Swedish people in front of charts Source: digitaltmuseum.org

Fjord heaven’s sake! onlyfjords.com

Journo friends: ‪@theguardian.com‬ has published the open source code behind their secure messaging feature for mobile apps.

The Pentagon Pizza Report never fails

Most reporting on AI examines worst-case systems deployed under the guise of efficiency. But what would a good faith effort at Ethical AI look like? For two years, we’ve been looking over the shoulder of a city trying to do things differently.

Crazy times. Trump and Musk are bickering on their own platforms. And it is actually fun to watch Norway play football. www.nrk.no/sport/norge-...

After yesterday's unhinged Trump-Musk feud on Twitter and Truth Social, it's easy to believe every new update you see. But there are fake posts doing the rounds, so be careful. Check the feeds yourself before sharing: Trump: truthsocial.com/@realDonaldT... Musk: x.com/elonmusk

solidarity to anyone else who published something this afternoon that will get swallowed by elon news

OpenAI is featuring a "Looksmaxxing GPT" that provides "PSL ratings" for photos. It will rate people as "subhuman", and advise men to get invasive procedures like jaw surgery to "increase their sexual market value" among women, who it describes as "hypergamous by nature".

Fomo hits hard.

Great case studies here: How this year’s Pulitzer awardees used AI in their reporting (by @andrewdeck.bsky.social) www.niemanlab.org/2025/05/how-...

This National Post article is based entirely on a StatsCan report that cites "systemic discrimination and racism" as a "key contributing factor" in the overrepresentation of Indigenous people in court... publications.gc.ca/collections/... ... and it somehow goes with this as the headline:

We're ready for Microsoft Recall and the automatic screenshots it takes of everything on your desktop. Signal Desktop on Windows now includes support for a new "Screen security" feature designed to block screenshots of your Signal chats. signal.org/blog/signal-...

Each time you ask an AI chatbot a question, it sends a request to a data center and strains an increasingly scarce resource: water. A 🧵on our investigation into how the data centers that power AI are increasingly being built in highly water-stressed places: www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

"A REMARKABLE RECOVERY BY JOURNALISM!" JOURNALISM WINS THE 150TH PREAKNESS STAKES! #Preakness150

Gratulerer med dagen, #Norway! 🇳🇴 Cheers to freedom, unity, and all the traditions that make your national day so special! Norway holds a special place in my heart.

🐺

In a groundbreaking investigation, we used facial recognition software to identify Ukrainian children given false Russian identities and listed for adoption. @alisonkilling.bsky.social @christopherjm.ft.com @peter.andringa.me @digitalcampbell.ft.com @samlearner.bsky.social on.ft.com/433Mpgw

Delighted to see this project shortlisted for the Sigma awards alongside a host of other incredible data journalism projects from around the world.

Two days too late and perhaps only funny for those speaking Dutch. (H/T Gemma Janssen.)

So happy that our project «Inequality for the law» is on the shortlist. 🏆 Lucky to have been collaborating with the talented people at @lighthousereports.com. @elenadebre.bsky.social @gabrielgeiger.bsky.social @jusbraun.bsky.social

I am running a contest. It is about bad pdfs. It can make you independently wealthy (for immeasurably small measures of independent wealth) badpdfs.com

Siden 2018 er han gået langt for at skjule sin identitet. Men nu kan TjekDet i samarbejde med @politiken.dk, @bellingcat.com og CBC afsløre navnet på manden bag MrDeepFake www.tjekdet.dk/indsigt/afsl...

Inside The Scam Network: «The scammers don't know that NRK has been monitoring them for a year. We've read over 40,000 chat messages between them to understand how the scam works.» www.nrk.no/dokumentar/x...

Once again, Australian election results prove how awful choropleth maps are for data visualisation. "Land doesn't vote, people do." #rstats code to reproduce animation here: github.com/emitanaka/oz...

NEW: SignalGate Meets WordPress: Outgoing National Security Adviser’s Phone Dumps Messages via Israeli App unicornriot.ninja/2025/signalg... Mike Waltz is using a foreign company’s software to log Signal chats. Our exclusive deep dive into the TeleMessage system.

NEW: @bloomberg.com analysis of +13 years of ICE detentions shows immigrants transferred to the South and SW from interior US at unprecedented rates. Reducing the odds of winning their cases. w/ @elenamejia.bsky.social @racheladhe.bsky.social @pollymosendz.bsky.social bloom.bg/43am95w

In case it's helpful, I've been keeping an updated timeline of DOGE's fake "IT modernization" tasks at agencies (and some other data like Trump's golf trips or weekly unemployment claims) here at my little data repo github.com/harrisj/trum... Suggestions/bug reports/questions always welcome

Introducing ICIJ’s #ChinaTargets investigation: This collaboration among 104 journalists from 43 media partners in 30 countries uncovers the sprawling scope and terrifying tactics of Beijing’s campaign to target dissident members of its diaspora. Here is what we found:

So much to love in the scrollytelling — the ternary plot, the depth of the data, the findings — but my favourite part is the explanation and the text in general. 📊 Remember, a chart doesn't have to be understood in 3 seconds. It should reward the effort you put into understanding it.

BREAKING: A.G. Bondi reverses Garland policy against subpoenaing journalists. Stating that leaks "undermine President Trump’s policies," Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that "the news media ‘must answer subpoenas’ when authorized." Today, at Law Dork —>

I'm tilting at windmills again, trying to convince people that phones don't spy on you through your microphone to target ads at you simonwillison.net/2025/Apr/26/...

Will Dicks on ballot papers unseat Dutton in Dickson? I investigated, and it went straight to being the top story on Crikey yesterday

I don't think I've ever read an article more precision engineered to my interests (as a data journalist and owner of a chicken wine T-shirt) pudding.cool/2025/04/wine...

Enter the «matpakke».

On the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, we thought we'd answer a question that's often asked, "If they raised the Mary Rose, why not raise the Titanic?" Allow our scaled diagram to explain...

1. LLM-generated code tries to run code from online software packages. Which is normal but 2. The packages don’t exist. Which would normally cause an error but 3. Nefarious people have made malware under the package names that LLMs make up most often. So 4. Now the LLM code points to malware.

The problem with most machine-based random number generators is that they’re not TRULY random, so if you need genuine randomness it is sometimes necessary to link your code to an external random process like a physical noise source or the current rate of US tariffs on a given country.

Extremely proud of receiving a Skup Diploma for our series «Instukids», which uncovered massive drug abuse inside child welfare institutions in Norway. www.m24.no/nordlys-skup...

These are boom times, the best of times ... ... for companies producing stock photos of bummed-out traders.

We made AI watch 1,200 P*rnhub videos—nearly 20,000 minutes—to analyze trends. Here’s what we found. 🧵 www.nrk.no/vestfoldogte...

"xAI Aquires X" sounds like a headline that made its way out of the CMS before it was supposed to publish (this is a journalism joke) but read here --> www.wired.com/story/xai-x-... via @zoeschiffer.bsky.social @lmatsakis.bsky.social

Quite a comeback www.economist.com/interactive/...

In 25 years of covering national security, I’ve never seen a story like this: Senior Trump officials discussed planning for the U.S. attack on Yemen in a Signal group--and inadvertently added the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic. www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

In partnership with @freedom.press, WIRED will make all of its FOIA-based reporting free to access for anyone. Public records should be public, and I hope to see more outlets follow suit: freedom.press/issues/wired...

A friend is reading "The Wheel of Time" for the first time, is finishing Book 8, and complained to me that the story of Perrin hunting for the Prophet was left hanging. I had to aggressively burst his remaining illusions as he enters The Slog:

🚨 @newscientist.com SCOOP: I've exclusively obtained Peter Kyle's interactions with ChatGPT using FOI laws - in what I believe may be a world-first transparency release. The chatbot said "Lack of Government or Institutional Support" slowed UK AI adoption www.newscientist.com/article/2472...

Here's the handout for my "Cutting-edge web scraping techniques" workshop at #NICAR2025 this morning github.com/simonw/nicar... Plus some extra notes on the custom software I built to support the workshop: simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/8/c...

👇 A good summary of our latest investigative project. So grateful for working with talented people like @elenadebre.bsky.social, @gabrielgeiger.bsky.social and @jusbraun.bsky.social.

In 2022, Frank went to prison. A richer man convicted of the same crime went free.