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. For all the headlines about "tokenmaxxing" leaderboards, some companies are ill at ease with the bills that come with such a token spend. Employees are also wasting tokens in order to game the system. (Les Echos 🇫🇷 and FT, respectively)
2. A university in Moscow is allegedly part of a student-to-cyber-warrior training program. (Le Monde 🇫🇷)
3. The sudden collapse of Spirit Airlines sends a very special business into action: pilots to repossess the planes. (WSJ)
4. First came the AI-based note-takers. The came the shocking realization: letting an unaffiliated third party listen in on your meetings was probably a bad idea. (New York Times)
5. Companies treat genAI as far more capable than it is, to the point that they view human involvement as a bottleneck instead of a safety mechanism. (No One's Happy)
6. Remember Vine, the short video platform? It's making a comeback as "DiVine." (Le Monde 🇫🇷)
7. It's well-known that emotional appeal drives social engagement, and that engagement drives revenue. One man in Pakistan has been raking it in with AI-generated, Islamophobic slopaganda. (The Bureau Investigates)
8. Our increasingly dwindling attention spans have led to an entire industry of people who create short clips of movies, music, and podcasts to farm social engagement. It's a lucrative business. (The Verge)
9. Vibed-up apps, especially those built by amateurs, are often rife with security holes that expose user data and other sensitive details. (Wired)
10. Since people tend to gravitate to what's popular, making something appear popular is a way to gain market share. So marketing groups are manufacturing content to artificially stimulate interest in their clients' work. (FT)

Special section: datacenters

• An Amazon datacenter in Chile is back on-track after residents lose their court case. (Reuters)
• A datacenter developer sues its way into a Michigan town. (Futurism)
• The state of Virginia hosts twelve percent of the world's datacenter capacity, and that figure is likely to grow. (Le Monde 🇫🇷)
• Saint John is the latest area to protest a proposed datacenter build. (CTV News)

The rest of the best

• Autonomous taxi company Waymo issues a recall because their cars (well, the cars' systems) have trouble on flooded roads. (Reuters)
• The EU fines taxi company Yango for transferring passenger data into Russia. (Der Spiegel 🇩🇪)
• Some companies are trying to put AI in everything they make. Apple takes this to the next level by adding cameras to its already-AI-infused AirPods Pro. (MacRumors)
• Developers in NYC are building apartment complexes that are just one unit shy of a threshold for affordable housing laws. Sheer coincidence, I'm sure. (The City)
• Nvidia says the quiet part out loud by noting that genAI costs more than the workers it is poised to replace. (Tom's Hardware)
• Edtech platform Canvas has been hacked by a ransomware group, potentially putting large amounts of student data at risk. (404 Media, Washington Post)
• Fun fact about AI bots: people are still finding creative ways to trick them. Fun fact about crypto: blockchain transactions are one-way affairs, so there's no recovery. Put those together and you get someone tricking Grok into sending someone $200,000 via crypto. (Dexerto)
• Here's an explainer on why beef prices are so high. Spoiler alert: it's the supply chain. (Bloomberg)

Did I miss anything?

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