"As Japanese financial newspaper Nikkei Asia found in a recent investigation, just five US tech giants — Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Oracle — are hiding an estimated $1.65 trillion in debt that doesn’t appear on balance sheets. futurism.com/artificial-i...
AI Companies Are Trying to Hide a Staggering Amount of Debt
AI companies are pouring tens of billions of dollars into enormous data centers. They're being built on top of a mountain of hidden debt.
futurism.com
I didn't _quite_ paint every individual hair/scale on the wings, but I as good as did. 😮💨
Today is the birthday of African American science fiction author #OctaviaEButler. The winner of numerous Hugo and Nebula Awards, she was the first science fiction author to receive a MacArthur Fellowship. #💙📚 #Booksky Have you read her work? www.librarything.com/author/butle...
This might be one of the most insane scandals in game history When Pokemon Go players scan PokeStops, theyve been unknowingly building a detailed visual model of the world which is being sold to a military contractor to build a no-GPS positioning for the new generation of unmanned killing machines
I've been running Follow the Crypto since 2024. Today I'm relaunching it as Tech Influence Watch, expanded to cover AI political spending alongside crypto. They’ve spent more than $400 million this election cycle, and now you can follow it in close to real time. influence.citationneeded.news
Tech Influence Watch
Tracking cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence industry influence on 2026 elections in the United States.
influence.citationneeded.news
Really speaking, that should be the baseline expectation.
Eize Basa@eizebasa.baby · 2mo agothis is my kind of company motto right here
As an anthropologist, I endorse this message!
After over four years of development, apkeep’s version 1.0.0 signifies the project as a stable tool in the toolbox researchers use to download and analyze Android apps. www.eff.org/deeplinks/2...
Milestone 1.0.0 Release of APK Downloader `apkeep` Powers Research on
Last week, we released apkeep version 1.0.0, the latest edition of our command-line Android package downloading software. Rather than indicating major changes for the project, this milestone instead
eff.org
Okay so – with a big caveat that we still need to write a lot more documentation – between the @roost.tools team, @dcallies.bsky.social and myself we've managed to ship a new documentation site for ThreatExchange / HMA: facebook.github.io/ThreatExchan...
ThreatExchange
Trust & Safety tools for working together to fight digital harms.
facebook.github.io
Being on the TED stage has been one of the biggest thrills of my life. My TED talk is live! Please share widely! Predictions can be weapons of power, and we are being much too naive about them, from prediction markets to AI. #Prophecy www.ted.com/talks/cariss...
Beware the power of prediction
What do the story of Oedipus and your insurance premiums have in common? They are both driven by self-fulfilling prophecies. Philosopher and TED Fellow Carissa Véliz traces the hidden power of predict...
ted.com
Manifest-declared protocol handlers just landed (behind a flag) in Chrome 146 🎉 This is how ipfs:// or atproto:// can become first-class citizens of the browser! The web that's coming is built on keys, hashes, and verifiable data. Browsers need to meet it there. ipfsfoundation.org/protocol-han...
Protocol Handler Registration in Chrome 146 and the Browser as OS
Manifest-declared protocol handlers in Chrome 146? The web that's coming is built on keys, hashes, and verifiable data. Browsers need to meet it there.
ipfsfoundation.org
“Even more troublingly, other researchers say, the fake papers were then cited in peer-reviewed literature. Osmanovic Thunström says this suggests that some researchers are relying on AI-generated references without reading the underlying papers.”
John Rogers@johnrogers.bsky.social · 4mo agoBloody hell. Researchers invented a disease, published two fake papers to see if LLM’s would ingest them and kick them up as fact — and then it broke containment and all the major AI’s bought in. Information pollution. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Being Black in America is wild because there’s always a white person willing to volunteer their services to act as a supervisor.
For all the folk using AI to automate away everything, including things you might actually enjoy doing yourself if you gave yourself the chance…please don't forget the Peter Principle. (Hat-tip to the amazing @sketchplanations.bsky.social)
you could keep googling “why does my cron job not work” OR you could get 15 Linux books for $60 and become the person with answers Linux, The Good Stuff on @humblebundle.com: https://www.humblebundle.com/books/linux-good-stuff-no-starch-books Proceeds benefit @eff.org
The forced global adoption of puritanistic American cultural norms vis sexuality and nudity via app store/payment processor rules is one of the least-discussed free speech issues of the last decade and this lack of attention is going to hurt online expression so much in the years to come.
Bee 🐝@bee.babesky.social · 4mo agoI think also we cannot ignore the potential social and cultural ramifications of normalizing the demonification of anything adult or sexual The whole system is stacked against any sort of movement in the other direction and it's not something the porn industry can handle alone at this point
At just 12, Yashoda D. Shenoy from Kochi, Kerala decided reading should be free after questioning a late library fine. She went on to open Yashoda’s Library with no fees and no fines, growing her collection to over 3,500 donated books in multiple languages. magazine.1000libraries.com/meet-indias-...
Meet India's Youngest Librarian Who Opened a Free Library for Her Community - Magazine
From her home in Kerala, a young librarian opened the doors to imagination. Proof that age is no barrier when passion leads the way.
magazine.1000libraries.com
I think I was 19 when I started studying US history for real and learned about the many cruelties the state visited upon people. Reading about how folks had picnics around burned and hung bodies and how people were murdered for knowing how to ready was hard, but necessary. It gave me perspective
This is a lovely short video from the Royal Society on why soil is one of the most amazing things on Earth: www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmJU... Beautifully done. And soil is our topic for this week's Rare Earth, so lots more on the joy, importance & surprises of soil will be coming soon. 🪱🌱🍄
Over the years, the same tools that were once celebrated as tools of dissent have become instruments for tracking, harassing, and prosecuting dissenters. www.eff.org/deeplinks/2...
Digital Hopes, Real Power: Reflecting on the Legacy of the Arab Spring
A new generation of protesters, raised on social media and often fluent in the tools of digital dissent, has taken to the streets in recent months and years. This is the first installment of a blog
eff.org
Yael's post demonstrates something about digital privacy/security that I think a lot of people miss: there is no right answer, just a series of trade-offs. And every person has to make their own decisions avout which trade-offs are worthwhile. blog.yaelwrites.com/options-for-...
Options for Phones at Protests
Simply showing up to a protest leaves you susceptible to all sorts of surveillance, including cameras, drones, facial recognition, and more. There's not always a lot you can do about pernicious street...
blog.yaelwrites.com
Vite's new plugin registry is live! 🎉 Browse @vite.dev, @rolldown.rs, and Rollup plugins from the teams and the community. Filter by version compatibility to find plugins that work with your setup. And if you are a maintainer, you can add your plugin easily too registry.vite.dev
Vite Plugin Registry | Discover plugins for your build tools
Discover plugins for Vite, Rolldown, and Rollup
registry.vite.dev
It's not yet a formal proposal and it's still some uncertainly months away, but
daniel holmgren 🫠@dholms.at · 5mo agohere it is folks! lots of details to still nail down, but this is roughly where our heads are at for the design of a permissioned data protocol give it a read and let me know your thoughts!