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The Washington Post [no paywall]: “How DOGE and the White House carried out a once-unthinkable transformation of the nation’s sprawling bureaucracy…“It isn’t easy to fire federal employees,” her co-worker told her. “We have all these protections. We’ll be okay.” He was wrong. The United States’ 2.4 million federal employees were about to get caught up …
Card Catalog – Hana Lee Goldin: “The verification tricks that would make fact-checkers weep with joy. Last Tuesday, a client sent me their “thoroughly researched” white paper on workplace automation. It had 47 citations. Looked bulletproof. Every claim backed by a study, every statistic sourced to a journal. I was impressed for exactly three minutes. …
ZDNet: “Every month, Google sends me a report on my online activity, and I must say that I’m not a fan. In fact, the idea that Google is tracking me via Maps disturbs me. That’s not the only issue I have with the default Maps app. It seems that every time I have to rely …
Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, December 20, 2025 – Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and …
Android Headlines: “DuckDuckGo has introduced a new AI image generation tool that emphasizes privacy, anonymizing prompts and storing images locally on users’ devices. While it faces stiff competition from Google and OpenAI, the tool could appeal to users who want AI image generation without giving up personal data. It seems like everyone is launching their …
ZDNet: “Here’s a common scenario for many travelers. You’re at an airport waiting for your flight. You want to hop online with your mobile phone to stream a movie, play an online game, or download some apps. Your first instinct is to connect to the airport’s Wi-Fi. But that may not be your best option. …
Ars Technica: “There have been a number of high-profile cases where scientific papers have had to be retracted because they were filled with AI-generated slop—the most recent coming just two weeks ago. These instances raise serious questions about the quality of peer review in some journals—how could anyone let a figure with terms like “runctitional,” …
Bloomberg no paywall: People Watched 700 Million Hours of YouTube Podcasts on TV in October. ” People are spending more time tuning in to podcasts on Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube, and increasingly they’re turning to the biggest screen in their homes: the TV. In October, viewers streamed more than 700 million hours of podcasts on their …
Ars Technica: “Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued five large TV manufacturers yesterday, alleging that their smart TVs spy on viewers without consent. Paxton sued Samsung, the longtime TV market share leader, along with LG, Sony, Hisense, and TCL. These companies have been unlawfully collecting personal data through Automated Content Recognition (‘ACR’) technology,” Paxton’s office …
The New Yorker [no paywall]: Is the term a new way of calling people pretentious, or does it reflect a deprioritization of the written word? “Here’s a hypothetical: a man walks into a bar, buys a drink, and starts reading from a paperback copy of David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest.” He could very well be …
Indicator: “Just because it’s “intelligent” doesn’t mean it’s always right. Errors are a wonderful thing. That may be a strange thing for a former fact-checker t/o write in a newsletter about digital deception, but bear with me. Errors are often funny, because – like good jokes – they subvert meaning in unexpected ways. I recently …
The Inclusive Forum on Carbon Mitigation Approaches (IFCMA) has released the first edition of its Climate Policy Database, providing unprecedented detail on how governments are tackling climate change through policy action. With validated data covering 38 out of 60 countries so far, and around 1 600 carbon mitigation policy instruments, the Database offers granular insights …
