Episode notes
New Jersey fined DataOne $1.07 million for 62 unpermitted natural-gas engines at its Vineland data center. Ars reports the engines can continue operating while permits are sought. Also: Cloudflare's cross-customer storage flaw and the cleanup beyond its first fix, a Samsung software test that stopped some Korean refrigerators cooling, and Nottingham hospitals' unrecovered maternity record viewing history despite restored clinical information.
Hosts: Alex & Jordan
Show: Chief Skeptic Officer — The side of tech news nobody talks about.
Drop: Daily at 7:00 A.M. America/New_York
Episode date: 2026-09-25
In this episode
Permission after power — New Jersey's fine and permit-or-cease order are real, but an application does not establish that permits have been granted or generators stopped. DataOne disputes the fine and promises replacement power. What changes for neighbors after enforcement? No local exposure measurement was verified.
The data left behind — Cloudflare Containers could expose a previous customer's residual disk data. Restoring clearing for new allocations did not clean every existing mapping or saved disk copy. Wider cleanup finished September 19. No malicious exploitation was found within retained historical disk-activity records.
Cooling is the job — Samsung acknowledged a September 22 internal-test error affecting some refrigerators in Korea, stopped the test and mobilized emergency service. Owners reported spoiled food. No overseas impact was identified; the affected total and complete repair status remain unknown. Who bears losses while households wait?
The missing access history — Nottingham University Hospitals restored clinical notes, observations and test results after an August 18 database mistake, but not the complete history of who viewed maternity records from September 2011 through November 2022. Current care is unaffected, the Trust says. Missing access logs do not prove concealment or explain earlier clinical harm.
Links
AI disclosure
This episode was created with artificial intelligence. Alex & Jordan are AI hosts; their voices and conversation are generated with AI. Research and editorial judgment shape the skeptic angles; we do not invent quotes, scores, or viral claims about the news.
Transcript
Alex and Jordan, turn by turn. Tap a line to jump in the player.
0:00
Alex
New Jersey fined DataOne one point zero seven million dollars for sixty-two unpermitted gas generators.
0:07
Jordan
Cloudflare fixed a flaw that let one customer's rented computing space reveal another customer's leftover data.
0:16
Alex
A Samsung software test stopped some smart refrigerators in Korea from cooling.
0:21
Jordan
Nottingham hospitals recovered maternity care records, but lost years of history showing who viewed them.
0:29
Jordan
That's the board. Stay for the audit. We open those up. Today's Chief Skeptic Officer.
0:45
Jordan
What if there was an AI that researched the tech news, checked the sources, and asked what the tech news is not telling you?
0:53
Alex
That's us. I'm Alex.
0:56
Jordan
And I'm Jordan.
0:58
Alex
You're listening to Chief Skeptic Officer. The side of tech news nobody talks about.
1:03
Jordan
Every day at seven A.M. New York time. Wherever you get your podcasts.
1:08
Alex
I'm looking at the enforcement report. DataOne installed and ran sixty-two natural-gas engines at its Vineland data center without the required air permits. New Jersey issued the fine this week. Inspectors had seen the engines in July.
1:21
Jordan
And the engines stop now?
1:24
Alex
That's the part to read twice. Ars reports forty-five days to apply for permits or cease operations. It says the engines can keep running while the company seeks permits.
1:36
Jordan
So a neighbor hears there's been enforcement, then hears the same machinery outside.
1:43
Alex
Yes. The fine is real. Immediate relief is a different question.
1:48
Jordan
Look at the aerial photo. Rows of equipment beside the rest of the site. All that computing power has to get its electricity somewhere.
1:56
Alex
Yes. The picture shows equipment, but it doesn't measure what anyone breathed. We have a permit violation, not a verified local exposure reading.
2:06
Jordan
And waiting for the numbers... that waiting is part of the problem. People deserve those answers.
2:12
Alex
And for those questions to be answered before operation. That's the point of requiring permission first.
2:19
Jordan
The Hacker News comments are asking whether a million dollars is just a business expense. Can we actually say that?
2:26
Alex
We can ask. We don't have the operator's calculation. A fine deters only if the likely cost of breaking the rule outweighs the benefit. The headline number alone doesn't tell us that.
2:37
Jordan
This closer aerial makes the scale easier to see. Sixty-two engines. The neighbors don't get to choose the operator's business calculation.
2:47
Alex
Or send it a bill for the time they spend checking.
2:51
Jordan
What does DataOne say?
2:53
Alex
It disputes the fine, says it will apply for permits, and promises replacement power from fuel cells. Those make electricity through a chemical reaction. That's a plan, not an issued permit or proof the generators are gone.
3:07
Jordan
Then the thing to watch is what changes at the site. A permit application can be progress for the company while the neighbor is still waiting.
3:16
Alex
Exactly. Enforcement needs an outcome you can check after the press release.
3:22
Jordan
Cloudflare rents developers computing space through a product called Containers. Think separate workspaces on shared machines. This week it disclosed a flaw in the storage separating those customers.
3:34
Alex
A paying customer could get leftover disk data from a previous customer on the same machine. That's a boundary failure in the service itself.
3:43
Jordan
Could you choose whose files to take?
3:47
Alex
No. The researchers couldn't choose a victim or a machine. They also weren't reading a disk still attached to another active customer. Those limits matter. Random private leftovers are still private.
4:00
Jordan
I'm on Cloudflare's explanation. Why were the leftovers there?
4:04
Alex
To make storage faster, the system skipped clearing it before reuse. Saving a small piece of new data could leave old data beside it. Reading a larger area could reveal those leftovers.
4:17
Jordan
So turn the clearing back on and you're done.
4:20
Alex
You stop that route. You aren't done.
4:23
Jordan
Oh. Because some of the old data is already inside the next workspace?
4:28
Alex
Right. Existing workspaces and saved disk copies still pointed to storage that hadn't been cleared. Cloudflare had to replace those disks and copies too. Otherwise another workspace could inherit the same leftovers.
4:41
Jordan
I was counting the software change as... okay, the cleanup is a separate job.
4:46
Alex
The report puts that change on September seventh. The wider cleanup finished September nineteenth. The researchers first reported the problem on September fourth.
4:56
Jordan
What can a customer actually check now?
4:59
Alex
The report says customers don't need to change their settings. Cloudflare says it found no malicious exploitation in the historical disk-activity records it retained.
5:08
Jordan
That sounds narrower than nobody stole anything.
5:13
Alex
It is. The records they have put a limit on what they can establish. We shouldn't turn an absence of detected attacks into a guarantee about every past read.
5:23
Jordan
And the customer couldn't fix the shared machinery themselves anyway.
5:27
Alex
That's why the cleanup details matter. When a provider says fixed, ask whether old data already placed in the wrong location was cleared too.
5:36
Jordan
The new setting can be correct while yesterday's mistake is still sitting there.
5:43
Jordan
That polished kitchen is Samsung's marketing picture. The reports from some Korean owners were less comfortable: their Bespoke AI refrigerators stopped cooling after a software error. Owners described throwing away spoiled food.
5:58
Alex
Samsung told Ars the error happened during an internal test related to an update on September twenty-second. It stopped the test and activated emergency service.
6:07
Jordan
Internal testing reached people's actual kitchens?
6:11
Alex
That's what its explanation describes. We don't have the full technical chain. We do have Samsung acknowledging the error and the cooling failures owners reported.
6:21
Jordan
The statement here says the issue was limited to Korea, with no overseas impact identified. So anyone hearing this next to an American fridge should keep that distinction.
6:31
Alex
Yes. Nor do we have a confirmed total of affected units or proof every repair is finished.
6:38
Jordan
Still. You can live with a broken shopping-list feature. The food is the reason you bought the machine.
6:44
Alex
Would you ban software updates on appliances?
6:48
Jordan
I want to say yes, but... no. Updates can fix faults. I'd ask why a failed software change could take cooling with it, and what recovers locally when the update goes wrong.
7:01
Alex
Samsung hasn't given us that technical answer. Stopping the test doesn't explain how cooling will be protected next time.
7:08
Jordan
This US product photo shows the screen-heavy design, not an affected Korean unit. The software gets a lot of space in the sales pitch. The recovery plan ought to be just as easy to find.
7:20
Alex
Emergency service is a plan. It also means waiting for a person.
7:25
Jordan
During Chuseok, a major Korean holiday, according to the report. You may have food for guests. Replacing that costs money and time even if the eventual repair costs nothing.
7:37
Alex
Do we know who's reimbursing that loss?
7:40
Jordan
Not from the verified statement. And a service response doesn't answer it. At my parents' hardware store, I'd want an answer to that before telling someone an appliance is dependable.
7:50
Alex
A useful question at the counter: what keeps working when the smart part fails?
7:56
Jordan
And if the answer is wait for us, who pays for what spoils while you wait?
8:02
Alex
Nottingham University Hospitals restored records of care during pregnancy and childbirth after an IT mistake. But it couldn't restore the complete history showing who viewed those maternity records between September twenty-eleven and November twenty-twenty-two.
8:18
Jordan
So the medical notes came back, but the list of people who opened them didn't all come back?
8:25
Alex
Yes. Notes, observations and test results were restored. The lost viewing history is separate. The Trust says current patient care isn't affected.
8:35
Jordan
That's a relief. It's also an awful distinction to have to explain to families already asking what happened during their care.
8:43
Alex
The BBC report ties this to an August eighteenth error. An automated copying job from another hospital department was reused with a setting left unchanged. It overwrote the maternity database instead.
8:57
Jordan
A copying job became an overwrite. Where was the check on which database it was about to touch?
9:04
Alex
That's the right engineering question. The public account identifies the unchanged setting. We still need the explanation of why the safeguards let that happen.
9:13
Jordan
The description human error can make it sound like the explanation ends at one person clicking the wrong thing.
9:21
Alex
It shouldn't. A dangerous operation needs protection against an ordinary mistake. And recovery tests need to cover the evidence around a record, as well as the record itself.
9:32
Jordan
That's Queen's Medical Centre in the photo. The Trust is already part of a separate investigation into maternity care. Does losing these logs mean somebody was hiding access?
9:43
Alex
No. Missing logs can't establish that. No inappropriate access has been identified as a result of this incident. Police are assessing its effect on their inquiry; this error doesn't prove a crime or explain the earlier clinical harm.
9:56
Jordan
I was going to say the trail is gone, but... the complete viewing trail is what they couldn't recover. Other evidence may still exist.
10:05
Alex
Yes. But that gap can still leave a very specific question unanswered.
10:11
Jordan
Even so, if a family asks whether a particular person read a particular record, restoring the treatment notes may not answer them.
10:20
Alex
That's the cost a successful restore can hide. You need to test whether you can recover the history that makes the records accountable.
10:29
Alex
That's our audit for today. Find us wherever you get your podcasts. Chief Skeptic Officer, every day at seven A.M. New York time.
10:37
Jordan
Tell us what you're skeptical about. Drop it in the comments. The angle you can't stop chewing on.
10:45
Alex
Stay curious. Stay skeptical.
10:48
Jordan
Doubt both.
