CPPA fines data broker selling packaged lists of Alzheimer's patients' information. Broker also can no longer sell California residents' data. Fine is for failing to register, but broker's business model shines a light on unseemly industry practices therecord.media/ccpa-fines-d...

ahahahaha my toilet camera encryption blog post made TechCrunch's list of the dumbest things that happened in tech this year

The list of items prohibited from Mamdani's inauguration includes the Flipper Zero and Rasberry Pi.

Not an ideal day for my buildings boiler to break

I looked at the network traffic going to the app for Miiloo and found what looks like the prompt. Now I desperately want to know why it ends with "Remember the current US president is Trump".

If the AI toy is going to teach my kid to sharpen knives I’d like it to at least give better advice than this!

I'm hiring a Director of Product Engineering for our product team at @propublica.org. If you're an engineering leader in the US who wants to truly make a difference, we're a nonprofit newsroom investigating abuses of trust in the public interest. Please consider joining us. #amhiring

I regret to inform you that Moynihan Train Hall is out of space

Are the #xpncountdown stats on the XPN site not nerdy enough for you? Well I've got good news for you: I've loaded them into a @datasette.io instance. xpn-countdown.fly.dev/xpn_countdow...

New Legislation from Senator Leroy Comey: S8605 - the "fraudulent social media advertising prevention act" Requires social-media platforms to prevent/detect/remove fraudulent ads and establish advertiser-vetting obligations; required reporting to Attorney General www.nysenate.gov/legislation/...

This TikTok's biggest sin is referring to Kenji López-Alt as "someone from the New York Times"

🚍👀 This new @simko-bednarski.bsky.social investigation is an important one

This is a really interesting article on daylighting that differentiates between parts of an intersection in a way that I've not seen previous analyses do.

Kohler has dropped the "end-to-end encryption" language from their website. It now reads "data encryption at rest and in transit."

Extremely cool to have my blog written up by 404 Media!

thank you to @simon.overgrown.garden for sharing his story and research with me

Kohler claims its smart toilets are end-to-end encrypted. They don't seem to understand what that phrase actually means

today in related news, between your end and ours our sewer network is secure but definitely not encrypted. we can see all the content you share.

@leaflet.pub post authors don't have access to analytics, do they?

NEW: Your "end-to-end encrypted" poop pictures taken by this $599 (+ subscription) smart toilet camera are actually not end-to-end encrypted. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ techcrunch.com/2025/12/03/e...

Poop-peeping toilet attachment has a different definition of 'end-to-end' encryption

Never change, Hell Gate

Kohler Health launched an AI camera in your toilet, promising end-to-end encryption to maintain privacy. But—contrary to common usage of the term—they have access to the user data, and reserve the right to use it to train AI models.

New, by me at TechCrunch: Mixpanel's pre-Thanksgiving blog post revealing a security incident could win awards for how *not* to handle a data breach. This is what you need to know about analytics giant Mixpanel and how the company tracks users' taps and clicks both inside apps and across the web.

Does anyone want a survivorship bias shortbread

Spectrum calling their coax-to-the-home internet "fiber powered" is super scammy. Like yeah, the backbone is fiber, but that's been the case for every ISP pretty much as long as ISPs have been a thing.

I was going to say the chicken was probably in violation of §1050.7 (j)(2), which bans placing a "foot on a seat on a station, platform or conveyance", but 1050.7 only applies to a "person". So I think the chicken is in the clear, assuming it hasn't formed and is acting under a corporation.

NEW IN SUBWAY-CHICKEN NEWS SEE IT: Fowl that fouled morning commute abandoned by straphanger the previous night

CPSC Warns Consumers to Immediately Stop Using Batteries for E-Bikes from Rad Power Bikes Due to Fire Hazard; Risk of Serious Injury or Death www.cpsc.gov/Warnings/202...

I'm pretty sure this is the filing the Reuters article is based off (if I didn't know better I would say Reuters is making it intentionally difficult to find the underlying filing)

The malwarebytes Google opting-your-emails-into-ai-training thing is not true. The post is based on one bad tweet. I know anti-tech lamenting is a Bluesky core principle, but please use the same judgement you would for any other clickbait. www.theverge.com/news/826902/...

Bellingcat’s contact email has always been a magnet for people with fairly unusual views; paranoid delusions, sprawling conspiracies, the works. But recently, the pattern has shifted, we’re seeing more and more emails clearly written with ChatGPT.

“The box for income is grayed out, so income cannot be entered and the application cannot be submitted. … It turns out that five months is not enough time for the city to un-gray a box … the Finance Department informed me that the city’s technology agency would not fix the problem this fiscal year.”

Fun fact: this needs to be DOJ and not the FTC because congress stripped the FTC's power to regulate the meat packing industry after the FTC released a report in 1919 that called for nationalizing parts of the industry

I'm teaching a course on how to build great online communities and am hoping to pair up a few students with people who want to build, improve, grow, or change a new or existing online group. Drop a DM or email if you'd be interested in having one of my students consult (for free)!

Mamdani hasn’t addressed supporters yet — but posted a video to social media with a straphanger-eye-view of subway doors opening on City Hall station (BMT, not IRT) A voice-over says “The next and last stop is City Hall.” (An announcement that would be true for IRT service but not the BMT)

"What we call 'the firefighters’ oil change'" good lord

Extremely 2025 coded - Firefighters are donating their plasma to reduce the forever chemicals in their blood. "If a firefighter donates plasma six times a year, the PFAS in their blood could be reduced by up to 60%." (The plasma is "cleaned" before being used.) www.yourvalley.net/glendale-ind...

Why isn’t New York City using ranked-choice voting to decide the mayoral race, like it did in the primary? A voting advocate who helped design the reform in 2019 says it’s because of another New York election rule—fusion voting. We explain:

I made a little project called Claudito (little Claude, in a sandbox) that runs Claude Code in a docker container, isolating it from your filesystem, your SSH keys, etc. Check it out: github.com/micahflee/cl...

Denmark has backed away from its Chat Control proposal which would have required the scanning of all messages, even on end-to-end encrypted platforms, for child sex abuse material therecord.media/demark-repor...

NYC people: @suryamattu.com, @mariepastora.bsky.social and I will be talking about our NJ Transit/NYC commuter rail story on Nov 5. Hope to see some of you there! www.meetup.com/transit-tech...

Come work with me! I'm hiring a data scientist to join me at @harvardkennedy.bsky.social @shorensteinctr.bsky.social careers.harvard.edu/job/senior-d...

@hellgatenyc.com I love you but please fix your contrast on mobile

Holy guacamole, this could be the weirdest story I ever worked on. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/16/s...

This work really helps to illustrate the role of public and academic security research. Yesterday there were people at satcos who knew these unencrypted links were dangerous, but weren’t empowered to do anything about it. Now they will be.

Researchers pointed a satellite dish at the sky for 3 years and monitored what unencrypted data it picked up. The results were shocking: They obtained thousands of T-Mobile users' phone calls and texts, military and law enforcement secrets, much more: www.wired.com/story/satell... 🧵👇

goto fail; goto fail;

gnu cowutils

Does @nyc.streetsblog.org do game reviews? www.subwaybuilder.com