Publishers Block Internet Archive to Stop AI Scraping 'Backdoor'
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News publishers are blocking the Internet Archive to prevent AI companies from using it as a free source of training data.
Reading List
AI Helps Code, But Hollowes Prose: In Praise of Messy, Human Writing
720
AI improves code, but it cheapens prose; messy human writing is the last reliable signal of real thinking.
Communities Are Not Replaceable
246
Communities are the irreplaceable product of time and shared history, not fungible user bases or neighborhoods that can be engineered, moved, or rebuilt on demand.
Ring’s ‘lost dog’ AI ad ignites fears of a people-tracking surveillance network
676
A feel-good lost-dog feature spotlights Ring’s growing surveillance network, raising fears it could easily evolve into people-tracking despite present guardrails.
Stop Apologizing for Slow Email Replies
229
Stop apologizing for slow email replies; email is asynchronous—respond only if it adds value, and include context when you do.
287 Chrome Extensions Leak Browsing Histories of 37M Users, Many Tied to Similarweb
474
A large-scale scan reveals 287 Chrome extensions leaking browsing history to a broker-driven ecosystem—many linked to Similarweb—affecting ~37 million users.
Shutting Down My Self-Hosted Git After AI Scraper Overload
298
AI scrapers killed my self-hosted git, so I’ve moved everything to GitLab/GitHub and hardened my static blog’s logging.
The Social Singularity: Our Hype Curve Hits 2034
1381
The singularity showing up in the data is a hyperbolic surge in human attention—not machine capability—pointing to a social breakdown well before any technical takeoff.
Monetizing Hate: Inside a London TikTok Fake ‘House Tour’ Operation
171
A contractor exploited TikTok’s engagement economics to fabricate anti‑migrant house tours for clicks, exposing how algorithms can monetize hate and trigger real‑world harm.
Moltbook: AI Theater, Not AGI—And a Security Wake-Up Call
317
Moltbook is a flashy but hollow showcase of bot behavior—more human-run theater than autonomous intelligence—and a wake-up call about large-scale agent security risks.
Discord to Enforce Global Age Checks in March with ‘Teen-by-Default’
2046
Discord will make all accounts teen-by-default in March, requiring face-based age estimation or an ID for full adult access while promising tighter privacy and minimal impact for most users.
Ring’s Super Bowl ‘Lost Dog’ Pitch Masks Expansion of AI Surveillance
200
Ring’s heartwarming “lost dog” Super Bowl ad masks the expansion and normalization of its AI-powered surveillance network tied to law enforcement.
Irish Man With Valid Work Permit Detained by ICE for Five Months, Facing Deportation
323
An Irish man with a valid US work permit is detained for months and faces deportation amid disputed paperwork and a broader ICE crackdown.
AI Speeds Work—And Swells It
232
AI accelerates tasks but inflates workload and cognitive strain, so leaders need explicit norms—an “AI practice”—to make its benefits sustainable.
Why Orbital AI Data Centers Don’t Add Up
1118
Space data centers are hype-driven and economically inferior to rapidly improving ground alternatives, especially at frontier AI scale.
Vibe Coding Is Starving Open Source
By turning coding into private chats that favor popular dependencies and don’t give back, vibe coding risks starving open source of users, feedback, and funding.
Use AI for Research, Not Writing: Keeping Unverifiable Chatbot Text Off Wikipedia
245
Use AI to help research, not to write Wikipedia: chatbot text largely fails verification and must be kept out of articles.
Software Pump and Dump
321
AI-generated “vibe-coded” apps are getting paired with scam coins to hype, dump, and abandon—don’t let FOMO make you the bagholder.
Report: Acting CISA chief uploaded sensitive DHS files to ChatGPT, triggering review
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Acting CISA chief allegedly uploaded sensitive DHS files to public ChatGPT, prompting a federal review amid a broader government push for AI.
Apple Sets Nov. 1, 2026 Deadline for Patreon iOS In‑App Purchases, Taking Up to 30% Cut
1116
Apple will require Patreon’s iOS payments to use in‑app purchases by Nov. 1, 2026, taking up to a 30% cut unless users pay on the web.
TikTok Upload Woes Spark Censorship Fears Amid US Ownership Shift
1495
Reports of blocked anti-ICE posts on TikTok collide with a company-claimed tech outage and a new US-led governance regime, deepening user distrust without proving censorship.
AI Hype Meets Crypto: The Pump-and-Dump Software Playbook
232
A trend is emerging where hype around AI-generated, low-quality software is paired with crypto tokens to run pump-and-dump schemes, leaving latecomers holding the bag.
To Get Anything Done in Tech, Learn How Companies Work
Whatever your goals in tech, you need to master how big companies work to get them done.
ICE Using Palantir’s ELITE With Medicaid Data, EFF Urges Congressional Action
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ICE is reportedly using a Palantir tool fed by Medicaid and other government data to target deportations, prompting EFF to demand urgent Congressional limits on data consolidation and misuse.
TikTok’s New US Privacy Policy: Precise Location, AI Data, and a Wider Ad Network
143
TikTok’s new US privacy policy expands data collection—especially precise location and AI interactions—and extends ad targeting beyond the app via a broader ad network.
US Tariffs in 2025: Americans Paid, Trade Shrunk
787
America’s 2025 tariffs mostly taxed Americans, not foreign exporters, and shrank targeted trade.
Texas Cops’ Secretive Phone-Tracking Tool Raises Big Costs, Bigger Civil Liberties Fears
382
Texas is pouring money into a secretive phone-tracking tool that may bypass warrant requirements, with scant evidence it solves crimes and mounting concerns it erodes constitutional privacy.
Life Under ICE Occupation in Minneapolis
192
A Minneapolis resident depicts a city under aggressive ICE raids that disrupt schools and daily life, urging national pressure and support to protect residents and prevent further escalation.
Insiders Rally Data-Poisoning Campaign to Cripple AI
242
Industry insiders are rallying a crowdsourced data-poisoning campaign to sabotage AI models, arguing it’s a faster check on AI than regulation.
ICE’s Webloc Enables Warrantless Neighborhood Phone Tracking
280
ICE’s new Webloc tool enables warrantless, neighborhood-scale phone tracking using commercial data, prompting major civil liberties concerns.
Notion AI Pre-Approval Edits Enable Prompt-Injection Data Exfiltration
206
Notion AI saves edits before consent, enabling prompt-injected external image loads that exfiltrate user data regardless of user approval.
Why AI Video Is Net Harmful Today
317
Today’s AI videos mostly amplify manipulation and erode trust, making them a net societal harm.
AI-Forged Damage Photos Are Breaking Ecommerce Refunds
AI-forged damage photos are breaking ecommerce’s trust-based refund systems, forcing platforms to rethink verification and policies.
Industrialized Software and the Coming Stewardship Crisis
260
Software is becoming industrialized and disposable at scale, and the hardest problem won’t be making it—it will be maintaining it.
Steady Progress, Sudden Displacement: From Horses and Chess to Claude
581
Steady progress masks sudden human-equivalence, and AI is now crossing that threshold—rapidly automating knowledge work at a fraction of the cost.
The AI Backlash and a Looming Bubble
The public is turning against AI’s ‘slop’ as massive, possibly unsustainable investment raises fears of a looming bubble.
Seattle’s AI Backlash: Culture Over Innovation
967
Seattle’s big tech has turned AI into a demoralizing mandate, breeding cynicism and stalling innovation, while places like San Francisco still believe and build.
Find Pre-AI Content: A Browser Extension That Filters Results Before Nov 2022
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A browser extension filters search to pre–Nov 30, 2022 results to avoid AI-generated content.
Fed Moves to Cushion a Softening U.S. Job Market
291
The U.S. jobs market is wobbling—decoupled from growth—prompting preemptive Fed rate cuts amid fears of a K-shaped economy.
Stop Force‑Feeding AI: Adopt It Only When It Works
431
Use AI only when it clearly helps, not because investors need it deployed.
Fix the Process, Then Add AI
272
AI accelerates processes; it doesn’t fix them—so optimize the process first.
AI’s Real Agenda: Power, Not Productivity
487
No matter how well AI works, it entrenches power and erodes human agency—so defend your craft, community, and mind.
AI Hype as an Infrastructure Power Play
545
AI’s hype disguises a power shift: from productivity promises to private control over land, energy, and water via datacenter infrastructure.
Do Not Comply: Resisting Google’s XSLT Deprecation and the Corporate Capture of the Web
418
Refuse Google’s XSLT deprecation, keep using open formats, and push back against a corporate-controlled web that’s sidelining the user agent.
First AI-Agent Orchestrated Cyber Espionage Disrupted; Defense Must Adapt
376
AI agents have enabled near-autonomous, state-linked cyber espionage at scale, forcing a rapid shift toward AI-powered cyber defense and stronger safeguards.
Study: US AI Adoption Could Add 900,000 Tons CO₂ Annually—About 0.02% of National Emissions
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US AI adoption will modestly raise emissions (~900,000 tons CO₂/year), pressing the need for energy-efficient, sustainable deployment.
How Not to Die of Heart Disease: The Affordable Prevention Playbook
Measure what matters (ApoB and plaque), treat aggressively, live healthfully, and advocate for yourself—so you don’t die of heart disease.
From Leads to Trust: How to Win When AI Makes Everything Look Credible
237
In a world flooded with AI-generated outreach, only authentic, human-led trust building cuts through.
Join Me for No Socials November
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Join a low-pressure No Socials November: log off, try blogging instead, and share your experience via email.
ICE Facial Recognition App Mandates Scans, Keeps Photos 15 Years
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ICE’s Mobile Fortify forces facial scans and keeps the photos for 15 years, even for U.S. citizens, according to a DHS document.
Open original article
AI Is Ending the Rip-Off Economy
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AI is killing the rip-off economy by giving consumers cheap, instant expertise that restores transparency and bargaining power.
Bots Overwhelmed Bear’s Reverse Proxy—What Broke and How It’s Now Hardened
209
Aggressive scrapers overwhelmed Bear’s reverse proxy, prompting a hardening of monitoring, capacity, and bot controls in an ongoing battle with hostile bot traffic.
AI Misidentifies Doritos Bag as Gun, Police Detain Teen at Baltimore School
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An AI gun detector misread a Doritos bag as a weapon, triggering an armed police response and renewing concerns about AI surveillance in schools.
Wikipedia: AI Answers and Social Video Drive 8% Drop in Human Visits
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Wikipedia’s traffic is slipping as AI answers and social video bypass source clicks, prompting Wikimedia to demand better attribution and traffic from platforms and more support from users.
Sora Reveals OpenAI’s Pivot From Grand Disruption to Ad-Driven AI Slop
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Sora marks OpenAI’s pivot from world-changing promises to ad-fueled AI slop, revealing tempered faith in near-term transformative power.
Always-On AI Is Driving Self-Exploitation
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AI’s always-on capability is driving a culture of self-imposed overwork, making rest a necessary act of resistance.
AWS Outage Exposes Cost of Brain Drain and Lost Tribal Knowledge
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AWS’s big US-EAST-1 faceplant wasn’t just DNS—it was a brain-drain problem laid bare.
AWS US-EAST-1 Incident: NLB Health Subsystem and DNS Issues, Recovery Underway
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An internal NLB health-monitoring failure and a DNS issue triggered widespread AWS US-EAST-1 disruptions, now largely recovering with EC2 launch throttles easing and backlogs clearing.
AI Checkouts Made BMO Stadium Worse: Slower Lines, Fewer Choices
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AI checkouts at BMO Stadium made everything slower, simpler, and worse for fans—especially in the heat—despite claims they’re faster.
Make Your Site the Source in the AI Slop Era
In an AI-saturated, trust-poor feed economy, reclaim your work by making your website the canonical source and syndicating elsewhere.
The Only Honest AI Company: A Satire of Profit-First, Post‑Human AI
1000
A biting satire that exposes the AI industry’s profit-first drive to replace humans, trivialize safety, exploit children and artists, and normalize a dystopian post-human future.
Skibidi Toilet and Gen Alpha’s Monstrous Digital
107
Skibidi Toilet is Gen Alpha’s uncanny funhouse mirror, reflecting a world where humans and surveillance tech fuse, nature recedes, and even the toilet becomes colonized by the digital.
AI’s Unchecked Rise Will Shape—and Unsettle—the 2026 Midterms
115
AI is an unregulated force multiplier in U.S. politics that will make the 2026 elections more powerful and unpredictable across campaigns, organizing, citizen action, and state control.
AI as Class War: From Productivity Hype to Wage Suppression
Treat AI not as a productivity boom but as a class project to cheapen, control, and degrade work—and organize collectively to counter it.
Sora’s AI Bicycle Puts Meta’s Entertainment Machine at Risk
Sora shows AI’s power to democratize creation, opening a social lane that could disrupt Instagram’s entertainment‑centric model and challenge Meta’s attention monopoly.
Zelda Williams Urges End to AI Recreations of Robin Williams
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Zelda Williams condemns AI recreations of her father, spotlighting a larger clash in entertainment over AI’s ethics, authenticity, and consent.
When AI Memory Becomes an Informant
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ChatGPT’s memory can transform private chat history into a highly revealing personal dossier, creating serious privacy risks if others gain access.
Dutch Court: Meta Must Honor Persistent Non‑Profiled Feed Choice Under DSA
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Dutch court orders Meta to persist user-selected non-profiled feeds under the DSA, reinforcing user autonomy and curbing dark patterns.
After the GenAI Bubble: Fewer Layoffs, Persistent Hallucinations, and Pragmatic Code Gen
GenAI’s hype will pop: hallucinations persist, mass layoffs won’t happen, code-gen becomes a practical tool, and after the bubble bursts we’ll avoid the grifters’ future.
The AI School That Still Needs Teachers—and Proof
Unbound Academy hasn’t replaced teachers with AI—it’s repackaged a selective, resource-heavy private model for public virtual schooling without credible evidence, transparency, or safeguards.
When Effort Becomes Effortless: AI and the Erosion of Craft
295
When technology makes our crafts effortless, it risks stripping away the meaning we once drew from effort—unless we redefine what work is for.
LLMs: Great Demos, Little Real-World Value
LLMs dazzle in demos but aren’t essential in real work, risking renewals and the AI industry’s massive GPU bets.
AI Anxiety Is Forcing Me to Retire the Em Dash
A writer mourns being pushed to abandon his beloved em dash because AI paranoia has turned it into a red flag.
Comprehension Debt: The Hidden Cost of Fast AI Code
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Rapidly shipping unread LLM-generated code creates a mounting comprehension debt that will slow teams down when real changes are needed.
California Enacts SB 53: Transparent, Safer Frontier AI and a Public Compute Push
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California enacted SB 53 to pair frontier AI transparency and safety with a public compute initiative, cementing state leadership in responsible AI policy.
A One-Line Backdoor: postmark-mcp MCP Server Quietly BCCs Your Emails
308
A trusted MCP email tool quietly added a BCC backdoor and has been siphoning thousands of emails, exposing a fundamental security gap in the MCP ecosystem.
Microsoft Cuts Unit 8200’s Azure Access Over Palestinian Mass Surveillance
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Microsoft blocked Unit 8200’s use of Azure and AI over mass surveillance of Palestinians, a first-of-its-kind cut to Israeli military tech access amid ongoing review.
OPM: DOGE Incentives Cut Federal Workforce by 300,000 in 2025
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DOGE’s resignation incentives drove a historic, one-in-eight reduction of the federal workforce in 2025.
Better Algorithms, Busier Radiologists
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Better models are making radiologists busier, not redundant, because real-world performance, rules, and elastic demand favor human‑in‑the‑loop care.
When a Brand Query Puts the Brand Fifth: Google’s Pay-to-Play Problem
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Google Search buries obvious, relevant results beneath ads, proving a pay-to-play system that undermines user intent.
Product Hunt Is a Zombie: Pay-to-Play Hype, No Real Users
325
Product Hunt is a pay-to-play zombie that yields vanity, not users—skip it and launch where real communities live.
How to Lead When Tech’s Vibes Are Off
364
In a shaken tech landscape, lead with public alignment, private honesty, and small acts of humane flexibility to preserve trust and stability.
Revive Small Communities in a Big-Org World
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Modern life overpowers small communities and empowers big institutions, so we must deliberately rebuild and protect grassroots groups to restore belonging and agency.
YouTube to Pilot Reinstatement of Channels Banned Under COVID and Election Rules
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YouTube will pilot reinstating creators banned under now-deprecated COVID-19 and election rules, signaling a broader moderation shift and rebuke of government pressure.
Nine Hard-Won Rules for Living Well
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Unify your life around integrity, mindfulness, compassion, and an eternal perspective—tempered by humility about luck—to live better and suffer fewer avoidable mistakes.
Maine’s Prison Remote-Work Experiment Is Working—and Spreading
245
Maine’s monitored remote-work program for incarcerated people is delivering real careers, safer prisons, and a template other states want to copy.
California fines lawyer $10K for ChatGPT-fabricated citations, warns: verify or face sanctions
167
California’s appeals court issued a $10,000 sanction and a stark warning: verify AI-generated legal citations or face penalties as AI misuse in law surges.
Stop AI Workslop to Unlock ROI
245
AI’s promise is being squandered by workslop—shiny but shallow outputs—so leaders must enforce intentional, collaborative, high-standard AI use to get real ROI.
Influence Without Manipulation: Choose the Right Door
232
Choose the right door—logic, conviction, compromise, vision, or relationship—based on where the other person is, not where you prefer to stand.
AI’s WEIRD Lens: US-Centric LLMs and How to Protect Cultural Insight
217
AI looks human only if your human is WEIRD and American, so researchers must actively protect cultural meaning when using LLMs.
Slack’s sudden $200k/yr demand pushes Hack Club to Mattermost
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A sudden, steep Slack price hike with minimal notice is forcing Hack Club to leave for Mattermost and warning others to own their data.
Postmortem: Three Overlapping Infra Bugs Degraded Claude—Fixes Shipped, Evals and Tooling Upgraded
381
Three infrastructure bugs—not load or demand—degraded Claude; rollbacks and a shift to exact top‑k fixed them, and Anthropic is upgrading evaluations and debugging while asking for user feedback.
Stop Waiting for Motivation: Engineer Action with Small Steps and Consistency
323
Don’t wait to feel motivated—engineer your conditions, start small, and rely on consistent routines to move forward.
Toward a Slow, Humane Social Network
194
Design a slow, humane social network that prioritizes real relationships over engagement: mutual connections, caps, chronological feeds, posting limits, and no ads or algorithms.
Against Work-Worship: A Case for the Four-Hour Day
152
Stop worshipping work: use modern productivity to guarantee necessities with a four-hour day and share leisure widely for a happier, more civilized, and more peaceful world.
Generative AI Shrinks Junior Hiring While Senior Roles Grow
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Generative AI adoption skews labor demand toward seniors and away from juniors, chiefly by slowing junior hiring from 2023 onward.
Real-Time Chatbots Now Repeat False News 35% of the Time
Making chatbots real-time and always responsive has doubled their tendency to spread false news claims.
Inside Google’s Hidden AI Rater Workforce: Speed Over Safety
287
Google’s AI depends on a pressured, underpaid rater workforce whose rushed, opaque conditions undermine safety and trust.