Week 49: Micron Abandons Gamers, Satellites Blind Telescopes, Microsoft's AI Hype Collapses
THE TRIAGE
The tech industry revealed its priorities this week — and you’re not on the list. From hardware makers choosing data centers over consumers to satellite operators choosing connectivity over astronomy, we’re watching a series of cold calculations about who matters and who doesn’t. These aren’t market forces or inevitable progress. They’re decisions, made by people, about who gets served and who gets abandoned.
CHOOSING SIDES
Micron Abandons PC Builders as the company kills its consumer-focused Crucial brand to redirect RAM and SSDs to power-hungry AI data centers. AI Strains the Power Grid with its immense energy demands forcing hard choices about energy infrastructure, siting, and pricing. Satellites Eclipse Science after a new study reveals that light pollution from megaconstellations is increasingly photobombing Hubble images, threatening scientific observation.
THE RECKONING ARRIVES
Microsoft Slashes AI Quotas after its sales team broadly failed to meet ambitious targets, revealing enterprise customers are resisting unproven AI agent technology. React Flaw Threatens Millions as a maximum-severity vulnerability in a core open-source package used by 6% of all websites creates a massive, easily-exploited security risk.
Curious what it all adds up to? Let’s break it down. Keep reading below.
Tell Me More
You Didn’t Make the Cut. Micron killing its 30-year-old consumer brand isn’t market evolution — it’s a deliberate choice about who deserves their products. After three decades serving PC builders, the company looked at its options and decided you’re not worth the trouble. Data centers write bigger checks. This is triage logic: under constraint, serve the customer who pays most. Expect other hardware manufacturers to make similar calculations. By 2027, building your own PC may require hunting for scraps from companies that decided you weren’t a priority.
The Grid Gets Rationed. AI’s exponential power demands are forcing utilities and regulators into triage mode: who gets the electrons? Data centers are competing directly with cities for grid capacity, and someone has to lose. These aren’t abstract infrastructure challenges — they’re allocation decisions being made right now about whether your neighborhood or a compute cluster gets reliable power. The next 24 months will reveal whose needs come first.
Astronomy Loses the Bid. Satellite megaconstellations photobombing Hubble represents a completed triage: connectivity won, science lost. SpaceX and its competitors weighed global internet access against humanity’s ability to observe the cosmos, and made their choice. No one held a vote. No agency arbitrated. The prioritization happened through action and inaction, and now Hubble increasingly captures streaks instead of stars. We chose faster downloads over deep space.
Enterprise Calls the Bluff. Microsoft’s dramatic quota reduction is what happens when customers perform their own triage. After months of aggressive AI sales pitches, enterprises looked at the offerings and decided: not yet, not at this price, not without proof. This is the market triaging hype from reality. Microsoft bet that urgency would override skepticism. They bet wrong. The “show me” era begins — and the companies that oversold will feel it first.
Security Lost to Speed. A critical vulnerability in React reveals the triage at the heart of modern software development: security was deprioritized for velocity. We chose fast deployment over careful review, convenience over resilience. Now 6% of all websites share a single point of failure. This wasn’t an accident — it was a thousand small decisions to ship now and patch later. The bill comes due all at once.
Below The Fold
Amazon pulled its “eerily emotionless” AI-generated anime dubs after viewers complained. Because it turns out art still requires a soul. Ars Technica
Chamberlain is once again blocking third-party smart home integrations for its garage door openers. A periodic reminder you don’t really own the things you buy. The Verge
Netflix is acquiring Warner Bros. for over $80 billion. The streaming wars are over and one country won. TechCrunch
A viral creator is being sued for allegedly punching and choking a humanoid “Rizzbot.” Which raises legal questions we are simply not mature enough to handle. TechCrunch
Kohler’s smart toilet cameras aren’t actually end-to-end encrypted. An answer to the question “how could the Internet of Things get any worse?” Wired
China deployed a humanoid robot to direct traffic. Finally, an authority figure you can’t argue with. Interesting Engineering
Researchers turned food waste into functional robotic hardware. Proving that one person’s trash is another’s terrifying crab-bot. Interesting Engineering
A $20 drug in Europe costs $800 in the U.S. Because some tolls are more seen than others. STAT News
Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano melted the webcam that was filming it. Nature’s way of saying “no pictures, please.” YouTube
OpenStreetMap in South Korea is suffering a wave of coordinated vandalism. Proving even collaborative, utopian projects have a troll problem. OpenStreetMap Diary
Looking Ahead: Next week, watch for more hard choices about who gets prioritized — and who gets left behind.
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