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. Here's a 2015 longread on the way gangs, politics, and everyday life mixed in Karachi, Pakistan. (Harper's)
2. Many of those political posts on social media aren't genAI slop. They're hand-crafted by humans … paid actors who live thousands of miles away and sometimes don't even understand the US political scene. (The Atlantic)
3. China's army is allegedly considering humanoid robots for the battlefield. (Reuters, republished via Yahoo News)
4. Companies are still hiring people to clean up after genAI bots. (The Guardian)
5. OpenAI's latest marketing tactic: hinting that their latest model release, GPT-6 Astra, marks the start of the singularity. (Gizmodo)
6. Citing national security reasons, the US Department of Justice backs OpenAI in a suit over copyright infringement. (New York Times, Les Echos 🇫🇷)
7. Data, business models, and food: tracking the proximity of Chinese-food restaurants to Food Lion stores. (NC Rabbithole)
8. Actors don't care for AI. Directors take a different view. Even though they're still pretty quiet about it. (Semafor)
9. Despite efforts to stop the flow of data, it's still possible to purchase US troops' location data. (The Register)

The rest of the best

Datacenters

• One Missouri city boots a council member over datacenter support. (NBC News)
• After construction, datacenters are supposed to create long-term jobs for maintenance. But Meta has plans to employ robots for at least some of that work. (Wired, republished via Ars Technica)
• Datacenter companies' charm offensive continues. Their latest tactic? Pro-datacenter ad campaigns. (Futurism)

Special section: Financial Times

FT provided more fun reading material than usual this week. Some of my favo(u)rites:

• How Scotland's whisky industry is handling consumers' changing tastes and lighter pocketbooks. (Financial Times)
• Here's a rundown on how some companies are using genAI. (Financial Times)
• Inspired by the loss of their favorite lunch spot, one team of journalists traces the rise of China's Luckin Coffee in the US. (Financial Times)
• How Sweden is winning against violent gangs. (Financial Times)
• Large genAI companies have loaded up on debt, in the form of loans and bonds. That could spell trouble if interest rates rise. (Financial Times)

Did I miss anything?

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