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. This piece by Julie Averill is some of the sharp-yet-nuanced writing I've seen on genAI. And I say that as someone who regularly publishes sharp-yet-nuanced takes on genAI. (New York Times)
2. I've noted before that the genAI space feels less "2001 Dot-Com" and more "2008 mortgage crisis." This article goes into the staggering amount of debt the major genAI companies carry. (Futurism)
3. A 1960s CIA operation involved a device many people believe to be movie lore: the skyhook. (Popular Mechanics)
4. We recently passed the anniversary of the 2012 Knight Capital meltdown. Here's a writeup I post every year around this time. (my website)
5. China's tech-driven domestic surveillance has a worldwide reputation. But the discovery of an unsecured dashboard of police-like information sheds new light on just how much data the government collects on people, and the wide array of collection sources that make it possible. (New York Times)
6. You may have heard of how an AI-themed hedge fund suffered a meltdown. As far as I can tell, the problem wasn't so much "genAI" but "the entire investment thesis was Line Go Up." (FT, TechCrunch)
7. With genAI at the center, an attorney has built a system to expunge criminal records at scale. Adding this to my list of Practical genAI Use Cases™. (NPR)
8. A new EU rule went into effect over the weekend: certain AI-generated materials now require a label. (The Guardian, Die Zeit 🇩🇪, Le Monde 🇫🇷)
9. A new font may let web publishers poison genAI scraper-bots. (The Register)

The rest of the best

• The UK's Home Office allegedly used genAI to deny an asylum claim. The smoking gun: the rejection referred to a nonexistent document. (The Guardian)
• In at least one city, those Flock license plate readers are not getting high marks. (Gizmodo)
• LinkedInk rolled out a new feature that lets you flag a message as potential genAI slop. (Der Spiegel 🇩🇪, Business Insider)
• London's desire to be a major datacenter hub runs up against other matters, including housing and environmental concerns. (FT)
• In a move that speaks to both the state of technology and the state of the economy, Apple will now let you lease iDevices. (Washington Post)
• The Google Earth team released, then quickly removed, a feature that let end-users modify images. The reason? People used genAI to add fake damage to satellite imagery. (The Atlantic, Washington Post)
• OpenAI CTO Sam Altman shared a potential ChatGPT use case on social media. At least one person was not amused. (Veerender Singh Jubbal on Bluesky)
• A PR firm was caught using genAI "publicists" to promote its clients to journalists. (Futurism)
• Plenty of groups try to counterfeit US currency. But it takes a true artist to make the most convincing fakes. (New York Times)

Did I miss anything?

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