In news that will surprise absolutely no one who has ever used an LLM, a team of researchers has presented a paper at a top AI conference arguing that it is fundamentally impossible to make large language models fully secure against hacks. The flaw, they say, is in how LLMs determine who or what is giving them instructions - a weakness they exploited to make popular models spit out forbidden knowledge, such as how to synthesize cocaine or sabotage a commercial aircraft's navigation system. But hey, at least we know now, right?

Meanwhile, in geothermal news that's actually good for once: In June 2024, a small company called Zanskar purchased a failing geothermal power plant in New Mexico. The water was getting colder by the day, and the plant was uneconomical. But two years later, thanks to advanced modeling and modern drilling technology, they drilled a new well thousands of feet down and revived the entire operation. The Lightning Dock plant is now running at full capacity, proving that there's still hidden potential deep beneath our feet - just like the potential for AI to do something useful without being hacked.

Over in South Korea, the AI chip boom is making semiconductor workers the hottest commodities in the dating market. Baek, a 35-year-old manager at SK Hynix, was signed up for matchmaking by his anxious mother a year ago. But lately, he and his coworkers are having better luck finding dates, likely thanks to the dazzling bonuses they just received. SK Hynix, flush with eye-popping profits, agreed to pay 10% of operating profits to employees - an extra $476,000 per employee this year. Nothing says 'marriage material' like a six-figure bonus.

In other tech news: The US government has banned Roombas? Yes, robot vacuum cleaners are included in a new FCC ban, alongside Chinese humanoids. Europe's fires are breaking records, and there's more destruction coming. Google DeepMind has dismantled its Nobel-winning AlphaFold team, because why keep a specialist tool when you can have a general AI agent? Data centers are easy to build but hard to run, DoorDash is planning drone deliveries (eventually), AI is accelerating global digital inequality, quantum computers are inching closer to commercial reality, Chinese students are using AI for university admissions, boomers are giving grandkids AI-generated slop books (driving millennial parents mad), and Minecraft is helping children redesign their cities even amid war.

Finally, Europe is testing an invisible automated intelligence network called Project ASGARD, designed to connect sensors and shooters into a single shared wireless brain. It's a brutal new calculus for European defense, as the Russians knock on the door. And in lighter news, we learned why cats always land on their feet - it's their amazingly flexible spines. So there's that.