My main newsletter, Complex Machinery, includes a section called "In Other News..." It's where I list one-liners about interesting articles that didn't fit into any segments.

You can think of this list as a version of In Other News, but with a wider remit than Complex Machinery's "risk, AI, and related topics."

Above the fold

1. Open source intelligence (OSINT) uses public information to uncover stories. Here, OSINT group Bellingcat tracks the founder of deepfake porn sites. (Bellingcat)
2. To protect themselves from violence, people in Brazil are paying to up-armor their cars. (And for a look at the business of selling such vehicles, I highly recommend the 2008 documentary Bulletproof Salesman. That film is about Iraq, not Brazil, but many of the lessons still hold.) (Bloomberg)
3. Do you want to give that genAI bot a role in your business? Think again. An Anthropic vending machine went up against an office full of journalists and lost. Hard. (WSJ)
4. From minor league baseball to financial advisor to arms dealer: how one man's company became the go-between in global armed conflict. (FT)
5. So what if you actually wanted that AI bot to hallucinate? Like, a lot? You give it the digital equivalent of mind-altering substances. (Wired)
6. Adding to the list of "Newly-Minted Experts Joining the genAI Gold Rush" aka "Amateurs In Important Roles": datacenter operators. I'm sure this will be fine. Just fine. (Bloomberg)

The rest of the best

• Another item for the "improve technology by making it a sport" file: humanoid robots duking it out. (Les Echos 🇫🇷 , The San Fancisco Standard)
• Those AI-generated "news" sites draw a sizable audience. Especially in the 50-and-up demographic. (Le Monde 🇫🇷)
• During a power outage in San Francisco, those fancy Waymo taxis were expensive paperweights. And roadblocks. (Gizmodo, TechCrunch)
• GenAI has yet to deliver – not even close – but CEOs keep throwing money at it, problem-gambler style. (WSJ)
• A look at how buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) companies fuel "the YOLO economy." (Bloomberg)
• Leadership lessons from Sylvain Delpique, head chef of the Mandarin Oriental. (WSJ)
• Korea's scrollable webtoons are designed for bite-sized viewing on your phone. The "microdrama" looks like the video spinoff of that idea. (The Guardian)
• Have you noticed? AI companies are quietly rebranding "artificial general intelligence" (AGI). (Which shouldn't be a surprise – we've seen the entire data field rename itself several times already.) (The Verge)
• First-hand tales of genAI's impact on copywriting jobs. (Blood in the Machine)
• The United States Postal Service (USPS) has created incentives for marketers to use genAI. No, seriously. It's on the USPS website as part of their 2026 Integrated Technology promotion. (USPS)

Did I miss anything?

Have something I should read? Send the link my way.