Five Things Tech: Cat Meme, GPS, Robotaxis, Apple, Outlook in Space
This is everything you should read about Tech right now.
Saturday is for Tech, welcome back!
A college‑age researcher used a cat‑meme clip to socially engineer his way into clues about a massive residential‑proxy–based cyberweapon, eventually exposing a network that could have hit tens of millions of consumers and up to a quarter of the world’s corporations.
In the Persian Gulf, military‑grade GPS jamming and spoofing to counter drones and missiles are turning everyday delivery‑app drivers into analog navigators, forcing them to rely on memory and landmarks when their maps vanish, and underscoring how easily “defensive” electronic warfare can bleed into civilian workflow.
Meanwhile, in Wuhan, Baidu’s Apollo Go robotaxis suddenly froze mid‑traffic, stranding travelers and generating at least one highway collision, a reminder that even the most advanced autonomy still ships with the kind of “nothing works” moments drivers knew all too well in the analog age.
A look back at Apple in the 1990s shows that the company didn’t just sleepwalk through its post‑Jobs exile; it iterated the Mac, invented the PowerBook, and made strategic bets that quietly laid the groundwork for its later comeback, inviting a more nuanced take on the “Jobs‑as‑sole‑savior” narrative.
Finally, midway through the Artemis II lunar‑flyby mission, astronauts called down to Mission Control puzzled by “two Microsoft Outlooks” that refused to work, turning a low‑level office‑app quirk into a meme‑worthy question: who thought Outlook, of all terrestrial tools, belonged on a spaceship bound for the moon?
Enjoy Five Things Tech! Also, cherish the GPS signal! 🤖
The College Student—and His Cat Meme—Who Hunted the World’s Biggest Cyberweapon
At one point, he asked for some technical details. He followed up with the cat meme: a six-second clip that showed a hand adjusting a necktie on a fluffy gray cat.
Brundage didn’t expect it to work, but he got the information. “It took me by surprise,” he said.
Eventually the leaker hinted there was a new vulnerability on the internet. Brundage, who is 22, would learn it threatened tens of millions of consumers and as much as a quarter of the world’s corporations. As he unraveled the mystery, he impressed veteran researchers with his findings—including federal law enforcement, which took action against the network two weeks ago.
Chad Seaman, a researcher at Akamai, joked at one point that the internet could go down if Brundage spent too much time on his exams.
Social Engineering to take down an evil hacker, that is a nice twist and shows how important it is to understand your opponents.
In the Gulf, GPS jamming leaves delivery drivers navigating blind
As the conflict between the U.S., Israel, and Iran rages on for the second month, gig workers say these kinds of GPS-related disruptions have become routine. Military forces across the region are increasingly deploying electronic systems that interfere with Global Navigation Satellite System signals, including GPS, to defend against drones and missile attacks. These systems can jam signals entirely or spoof them by feeding false location data to receivers. The interference often spills into civilian life, disrupting the lives of millions of people who rely on tools like maps. For delivery drivers, the breakdown is both immediate and disorienting.
I didn’t think of this angle before, but sure, if you need to rely on GPS to get your job done, you’re screwed.
Robot Taxis Stop in Traffic in Chinese City, Stranding Travelers
The police in Wuhan, a large metropolis in central China, announced on Wednesday that they had received a “succession” of reports that self-driving cars had stopped. The cars were part of the extensive Apollo Go program of self-driving cars run in Wuhan by Baidu, a large Chinese internet company.
The police said an unspecified “system failure” had occurred, and did not say how many cars had been affected. Baidu has hundreds of the cars in Wuhan, where they have become a common sight.
I think self-driving cars will make our roads safer and our cities more livable. We will have to get used to these kind of scenarios though, where all of a sudden nothing works. Like back in the 70s when the car just wouldn’t start in the morning or would just go silent in the middle of an intersection. We tend to forget that new technology always needs some time.
The triumphs and failures of Apple without Steve Jobs
It’s a famous story on its way to becoming legendary: Apple cofounder Steve Jobs was pushed out of Apple in 1985, spent more than a decade in the wilderness, and then returned to Apple in 1997 to save it from bankruptcy and transform it into one of the world’s most valuable companies.
That’s true, so far as it goes, but this interregnum is too often simplified as when Apple CEO John Sculley got rid of Steve and ruined the company. And that’s really not true. Not only was the Jobs who was ejected from Apple completely unprepared to run the company (as his disastrous but educational years at NeXT would prove), but the Apple of this period had some real accomplishments.
From making necessary changes to the Mac to the creation of the PowerBook, Apple didn’t simply weather the 12 years without Jobs. The company made shifts, adaptations, and decisions that would become foundational to its future. Were there missteps? Most definitely. But ignoring Apple’s successes over those dozen years undermines the truer, deeper story of how Apple survived to become the behemoth it is today.
I remember that phase very well. I started university in 93 and bought a Mac Performa 600, later I bought a used Powerbook 145b, which I would carry into the library even though the battery would last only for 30 mins and of course there where no sockets anywhere as people still used pencil and paper.
Artemis II Astronauts Have ‘Two Microsoft Outlooks’ and Neither Work
In 1969, the three astronauts of the Apollo 10 mission conducted a momentous “dress rehearsal” for putting humans on the lunar surface for the first time. It was a historic, inspiring moment for humanity; Astronaut John Young watched from a command module spacecraft as Thomas Stafford and Gene Cernan broke away and flew a lunar module within 10 miles of the moon’s surface, then reunited to return home to Earth. It’s from this mission that we have one of the most powerful transcripts in NASA history:
“Who did what?” Young asked. “Where did that come from?” Cernan added.
“Give me a napkin quick,” Stafford said. “There’s a turd floating through the air.”
The provenance of the poop remains one of the great mysteries of spaceflight. Today, in the early Earth-morning hours of the Artemis II astronauts’ history-mirroring mission around the moon, we have another: Why is Microsoft Outlook not working in space?
How can they think that relying on a Microsoft product when flying to the moon would be a good idea?
That’s all for now! Thanks for reading! If you missed last week’s Five Things Tech, you can find it here:
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— Nico