Dog learning the spatula trick....

NEW: ChatGPT advised the FSU shooter that a mass shooting would get more attention from media if it involved several children, according to a new lawsuit against OpenAI www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

Another example of how your data will be used against you. You should be able to own and drive a vehicle without it transmitting ANY data at all. Alternatively, include an ability to turn it off. Why should consumers pay for this self-surveillance that benefits others? @profferguson.bsky.social

We tried to warn you about Anthropic. Now they're using xAI's ultra-polluting community-killing nightmare data centre to power your toxic claude relationship All the new paid subs from @rutgerbregman.com and @quitgpt.bsky.social's campaign, now powered by Musk 🫠 www.anthropic.com/news/higher-...

Once upon a time I bought programs that came in a box. I would install them on the computer and there they would stay until I uninstalled them. They worked the same way every day. I didn’t have to worry about some guy in Seattle or San Francisco rearranging the buttons and menus overnight.

tell people to listen to techtonic.fm

I've spent years interviewing data workers who are the lifeblood of the AI industry in places like Kenya & Colombia. Now it's the #4 fastest growing job in the US. AI is coming for your job and not in the way you think. My latest for @moreperfectunion.bsky.social. www.youtube.com/watch?v=aooi...

If you approach me wearing chunky plastic frames I’m sorry I’m now going to have to presume you are a creep until proven otherwise. Time for wire rims to come back into style because Meta had to ruin everything as usual

New Yorkers can visit a new library, May 8-21, in Tribeca: The Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room, displaying all 3,437 volumes of the Epstein files. trumpsonian.us/rr/

Great conversation on Techtonic with Julie Scelfo, founder of MAMA - Mothers Against Media Addiction. Share this episode with any parents you know! Full episode: techtonic.fm/episodes/202...

Hey This Seems Bad

Looking forward to the day that all Facebook and Google products fit into a janky little kiosk... run by what remains of Amazon

inspired by a post I saw on here and have since lost, I've started reading "AI companies" as "cigarette manufacturers," so something like this becomes "maker of Newports backs bill to fund smoking literacy in schools"

"Burger King is piloting an AI chatbot embedded in employee headsets that will evaluate their interactions for friendliness… " Imentiv advises clients on analysis of candidates’ emotional engagement and personality type." Free: archive.ph/2026.05.03-1... "Step it up lively." - Hartman, Scenes… 📚

Today in luxury surveillance.

i've been getting more folks telling me about this and it's not anything i agreed to. it's been stolen like AI steals. please vandalize it if and when you see it.

I'm organizing a community gathering in a few months for anyone who is tired of AI's intrusions and hopeful about new ways of creating, resisting, and living: we'll spotlight those people and projects. It's called Gel. Hope you'll be with us! gelconference.com

dudes rock

In totally unsurprising news, Richard Dawkins is developing AI psychosis. Paywall bypass: archive.is/6RdK9

"The clam chowder in a New England diner and the clam chowder in a Florida diner come out of the same Sysco can." On regional collapse in restaurants - h/t @doctorow.pluralistic.net www.worseonpurpose.com/p/your-dinne...

Study finds that students using chatGPT learned and remembered less than students who did not use it. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

"The students described feeling sapped of motivation, noticeable cognitive deterioration among their peers and a sense of hopelessness" A trillion-dollar investment. In this.

Now which shirt should I wear today... 🫠🫠🫠, 🫩🫩🫩, or 😠😠😠?

This is the most fun you'll probably ever have with a mouse pointer. Well done.

I'm so excited to join this exciting conference in the fall! Wonderful to see this kind of conversation re-emerge at a time of need. Thanks, @markhurst.bsky.social for this opportunity.

1/ I have a huge announcement. After a 10-year hiatus, I'm bringing back my Gel conference. gelconference.com

So. Which do you think is more efficient: 1) Solar panels in space, converting that electricity *back* into EM radiation, beaming that *through the same atmospheric losses*, recapturing it (losing some to efficiency/misses), and converting it back into electricity, or 2) solar panels on the ground

Every AI centrist article: "My second paragraph will rattle off a list of ethical harms, and the rest of the piece will disregard all of them so I can talk about how I completely misunderstand how genAI works and really wanna use it."

Our culture is so dominated by developers & investors in software that any possibly tiny improvement to coding efficiency suddenly becomes The Thing That Everyone Must Use, Just Be Quiet And Use It, It's Inevitable. Can we get thru to them - not everything in the world revolves around programming-!

Really enjoyed speaking w/ @profferguson.bsky.social about his important book "Your Data Will Be Used Against You." All your emails, search engine queries, social media activity, Alexa and Ring spy data - all of it is exposed with a single warrant. Full episode: techtonic.fm/episodes/202...

Really excellent conversation with @markhurst.bsky.social on TechTonic about “Your Data Will Be Used Against You.” Good questions mean great conversations. techtonic.fm/episodes/202...

For like 25 years I've been arguing with people who tell me that surveillance is fine if it's not the government.

Yell the wrong thing at Madison Square Garden and they'll find you and identify you - in your seating area. From "The Shocking Secrets of Madison Square Garden’s Surveillance Machine" in Wired: www.wired.com/story/madiso...

More on Clear here. “…soon enough, if Clear has its way, it may also be in your favorite retailer, bank, and even doctor’s office—or anywhere else that you currently have to pull out a wallet (or, of course, wait in line).”

The fight is here. If hospitals, airports, & stadiums succeed in normalizing facial rec, get ready to scan your face EVERYWHERE. Your privacy - and the privacy of the vulnerable, the dissident, the minority - will disappear forever.

9 GW is flat out insane. If you assume 80% utilization, that's 56 TWh of electricity. That's more than 26 states used in 2024.

In the same way that some people seek out old-model cars and trucks, built before vehicles were filled with sensors and spy devices benefiting the manufacturer, people will look for old-model computers, built when a laptop actually did what you told it to do - and didn't feed your data to Big Tech.

I genuinely think some people do not want to look this in the eye/think about it because it is so awful. We wrote what I thought was a pretty eye-opening story about all this and I was surprised by the lack of engagement tbh

New from me: bad news about space junk, plus a fun piece about "our mom-and-pop data center" - buttondown.com/creativegood...

ADOBE: welcome to photoshop. what would you like to do. here is an AI tool ME: i would like to draw a rectangle. i am selecting the rectangle tool ADOBE: did you say AI? ME: rectangle please ADOBE: sorry but i can only do that in an insane way now. here is a new layer and a vector for some reason

The logical conclusion to AI is that humans eventually will not be allowed to tell other humans if, how, and when to engage with the System. Only the System will be allowed to do that. Each person will be isolated in their own addiction/enslavement to AI. (exceptions made for oligarchs, of course)

Like the best of ethnographic writing, this turns a light on what we take for granted, what is our habitus, and how humans operate in the world. But also that it is a different habitus and system for the wealthy than it is for us. We think we know this about them, but this piece makes us feel it

From "What I Learned About Billionaires at Jeff Bezos’s Private Retreat" by Noah Hawley: www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

RE: https://mastodon.social/@markhurst/116443904029279313 New paper came out today by atmospheric chemists looking at what changes are already happening in the atmosphere due to billionaires using the atmosphere as a satellite crematorium […]

I spoke with astronomer Samantha Lawler - @sundogplanets.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy - about how Elon Musk has proposed to burn up in the sky one truck-sized satellite *per hour*. Unclear what that will do to the atmosphere, but it's not good. Full episode: techtonic.fm/episodes/202...

here's the episode page with links & embedded player techtonic.fm/episodes/202...

Nothing says "innovation" like "betting the company on a technology that no one asked for and has already failed multiple times"

Kinda tired of coked-up Silicon Valley losers who haven't read a book in seven years telling me my job is stupid

I have long been recommending @markhurst.bsky.social's wonderful book Customers Included to entrepreneurs. In the age of AI coding knowing what to build has become more important than ever! customersincluded.com