Sean Dreilinger

How the Rapid Spread of Misinformation Pushed Oregon Lawmakers to Kill the State’s Wildfire Risk Map After Oregon’s record-breaking fire season in 2020, lawmakers wanted to map out which properties were most at risk. But anger from homeowners escalated quickly.

"...rural residents were understandably upset. The impacts of climate change were abstract to many people, Golden said, until they started getting those letters — at the same time insurance companies were dumping them."

It’s Official, The World Doesn’t Want AI Generated Content AI is for information dissemination. Humans are for making you think. Humans are winning. Here’s how to win.

"AI-generated content is what math decides the groupthink wants to hear based on what it’s already said in the past."

'We had no idea of what it would become': How Keep Calm and Carry On became a divisive 21st-Century phenomenon After a forgotten WW2 propaganda poster was discovered in 2000, it found an astounding new resonance in 21st-Century Britain.

"its survival speaks volumes about the cultural appeal of reassurance in chaotic times...calm perseverance in the face of adversity–continues to strike a chord. It has thrived in meme culture because its message is timelessly adaptable; calm resilience suits both crisis and comedy."

Exclusive: The high costs and thin margins threatening AI coding startups Coding assistant startups are highly unprofitable, says a source familiar with Windsurf financials.

"...expect the cost of LLMs to decrease over time. “That’s what everyone’s banking on...the inference cost today, that’s the most expensive it’s ever going to be...” Rather than falling as expected, the cost of some of the latest AI models has risen"

Cornell Alum Buys College President’s House for $2.8 Million A Cornell University alumnus bought the longtime home for the college’s presidents after the Ivy League school put the property on the market amid budget constraints.

"The sale of the president’s house came as Cornell faces “profound financial challenges...” They referenced hundreds of millions of dollars in federal research contracts that were terminated or frozen by the Trump administration as well as threats to future funding...""

Deportation fallout: This farmer lost half his workforce. Now he’s losing his crop too | CNN Ian Chandler’s Oregon cherries are dying on the branch — not because of bad weather, disease or blight, but because there is no one to pick them, a fact he links to the ongoing immigration crackdown.

"Chandler said he will lose $250K-$300K of revenue, left to rot on the trees. “...it’s also lost revenue for the workers...The beginning of the season, it coincided...with...immigration enforcement down in southern California...and that had a chilling effect.”"

Who will pay for the trillion-dollar AI boom? A technological revolution meets a financial one

"Predictions of the eventual bill are uniformly enormous...Morgan Stanley reckon $2.9trn...McKinsey...$6.7trn...Like a bad party at a good restaurant, nobody is quite sure who will pick up the tab...The hot centre of the AI boom is moving from stock markets to debt markets."

The Trump administration takes a very Orwellian turn | CNN Politics Back in March, President Donald Trump signed an executive order targeted at the Smithsonian Institution that began as follows: “Over the past decade, Americans have witnessed a concerted and…

The Trump administration takes a very Orwellian turn | CNN Politics

US job growth stalls: Just 73,000 jobs added in July, with ‘stunning’ downward revisions to recent months | CNN Business The US job market slowed substantially in July and was much weaker than first estimated for prior months, suggesting President Donald Trump’s trade policy may be stifling hiring.

"The 253,000 downward revisions to May and June was the largest since at least 1979 (with the exception of 2020), according to Ernie Tedeschi, director of economics at the Budget Lab at Yale. The outsized correction is reflective of an extremely volatile economic environment..."

The Hater's Guide To The AI Bubble Hey! Before we go any further — if you want to support my work, please sign up for the premium version of Where’s Your Ed At, it’s a $7-a-month (or $70-a-year) paid product where every week you get a…

Hater's Guide To The AI Bubble

When Your Power Meter Becomes a Tool of Mass Surveillance Sacramento’s power company and law enforcement agencies have been running an illegal mass surveillance scheme for years, using our power meters as home-mounted spies. The Electronic Frontier…

When Your Power Meter Becomes a Tool of Mass Surveillance

Extreme weather caused by climate change is raising food prices worldwide, study says | CNN Business Extreme weather caused by climate change is driving up the prices of basic food products worldwide and posing wider risks to society, a new study has found.

“Until we get to net-zero emissions, extreme weather will only get worse, and it’s already damaging crops and pushing up the price of food all over the world...with rising food prices number two on the list of climate impacts...second only to extreme heat itself.”

That Dropped Call With Customer Service? It Was on Purpose. Endless wait times and excessive procedural fuss—it’s all part of a tactic called “sludge.”

That Dropped Call With Customer Service? It Was on Purpose. "Ostensibly the goal of customer service is to serve customers. Often enough, its true purpose is to defeat them." buff.ly/zyDyKtO

Exhausted man defeats AI model in world coding championship “Humanity has prevailed (for now!),” writes winner after 10-hour coding marathon against OpenAI.

"OpenAI's artificial entrant...placed second overall, ahead of 10 other human programmers who had qualified through year-long rankings. OpenAI characterized the second-place finish as a milestone for AI models in competitive programming."

The AI Mirage For decades, tech companies have promised that AI will make our computers easier to use. That hasn’t happened yet.

The AI Mirage

AI is killing the web. Can anything save it? The rise of ChatGPT and its rivals is undermining the economic bargain of the internet

AI is killing the web. Can anything save it?

Are a few people ruining the internet for the rest of us? Why does the online world seem so toxic compared with normal life? Our research shows that a small number of divisive accounts could be responsible – and offers a way out

"A mere 0.1% of users share 80% of fake news. Twelve accounts – known as the “disinformation dozen” – created most of the vaccine misinformation on Facebook during the pandemic."

Scientists reportedly hiding AI text prompts in academic papers to receive positive peer reviews Research papers found carrying hidden white text giving instructions not to highlight negatives as concern grows over use of large language models for peer review

"If the papers are being peer-reviewed by humans, then the prompts would present no issue, but as one professor behind one of the manuscripts told Nature, it is a “counter against ‘lazy reviewers’ who use AI” to do the peer review work for them." buff.ly/M0hNniy

Number of first time home buyers hits record low The number of renter households in the U.S. has ballooned to a record 46 million

"...there were 1.1 million first-time buyers last year - 380K fewer than the number of first time buyers in 2023, and almost half of the historical norm...this year could be even worse for first-time buyers."

Jury says Google must pay California Android smartphone users $314.6m Alphabet’s company found liable for making data transfers without permission while devices were idle

"Google misused customers’ cellphone data and must pay more than $314.6m to Android smartphone users in the state...Google was liable for sending and receiving information from the devices without permission while they were idle..."

"Russia has not relied on well-trained agents in this campaign, but a network of low-level criminals: some sympathetic to Moscow’s cause, others simply wanting cash. Whereas espionage and sabotage used to take years to recruit and plan for, these operations now require just..." buff.ly/1thsfFT

Weedkiller ingredient widely used in US can damage organs and gut bacteria, research shows Diquat is banned in the UK, EU, China and other countries. The US has resisted calls to regulate it

Weedkiller ingredient widely used in US can damage organs and gut bacteria, research shows

Content will be judged by quality not volume - but no-one has told AI The inevitability of AIGen content spreading isn't inevitable at all, as any glance at real world uses tells us.

Content will be judged by quality not volume - but no-one has told AI buff.ly/bWxvoVw

Protect Yourself From Meta’s Latest Attack on Privacy The best way to stop this cycle of invasive tracking techniques and patchwork fixes is to ban online behavioral advertising. This would end the practice of targeting ads based on your online…

Protect Yourself From Meta’s Latest Attack on Privacy

The résumé is dying, and AI is holding the smoking gun As thousands of applications flood job posts, ‘hiring slop’ is kicking off an AI arms race.

"Anthropic recently advised job seekers not to use LLMs on their applications—a striking admission from a company whose business model depends on people using AI for everything else." buff.ly/bijNSbA

‘GO **** YOURSELVES’: National park visitors slam feds in leaked park comments Attempts to root out 'negative' national parks history have backfired.

""...instead of reporting incidents of “negative” history as directed by new signs, visitors have used the signs’ QR codes to submit hundreds of comments in support of the park service. In a 65-page leaked document..." buff.ly/QKtCz6y%22

The Computer-Science Bubble Is Bursting Artificial intelligence is ideally suited to replacing the very type of person who built it.

"The best evidence that artificial intelligence is displacing tech workers comes from the fact that the industry that has most thoroughly integrated AI is the one with such unusually high unemployment."

The Entire Internet Is Reverting to Beta The AI takeover is changing everything about the web—and not necessarily for the better.

"Reorienting the internet and society around imperfect and relatively untested products is not the inevitable result of scientific and technological progress—it is an active choice Silicon Valley is making, every day."

As the Trump Administration Slashes Federal Spending, Scientists Consider Leaving the U.S. As the United States cuts budgets and restricts immigration, China and Europe are offering researchers money and stability.

As the Trump Administration Slashes Federal Spending, Scientists Consider Leaving the U.S. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/03/u...

U.S. Spy Agencies Are Getting a One-Stop Shop to Buy Your Most Sensitive Personal Data The government wants to build a centralized platform where spy agencies can more easily buy private info about millions of people.

"...the Data Consortium would provide a one-stop shop for agencies to cheaply purchase access to vast amounts of Americans’ sensitive information from commercial entities, sidestepping constitutional and statutory privacy protections..." buff.ly/yWrXyKj