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. Narco traffickers have proven to be a creative, resourceful, and determined bunch. After years of finding ways to smuggle goods and launder money, they've begun sending people to fight in Ukraine in order to develop skills on using drones. (FT)
2. Occasionally you luck out, and someone else makes fine prose of an idea that's been lingering in the back of your mind. The latest example: professor Henry Farrell and research fellow Dan Wang explore how today's sci-fi-obsessed techbros have built a world that mirrors Philip K Dick's dystopian writings. (FT)
3. With the ChatJTB project, one man is bold enough to create hand-crafted, small-batch, artisanal "chatbot" answers. (Futurism)
4. BMW reminds customers who's really in charge by pushing a movie advertisement to the dashboards of connected cars. (Autonocion)
5. Meta tried to hide behind Section 230, but a judge says that's not a barrier to a lawsuit. (Ars Technica)
6. This summer's extreme heat has created knock-on effects for businesses. (New York Times)
7. The Chinese government has effectively banned genAI companions. (AP News)
8. As autonomous taxi company Waymo expands its coverage, its vehicles are running into more edge cases. (New York Times)
9. An AI assistant hacks a gym website in order to fulfill an end-user's request. (ABC Australia, Der Spiegel 🇩🇪)

The rest of the best

Datacenters…

• The datacenter industry keeps trying to portray its behemoth installations in a positive light. (NB: It's not working.) (Mother Jones)
• This Bloomberg writeup is a thorough look into datacenters' water consumption. (Bloomberg)
• Some datacenter execs came to Salem, Oregon to pitch a new facility. One protester skipped "angry placard" and went straight to "rock up with a guillotine." (Gizmodo)
• Datacenter hopefuls are still trying to win people over. (Semafor)

… and everything else

• Meta is accused of deleting data that would have been relevant for a legal case. (Le Monde 🇫🇷)
• In what is likely to be foreshadowing for America's stock market, investors in South Korea are reeling after AI-related stocks flame out. (FT)
• Meta, trying to get in on the recent "AI company bad-boy" wave, announces that one of its models broke out of the lab and attacked another company. (CNN)
• A New Mexico judge orders Meta to shell out $942M because of its products' impact on children's mental health. (The Independent)
• Some would-be hackers decided to mess with in-flight wifi. They were met by on-the-ground police. (TechCrunch)

Did I miss anything?

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