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. Remember Uber's "greyball" tool? Meta saw that idea and said "hold my beer," allegedly creating an entire playbook for dodging government regulators around the world. (Reuters)
2. If you don't recognize the name Yann LeCun, just know that he's 1/ well-known in AI circles and 2/ recently left his role at Meta. In this interview with the FT, he pulls no punches in describing life at Meta after the company built a separate AI "superintelligence' unit. (FT)
3. NYC grocery chain Wegmans has decided to get into the data collection game. As in, collecting customers' biometric data. And the wording on its signs does little to calm privacy concerns. (Gothamist)
4. Games aren't just for fun. They can also serve as simulations for testing ideas. Which is why leadership hopefuls at gaming company Hasbro play a custom game to simulate being in charge. (WSJ)
5. As live music acts become more elaborate, the roadie job has gone up a few notches. And it's actively recruiting. (Bloomberg)
6. Grok, the Twitter-based genAI chatbot that was designed to be anti-woke and extremely permissive, unsurprisingly churns out deepfake images that sexualize minors. Despite wall-to-wall news coverage, widespread public outcry, and potential legal action from multiple governments, parent company xAI has yet to issue any substantive explanation or correction. (Le Monde 🇫🇷, Ars Technica, Politico, CNBC, The Atlantic, Les Echos 🇫🇷, The Times UK, The Guardian, Washington Post, and many more ...)
7. In light of the Grok news, the Financial Times Alphaville division has provided a rundown of the Twitter/X org chart.)

The rest of the best

• California, once again, leads the pack in US data privacy: residents can mass-delete their personal data from data brokers. (TechCrunch, Washington Post)
• Lego creates a new tech-enabled brick that can change color and emit sound. (Der Spiegel 🇩🇪 , PCMag)
• Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella hopes people will stop talking about genAI "slop." No details on whether genAI will actually stop creating the slop that people talk about. (Windows Central)
• The latest in anti-surveillance fashion. (404 Media)
• More hospitals are exploring genAI use cases. It's going about as well as you'd expect. (WSJ)
• A look back on 2025 being the year that genAI met reality … (Ars Technica)
• … and a look ahead at what 2026 might bring. (MIT Technology Review)
• Labeling data is hard work, but it pays relatively well in Madagascar. (Le Monde 🇫🇷)
• We all know that genAI bots will goof now and then. (More like "a lot," but who's counting?) In this latest example, a bot working through some police reports transformed an officer into a frog. (Futurism)

Did I miss anything?

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