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. Debt is a fascinating topic. Many stories of debt follow the same plot: the sudden shift from "stable and manageable" to "in over your head, and in a race against time." Anyway, this article is about America's debt but so many of the lessons apply just as well to the genAI sector. (Bloomberg)
2. In its latest contribution to the workplace surveillance hellscape, Microsoft is testing new digital shackles camera-equipped AI-backed badges and other gadgets that we're all sure will respect workers' privacy and autonomy. (BBC)
3. Meta gave its "smart" glasses facial recognition capabilities, allegedly planning to activate the feature while opponents to the technology would be distracted by other social matters. The feature mysteriously disappeared following a Wired article. (Wired , EFF)
4. Starbucks blames genAI for a massive marketing snafu in South Korea. (The Guardian)
5. So-called "smart" devices are not only potential spies on your home network, they can also turn you into an unwitting participant in data scraping for AI bots. (Include Security)
6. Columbia University suffered a data breach that has exposed social security numbers (SSNs) of people who have no affiliation with the school. Consider this your periodic reminder to review your company's data stores and see what you should remove. (Ars Technica)
7. The frustration is coming from inside the house: tech employees at genAI company Google are fed up with genAI. (Futurism)
8. Lex Greensill, founder of scandal-laden Greensill Capital, is barred from running a company for nine years. For more details on the Greensill Capital story, I highly recommend Duncan Mavin's book Pyramid of Lies. (Financial Times)
9. Investor Jerry Neumann addresses reactions to his piece on what he deems ineffective startup methods. (Reaction Wheel)

Special section: datacenters

• California residents' fight against datacenters intensifies. (Der Spiegel 🇩🇪)
• Datecenters' demand for electricity might force the split of a major grid operator. (Bloomberg)
• Water consumption for datacenters keeps growing, and growing, and growing. (Reuters)

The rest of the best

• For all of genAI's touted benefits, companies are seeing net-zero time savings. (Bloomberg)
• In France, employees are having a tough time with execs' genAI mandates. (Le Monde 🇫🇷)
• The maker of an AI-backed gun detection system is now facing a lawsuit over the product's failure to detect a gun. (Ars Technica)
• In the latest episode of Humanoid Robots Are All The Rage But They Keep Going Rogue, one robot has kicked a child. (Futurism)
• OpenAI plans to pivot ChatGPT away from chat, and into a "super-app." (Gizmodo)
• It's not just you – the genAI rush is raising prices all around. (Le Monde 🇫🇷 , Washington Post)
• Meet the people who are most certainly not using genAI in their creative process. (The Guardian)
• Surprise, surprise: the agentic AI hype and reality don't line up in corporate settings. (The Register)
• More publicists are carving out strategic roles, sometimes working directly with the CEO. (WSJ)
• Anthropic and OpenAI prepare to go public. (WSJ, NBC News)

Did I miss anything?

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