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A word from me

Thanks for reading!

I’ve added a new section this week called “Regulatory” to focus on some Canadian and US regulatory ongoings.

It will evolve over the coming issues and has been added as a result of the feedback you provided me in my survey prior to the end of the year. Have to start somewhere!

Suggestions, comments and feedback are always welcome at [email protected]

Happy reading!
Jason

Broadband / Telco

🇨🇦 A Major Milestone for Indigenous Connectivity in Canada - I want to personally commend Mark S. and the Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada team for officially launching the Indigenous Priority Window (IPW). A transformative policy that empowers Indigenous communities with first access to unused spectrum across Canada. This is how we build equity through infrastructure.

My Take: In a nutshell, Karrier One is trying to build community-owned, decentralized mobile networks, where connectivity, identity, and access are handled locally instead of by a national carrier. Also known as Web3 telecom or DePIN, believe. One day Samer will come on my podcast and chat about it! It seems pretty cool.

🇨🇦 Rogers vs Bell: New 2025 Speed Rankings Reveal a Surprising Winner After Data Fix - The latest broadband rankings from Speedgeo initially named Shaw as the top performer. However, after iPhone in Canada pointed out that Rogers and Shaw have been the same company for nearly three years, the analytics firm consolidated its data to reflect the modern telecom landscape.

My Take: Do we know how I feel about these speed test rankings yet? Better put the hats, whistles and cake away, Bell.

🇨🇦 CENGN Living Labs: Accelerating Canada’s Tech Innovation Through Real-World Testing - Canada’s tech innovation is a critical pathway to revitalizing the economy, enhancing Canada’s traditional sectors’ global competitiveness, and driving sustainable economic development. Seeing this need for tech growth and adoption, CENGN launched 8 Living Labs across Canada designed to accelerate innovation across multiple sectors, help overcome the current economic headwinds, and position Canada at the forefront of emerging technological advancement.

My Take: Old article. New conversation. I had the pleasure of reconnecting with CENGN this past week to chat about a couple of projects and where they may live inside the Living Lab ecosystem. If you’re not familiar with CENGN and you’re part of any tech innovation effort, check them out. Pretty impressive access and programs.

US lawmakers want memory added to chip controls - U.S. lawmakers called for memory to be added to chip controls, days after a bill was passed to further limit Chinese access to U.S. technology. The request was made by a House of Representatives committee after memory shortages continue to pose a major bottleneck for AI development and utilization.

My Take: Seems the lawmakers suggest that existing controls leave a major loophole. The concern is that even if AI chips are restricted, access to high-performance memory can still enable advanced computing systems, especially for AI and military use. Memory is always at the core of everything.

Broadband Prices Didn’t Really ‘Increase’ for Consumers in 2025 - A recent post from the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society declared, “Broadband Prices Increased in 2025.” But the data discussed in the piece tells a more nuanced and far less alarming story for consumers

My Take: Broadband prices didn’t technically go up in 2025, but that doesn’t mean people paid less. Providers used fees, plan tweaks, and expired promos to push bills higher. On paper, prices stayed flat, but in reality, many households paid more.

US fiber coverage hits 60% as deployment costs creep higher - New data released today by the Fiber Broadband Association (FBA) suggests fiber optic networks continue to spread rapidly across the United States, even as the cost of deployment climbs.

My Take: That last 40% costs far more than the first 60%.

Fiber construction costs have climbed roughly 20–30% in the past few years, mainly from labor (72% of underground costs, 64% of aerial), materials, and permitting. Will BEAD money suffice? Time will tell, but what’s most curious to me is the upward trend of homes with more than a single FTTH Internet provider, courtesy of the “overbuilders”.

Of interest, the Fiber Broadband Association found that when a secondary fiber provider enters a market, “total FTTH take rate increases from 46.5% to approximately 61%. This suggests fiber-to-fiber competition stimulates adoption rather than merely redistributing existing subscribers”, growing the overall broadband pie.

In Canada, according to the most recent data available, more than 75% of households have access to FTTH, with 14.5 million fiber passings as of 2025. This positions Canada as a global leader in fiber deployment relative to household penetration.

The CRTC explicitly states that "nearly 60% of Canadians have an option from two competitors (fibre and cable)". This represents facilities-based competition where consumers can choose between a fiber provider (typically Bell or Telus) and a cable operator (typically Rogers, Cogeco or regional cable companies).

There aren’t any stats on overbuild because it’s neither supported under any funding-incentive framework nor happens (on purpose) all that often, very likely due to two things. First, the regulatory mandate for the large Tier 1 providers to provide third-party wholesale access to their fiber access infrastructure. Think of it as mandated and regulated open access. The retail ISP competes with the incumbent on their own infrastructure.

The second issue would be scale. Sharing 100,000 subscribers is different than sharing 10,000 subscribers in a serving area. The US has a larger population (say, 10x) and a higher population density than Canada. Achieving a 35% penetration rate necessary to deliver returns on capital is unlikely.

With that, overbuilding an area where fiber already exists is a difficult business case to support, which then limits expansion opportunities for providers looking to grow into new service areas. This leaves them with a few options:

1) Target existing subscribers with new value-added offers to bolster top-line revenue
2) Refocus on higher ARPU commercial opportunities on the existing footprint
3) Consider expanding the brand and retail service in the market using the wholesale framework
4) Move into and set up shop in non-adjacent underserved areas (in Ontario, that would be the north)

Not sure how I ended up here, but glad that I did. Download the report for all the info.

Old cell phone fears surface amid new Washington fight - HHS Secretary RFK Jr. raised new concerns about 5G and electromagnetic radiation. CTIA said there’s no credible evidence linking wireless devices to cancer or other health problems. More litigation and siting challenges could happen, but one analyst said he expects courts and regulators to largely side with the wireless industry

My Take: This is the same guy who removed vaccine advisory panels, cut COVID-19 vaccine recommendations, restructured HHS with mass staff losses, froze major research funding including mRNA work, and rewrote health guidance on vaccines, fluoride, and food additives - and now he’s woried about 5G radiation?

Verizon outage: Analysts and more weigh in - Verizon has blamed its massive nationwide outage last week on a "software issue." Analysts and commentators are weighing in on what might have happened, but the present cloud and software code-based networks of major mobile operators make such outages likely to happen again.

My Take: Are the days of 99.999 gone? Should we just expect infrastructure to fail every now and again? Is that OK?

🇨🇦 Telecom executives among highest paid CEOs in Canada - The list of the 100 top paid executives in the nation set several records. The highest paid CEO took home $205 million. The average compensation for the top 100 was $16.2 million. The lowest, or “minimum wage,” on the list was $7.2 million. Those large numbers surprised the author of the report.

My Take: Executives earn at the top of the market while consumers keep paying some of the highest prices. Hard to ignore that gap. Perhaps compensation should reflect public value as a critical infrastructure facility.

Regulatory

Pew analysis lists potential BEAD roadblocks after distribution of funds - With indicators pointing toward the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program nearing the distribution stage to states — and broadband construction on BEAD projects beginning in coming months — a recent analysis by The Pew Charitable Trusts examined the factors that could cause future delays in BEAD project completions.

My Take: Pew warns that issues like staffing shortages, permitting delays, supply chain constraints, and oversight gaps could slow or derail actual broadband builds. What about memory issues?

Trump administration’s tribal broadband cuts, “reforms” raise red flags ahead of consultation - A recent announcement by the Trump administration upended the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program, canceling over $160 million in announced grants and leaving nothing but questions about the hundreds of millions of dollars remaining in the program. 

My Take: Making decisions and then consulting isn’t the way to do it. Tribal communities are among the least connected in the country, and broadband access is tied directly to education, healthcare, and economic opportunity.

🇨🇦 Telus accuses Bell of ‘degrading’ broadband service that CRTC makes it sell - Vancouver-based Telus said in a filing to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission that on Jan. 14, Bell abruptly and illegally lowered the quality of the internet service that Telus buys from it at wholesale prices, as “part of a pattern of behaviour designed to reduce Telus’s’ competitiveness” and undermine the CRTC.

CRTC: Application for urgent relief regarding Bell Canada’s degradation of its mandated wholesale FTTP service to TELUS

My Take: Best that I can make of this is that the provisioning interface was affected, not the actual delivered service. The changes interfered with TELUS’ ability to place and manage orders and to serve end customers, while Bell’s own retail services were unaffected. Lots of redacted stuff in the filing - mainly emails between TELUS and Bell leading up to the event.

🇨🇦 Bell Canada - Part 1 Application to Review and Vary Telecom Order CRTC 2025-275, Bell Canada – Change to support structure tariff - Bell asks the CRTC to review and change Telecom Order 2025-275, which set pole-attachment rates. Bell says the Commission made three factual costing errors that unfairly lowered its rate compared to Telus, covering pole counts, the communication space factor, and depreciation treatment.

My Take: Link downloads a zip with the submission files, including an XLS with lots of interesting pole info, including the cost structure. Who knew that Bell had 1.927 million poles?

Fiber Optic Sensing

Connected sensors for the power grid - Sensors are an indispensable tool to inform utility managers of the state of the electricity grid and the occurrence of disruptions of any kind. The IEC provides the standards and conformity assessment that enable them to operate safely and efficiently.

My Take: “Distributed fiber optic acoustic sensing (DAS) is a promising technology for remote monitoring of critical infrastructure like the grid. It is increasingly used because fiber optic sensors are immune to electromagnetic interference, which makes them ideal for using in high voltage electricity environments — for instance inside transformers.”

Illuminating New Possibilities in Infrastructure Monitoring: Lightera Introduces DataSens™ DryBlock Cable - Lightera today announced the release of DataSens™ DryBlock Cable, a solution designed to help business partners advance their distributed sensing capabilities without compromising on ease of installation. By integrating enhanced backscatter fiber into a proven outside plant (OSP) design, Lightera is providing network builders with a tool that supports infrastructure monitoring through integrated sensing capabilities.

My Take: The cable can detect changes like temperature, strain, and moisture along its entire length, helping operators spot problems early in assets such as pipelines, power lines, railways, and civil infrastructure.

From Construction to Predictive Maintenance: The Era of Smart Infrastructure - Another frontier is fibre optics, described by Carlo Ratti as “silent nerves that bring the internet into our homes”, often already installed inside bridges and tunnels. Thanks to Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) technologies, these fibres can be transformed into distributed geophones, capable of recording the daily “breathing” of infrastructures under load.

My Take: Smart infrastructure isn’t just about flashy light and tech, it’s about spotting problems before things break. Treat roads and bridges like living systems so you can watch and manage over time. It makes data just as important as concrete.

What’s Happening In Space?

🇨🇦 Canadian rocket startup launches, aimed at space sovereignty amid global turmoil - A new rocket startup to be launched Friday says it plans to soon become the first Canadian company to have the capacity to launch medium-payload satellites in space, filling in a potentially important niche in Canada’s defence.

🇨🇦 Canada Rocket Company enters the ‘Launch the North’ sweepstakes and raises $6.2M in seed round - Mark Smith, Partner & Team Lead with the Seed Venture Fund said, “Canada Rocket Company is led by an ambitious team with deep expertise in rocket science and orbital launch operations. We believe their differentiated approach and scalable architecture is a pathway to leadership in a critical market.

My Take: 👏 We need our own access to space. Can’t rely on others forever. These guys aim to provide launch services from Canadian soil, targeting small satellites, etc. Nordspace is also in the launch market. More launch capacity on the East coast, perhaps?

Blue Origin Introduces TeraWave, a 6 Tbps Space-Based Network for Global Connectivity - Blue Origin today announced TeraWave, a satellite communications network designed to deliver symmetrical data speeds of up to 6 Tbps anywhere on Earth. This network will service tens of thousands of enterprise, data center, and government users who require reliable connectivity for critical operations.

Blue Origin’s TeraWave Satellite Constellation - Following up on yesterday’s announcement, here is the first animation of Blue Origin’s multi-orbit TeraWave constellation, based on filings submitted to the FCC. Using the orbital parameters detailed in those filings, I imported the data into NCAT to generate both 3D and 2D visualizations of the constellation.

Blue Origin Plans a Faster Starlink Competitor With 'TeraWave' - SpaceX rival Blue Origin has announced its own competitor to Starlink that promises to offer even faster speeds, but it’s only for enterprise and government customers. 

Q- and V-Bands for Next-Gen Communications - The Q- and V-Bands open far more spectrum, with bigger and more continuous bandwidths than Ka-Band, enabling higher data rates and more efficient transmission between satellites and ground stations. However, moving to higher frequencies presents challenges

My Take: So this is a pretty disruptive announcement with some aggressive timelines. Read the various links for more detail and analysis. IMHO, I can’t see how Rivada and Telesat Lightspeed compete here (post-launch) - depending on cost, of course, but pure bandwidth seems significant. Imagine how powerful this becomes if it’s integrated directly into AWS’ network, as is being done with Amazon LEO. Different customers, but very compelling. And then there’s Kepler’s LEO data relay constellation.. Competition for that as well.

I also added the link to an article about Q and V bands as outlined for the optical links. Narrower beam path. More secure, but also more susceptible to atmospheric interference, etc.

Oh, and check out Carlos Placido’s cool NCAT simulation video.

Senate bill wants satellite applications turned around in 1 year or less - The SAT Streamlining Act would require the FCC to turn around satellite applications within a 1-year timeline. Simultaneously, the FCC is taking comments on its own Notice of Proposed Rulemaking related to satellite applications. The FCC's proposed rule wants a satellite licensing "assembly line"

My Take: Supporters say the current process is too slow and is holding back innovation and competition. Things are moving at the speed of Government. Remember, they’re here to help.

‘He’s an idiot’: Musk and Ryanair’s O’Leary trade insults in Starlink Wi-Fi row - A spat over in-flight Wi-Fi has spiralled into a public verbal brawl between Elon Musk and Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary, pitting one of the world's richest men against Europe’s most outspoken airline boss.

My Take: 🍿 - “He’s an idiot — very wealthy, but still an idiot,” O'Leary said. He also described Musk’s social media platform X as a “cesspit.”.. Musk fired back on X, writing: “Ryanair CEO is an utter idiot. Fire him.” In a follow-up post, he accused O’Leary of getting Starlink’s fuel-burn impact wrong “by a factor of 10” and added: “Fire this imbecile.” .. I think there’s a Harvard Business Review case study coming soon.

Even Starlink Wants Your Data for AI Model Training. How to Opt Out - SpaceX uses your data to train its machine learning and AI models and might share that with partners who 'help us develop AI-enabled tools that improve your customer experience.'

My Take: Even Starlink? What makes them so special? Anyway, here’s how to turn it off. Maybe these things should be off by default (ha).

Space is Getting Crowded, and Policy Governing Low Earth Orbit is Broken - But while outer space grows crowded, the US policy that guides LEO satellites remains outdated and constrained. Regulators haven’t begun to address these new use cases. Current policies don’t effectively allocate the limited resources satellites depend on, and the state of competition in the field remains widely unaddressed. Orbital data centers are just the latest technological advance whose implications regulators haven’t begun to understand. When will policy catch up?

My Take: The piece outlines how outdated policies and fragmented oversight are increasing the risk of collisions, interference, and long-term damage to orbital space. Imagine space with 200,000 Chinese satellites and another 30,000 from SpaceX.. and then other stuff,,

Global Airline In-Flight Connectivity: Starlink, Amazon Kuiper, OneWeb, and Other Satellite Solutions - Passengers increasingly expect reliable Wi‑Fi at 35,000 ft. Airlines worldwide are partnering with satellite internet providers to meet this demand. The main solutions include Starlink (SpaceX), Amazon Kuiper, OneWeb, and traditional GEO satellites like Viasat, Intelsat, and Panasonic. In China, domestic satellite constellations are also being developed.

My Take: If you’re looking for a reference summary list of airlines and IFE partners, look no further!

Starlink-rival Eutelsat signs deal with Europe's MaiaSpace to launch satellites - European satellite operator Eutelsat said on Friday it had signed a deal with French space startup MaiaSpace for the future launches of its low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites, in a major strategic boost for Europe as it seeks to catch up with U.S. rival Space

My Take: This deal isn’t really about beating Starlink, it’s about Europe not wanting to rely on someone else’s space backbone. As satellite internet becomes real infrastructure, independence starts to matter just as much as performance.

Defending against Kessler Syndrome with Space Armor - Composite-based orbital debris mitigation tiles to be deployed on new satellite.

My Take: Remember the old joke about making airplanes from the same material used for the black boxes? Space debris is no longer a future risk, it’s a present one. (Kessler Syndrome - a theoretical scenario where the density of objects in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) becomes so high that collisions between space debris trigger a runaway chain reaction, creating exponentially more debris and eventually rendering LEO unusable for satellites, spacecraft, and critical services like GPS, potentially trapping humanity on Earth)

Rivada Space Networks: Time for an announcement? - For many years Rivada Space Networks has kept the market on tenterhooks regarding its plans for a 576-craft mega-constellation for its ‘Outernet’ laser-linked LEO fleet.  Fresh news might be forthcoming, although nothing is confirmed – as yet. But there are clues that something is bubbling under.

My Take: So.. you read about TeraWave above. Stated date. Funding. Integrated launch, etc. Much higher bandwidth for critical applications and larger infrastructure (LEO, MEO, V/Q spectum..) than what Rivada (and Telesat) talk about. Does this just kill these guys before they literally get off the ground?

Is Starlink Actually Reliable? Here's What Users Say - While Starlink may not be good for every type of user, it's a game-changing option for its target audience since it can often provide good service, especially during calls or when playing online. That said, it may not be reliable all the time, since not even the gigabit fiber found in major cities is always flawless, but it's still a strong contender when comparing Starlink against other 5G internet options.

My Take: Overall, it comes across as reliable, especially for people in rural or remote areas. Most users say it works consistently day to day, with problems showing up mainly during bad weather or heavy congestion, or when a cat decides to have a nap on the warm panel. Is that still a thing?

Starlink Mini Powers Remote Road Trips As Rivals Emerge - A family’s Yellowstone journey with Starlink Mini highlights the evolving battle for global broadband, with Alphabet and Amazon racing to challenge SpaceX’s dominance.

My Take: …surprisingly easy to set up and reliable, even while driving through very remote areas. Their experience showed stable internet for navigation, work, and streaming, with the main downsides being power use and cost rather than performance.

Data Centres

Nokia and Hypertec deploy supercomputing cluster in Canada - Kit vendor Nokia and Hypertec, which specialises in large-scale AI and HPC infrastructure, have deployed an advanced supercomputing cluster at the University of Waterloo in Canada.

My Take: “The new infrastructure will be integrated into high-performance computing environment called SHARCNET (Shared Hierarchical Academic Research Network) which allows faculty, students, postdocs, and research fellows at Canadian academic institutions access to computational power for research.”

Orbital Compute Landscape: Edge to Infrastructure - Orbital Data Centers (ODCs) are not a single market, but five distinct business models with different timelines, constraints, and revenue logic: Edge Compute & Software, Compute Payloads/Modules, Compute Platform Operators, Compute-Enabled Constellations, and Co-location Facilities.

My Take: Orbital compute works best at the edge for specific tasks, not as a full replacement for terrestrial data centers, although I think some think otherwise. Think filtering, inference, and prioritization, not large-scale training. Don’t know. Time will tell. Lots of attention in this ‘space.’ Elon loves it.

Trump administration wants tech companies to buy $15B of power plants they may not use - The White House and the governors of several states in the region want grid operator PJM to hold an auction for 15-year contracts for new generating capacity. The administration said it wants tech companies to bid on the contracts even if they don’t ultimately need the power for their data centers. Demand from data centers is expected to increase nearly threefold over the next decade.

My Take: Here’s the catch - these plants may sit idle most of the time, only turning on during peak demand or emergencies. The goal is to prevent AI-driven energy demand from straining the US power grid. Sounds like a plan. Maybe not ‘the’ plan, but a plan.

BCE's data centre rollout moving faster than expected - Demand for data centre capacity in Canada is causing BCE Inc. to accelerate work on its new artificial intelligence business, and the construction of new facilities is ahead of schedule, its top executive said.

My Take: That’s a pretty good sign of what can be expected. We just need all those massive LNG-powered data centres in Western Canada to be built and come online. I wonder if Bell is serving interim demand only?

Enabling AI

Our approach to age prediction - We’re rolling out age prediction on ChatGPT consumer plans to help determine whether an account likely belongs to someone under 18, so the right experience and safeguards can be applied to teens. As we’ve outlined in our Teen Safety Blueprint⁠ and Under-18 Principles for Model Behavior⁠, young people deserve technology that both expands opportunity and protects their well-being.

My Take: In short, they rely on “inference plus caution”, not hard verification. The goal is to protect minors while avoiding invasive identity checks, even if that means being overly restrictive at times.

Musk seeks up to $134 billion from OpenAI and Microsoft - Elon Musk is seeking up to $134 billion from OpenAI and Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab, saying he deserves the "wrongful gains" that they received from his early support, according to a court filing on Friday.

My Take: Wasn’t OpenAI’s original mission to build AI for the public good, not shareholder gain?

Ads Are Coming to ChatGPT. Here’s How They’ll Work - OpenAI says ads will not influence ChatGPT’s responses, and that it won’t sell user data to advertisers.

My Take: Ah, money influencing outcomes? I wonder how that wil work?

Power, connectivity and the next phase of the AI supercycle - Impressive as today’s AI agents are, they are not the endpoint of the AI supercycle. To enable the AI supercycle, we need infrastructure that moves intelligence securely, efficiently and reliably to wherever it is needed.

My Take: Yes, power. We need more power. What we also need is to look at securing infrastructure outside of the secure data centres.

ChatGPT Health Raises Big Security, Safety Concerns - The recent announcement of LLM health chatbot product ChatGPT Health suggests a world where health advice will be at the consumer's fingertips more than ever before, but with the product also comes a wide range of safety and data security concerns. 

My Take: Although I think being able to query my medial records is a good thing, it’s the connections with 3rd parties that is the cause of much of the concern.

Claude Is Taking the AI World by Storm, and Even Non-Nerds Are Blown Away - Developers and hobbyists are comparing the viral moment for Anthropic’s Claude Code to the launch of generative AI

My Take: Y’know, I’ve been spending MUCH more time with Claude. I even subscribed, and I see a lot of other people doing the same with some even abandoning ChatGPT.

Young workers most worried about AI affecting jobs, Randstad survey shows - Four in five workers believe artificial intelligence is going to impact their daily tasks at the workplace, with Gen Z among those most concerned as companies increasingly rely on AI chatbots and automation, a survey conducted by Randstad showed on Tuesday.

My Take: Gen Z and millennials are anxious about job security, skills becoming outdated, and career stability as AI tools spread across workplaces. Older workers, by contrast, tend to see AI more as a support tool than a threat. Companies need to show how AI creates real career paths

OpenAI seeks to increase global AI use in everyday life - The initiative – called OpenAI for Countries – will expand the reach of its products and help close the gap between countries with broad access to AI technology and nations that do not yet have the capacity, the company said.

My Take: “OpenAI is expanding its efforts to convince global governments to build more data centers and encourage greater usage of artificial intelligence in areas such as education, health and disaster preparedness.”.. Embed it in every day life and then you have them hooked

This and That!

Apple Developing AirTag-Sized AI Pin With Dual Cameras - The pin is said to be similar in size to an AirTag, with a thin, flat, circular disc shape. It has an aluminum and glass shell, and two cameras at the front. There is a standard lens and a wide-angle lens that are meant to capture photos and videos, while three microphones are designed to pick up sound around the wearer. An included speaker allows the pin to play audio, and there is a physical control button along one edge. The device is able to wirelessly charge like an Apple Watch.

My Take: Sounds like a little privacy concern. One day, everyone will be walking around recording audio and video of everything and everyone. And then all that data will be fed back to some central monitoring location, and used for surveillance and tracking.

Sun unleashes powerful X-flare, CME hits Earth sparking severe geomagnetic storm - The sun sure has woken up this week, unleashing a powerful X-class solar flare on Jan. 18 that hurled a colossal, fast-moving coronal mass ejection (CME) directly toward Earth. That CME has now arrived, triggering severe (G4) geomagnetic storm conditions far earlier than initially forecast.

My Take: Google will take you to some pretty cool aurora pictures. From 37,000’ no less.

Animals experience joy. Scientists want to measure it - As animals ourselves, we think we see happiness in our fellow creatures all the time. Dogs romp in the park; squirrels chase each other up and down tree trunks; Tango purrs his head off at night while attempting to sleep on my face. Yet I know that it may not be glee because I can’t be certain what emotions are felt by a creature that can’t speak to me.

My Take: Call it whatever you want. As long as they’re not trying to kill you, they’re happy.

Your First Humanoid Robot Coworker Will Probably Be Chinese - Explosive acceleration, limited dexterity, eyes in the back of its head. What could possibly go wrong?

My Take: Oh, where do I go with this? Maybe I’ll just say nothing, for a change.

Ever watched a pet cow pick up a broom and scratch herself with it? You have now - A pet cow in Austria started using a broom to scratch herself — the first ever documented case of bovine tool use.

My Take: No, but there was this one time at band camp…

Infographic Of The Week

My Take: Shocking.

Movie/Streaming Recommendation

IMDb: 6.8/10

JMDb: 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿/10 (“bursts of brutal violence”)

The Rip is a muscular, throwback cop thriller that plays like a pressure-cooker chamber piece wrapped in a Netflix-ready package. Joe Carnahan locks Damon and Affleck in a Miami stash house with 20 million in cartel cash and lets paranoia do most of the heavy lifting. The film’s best asset is its tension: shifting alliances, clipped macho banter, and bursts of brutal violence keep the two-hour runtime leaner than it looks.

Where it falters is originality. The clean‑cop/dirty‑cop dynamic, tragic backstories, and late-game reveals are satisfying but rarely surprising, echoing better 90s programmers Carnahan clearly admires. Still, Damon’s frayed idealism and Affleck’s weary cynicism give the moral rot some emotional weight, and the staging of the nighttime raid sequences is genuinely gripping.

The Rip doesn’t redefine the genre, but as a mid-budget crime potboiler, it absolutely earns the click.

Until Next Time

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