This Week I Learned - Week 42, 2026

This Week I Learned - 

* 18 large language models from six AI labs now generate everything from code explanations to creative fiction. Even in a single short paragraph, every model leaves subtle clues in its word choice, tone, and sentence structure. Each lab's training data and post-training choices leave behind distinct stylistic fingerprints in vocabulary, phrasing, and punctuation. The October Kaggle competition requires participants to build models to classify ~4,000 unlabeled text passages across 18 frontier language models from OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Qwen, ZAI, and Moonshot AI. The goal is to find out how reliably today's frontier models can be fingerprinted from short text alone. 

* Experiential Labs is an OpenAI-compatible model gateway. A user reported that they're injecting ads into free tier model responses without disclosure. It turns out it is mentioned in their long privacy policy that no one really reads. 

* Tesla's Full Self-Driving (FSD) system rests on foundational AI research by Yann LeCun, especially convolutional neural networks central to computer vision.

* How Misanthropic! According to a recent Anthropic report humans are “bottlenecking the agents.”

* "I realize that some people really dislike AI, but this is an area where I'm willing to absolutely put my foot down as the top-level maintainer.

Linux is not one of those anti-AI projects, and if somebody has issues with that, they can do the open-source thing and fork it.

Or just walk away.

AI is a tool, just like other tools we use.  And it's clearly a useful one.

It may not have been that "clearly" even just a year ago, but it's no longer in question today.

There are other questions around AI (like what the economy of it will actually look like in the end), but "is it useful" is no longer one of those questions. Anybody who doubts that clearly hasn't actually used it.

Yes, it can also be a somewhat painful tool, both for maintainer workloads and just from a "it keeps finding embarrassing bugs" standpoint.

But the solution is not to put your head in the sand and sing "La La La, I can't hear you" at the top of your voice like some people seem to do...

We're not forcing anybody to use it, but I will very loudly ignore people who try to argue against other people from using it.

And no, AI isn't perfect. But Christ, anybody who points to the problems at AI had better be looking in the mirror and pointing at

themselves at the same time. 

Because it's not like natural intelligence is always all that great either.

The kernel project has been and will continue to be about the technology.

Sure, the social angle of working on open source is important and often a very motivating part of the project, but in the end that's a side benefit, not the _point_ of the project.

This is *NOT* some kind of "social warrior" project, never has been, and never will be.

In the kernel community we do open source because it results in better technology, not because of religious reasons.

And so we make decisions primarily based on technical merit. Not fear of new tools." - Linus Torvalds while rejecting AI Restrictions in Linux Kernel

* "Intelligence is not that important anymore. Cooperation, negotiation, dealing with uncertainty and risk matter."  - S Anand

* JioMotive is an On‑Board Diagnostics (OBD) device that plugs into a car’s OBD‑II port—usually located under the steering wheel—to provide smart‑car features without rewiring. It uses Jio’s e‑SIM for connectivity and works with the JioThings app. The device works with most cars that have an OBD‑II port (common in vehicles manufactured after 2010) using your existing Jio mobile plan. Features include real‑time 4G GPS tracking for location monitoring, geo‑fencing & time‑fencing alerts to set boundaries and movement times, vehicle health monitoring, including engine load, battery status, and diagnostic trouble codes and driving behavior analysis and historical route playback. 

* For years, Ukraine’s armed forces have relied on Starshield, the satellite communication services developed by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

* AgingHallmarksDB is an interactive web platform that systematically catalogs and curates 3,111 genes associated with the 11 major core biological processes driving how we age. The platform shows which of the 15 types of body cells and 36 organ tissues these genes work in, how they talk to each other and which ones act like ‘master switches’ in the body.

For age-related diseases such as Alzheimer’s, heart failure, lung trouble and diabetes, the AgingHallmarksDB showed that almost all the 11 ageing categories were popping up everywhere. The tool pointed out that air pollution turns on genes linked to skin swelling and gene damage, making skin age faster.

* A 1994 analysis of Ramanujan's medical records and symptoms concluded that his medical symptoms—including his past relapses, fevers, and hepatic conditions—were much closer to those of hepatic amoebiasis, an illness then widespread in Madras, than of tuberculosis. He had two episodes of dysentery before he left India. When not properly treated, amoebic dysentery can lie dormant for years and lead to hepatic amoebiasis, whose diagnosis was not then well established. At the time, if properly diagnosed, amoebiasis was a treatable and often curable disease.

* A generic drug is a medication created to be equal in performance, safety, dosage, strength, quality, and intended use to an existing brand-name drug. It contains the exact same active ingredient(s) as the original brand-name version, but it is typically sold at a significantly lower price. To get regulatory approval (such as from the US FDA or CDSCO in India), generic manufacturers must prove bioequivalence.

Generics fill 90% of US prescriptions. 40% of those generics are made in India. US FDA inspections of Indian plants are now unannounced. - NYT

* Unlike standard sponges that rely on soap or chemical detergents, melamine foam (commonly sold under brand names like "Magic Eraser") works through physical abrasion.

Melamine foam is made from melamine-formaldehyde resin spun into a three-dimensional network of glass-hard, open-cell fibers. Even though the sponge feels soft to human touch, on a microscopic level, these rigid fibers act like extremely fine sandpaper. When moistened with water, the sponge’s open-cell structure creates friction that breaks up stubborn stains, dirt, scuffs, and grease, trapping the debris inside the tiny voids of the foam.

As the sponge wears down, it sheds small particles (microplastics). Avoid dry scrubbing, which creates airborne dust. Always wet the sponge before use to reduce shedding and improve cleaning power.

* Journalist Srinivasan Jain is the son of Gandhian economists Devaki Jain and L.C. Jain.

* Year-on-year data from the Department of Consumer Affairs shows a sharp double-digit rise in the prices of essential commodities. 

* Indian professionals account for over 70% of all approved H-1B petitions annually.