Here's a shattering Jeff Dean fact: Google's top scientist, along with Sanjay Ghemawat and 2 other top AI researcher are leaving Google to form Discovery Loop, a startup that hopes to automate the scientific method so AI can create breakthroughs in multiple fields. www.wired.com/story/jeff-d...

4 of Google’s Top AI Brains Are Leaving—and Launching Their Own AI Startup

Jeff Dean and other high-profile Google executives have founded Discovery Loop, a startup that will seek AI-powered breakthroughs in everything from drug discovery to chip design.

wired.com

New: Police in Wisconsin used Flock to create a pretext to search a man's car for weed. Their justification? He drove from Wisconsin to Michigan, a “known source state for marijuana as it is legal there,” and Flock showed he "travels to Michigan frequently." www.404media.co/cops-used-fl...

Cops Used Flock to Track a Man Across State Lines to Create Pretext to Search His Car for Weed

"The vehicle travels to Michigan frequently which is a known source state for marijuana as it is legal there," a probable cause justification reads.

404media.co

We’re auctioning a limited number of MetroCard Vending Machines and MetroCard Express Machines! The auction is now open and offers must be received by Wednesday, August 19, 2026 at 8 pm EST. Learn more and bid on our website: mta.info/auction

I think about this operative definition of “bubble” in the press all the time and it’s endlessly frustrating. bsky.app/profile/crai...

Craig Harrington@craigipedia.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Basically yeah. Sort of like when the liberal newspapers accost Democrats for living in "bubbles" but the "bubble" is a vibrant, diverse, dense, multilingual community whereas "real America" where everyone in town is related and goes to the same church is not a bubble.

Indeed. My "echo chamber" has scientists, doctors, historians, journalists and artists. Who's in yours?

Ian Boudreau@ianboudreau.com · 2d ago

"Liberal bubble" has only ever meant anywhere where right wing perspectives aren't artificially elevated and forced into everyone's feeds.

Errrrr

Drives me nuts when I see bad reader reviews of books because they had a strong negative reaction to a character’s actions. It moved you! That’s good writing! Blehhh

This is acutally fantastic

Jeremy White@jeremywired.bsky.social · last mo.

CHILD’S PLAY: I found the perfect way to make an iPhone child-friendly, one that completely blocks web browsing but allows tracking and navigation. It’s not a paid-for 3rd party app, it’s completely free. Why is Apple not highlighting this great feature more? @wired.com www.wired.com/story/this-b...

For all its notoriety over the years, the news that Amazon is winding down Mechanical Turk draw very little chatter. But the reason it fell into irrelevance has warnings for us all. 🎁 link for my @opinion.bloomberg.com column today: www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

The Fall of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk Is an Omen for the AI Age

For more than two decades, Amazon.com Inc.’s Mechanical Turk offered a similar illusion to its namesake. The 18th century chess-playing “machine” was actually a contraption controlled by a human hidde...

bloomberg.com

The demise of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk offers a warning for human labor

The Fall of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk Is an Omen for the AI Age

For more than two decades, Amazon.com Inc.’s Mechanical Turk offered a similar illusion to its namesake. The 18th century chess-playing “machine” was actually a contraption controlled by a human hidden in a box. Amazon’s groundbreaking digital work platform did this at scale. Its Mechanical Turk was an army of hidden, anonymous workers carrying out a dizzying array of small mundane tasks for money.

bloom.bg

Anyone remember when he ran a poll saying he would resign as head of Twitter if enough people asked him to, and they did and he didn't?

NYT rearranging its app like a grocery store trying to get you to wander different aisles

Dana's relentless reporting has made us all safer

Dana Hull@danahull.bsky.social · 2w ago

NHTSA will start developing new requirements to ensure drivers and passengers can safely exit their vehicles, a significant move to address issues exposed by deadly incidents in which people have become trapped inside cars. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

who leaves a review of a lemon

Schlong John Silver@kastor.sh · 2w ago

It’s finally out

PREACH

Anon Opin@anonopin.bsky.social · 2w ago

Everyone has heard of the Grateful Dead but barely anyone can name a song by them, as they are almost all completely unmemorable. Their lofty reputation is inexplicable.

Tech CEO pledges to catch bolted horse www.businessinsider.com/instagram-me...

Instagram will now ban creeps in Meta glasses

Content shot on Meta glasses from pickup artists and pranksters can now get you banned.

businessinsider.com

Console gaming edges ever closer to the business model of mobile. Horrible -- for games designers and gamers alike.

Tom Warren@tomwarren.co.uk · 2w ago

I reported last year that Microsoft was working on ad-supported Xbox Cloud Gaming. It’s now coming to Xbox Insiders today for testing. Sessions are capped at an hour, and ads only play before you stream a game, not during one. Details 👇 www.theverge.com/games/969969...

Must be frustrating for Rubio to work with a leader that doesn't stand by his word

The Bulwark@thebulwark.com · 2w ago

Rubio: “The problem with Iran is every time they make a deal, the people that are in charge there, they either break it or they wanna change it. So it looks like they're not ready to make a deal, so they're gonna continue to pay a price. And every night the price gets higher and higher and higher.”

The degree to which OpenAI is using the Hugging Face hack as a sales pitch tells you an awful lot, doesn't it?

That a government agency would present this kind of story in this way is just staggering.

Google misses (barely) on "Search & Other" for the first time since Q4 2023.

A rare upper hand being British today

Emily Nussbaum@emilynussbaum.bsky.social · 2w ago

I support you Wordle, I love and know all these words, hang in there!!

Walked past one of those NYC Link screens on the street earlier. It explained two recent Mamdani policy changes (rent; click-to-cancel) and then saying what was next on the agenda (buses). How many people does that reach who might not otherwise be picking up a paper or scrolling politics news?

Inbox: "Faraday & Future becomes the Official Regional Sponsor of the Argentine National Team in North America" I see

had a bad time at a city council meeting last night. I live in a town of 12,000 people. They just voted to install 22 Flock cameras, bringing the total to 33. That's 1 Flock camera per 300 residents. It's more Flock cameras than police officers

What Happened When Flock Came to My Town

My small town in South Carolina will soon have more Flock cameras than police officers.

404media.co

Boy is Andy Burnham's twee social media everyman persona going to get old quick

Apple News should be doing much more to make people aware that their local publication is a) available on the platform and b) a joy to read in that environment. I know it won't solve all the problems but Apple News has stood the test of time and *does* make publications money.

Chris Vannini@chrisvannini.com · 2w ago

The least-talked-about factor in the decline of local news and reading is how horrible and unusable so many of their websites are. It's just the truth, and it's been awful for a decade, so people moved on.

Killer chart in this!

Carl Quintanilla@carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 2w ago

FT ALPHAVILLE: “.. the proportion who use AI daily in their work is .. just one-in-ten, and has been flatlining ..” @financialtimes.com @alphaville.ft.com www.ft.com/content/3fcd...