The good point in this article is about how the "AI" features in Chrome all use Google's cloud API and not a local model. That's true and some of it should be local. ("AI mode" uses the Web index, so it fundamentally cannot be local, but there are features that could be.)

I've been trying these models out for the last year, and it seems to me that we want them to work in a 5-10W "laptop" power envelope, but they really work best with a 50-500W GPU instead - i.e. they eat batteries. This means things work better in a "plugged in" gaming laptop/desktop rather than a typical web client. At least for now.

Technically speaking, imagine you're iterating over a million files, and some of them are 1000x slower than the others, it's not Backblaze's fault that things have gone this way. Avoiding files that are well-known network mount points is likely necessary for them to be reliable at what they do for local files.

It's important to recognize that these new OS-level filesystem hooks are slow and inefficient - the use case is opening one file and not 10,000 - and this means that things you might want to do (like recursive grep) are now unworkably slow if they don't fit in some warmed-up cache on your device.

To fix it, Backblaze would need a "cloud to cloud" backup that is optimized for that access pattern, or a checkbox (or detection system) for people who manage to keep a full local mirror in a place where regular files are fast. This is rapidly becoming a less common situation. I do, however, think that they should have informed people about the change.

https://red.anthropic.com/2026/mythos-preview/

Also "isolating the relevant code" in the repro is not a detail - Mythos seems to find issues much more independently.

For instance, almost none of the useful settings from win32 apps sync - migrating to a new PC is painful, your apps don't move, your settings are all missing. It takes weeks, you don't just login to it. So this idea that it makes all your settings sync is maybe 10% true.

The argument for this online account (vs just a container for apps) is that you think a few Windows appearance settings must be synced always, or that you want to save things like your BitLocker keys in the cloud (which probably makes them visible to FBI or whoever else). And the security implications need to be spelled out in plain language. And in the end, it's a pretty bad argument - Grandma doesn't need BitLocker, but the people who do want a clear explanation. A lot of the rest could live in a "Microsoft apps" credential layer: Edge, OneDrive, Office, etc.

I want to feel like I can login to a recovery console and fix a bad partition. I want to keep using the same username across Linux and Windows. I want to recover a router with the old laptop that has actual ethernet, and who knows if it has cached credentials? My Microsoft account is my least used one, and who knows if it is secure?

One last thing: logging in with biometrics is amazing, but why must I use a low-security PIN in place of your pre-existing password?

Please fix it all.

The patches on top of this are really bad. For instance, we are seeing "AI" biometric video detectors with a margin-of-error of 5-7 years (meaning the validation studies say when the AI says you're 23-25 you can be considered 18+), totally inadequate to do the job this new legislation demands.