Dan Reinish

The Nonprofit Doing the AI Industry’s Dirty Work Common Crawl claims to provide a public benefit, but it lies to publishers about its activities.

A non-profit has built a massive internet database—and served training data to AI firms despite pleas from publishers to stop, Alex Reisner reports:

'Washington Post' editorials omit a key disclosure: Bezos' financial ties Three times in the past two weeks, editorials at the 'Washington Post' failed to disclose that they focused on matters in which owner Jeff Bezos had a material interest.

3 times in the past 2 weeks, a WashPost editorial "has taken on matters in which Bezos has a financial or corporate interest without noting his stake. In each case, the Post's editorial line landed in sync with its owner's interests"

Via @davidfolkenflik.bsky.social

www.npr.org/2025/10/28/n...

Patron-Supported Journalism Can’t Be the Future of News Writing about the failure of patron-supported journalism is itself a kind of...

I did not enjoy writing this; it can't even serve as an ad for my newsletter, which I've suspended due to an overbilling situation that has me almost regretting leaving Substack. But, you know, it's evidence for the piece I just didn't get to include.

talkingpointsmemo.com/tpm-25/patro...

THREAD 🧵

News overwhelm is real.

So we at States Newsroom are launching a podcast to help you make sense of the dizzying flurry of headlines coming from Washington and across the U.S.

Rebuilding the research desk in local newsrooms A merger between MuckRock and Sunlight Research Center will help slimmed-down newsrooms investigate local governments, public officials, and more.

“We called it the George Santos prevention program.” www.niemanlab.org/2025/10/rebu...

No Kings protest coverage | News From The States

Take a dip into our @statesnewsroom.com live blog for #nokings day with reports from on the ground across the nation, state after state
www.newsfromthestates.com/live-feed/no...

AI-generated news sites spout viral slop from forgotten URLs A new generation of content farms are harnessing AI to spin out clickbait — and they’re getting help from Google.

Oh no. Zombie sites are resurging. I haven't seen much since the Daily Tidings story by @opb.org but it sounds like zombie sites are alive and well, according to @niemanlab.org.

Stay vigilant out there, readers.

www.niemanlab.org/2025/10/ai-g...

Opinion: Why I'm handing in my Pentagon press pass Tom Bowman has held his Pentagon press pass for 28 years. He says the Pentagon's new media policy makes it impossible to be a journalist, which means finding out what's really going on behind the scen...

NPR’s Tom Bowman explains why media organizations on both sides of the ideological spectrum are refusing to sign the Pentagon’s new press agreement.

An incredibly detailed and informative review!

I’m so glad all our electric bills are going up so we can have calculators that don’t work.

A Fish Falls From the Sky and Sparks a Brush Fire in British Columbia

Original article: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/02/w...

Screenshot of a New York Times headline. The main headline reads, “A fish falls from the sky and sparks a brush fire in British Columbia.” The secondary headline reads, “Officials say a flying osprey dropped its catch, which then struck power lines, causing sparks that ignited dry grass.”

You read this headline and think to yourself, “What??” Then you read the secondary headline and you’re like, “Oh, okay. But also…what??”

NYC Mass Shooting Was Nearly Impossible to Prevent, Experts Say

Holy shit, they did it. They wrote the headline.

Cloudy with a Chance of Static For my latest post, I’m going to talk a little bit about, well, this blog! Specifically, I’d like to share my recent project to convert it from a dynamic, WordPress-based application hosted on a tradi...

I decided to turn my blog into a "serverless," (mostly) static website to reduce costs and security/maintenance overhead. Read my latest post to see how I used a WordPress plugin, a Cloudflare Worker, and some JavaScript to replicate the original setup, including contact forms and a search function.

Just click on this: skyviewer.app/explorer #RubinTelescope

Federalism Tested: How States Are Navigating an Era of Uncertainty States face a growing list of policy challenges and opportunities. The Pew Charitable Trusts and States Newsroom will host an event to explore key issues states are addressing today.

Tune in now to our @statesnewsroom.com event w The Pew Charitable Trusts. Former Govs. Steve Bullock and Larry Hogan are talking w @wordsbywillis.bsky.social

www.pewtrusts.org/en/about/eve...

A sprawling, textured field of galaxies scattered across the deep black of space. It is filled with the delicate smudges and glowing cores of galaxies of many shapes, sizes and colors, as well as the bright multi-colored points of stars. The image focuses on a collection of interacting galaxies connected by delicate streams of stars. At top center lies a large elliptical galaxy that is dense and smooth, like a polished stone glowing with golden light. Like delicate spider silk or stretched taffy, these stellar bridges link the large elliptical to the few larger galaxies beneath, evidence of past collisions. All throughout the image, thousands of galaxies gather in clusters or are spread throughout, like glittering gems strewn on a table. Some are sharp-edged and spiral, like coiled ribbons; others round and diffuse, like polished pebbles. Still others are just smudges of various colors against the black of space. The background is peppered with pinpoint stars in reds, yellows, and blues, crisp against the velvet black.

A cosmic tapestry of glowing tan and pink gas clouds with dark dust lanes. In the upper right, the Trifid Nebula resembles a small flower in space. Its soft, pinkish gas petals are surrounded by blue gas, and streaked with dark, finger-like veins of dust that divide it into three parts. It radiates a gentle, misty glow, diffuse and soft like the warmth of breath on a cold hand. To the lower left, the much larger Lagoon Nebula stretches wide like a churning sea of magenta gas, with bright blue, knotted clumps sprinkled throughout where new stars are born. Both nebulae are embedded in a soft tan backdrop of gas that is brighter on the left than on the right, etched with dark tendrils of dust and sprinkled with the pinpricks of millions of stars.

A sprawling, textured field of galaxies scattered across the deep black of space. It is filled with the delicate smudges and glowing cores of galaxies of many shapes, sizes and colors, as well as the bright multi-colored points of stars. To the lower left is a region filled with the hundreds of golden glittering gems of a distant galaxy cluster. In the foreground, below and right of center, two blue spiral galaxies look like eyes beneath the entangled mass of a triple galaxy merger in the upper right. A few bright blue points of foreground stars pierce the glittering tapestry. All throughout the image, thousands of galaxies gather in clusters or are spread throughout, like glittering gems strewn on a table. Some are sharp-edged and spiral, like coiled ribbons; others round and diffuse, like polished pebbles. Still others are just smudges of various colors against the black of space. The background is peppered with pinpoint stars in reds, yellows, and blues, crisp against the velvet black.

Introducing...your sneak peek at the cosmos captured by NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory!

Can you guess these regions of sky?

This is just a small peek...join us at 11am US EDT for your full First Look at how Rubin will #CaptureTheCosmos! 🔭🧪

#RubinFirstLook
ls.st/rubin-first-look-livestream

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory's first images are stunning — and just the start The Vera C. Rubin Observatory has just released some of its first images. Its powerful new telescope will be able to quickly spot previously unseen astronomical objects.

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory has just released some of its first images. Its powerful new telescope will be able to quickly spot previously unseen astronomical objects. https://n.pr/405DN8P

I've been noticing this since yesterday. I'm also seeing wonky UI issues when trying to check on the status of Actions. I filed a support ticket in the meantime.

In advance of the planned public protests Saturday across the U.S., our States Newsroom reporters have already been reporting on how protesters, local officials and law enforcement are preparing. Find out what to expect in your state.

The Lunacy of Artemis For the first time since the 1960's, it looks doubtful whether the US space agency is even capable of getting us to the Moon.

Exceptional deconstruction of NASA’s Artemis mission to the Moon. A disaster waiting to happen, if it ever actually gets under way.

idlewords.com/2024/5/the_l...

Everything right now…

The big mistake was letting them get away with calling it artificial intelligence in the first place

Oh, thank goodness! Journalism has made a comeback! (That’s evidently a horse-racing joke.)

I’m a fan of an artfully placed semicolon, but man was it difficult to teach my students to use them well!

But what this episode also points out is the opportunity for maintainers to introduce even more _explicit_ biases via the internal prompts and directives that shape models’ behavior. It is important that people understand that truth in the age of AI is _still_ very much a subjective concept. 4/4

It’s been noted plenty of times before that this “truth” is only as good as the data (and all the implicit biases) on which the developers opted to train it. 3/

No matter how many disclaimers their responses may be couched within, these tools are presented in such a way as to encourage a presumption of truthfulness. After all, if you can’t get an “accurate” answer from an AI model, what’s the point? 2/

Employee’s Change Caused xAI’s Chatbot to Veer Into South African Politics

While it’s easy to pass this off as an “unauthorized modification” by an employee, I feel like this episode speaks to a deeper issue with generative AI. 1/

www.nytimes.com/2025/05/16/t...