NEW: A federal judge in Illinois has granted a temporary retraining order which prevents federal agents from using force against journalists. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

We're so relieved to see Germany reaffirm its opposition to the dangerous Chat Control proposal--the one that would mandate mass scanning of communications. Germany's long been a solid champion of privacy, and the news that it was considering backing mass surveillance was alarming. 1/

In particular, we must be wary of "new" proposals that allow scanning of "known content" while claiming to protect privacy by proscribing "indiscriminate" surveillance. We must also look out for those that mandate only scanning for “hashed images or videos.” 4/

Good

This is a professor at Rutgers who teaches a class on the history of anti-fascism. He also teaches about human rights. He has received multiple death threats and been doxed. He is relocating to Europe for his safety. This is where we are in the US now. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Very interesting job ad, for a Peter Thiel-backed company, that involves trying to make sure AI models serve liberal users with liberal perspectives (and yes, there is an equivalent ad for a "conservative politics expert") www.linkedin.com/jobs/search/...

I'm looking at a Temu ad where they've basically melded the head of a nine-year-old girl with the body of a woman in a swimsuit, and I'm just like, what has happened to this world

Police arrest man based on his ChatGPT prompts. Did they issue a warrant to OpenAI, did company give notice to the accused? How was the prompt “found?”

This week's TGR is about AI's limits - please share with anyone who needs reminding! youtu.be/UNCG52ZcMKo?...

See this? This story is the sound of a bullet you didn’t even know was coming at you whistling past your right ear.

Why yes I did buy a guitar today

microsoft product (begging, pleading): save this document to my documents? me: save to desktop microsoft (twitching, shaking) this jpeg. save to pictures? me: save to desktop microsoft (weeping, throwing up): this email attachment... downloads? me: desktop

Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.

The Post laid off seemingly the remaining of their liberal-leaning staff members on Opinion last Thursday, when some of them were observing Yom Kippur. from @oliverdarcy.bsky.social for Status status.news/p/washington-post-opinion-cuts-adam-oneal

Um, ICE just coldly shot an unarmed PRIEST in the head w a pepper ball when he (and everyone around him) clearly posed no threat. For the crime of … complaining about government policy. Core 1A speech. With cameras rolling, they’re sniping priests for sport.

100% done with AI

Thanks, Meta AI, you insensitive clod

Over the weekend, Trump's deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller repeatedly attacked judges, calling them part of an "organized terrorist attack" on the US government.... On Saturday, the home of a judge who ruled against Trump, went up in flames time.com/7323442/sout...

Nvidia invests in OpenAI which invests in AMD... www.cnbc.com/2025/10/06/o...

RIP Jilly Cooper, the author of the only book my mother ever confiscated from me.

📣 Germany's close to reversing its opposition to mass surveillance & private message scanning, & backing the Chat Control bill. This could end private comms-& Signal-in the EU. Time's short and they're counting on obscurity: please let German politicians know how horrifying their reversal would be.

Very scary for both economic and societal reasons

Normalize the term "sprite"

I visited the apartment building ICE raided on Tuesday today. Story to come, but you can walk right in. Half of the apartments have no doors on them. Children's stuff abandoned in some flats. *Citizen* residents told me they were arrested and held for hours in zipties. This is America

In honor of National Poetry Day, the greatest parody rewrite of all time:

Please join me in congratulating Woman on her appointment

Every few months now I re-read this "Who Goes Nazi?" piece from 1941 and am blown away by how it captures the people we are dealing with 80 years later. harpers.org/archive/1941...

Still laughing at this

Bluesky's trends list is frustratingly US-centric. It really should be more region-specific. Europe could be sinking into the ocean and the top trends would be about some minor sport that isn't even played outside the US, or a soap star unknown outside the US. For 12 days straight.

We are losing something by having newsrooms where everyone who has more than a few years’ experience has gotten fired. I don’t fault a young writer for not knowing about things that happened before she was born. But now there are no editors to help give context to these stories, either.

kill it with fire

really enjoying all the people trying to explain the bible to the pope today

“ABC7 spoke to Pertissue Fisher, a woman who lives in the building. She said ICE agents took everyone in the building, including her, and asked questions later….’They was bringing the kids down, too, had them zip tied to each other.’” It can’t happen here, you say. But it is happening.

Breaking: Dutch court rules that Meta needs to offer chronological/ non algorithmic feed as clear and stable option (to Dutch users). Changes must be implemented in two weeks. 100,000 euro fine per day if non compliant. Case brought fwd by @bitsoffreedom.bsky.social nos.nl/l/2584891

This comes up on occasion. Companies like Meta aren't using your phone's microphones to listen to you. They don't need to! Their ad tech is already powerful enough to know where you go, who you chat with, and it can guess what you're interested in. *That's* the problem!

First time I’ve seen this reported in the press after rumours among experts: BILD reports/confirms there was a “mothership drone” over Germany which sent out smaller drones. Which a) really points to a capable actor and b) is concerning because it increases possible reach of these drones

You don’t actually have to both sides this. The Jewish community in the UK is not the Israeli government. You can just condemn the murder of two British Jews killed in their place of worship and you don’t have to say a single other thing.

PM of Albania having a good laugh with President of Azerbaijan and Macron about Trump repeatedly claiming that he ended the war between their two countries which were not at war with each other.

Next week's episode of Tech Gets Real will be about what not to expect from AI - including reasoning

GMP saying two dead, plus the apparent perpetrator.

“Apple cannot disable ADP automatically for [UK users, who…] will be given a period of time to disable the feature themselves to keep using their iCloud account” https://alecmuffett.com/article/115589 #EndToEndEncryption #HomeOffice #apple #censorship #surveillance #tcn

Horrible - one member of the public has reportedly died after the Manchester synagogue attack www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater...

Great show, nice digestible format dealing with actual facts and important issues, give it a listen (or view, if that's your thing)!

We are thrilled to announce that our NEW Large Language Model will be released on 11.18.25.

People who coax chatbots into sensible answers are basically opening and closing the fridge until it contains something you wanna eat, yes, eventually you get hungrier & eat the stuff in there. But what changed was your cognition. The fridge stayed the same. You changed your mind about the contents.

Finally figured out how to put the video of my new podcast onto Spotify open.spotify.com/episode/6fM7...

I think the design goal for a lot of new technology is to make it so terrible in specific ways that we forget it ever being good