The SEC has been probing AppLovin over its data-collection practices, according to people familiar with the matter My latest for @bloomberg.com www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

AI infrastructure ouroboros: Microsoft funds OpenAI, which pays for Microsoft & other cloud/data center companies for compute, and those cloud companies buy Nvidia GPUs, and Nvidia props those companies up with investment and guarantees to buy unused compute capacity.

In 2021, a report alleged that Evolution’s casino games could be played in sanctioned markets. The company denied the allegations, saying this wasn’t possible without “sophisticated technical manipulation.” It also sued the law firm that submitted the report to a regulator.

Devastated to learn that the Ibiza club Bezos and Sanchez went to was DC10. Stick to Ushuaia!

Big Parma is watching you www.theguardian.com/food/2023/au...

A series of short-seller reports about AppLovin have exposed the ugly underbelly of mobile ad tech www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

I like how hyperscalers shifted from using shell companies to develop data centers as quietly as possible to avoid community pitchforks to calling them things like Gigazilla and bragging about how they will consume all of Spain’s power and water

New by @oliviasolon.bsky.social ( @bloomberg.com) and @tomasstatius.bsky.social ( @lighthousereports.com): a EU border control system - with biometric info on 1.7 million people - has extremely serious cybersecurity issues. www.bloomberg.com/news/article... This is why these stories are important:

This reporting by @tomasstatius.bsky.social @oliviasolon.bsky.social follows our previous exposé of a related EU biometric border system fiasco involving French industrial group Atos bsky.app/profile/ligh...

An information-sharing system used by EU border forces to flag illegal immigrants and suspected criminals in real time was rife with software & security vulnerabilities, according to confidential documents seen by @bloomberg.com and @lighthousereports.com www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Journalists in movies are usually depicted as highly unethical -- sleeping with sources, making covert recordings, breaking into places to steal documents. But really we're spending 6 hours trawling LinkedIn for current and former employees.

The absolute entitlement with which my kids demand water. They cannot wait 5 minutes for their thirst to be quenched. In the 80s we never had access to water. No water bottles. We survived as desiccated husks, lucky to get the occasional cup of orange squash.

What's with these natalist/god complex billionaires? Telegram founder Pavel Durov says he has fathered 6 kids with three partners as well as more than 100 other kids via his sperm donations. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

“Imagine a woven butterfly”

"I'm sorry, you're right to point out the mistake. I didn't bomb the target you asked for, I bombed something statistically resembling the target you asked for. I'll do better next time!"

Stolen from a friend's IG:

I just tried to pre-order the Trump T1 Phone, the new all gold phone from the Trump Organization. The website failed, went to an error page, and then charged my credit card the wrong amount of $64.70. I have no idea whether or how I’ll receive the phone. www.404media.co/trump-mobile...

If anyone wants a dumb story then if you ask Amazon Alexa to “play More by Pulp” (the name of their new album) it just plays “more random old songs” by Pulp and is probably hitting their streaming numbers.

I imagine all these jobs will go with AI

It is astonishing how much the information ecosystem as accessed via Google search has deteriorated over the past 2 years.

Great – looks as if the White House used AI to draft a health report and wound up inserting citations for articles that don’t exist. They put cheating high schoolers to shame. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/29/w...

French movies perform well in France but it's been a while since there's been an international hit. Dimitri Rassam wants to change that with The Accursed Kings -- the riskiest movie project out of France since Luc Besson's ~$200m sci-fi flop Valerian www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

🇫🇷 🎬 French producer Dimitri Rassam is the godson of Francis Ford Coppola. He is also betting tens of millions of euros on “The Accursed Kings”, an epic medieval saga destined to revive French cinema on the world scene. By @benoitberthelot.bsky.social ⤵️ www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

The Internet of Things ended up being the internet of unsupported products. Google is ending support for 1st & 2nd generation Nests and completely pulling out of Europe. Imagine having to replace the thermostats in your home because of a reorg at some big tech meant it was no longer a priority.

🧵 There’s a thread going around misrepresenting my work and Bellingcat’s education strategy. I want to use this as an opportunity to explain what we’re actually doing—and why it matters. This is about truth, democracy, and how we build a more resilient society. x.com/buynevich/st...

Omaze, known for helping charities with its "Million Pound House Draw," only gives 17% of ticket sales to charity. What's happening to the rest of the money? (I guess a lot goes to Meta ads)

I'd be a lot more interested in a product that would correctly do my taxes than a product that writes novels more me.

Illegal ideas.

Illegal casinos and sports books dominated the US online gambling market -- earning 74% of gross gaming revenue (a whopping $67.1 billion) in 2024. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

This is delightful: Trading cards depicting local, middle-aged men take off in the Japanese town of Kawara www.tokyoweekender.com/entertainmen...

This is true: The Trump administration said it has imposed a 10% tariff on the British Indian Ocean Territory, whose only inhabitants are the U.S. and U.K. service members at the military base on Diego Garcia.

London journos! I'm speaking at this event at the Frontline Club on Friday alongside @oliviasolon.bsky.social, hosted by @lsmwilson.bsky.social. We'll be talking about how AI, algorithms, and disinformation are reshaping truth and power. Come join the discussion! www.eventbrite.com/e/feeds-fake...

“I faced political repression from the Chinese Communist Party for criticizing Xi Jinping […] I never expected to face such a distressing experience after escaping persecution from the CCP in China, only to encounter a somewhat similar situation at New College in the United States…”

Every White House correspondents dinner that I attended had a comedian mocking the President of the Day. Not this year …. www.politico.com/news/2025/03...

SCOOP: The Trump admin appears to be going into a visa database to quietly change students' immigration status. It's coming entirely by surprise — setting students up to be detained without warning. It's Mahmoud Khalil & Rumeysa Ozturk — on a wider scale.

Has an "independent" law firm hired by a company to investigate allegations of internal wrongdoing ever come out with a devastating confirmation of the allegations?

I had to get my site’s web hosts to take steps when traffic to the site went up by 200%, way over my plan and costing me a lot. All AI crawlers pretending not to be and cycling IP addresses. They are actively making smaller web projects impossible.

Open source projects are being overwhelmed by AI crawler traffic arstechnica.com/ai/2025/03/d...

"Exclusive" if you ignore @jim.londoncentric.media reporting from December . www.londoncentric.media/p/harry-pott...

Today, in dystopia: The world's largest call center operator is using AI to make its staff sound less Indian by @benoitberthelot.bsky.social www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

there were THREE YEARS of nonstop press and political hyperventilation about the dangers of Tiktok But China hacks into a dozen major telecoms to spy on powerful people and not only is the press coverage 1/100th as noisy, we're dismantling the regulators and organizations tasked with preventing it

South Africa’s presidency spokesman: “If a leading business figure like Elon Musk harbors the kind of unprogressive, racist views that we’ve witnessed and the peddling of lies that we’ve been confronted with, then we’re not going to pursue having his investments” www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Gambling operator Stake, which sponsors @evertonfc.com, is shutting down in the UK after a Gambling Commission investigation into its advertising practices. Stake says it's decided to leave to focus on other markets. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Kaspersky researchers found apps in Google's Play Store and Apple's App Store that use OCR to steal crypto wallet recovery phrases from images on users' devices www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/mobile/...

As @julialove.bsky.social , @oliviasolon.bsky.social and @davey.bsky.social of Bloomberg reported recently, Google has also quietly deleted language from its AI principles that promised to not pursue "technologies that cause or are likely to cause overall harm." www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Google has quietly removed a pledge to avoid using AI in potentially harmful applications, such as weapons. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Er, a concerning report from the UK's Institution of Civil Engineers just dropped. "critical parts of the road network, particularly bridges, are 'perhaps not as safe as the public thinks, while some structures should have usage restrictions but don’t'." 😳 www.ice.org.uk/about-us/our...

only one in five LEAVE voters think that Brexit has been more of a success than a failure, that is nuts