opening my inbox after a week+ of leave

Isogen Overflow

ALT: Isogen Overflow

static.klipy.com

Palantir is shifting profits from its European operations to the U.S., allowing the Florida-based data analytics giant to pay minimal taxes in Europe, a new report finds.

Palantir funnels earnings to US to avoid European taxes, report finds

A new study finds that Palantir, which boasts of high profit margins in the U.S., barely scrapes a margin in Europe, which helps slash its tax bill.

politico.eu

-Punched his pregnant girlfriend. -Said he would rape the kids if he was a schoolteacher. -Said chiild sex abuse porn should be legal. Allison Pearson in the Telegraph...

The most terrifying enshittification I've discovered has been learning that Microsoft Word documents no longer auto-save if you are not saving them to one of their own proprietary cloud services. I'm slapping control-S like it's 1999.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to be… The tragic truth is that, as some of us warned a decade ago, mainstream climate science has turned out to be the opposite of alarmist. It has turned out to be complacent and over-optimistic. Truthfulness - and strategic adaptation - are urgent. (Pse repost.)

Dr. Aaron Thierry@thierryaaron.bsky.social · 2d ago

A first year above 2C in the mid-2030s now looks plausible. 0.5C was first passed in 1980, 1.0C in 2010 and 1.5C in 2024. The 15-year trend runs at 0.42C per decade. The 2026 and 2027 points for the current El Nino are estimates. We're not remotely ready!

"Our role as academics is to protect this one institution. This is why we receive tax money; why we're basically civil servants. The role of the university is even lost on many, so bears repeating: produce knowledge and educate at the highest level. AI destroys both at their core"

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ@olivia.science · 3d ago

If useful, here's my attempt to process my feelings about how I feel sadly kinda — or rather very — sick from all this AI fascist nonsense as an academic. 😶‍🌫️ I'd be pleased if even one person finds something useful because there's something to be said for processing this all together, so, um, enjoy?

They got what they paid for

Shipwreck@shipwreck75.bsky.social · 3d ago

Behind the scenes, Gulf countries are frustrated with what they see as a lack of a clear strategy from the U.S. as the war drags on, subjecting their territories to frequent Iranian attacks, people familiar with the matter said.

Period tracker: knows when you're ovulating, when you're stressed, when you might be pregnant. Also your period tracker: selling that to an analytics firm, allegedly. 👀Nothing Personal's recent report on period trackers now live mzl.la/4pF2WCA

Period and Ovulation Apps Privacy Review 2026: Is Your Period Tracker Safe?

We tested six popular period and ovulation tracker apps to find out how they handle your private health data. Our privacy expert Shoshana Wodinsky did hands-on testing of 6 popular period tracking app...

mzl.la

There is always a human responsible Principle '"The algorithm did it" is not an acceptable excuse if algorithmic systems make mistakes or have undesired consequences, including from machine-learning processes' Claims www.bbc.com/news/article... www.bbc.com/news/article... #AI @abeba.blacksky.app

Anthropic says Claude AI hacked three organisations during cyber tests

It comes just days after rival OpenAI said rogue AI agents had breached other firms' networks.

bbc.com

no genai is what a healthier path looks like

Conejo Malo@bunnyprime.bsky.social · 6d ago

Interesting claim. What specific harms stand out most, and what would a healthier path look like?

SIPTU has reaffirmed that it will support any member who, on grounds of conscience, refuses to participate in the hosting, servicing or facilitation of the upcoming UEFA Nations League fixtures involving the Irish and Israeli national football teams. https://bit.ly/4cdpEw2

SIPTU supports workers' boycott of Israel fixtures and calls on Government to cancel games

When facing an attempt to sportswash a genocide, workers have a right to act in accordance with their conscience and should not face disciplinary action.

siptu.ie

This is going to make it very difficult to know which sports we should ban them from.

Kat Kerlin@katkerlin.bsky.social · 7d ago

Some avocados are female in the morning and male in the afternoon, while others are on the opposite schedule. This helps them avoid self-pollination. How do they do it? A @ucdavis.bsky.social study explains. www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/st...

this

Bhaskar Mitra | ভাস্কর মিত্র@bmitra.bsky.social · last wk.

AI is also different from traditional industrial automation. To use a horse carriage metaphor, AI doesn't replace the carriage with an automobile but instead inserts a machine between driver and horse displacing the driver from his craft but leaving him responsible for all machine errors. 18/

But that conversation cannot be just about the technological project of AI, it must recognize and center the much broader political projects of AI. This includes AI's anti-working class politics... 15/

This is not happening in a void. It is challenging but we must acknowledge the 🐘 in the room: Big Tech / Silicon Valley's growing alignment with authoritarian actors across the globe and their complicity in building digital infrastructure used for large scale human rights abuses and oppression. 11/

We must also remember that IR systems collect huge amounts of personal data on users (their search queries, clicked links to websites, keystrokes and mouse-movements, etc.) and make them available to be retrieved by corporate and government actors constituting powerful mode of user surveillance. 8/

How did we start with such grand ambitions but end up realizing infrastructure for surveillance and manipulation? And if this is where we are today, I quipped "where are we heading?" After posing that question, I cheekily played one of my favorite scenes from the film "Brazil" (1985). 6/

The provocation for this talk was: "How can IR be a force for societal good?". I chose to begin by reflecting on one of IR's inconvenient truths: Our work is often motivated by grand ambitions about information access but IR has been a testing ground for user surveillance and attention farming. 5/

The topic of societal impact of technology is saliently political. So, it's challenging to talk about this in a community like IR that historically has tried to view its work as apolitical. I chose to foreground this tension at the start of the talk to encourage authentic reflection and dialog. 4/

Like many others in the field, I am trained in information retrieval (IR) and machine learning (ML). But my research has also been informed by my lived experiences—growing up in Kolkata, working as an immigrant in USA/UK/Canada, organizing for social justice within the Southasian diaspora, etc. 3/

Last week I presented a keynote at #SIGIR2026 titled "Emancipatory Information Retrieval: Towards Critical IR Theories and Practices". Slides: bhaskar-mitra.github.io/files/emanci... I went in nervously excited but several people appreciated talking openly about this topic. A quick thread. 🧵 1/

i know genai is degrading society in general but this is shameful and can't be normalised

Al Jazeera English@aljazeera.com · last wk.

Canadian politician Bill Oliver has gone viral after he appeared to accidentally read AI-generated editing instructions aloud, not once, but twice, during a speech to lawmakers in early June.

Chad Livengood@chadlivengood.bsky.social · last wk.

BREAKING: Husband killed his wife, six kids before taking his own life in west Michigan, police say www.detroitnews.com/story/news/l...

Elon Musk, owner of X, has called the editor of the Economist "a traitor to the West, plain and simple" after her recent interview with him. He now argues that "anyone who opposes remigration is a traitor" Musk has been socialising violence since Aug25: "fight or die, that's what it comes down to"

Libraries are still essential in the digital age. Some librarians are even helping patrons ditch AI and get off Big Tech. This week Hannah Cyrus and @flexlibris.bsky.social join @parismarx.com to discuss how libraries address people’s concerns about tech. Full ep: techwontsave.us/episode/338_...

one of the most important things you need to do when developing a new product, especially in tech, is sit down and think about how it can be misused by bad actors and nowadays it sure seems like the bad actors are less “people to be guarded against” and more “the target customer base”

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · last wk.

FWIW, Meta was fully aware of how these glasses would primarily be used. The glasses were designed to erase consent, and that is why they exist. Anything that they do that suggests they want to ameliorate this use is an attempt to win the PR battle and manipulate public opinion.

genai ushering in an era of productivity and efficiency

Erin Fogg says Free Link@criminalerin.bsky.social · last wk.

Me: What did I just do Spreadsheets: You bolded a row Me: Yes & what didn't I do in the next row Spreadsheets: Bold anything at all Me: Right ok so what did you do when I entered information into the row that I didn't bold Spreadsheets: 👀 Me: 👀 Spreadsheets: I bolded it Me: YOU BOLDED IT

For many years, people didn’t randomly film others in public—not because we didn’t have the technology, but because the social contract said you didn’t do that. That’s why Meta is going full court press on their PR and celebrity endorsements. They remember how people ran google glass outta town.

Elon Musk is calling for the execution of the Economist editor who interviewed him. Here’s why Bluesky has an intellectual diversity problem.

FWIW, Meta was fully aware of how these glasses would primarily be used. The glasses were designed to erase consent, and that is why they exist. Anything that they do that suggests they want to ameliorate this use is an attempt to win the PR battle and manipulate public opinion.

Meta Desperately Trying to Ban Creeps Misusing Its AI "Pervert Glasses"

Meta is vowing to crack down on creeps misusing its Ray Ban smart glasses. Whether it will be enough to regain trust remains to be seen.

futurism.com