuters also wrote that OpenAI is unsatisfied with the speed of some Nvidia chips for inference tasks, citing eight sources familiar with the matter. Inference is the process by which a trained AI model generates responses to user queries. According to the report, the issue became apparent in OpenAI’s Codex, an AI code-generation tool. OpenAI staff reportedly attributed some of Codex’s performance limitations to Nvidia’s GPU-based hardware.

    After the Reuters story published and Nvidia’s stock price took a dive, Nvidia and OpenAI have tried to smooth things over publicly. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted on X: “We love working with NVIDIA and they make the best AI chips in the world. We hope to be a gigantic customer for a very long time. I don’t get where all this insanity is coming from.”

  • You know who’s not winning the AI war? Microsoft.

    Microsoft’s Copilot chatbot has become central to its artificial-intelligence strategy as the company’s close partnership with OpenAI diminishes. But the effort to build it up as a ChatGPT alternative has been tough going.

    Remember, Copilot is the AI that wants to take pictures of your desktop every few seconds. Golly, can’t imagine why it’s unpopular..

    Confusing brand positioning and interoperability problems have frustrated users, current and former employees who have worked on Microsoft’s AI products said.

    Interoperability problems? With a Microsoft product?

    Only a small proportion of subscribers to Microsoft’s enterprise suite use Copilot, and the percentage who favor it over Google’s Gemini or other tools has decreased in recent months, according to data reviewed by the Journal.

    The stakes are high for Microsoft because Copilot is core to a push by Chief Executive Satya Nadella to transform Microsoft into an AI-first company, much as he transformed it into a cloud-first company around a decade ago. Copilot is one of Nadella’s top priorities, current and former executives said.

    Microsoft shares tumbled after its earnings report last week sparked investor concern that growth in its most important unit, the Azure cloud-computing business, is slowing, and that its AI business is reliant on OpenAI while Copilot remains unproven. Shares fell nearly 3% Tuesday amid a slide in software stocks prompted by fresh concerns that AI tools will make enterprise subscriptions less necessary.

    For other AI companies, we merely suspect they’re evil. For Microsoft (and Google), we already know they’re evil…