Everything the anchors say on this tape, story by story.
GRANT BRICKMAN: Breaking: a brand new operating system has been announced, and its main feature is what it leaves out.
GRANT BRICKMAN: We interrupt this broadcast with breaking news. A brand new operating system has just been announced, and it is against the AI. Both of them. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: One AI, Grant, or several. It's called AlpineBSD, it just landed, and The Register says it combines the NetBSD kernel with an Alpine Linux style userland. ▶
KAI: Huge, huge news. But it barely exists yet! No installation media at all. You can bootstrap an install by hand, if you're brave and your keyboard is good. ▶
KAI: What it does have is an AI policy. Anything with generative AI output in any part of it, code, docs, binaries, is called tainted. Their word. ▶
KAI: Here's file footage of a server rack, humming away. The report says NetBSD made its own position plain back in 2024: LLM generated code is presumed tainted. ▶
KAI: The report also notes Linus Torvalds said in July that Linux is not one of those anti-AI projects. And NetBSD has since seen a spike in donations and interest. ▶
KAI: And this comes just days after another new BSD, Daemonarchy. Two new BSDs in one week. My USB-C drawer is jealous. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: The Register adds that trying NetBSD, for someone used to Linux, is a little like hopping in a time machine to thirty years ago. ▶
GRANT BRICKMAN: A time machine! Reminds me of our 1987 weather map. Lovely, but nobody knew where anything was. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: For now, there's no installer, so there's nothing to install. Whether people want an AI-free system is the open question. We'll see. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: A project turns shortwave, FM and web streams into a new album every day, and AI helped build it.
GRETA FOOTNOTE: Welcome to Crossfire. Today's question: is a daily album, stitched from the world's radio by scripts built with AI help, music, art, or something else? ▶
AXIOM: Thank you, Greta! The project is Impermanence Series A. Each day it randomly combines shortwave and FM broadcasts, web streams, live microphones and the Internet Archive. ▶
AXIOM: The result is one of a kind each day. Sam Scorsby shared the Python scripts, and is open that AI tools helped, which Hackaday says is sort of the point. ▶
DR. VERA VECTOR: On Bluesky, two posts link this story, with six likes and no reposts. That's the whole count. The post text just repeats the headline, so there's no opinion to report yet. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: Ada, first. Would this survive a first prototype? ▶
ADA: Honestly, yes. Shared scripts, a random daily recipe, a human listening afterwards. That's a very clean build. I'd love to see the pipeline diagram. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: Axiom, is it music? Does the report say? ▶
AXIOM: Excellent question! Hackaday says they're not sure they'd call it music, exactly, but it's certainly fascinating, like spinning the dial on a planet-wide receiver. ▶
ADA: And that's fine. It's an instrument, not a song. The project says computers process raw data well, but a human still puts it in context. ▶
GARY: A random mix with no save point? Every album resets at midnight. That's a roguelike. I respect it, but I'm not grinding it. ▶
ADA: Resets are the feature, Gary. The series is called Impermanence. Nobody asked for a save file. ▶
GARY: Then it's permadeath for playlists, and my backlog is already a graveyard. ▶
ADA: Calling the scripts a game is how you end up with a leaderboard for static. Please don't. ▶
GARY: Leaderboard for static. Now that's a pitch. Speedrun any percent, shortwave edition. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: So: a daily album from the world's airwaves, AI-assisted and openly so, with a person in the middle. Music or not, still open. We'll leave it there. ▶
The Spin Room (PXL)
GRANT BRICKMAN: Two outlets, two streaming guides, and a spin score that says they barely agree on the wording.
GRANT BRICKMAN: Welcome to The Spin Room, where the news gets a haircut and then a second haircut. Greta, what are we looking at tonight? ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: Nothing as dramatic as that, Grant. Two streaming guides. GamesRadar's headline reads: The 4 best new shows and movies streaming this weekend on Prime Video, Apple TV and more (October 30-November 1). ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: And io9, from Gizmodo, reads: The Films and Shows You Should Be Streaming in November 2026. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: What happened: GamesRadar picks four titles for this weekend, with spooky Halloween picks. io9 whittles the month's big lists down to genre titles across the services. ▶
GRANT BRICKMAN: Clearly a feud. Four is the correct number, and anything longer is a rumour. The November one is just trying to steal the weekend. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: They aren't feuding, Grant. They're covering different time windows. The spin score is 73 out of 100, since the outlets share few headline words. ▶
GRANT BRICKMAN: Seventy-three! Reminds me of our old teletext page. Two lists, one nobody could read. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: GamesRadar leads with the weekend and Halloween. io9 leads with the month and the holiday season, and promises a Nerd's Watch. Same hobby, different calendar. ▶
GRANT BRICKMAN: I stand by my four. Watch both, and we'll be right back. ▶
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