Open Channels FM: Rethinking Access and Dependence in Tech From AI Outages to Open Source Lifelines
Who maintains education AI, the backbone of software infrastructure, and a new open source document tool.
#237 – Robert Abela on WordPress Security and the Battle Against AI Threats
Transcript [00:00:19] Nathan Wrigley: Welcome to the Jukebox Podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley. Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress. The people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, the state of WordPress security in 2026, and the battle against AI threats. […]
Pope diagnosed with lung cancer but had successful surgery, Vatican says
Pope Leo had a “peaceful night” in the hospital after the surgery to remove a lower lobe of his right lung, the Vatican says.
Matt: RIP Eric Binnion
For the next 30 days, a few billion of you will get an extra header in honor of Eric Binnion. The code in Nginx to do this is poetic: add_header X-Remembering “Eric Binnion <https://friendsofericbinnion.wordpress.com/>” always; Our design team will make that less AI and more humane in the coming days. Automattic.com will have a mourning […]
Bank of America hit with $1.2bn fine for money laundering failings
The bank inadequately flagged transactions linked to potential Chinese money laundering networks, the Treasury said.
Saudi employee charged with planting recording device in OpenAI office
Prosecutors say the device, wrapped in toilet paper, was found inserted in a USB port on the back of a TV in an executive conference room.
Trump ousts Kimberly Guilfoyle as US ambassador to Greece after corruption allegations
Guilfoyle said the allegations of improper conduct were false and that being ambassador was the “honour of a lifetime”.
Cornell bans all fraternity parties over gang sex assault allegations
The school has faced an uproar over how it handled assault allegations brought by a woman known as Jane Doe.
OpenStation Blog: I Deleted 168,000 Lines of Comments. My AI Agent Didn’t Notice
Almost a third of our source code was comments. I deleted all of them and asked an AI agent to build the same features on both versions of the codebase, three times each. The code it wrote was just as good with or without comments. If you use agents on a real codebase and wonder […]
Matt: Neal Stephenson Live!
Speaking of sci-fi authors, Automattic is hosting Neal Stephenson for a livestream about his new book soon, please tune in! Neal was a big influence on WordPress! I got hip to him from Tantek. In the source code of billions of pages you’ll see this: <link rel=”profile” href=”https://gmpg.org/xfn/11″> GMPG is the Global Media Protocols Group, […]