All What Is Delicious to Man: Today’s implausible vision of superabundance is a lot grimmer than the one that they were promised in the 1830s.

What is genomic prediction and can embryos really be ‘screened for IQ’?: Even if it wasn’t a terrible idea, it’s not clear that we know how to do it effectively.

Google moves to end geofence warrants, a surveillance problem it largely created: Geofence warrants require companies to hand over data about everyone that was using a mobile device within a given geographical region - a type of reverse search warrant.

The ‘Internet of Things’ helping to provide key evidence in criminal trials: The Crown Prosecution Service’s take on the utility of our data-gathering gadgets.

Governments spying on Apple, Google users through push notifications - US senator: Inevitably the centralisation and lack of encryption around push notifications makes them a useful source of surveillance material.

Governments Are Using Spyware on Citizens. Can They Be Stopped?: Companies like the NSO Group are happy to sell commercial spyware to governments who will predictably use it for bad things.

The Subprime AI Crisis: Ed Zitron worries about what happens when the unprofitability of the current generative AI business becomes unsustainable.

Get Me Out Of Data Hell: The day Nikhil Suresh’s software engineering work pushed him so far into the pain zone that he has to quit there and then.

Ban smacking in England now, says children’s commissioner: Proposal to ban smacking one’s child in England, similarly to existing Scottish and Welsh legislation.

The Shareholder Supremacy: One of the many original sins of modern-day capitalism was when we decided companies should focus on pleasing their shareholders rather than their customers.

The Other Bubble: Why “Software as a Service” (SaaS) products - especially the enterprise-oriented offerings - often end up being so awful.

When therapy goes wrong: the problem of underqualified practitioners: Far more people should see therapists, but it is wild that there’s technically nothing to stop anyone claiming to be one.

XOXO festival 2024 playlist: Videos from the final outing of the ‘experimental festival for independent artists who live and work online’.

Who owns your shiny new Pixel 9 phone? You can’t say no to Google’s surveillance: Researchers find the Pixel 9 phone transmits “location, email address, phone number, network status, and other telemetry” to Google every 15 minutes by default.

A Personal Take on Using LLMs: Eleanor Konik’s view on when she finds it reasonable to use large language models.

The Return of the Deniers and the Revenge of Patoshi: One of the analyses that suggest that the creator of Bitcoin owns around 1.1 million of them.

Using static websites for tiny archives: What Alex does with the files that survive the decluttering.

Digital decluttering: Alex Chan’s process of deleting their less valuable files.

Revealed: International ‘race science’ network secretly funded by US tech boss: Andrew Conru previously gave >$1 million to the ‘Human Diversity Foundation’.

You should be using an RSS reader: RSS is great (& Cory Doctorow uses Newsblur for it).

Undercover police officer admits spying on Keir Starmer when he was a barrister: I’d maybe have been more actively excited about Starmer in his ‘radical barrister’ phase of life.

Why ‘I Have Nothing to Hide’ Is the Wrong Way to Think About Surveillance: Arguments against the nothing-to-fear trope.

The Art of Working Loudly: Don’t hold back from talking about what you’re working on.

Armed man arrested near Trump’s California rally was plotting to kill him, police say: Are there usually quite so many assassination attempts on a US presidential candidate?

Induction chemotherapy followed by standard chemoradiotherapy versus standard chemoradiotherapy alone in patients with locally advanced cervical cancer: Research finds that a bout of chemotherapy before the standard chemoradiotherapy reduces deaths from, and recurrence of, cervical cancer.