Monday, September 21
Monday, September 21
OpenAI's Ad Tracking Cookie Links Your Shopping to Your ChatGPT Account
A security researcher has exposed a cross-site tracking cookie called __obi that connects browsing activity on Chewy, Wayfair, Coursera, HelloFresh, and 930+ other advertiser sites directly to users' ChatGPT accounts. The cookie phones home to bzr.openai.com — internal codename "Bazaar" — with a one-year lifetime, and scrapes emails, phone numbers, and identity fields from advertiser pages via hijacked tag-manager data layers. OpenAI classifies it as an "analytics" cookie. The merchants hosting the pixel apparently had no idea their customers were being profiled. Easily Monday's biggest conversation across the tech community.
OpenAI's Ad Tracking Cookie Links Your Shopping to Your ChatGPT Account
A security researcher has exposed a cross-site tracking cookie called __obi that connects browsing activity on Chewy, Wayfair, Coursera, HelloFresh, and 930+ other advertiser sites directly to users' ChatGPT accounts. The cookie phones home to bzr.openai.com — internal codename "Bazaar" — with a one-year lifetime, and scrapes emails, phone numbers, and identity fields from advertiser pages via hijacked tag-manager data layers. OpenAI classifies it as an "analytics" cookie. The merchants hosting the pixel apparently had no idea their customers were being profiled. Easily Monday's biggest conversation across the tech community.
Industry Power Moves in AI and Policy
Monday's tech conversation has a split personality. Half the industry is anxious about acceleration, the other half about deceleration.
- The Sherman Antitrust Act turned 136 this year. It was built for railroad cartels fixing grain prices. Courts have spent a century applying it to companies that coordinate to charge more. Whether it covers companies allegedly coordinating to build less is untested legal territory.
- High-bandwidth memory (HBM) is the specialized DRAM that AI accelerators require. The market was roughly $4 billion in 2023; analysts project it past $25 billion by 2027. When two chipmakers both need the same scarce component, the supplier sets the terms.
- The phrase "agentic AI" barely existed two years ago. It's now a product category, a regulatory target, and the subject of proposed federal agencies.
All of it is playing out today.
Monday's tech conversation has a split personality. Half the industry is anxious about acceleration, the other half about deceleration.
- The Sherman Antitrust Act turned 136 this year. It was built for railroad cartels fixing grain prices. Courts have spent a century applying it to companies that coordinate to charge more. Whether it covers companies allegedly coordinating to build less is untested legal territory.
- High-bandwidth memory (HBM) is the specialized DRAM that AI accelerators require. The market was roughly $4 billion in 2023; analysts project it past $25 billion by 2027. When two chipmakers both need the same scarce component, the supplier sets the terms.
- The phrase "agentic AI" barely existed two years ago. It's now a product category, a regulatory target, and the subject of proposed federal agencies.
All of it is playing out today.
Fresh Drops and Developer Tools Worth Knowing
