It’s time to try something new. Starting today, you can support my writing on Patreon. I’ll never put up a paywall for my blog or newsletter; in effect, by supporting, you’re helping to continue to make it available for everyone. Here’s what you’ll get: * At
Media
[Nell Dhanesha at Nieman Journalism Lab] This was fun to watch unfold in real time: "The truck’s journey to that spot had begun a few days earlier, as an email with the subject line “guerilla marketing for sources” in the inbox of Ariana Tobin, editor of ProPublica’s
Culture
[Anthony Ha at TechCrunch] China Miéville, who is one of the great contemporary science fiction and fantasy authors, is right on the money about Silicon Valley's tendency to create the Torment Nexus. This is exactly why I think science fiction is so important, and why it has a
Notable links
[Brian Krebs] Sobering roundup from Brian Krebs about how each of the five pillars of the First Amendment - speech, religion, the media, the right to assembly, and the right to petition the government and seek redress for wrongs - has been attacked during the first few months of the
Notable links
[Lubna Kably in The Times of India] Worrying stuff being reported by the Times of India (and, at the time of writing, under-reported in the domestic US press). AI is being used to flag international students because of their social media activity, among other signals, who are now being sent
AI
[Allison Morrow at CNN] It's refreshing to see this kind of AI skepticism in a major outlet: "Apple, like every other big player in tech, is scrambling to find ways to inject AI into its products. Why? Well, it’s the future! What problems is it solving?
Notable links
[Makena Kelly at WIRED] If you know anything about building software, you know that this is an absurd idea: "The so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is starting to put together a team to migrate the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) computer systems entirely off one of its oldest
Notable links
[Joshua Kaplan and Justin Elliott at ProPublica] I bet this practice is more common than anyone might think, and certainly isn't limited to China. As always, follow the money: "In December, [SpaceX investor] Kahlon testified that SpaceX prefers to avoid investors from China because it is a
Technology
[Sabhanaz Rashid Diya at Rest of World] Like the author, I read Careless People, Sarah Wynn-Williams' account of her time as a director for global public policy at Facebook during a period when the company transitioned from a largely-domestic social network to a worldwide powerhouse that ultimately enabled a
Inadvertently, the other day, I became one of those people. My team and I were sitting together as part of a week-long summit; some attendees were in New York City, while others attended remotely. I was taking them through the principles that I believe are important for developing software for
Fp9ootron ABCXXZXCFDSESW4ZXDAWEQ!QWZ fwwqqqqwwQsxXSQWSASXC XDΩSXEDRTY7U8I9 Editor's note: does toddler input have sufficient entropy to be used as a random number generator?
Notable links
[Gaby Del Valle at The Verge] I appreciated this deep-dive on whether it's safe to travel through US borders with your phone. Journalists and anyone who's made overt political statements should take particular note. "The government maintains that it doesn’t need a warrant to