OpenAI spills technical details about how its AI coding agent works

On Friday, OpenAI engineer Michael Bolin published a detailed technical breakdown of how the company’s Codex CLI coding agent works internally, offering developers insight into AI coding tools that can write code, run tests, and fix bugs with human supervision. It complements our article in December on how AI agents work by filling in technical details on how OpenAI implements its “agentic loop.” AI coding agents are having something of…

January 26, 2026
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Why has Microsoft been routing example.com traffic to a company in Japan?

From the Department of Bizarre Anomalies: Microsoft has suppressed an unexplained anomaly on its network that was routing traffic destined to example.com—a domain reserved for testing purposes—to a maker of electronics cables located in Japan. Under the RFC2606—an official standard maintained by the Internet Engineering Task Force—example.com isn’t obtainable by any party. Instead it resolves to IP addresses assigned to Internet Assiged Names Authority. The designation is intended to prevent…

January 26, 2026
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Apple’s AirTag 2 is easier to find thanks to new chip

Apple is introducing a new version of its AirTag tracking device—simply dubbed “the new AirTag”—and claims it offers substantial improvements thanks to a new Bluetooth chip. The original AirTag came out five years ago now, and it became popular in a variety of contexts. There were some problems, though—there was real concern about unwanted tracking and stalking with the devices, based on real stories of it being used for that….

January 26, 2026
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How to encrypt your PC’s disk without giving the keys to Microsoft

In early 2025, Forbes reports, investigators at the FBI served Microsoft with a warrant seeking the BitLocker encryption recovery keys for several laptops it believed held evidence of fraud in Guam’s COVID-19 unemployment assistance program. And Microsoft complied with the FBI’s request. BitLocker is the name of the full-disk encryption technology that has been part of Windows for nearly two decades. Though initially only available to owners of the Pro…

January 26, 2026
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Demand for Intel’s processors is apparently there, but the supply is not

Intel reported its earnings for the fourth quarter of 2025 yesterday, and the news both for the quarter and for the year was mixed: year-over-year revenue was down nearly imperceptibly, from $53.1 billion to $52.9 billion, while revenue for the quarter was down about four percent, from $14.3 billion last year to $13.7 billion this year. (That number was, nevertheless, on the high end of Intel’s guidance for the quarter,…

January 23, 2026
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Telly’s “free” ad-based TVs make notable revenue—when they’re actually delivered

Telly, a company that accepts advertising data instead of cash for its TVs, has reportedly had a hard time getting its “free” TVs into people’s homes. Telly debuted in May 2023. Its dual-screen design can show ads, even when people aren’t watching. Although the smaller, secondary screen can be used for more helpful applications, like showing the weather or sports scores, its primary purpose is to serve as a billboard…

January 23, 2026
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Overrun with AI slop, cURL scraps bug bounties to ensure “intact mental health”

The project developer for one of the Internet’s most popular networking tools is scrapping its vulnerability reward program after being overrun by a spike in the submission of low-quality reports, much of it AI-generated slop. “We are just a small single open source project with a small number of active maintainers,” Daniel Stenberg, the founder and lead developer of the open source app cURL, said Thursday. “It is not in…

January 22, 2026
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eBay bans illicit automated shopping amid rapid rise of AI agents

On Tuesday, eBay updated its User Agreement to explicitly ban third-party “buy for me” agents and AI chatbots from interacting with its platform without permission, first spotted by Value Added Resource. On its face, a one-line terms of service update doesn’t seem like major news, but what it implies is more significant: The change reflects the rapid emergence of what some are calling “agentic commerce,” a new category of AI…

January 22, 2026
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Millions of people imperiled through sign-in links sent by SMS

Websites that authenticate users through links and codes sent in text messages are imperiling the privacy of millions of people, leaving them vulnerable to scams, identity theft, and other crimes, recently published research has found. The links are sent to people seeking a range of services, including those offering insurance quotes, job listings, and referrals for pet sitters and tutors. To eliminate the hassle of collecting usernames and passwords—and for…

January 21, 2026
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Kioxia’s memory is “sold out” for 2026, prolonging a “high-end and expensive phase”

The companies that make RAM and flash memory chips are enjoying record profits because of the AI-induced memory crunch—and they’re also indicating that they don’t expect conditions to improve much if at all in 2026. And while RAM kits have been hit the fastest and hardest by shortages and price increases, we shouldn’t expect SSD pricing to improve any time soon, either. That’s the message from Shunsuke Nakato (via PC…

January 21, 2026
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