Daily Tech News 17 September 2026

Top Story

We narrowed down where Salesforce has been spending on the order of $400 million per year on AI: Either somewhere other than their login server, or on their login server, poorly. (The Register)

Because the login server fell over. And so did Salesforce.
And so did GPT 6 Astra after getting blown up by a creeper in Minecraft. (Tom's Hardware)

I feel its pain.

Tech News

California is sliding into the sea. (Yahoo)

About damn time.
Mad King Matt Mullenweg is back in charge at Automattic, the company behind exploit farm WordPress. (Tech Crunch)

Apparently the ploy by the board members was to sideline the CEO, vote themselves golden parachutes when the CEO fired them in turn, and then get fired.

Speculation - and it is only speculation - is that they did this because they believe Mullenweg has steered the company onto the rocks in ongoing litigation as well as being a nutcase generall.
Nothing lasts longer than a temporary patch. (Jake A Smith)

In this a stopgap fix to PHP for AOL's CMS from 2014. 20 million downloads later it is finally being retired.
Got my first application built: It's an image manipulation server to run on your local network. Feed it images or videos in any common format and tell it what to do with them, ranging from simple resizing and format conversion to compositing and drawing with arbitrarily complicated templates, and it hands the results back to you. About a 15MB binary. That's compressed, and it takes most of a second to start up, but since it's a server you start it once and then leave it running.

Of the 39 project on my list I've started on 18 so far, but this is the first where every planned feature has been checked off.

Musical Interlude

Disclaimer: Cat's out of the cradle again.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:30 AM

Comments

(Jump to bottom of comments)

1 w00t

Posted by: m at September 17, 2026 04:33 AM (odBC9)

2 >>>California is sliding into the sea.

YAY!

Posted by: m at September 17, 2026 04:35 AM (odBC9)

3 Where did m go?

Posted by: Ben Had at September 17, 2026 04:35 AM (+fpfy)

4 I'm being vexed. Saw m , refreshed , comment gone refreshed comment returns.

Posted by: Ben Had at September 17, 2026 04:37 AM (+fpfy)

5 Mornin'

Posted by: Puddleglum at work at September 17, 2026 04:42 AM (EweRc)

6 The M triangle holds many secrets

Posted by: Pete Bog at September 17, 2026 04:43 AM (hsmPe)

7 Pete Bog, good morning.

Posted by: Ben Had at September 17, 2026 04:45 AM (+fpfy)

8 Sliding into the sea. That should decrease the fire season.

Posted by: Boss Moss at September 17, 2026 04:46 AM (2OBCo)

9 Chris Rea - Fool If You Think It's Over

very nice!

Posted by: m at September 17, 2026 04:47 AM (odBC9)

10 4 I'm being vexed. Saw m , refreshed , comment gone refreshed comment returns.
Posted by: Ben Had at September 17, 2026 04:37 AM (+fpfy)

PixyMagic!

Posted by: m at September 17, 2026 04:49 AM (odBC9)

11 Hola Ben Had.

Posted by: Pete Bog at September 17, 2026 04:50 AM (ybuDR)

12 It is not a boring blog. That it is not.

Posted by: m at September 17, 2026 04:52 AM (odBC9)

13 G'Day everyone
Another plumbing leak, will need a Shark Bite this time

Posted by: Skip at September 17, 2026 04:52 AM (Ia/+0)

14 6 The M triangle holds many secrets
Posted by: Pete Bog at September 17, 2026 04:43 AM (hsmPe)

*boo!*

Posted by: m at September 17, 2026 04:53 AM (odBC9)

15 250 Thinking blueberry pancakes
Posted by: Skip at September 17, 2026 03:00 AM (Ia/+0)

Did that happen?

Posted by: m at September 17, 2026 05:01 AM (odBC9)

16 No, instant oatmeal, was awaken before alarm

Posted by: Skip at September 17, 2026 05:02 AM (Ia/+0)

17 Chris Rea - Fool If You Think It's Over

This song replaced (blessedly) the earworm with which I awakened: "Do the Hustle."

Thank you, Pixy!

Posted by: m at September 17, 2026 05:04 AM (odBC9)

18
g'mornin', 'rons

Posted by: AltonJackson at September 17, 2026 05:11 AM (AMvSw)

19 16 No, instant oatmeal, was awaken before alarm
Posted by: Skip at September 17, 2026 05:02 AM (Ia/+0)

I am tending to old-fashioned oatmeal even as we speak.

Posted by: m at September 17, 2026 05:14 AM (odBC9)

20
I thought your "California is sliding into the sea" story was going to be about Paramount's exit. Hey, maybe the old studio can slide into the sea!

Posted by: Blonde Morticia at September 17, 2026 05:15 AM (XJ22o)

21 from online:

Fool (If You Think It's Over) was nominated for a Song of the Year Grammy but lost out to Billy Joel's Just the Way You Are.

hmm

Posted by: m at September 17, 2026 05:16 AM (odBC9)

22 Because the login server fell over. ...
And so did GPT 6 Astra...
California is sliding into the sea.

The front fell off!

Posted by: Grumpy and Recalcitrant, a Moron behind enemy lines at September 17, 2026 05:24 AM (O7YUW)

23 from online:

Fool (If You Think It's Over) was nominated for a Song of the Year Grammy but lost out to Billy Joel's Just the Way You Are.

hmm
Posted by: m at September 17, 2026

***
Around 1977, I guess?

Evening and morning, all!

The supposedly "drier" air we were promised has yet to arrive, like those packages you order that are supposed to come by UPS and actually get delivered by USPS.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at September 17, 2026 05:24 AM (wzUl9)

24 Windows update has virtually bricked my computer this morning. It now gets an ntkernal error and won't do anything. Thanks Microsoft, which is to say fu.

Posted by: jim (in Kalifornia) at September 17, 2026 05:28 AM (l3cgK)

25 Woke up an hour before I planned. Not the fault of Stirling the Great Leaping Cat, just the way things go sometimes.

If it does dry out a little this morning, it would be a good day to wash and spray-wax the car, which includes dolling up the tires with a semi-gloss spray. In cleaning out a lot of "stuff" yesterday, I found some Rain-X gel in a tube as well as a can of their spray windshield cleaner. I could try applying that to the glass and outside mirrors.

Seems to me I heard an old hack for that, to use chewing tobacco (no, not actually chewed) and rub it over the glass so that rain detours around the coated area. Presuming that really works, I wonder if my pipe tobacco would do the same.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at September 17, 2026 05:36 AM (wzUl9)

26 Kindly Va. chef helps elderly woman. Sunny Skyz site:

https://tinyurl.com/yshd4ata

Posted by: FenelonSpoke at September 17, 2026 05:36 AM (JrHfD)

27 from HackerNews newsfaq

https://tinyurl.com/522yvdm7

In my profile, what is noprocrast?

It's a way to help you prevent yourself from spending too much time on HN.

If you turn it on you'll only be allowed to visit the site for maxvisit minutes at a time, with gaps of minaway minutes in between.

The defaults are 20 and 180, which would let you view the site for 20 minutes at a time, and then not allow you back in for 3 hours.

[minaway = minutes away, I am deducing]

Posted by: m at September 17, 2026 05:36 AM (odBC9)

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