Mike Elgan

This is what Perplexity says. Can we trust AI to be impartial about AI?

This Week in Tech: A Shortage of Shame | TWiT.TV Is Black Friday really booming, or are inflated prices and AI shopping assistants just muddying the waters? This episode rips into the data, exposes retailer tactics, and

New Podcast Episode:
This Week in Tech: A Shortage of Shame
Why Black Friday Numbers Aren't What You Think
with @leolaporte.me, @danielrubino.com, @sam.abuelsamid.com, @mikeelgan.bsky.social

Greyshark Robots Begin Undersea Cable Patrol An autonomous underwater robot called Greyshark is joining NATO’s subsea defenses, patrolling undersea cables as Europe races to protect vital links.

More proof we're living in a cyberpunk novel: Shark robots are now patrolling undersea cables to protect them from sabotage.
www.eweek.com/news/greysha...

DeepSeek Injects 50% More Security Bugs with Chinese Political Triggers: CrowdStrike Study CrowdStrike research reveals DeepSeek-R1 generates up to 50% more vulnerable code when prompted with politically sensitive terms like "Tibet" or "Uyghurs". The Chinese LLM's embedded censorship mechanisms create unprecedented supply-chain security risks for enterprises using AI-assisted coding.

Discovery of the moment: China's DeepSeek-R1 LLM generates up to 50% more insecure code when prompted with politically sensitive inputs such as "Falun Gong," "Uyghurs," or "Tibet."
venturebeat.com/security/dee...

Historian Rutger Bregman criticises BBC for removing Donald Trump line from Radio 4's Reith Lecture Rutger Bregman says he is "genuinely dismayed" after a line about the US president was edited out.

Turns out all you have to do to censor the BBC is threaten to sue and they censor themselves! They're willing to lie for a two-bit dictator because money is more important to them. My advice: Dissolve the BBC. They have no reason to exist anymore.
www.bbc.com/news/article...

Claim of the moment: When the Pilgrims first arrived at Plymouth rock they created a communist society. When communism inevitably led to starvation, they turned capitalist, and later celebrated their abundance with Thanksgiving.
marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevo...

This Level Of Corruption Requires Stupidity The abyss. The darkness. The meaningless void that life rebels against. It stares at us. Nietzsche warned about this moment—when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. When th…

Donald Trump is so dumb he illegally appointed his personal defense attorney with zero prosecutorial experience to prosecute James Comey, guaranteeing that the case is thrown out. www.techdirt.com/2025/11/26/t...

The future will be explained to you in Palo Alto | TechCrunch On Wednesday evening at PlayGround Global in Palo Alto, some very smart people who are building things you don't understand yet will explain what's

Sentences of the moment: "Everyone laughed. He wasn’t joking."
techcrunch.com/2025/11/26/t...

Slop Evader — Tega Brain A browser extension for avoiding AI slop.  Download it for Chrome or Firefox. This is a search tool that will only return content created before ChatGPT's...

This browser avoids AI slop by showing you only websites built before ChatGPT existed.
tegabrain.com/Slop-Evader

Thanksgiving Dinner Headed for Tragedy as Disastrous AI Recipes Devour Internet Food bloggers are warning home cooks to be wary of AI-generated recipes that could turn this year's Thanksgiving dinner into a tragedy.

Phrase of the season: “recipe slop”
futurism.com/artificial-i...

Should Jim break up with his AI girlfriend? Episode #28

We need you to weigh in: Should Jim break up with his AI girlfriend? Do chatbot relationships make sense sometimes?

www.superintelligentpodcast.com/p/should-jim... @mikeelgan.bsky.social

Opinion: We need a ‘universal toggle’ to choose whether we want AI content or not.
www.computerworld.com/profile/mike...

How kids’ smartwatches led to anxiety, addiction, and crime The world needs to learn from China’s bad example.

170 million children between the ages of 5 and 12 wear smartwatches. The reason why they’re so popular is super depressing.
machinesociety.ai/p/how-kids-s...

How kids’ smartwatches led to anxiety, addiction, and crime The world needs to learn from China’s bad example.

How kids’ smartwatches led to anxiety, addiction, and crime
machinesociety.ai/p/how-kids-s...

HEADLINE: "Meta buried 'causal' evidence of social media harm"

ALT HEADLINE: "Meta buried 'causal' evidence of social media harm... again!"

www.reuters.com/sustainabili...

Shocker: Elon Musk spends a lot of time on X posting bad political takes Elon Musk spends a lot of time on X posting about politics and himself.

Number of the moment: 55

(The average number of times Elon Musk posts a tweet on X per day. His favorite topics in order are: 1) race; 2) crime; 3) Tesla; and 4) himself.)

www.theverge.com/tech/827125/...

We've been waiting since the end of 2017, which is the first date by which Elon Musk promised full self-driving in Teslas.

ChatGPT is smart, but no match for the most creative humans A new Australian study has smashed the myth that generative AI systems such as ChatGPT could soon replace society’s most creative people.

Claim of the moment: "Existing large language models (LLMs) have a built-in mathematical ceiling on their creative capacity, meaning they will never rival the originality or ingenuity of the most creative individuals.
www.unisa.edu.au/media-centre...

Waymo to expand service into Wine Country in one of California’s largest robotaxi rollouts California quietly opened the door to one of the largest geographic expansions of autonomous ride-hailing the state has ever seen after the DMV approved an enlargement of Waymo’s operating...

The most California thing ever: Soon you can go wine tasting in a self-driving taxi.
www.sfchronicle.com/tech/article...

Elon Musk's Boring Company Caught Hiding Toxic Waste Pond in Vegas Elon Musk's Boring Company has been illegally dumping toxic waste byproduct for months, landing itself a $500k fine from local officials.

HEADLINE: "Elon Musk’s Boring Company Caught Hiding Toxic Waste Pond in Vegas"

ALT HEADLINE: "Elon Musk's Boring Company, the Social Network Called X, Caught Hiding in Vegas"

futurism.com/advanced-tra...

Inside The Atlantic’s AI bot blocking strategy The Atlantic's CEO explains how it evaluates AI crawlers to block those that bring no traffic or subscribers, and to provide deal leverage.

The Atlantic built a scorecard for AI crawlers, identifying which bots send readers back and which just strip content. Only those with value get through. This approach led it to block a single AI crawler that tried to recrawl its site 564,000 times in the past seven days.
digiday.com/media/inside...

Jmail, logged in as jeevacation@gmail.com You are logged into jeevacation@gmail.com, Jeffrey Epstein's email. Sourced from the November 2025 House Oversight Committee data release.

Somebody made a clone of Gmail and put Jeffrey Epstein's real emails into it. jmail.world

DRUDGE:

Human behavior of the moment: "the Batman effect"
www.nature.com/articles/s44...

From the writers community on Reddit Explore this post and more from the writers community

I'm replacing my iPad with an iPhone for mobile writing. Read all about it: www.reddit.com/r/writers/co...

People are sexist towards AI labeled as either male or female
News. (Participants in a recent study were more likely to exploit AI agents labelled female and more likely to distrust AI agents labelled male.)
www.tcd.ie/news_events/...

Half gallon of organic orange juice costs $27 at a California health food store.

In our opinion: Akio Toyoda’s MAGA moment a tone-deaf mistake The spectacle betrayed decades of apolitical words and actions by Toyota Motor Corp., and did so in gleeful celebration of a man whose deeds this year have caused billions in losses to the auto indust...

Anybody want to buy my Prius?
www.autonews.com/opinion/edit...

The Saudification of America is under way | Karen Attiah Jamal Khashoggi’s plight and murder was a warning sign for the US, of the impending loss of freedom and censorship that would sweep the country

Word of the moment: "Saudification"
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

We should kill Chinese kill switches A huge number of Chinese electronics products can be remotely accessed, repurposed, controlled and shut down. Malice or incompetence? It doesn’t matter.

A huge number of Chinese electronics products can be remotely accessed, repurposed, controlled and shut down. Malice or incompetence? It doesn’t matter. We should kill Chinese kill switches.
machinesociety.ai/p/we-should-...