James Bamford · The Nation.

The project involved selling the ministry an Artificial Intelligence Platform that uses reams of classified intelligence reports to make life-or-death determinations about which targets to attack. In an understatement several years ago, Karp admitted, “Our product is used on occasion to kill people,” the morality of which even he himself occasionally questions. “I have asked myself, ‘If I were younger at college, would I be protesting me?’”

The Verge

While I’m already familiar, that Bruce Schneier share got me to take another look at the Ring doorbell relationship with law enforcement.

This time I caught the heartwarming mention, “Ring is ‘exploring a new integration with Axon that would enable livestreaming from Ring devices.’”

good lookin’ out

Schneier on Security

The mighty Bruce Schneier breaking down the existing data about us, how it’s collected, how it’s used and what you personally might want to consider given your situation.

Compute technology is constantly spying on its users—and that data is being used to influence us. Companies like Google and Meta are vast surveillance machines, and they use that data to fuel advertising. A smartphone is a portable surveillance device, constantly recording things like location and communication.

…

What’s different in a techno-authoritarian regime is that this data is also shared with the government, either as a paid service or as demanded by local law. Amazon shares Ring doorbell data with the police. Flock, a company that collects license plate data from cars around the country, shares data with the police as well.

…

Imagine there is a government official assigned to your neighborhood, or your block, or your apartment building. It’s worth that person’s time to scrutinize everybody’s social media posts, email, and chat logs.

Jay Stanley · ACLU

the incorporation of “BOLO” (“Be On the Look Out for”) alerts by companies on behalf of law enforcement has the potential to become — and may already be becoming — a powerful nationwide government surveillance dr­agnet.

Cute move Rite Aid:

In 2023 the FTC investigation found that “Rite Aid specifically instructed employees not to reveal Rite Aid’s use of facial recognition technology to consumers or the media.”

We know the technology makes false positives all the time, and that there’s typically no human in the loop.

If such sharing networks emerge — much as blacklists of “troublemakers” (i.e., labor organizers) were shared among companies in the 20th century — someone who is falsely accused might find themselves unjustly banned from a significant number of retail stores.

This article collects a lot of scattered details concerning the issue, so would be a decent jumping off point for your exploration.

bitforms gallery

luv luv luv me some Jim Campbell

Opening: This Saturday, January 24th, 5 – 7 PM @ the lovely bitforms gallery

Thomas Pynchon · NYTimes

One was the concentration of capital that each machine represented, and the other was the ability of each machine to put a certain number of humans out of work – to be ”worth” that many human souls.
…
It was open-eyed class war.
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If our world survives, the next great challenge to watch out for will come – you heard it here first – when the curves of research and development in artificial intelligence, molecular biology and robotics all converge. Oboy.

Written in 1984 👆 heh

2026.01.21 7PM – 7:30PM · EARTH · 49 Orchard St

Techlore Talks

You don’t have to trust Obscura—you just have to trust that not both Obscura and Mullvad are compromised.

M. Gessen · NYTimes

Ask anyone who has lived in a country that became an autocracy, and they will tell you some version of a story about walls closing in on them, about space getting smaller and smaller.

…

The only way to keep the space from imploding is to fill it, to prop up the walls: to claim all the room there still is for speaking, writing, publishing, protesting, voting. It’s what the people of Minnesota appear to be doing, and it’s something each of us needs to do — right now, while we still can.

Gift link:

Noah Giansiracusa · Harvard Law Today

Retailers are looking for what’s called the “pain point.” That’s the maximum amount that you as an individual customer are willing to pay for a specific product
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[an app’s] knowledge of your phone battery’s life to determine how desperate you might be for a ride home, and therefore charge you more for it
…
now imagine … they look at me and they know every video I’ve watched on YouTube, everything I’ve searched in Google, and everything I have liked on Facebook, every conversation I’ve had with an AI chatbot. Does that feel like a fair situation?

Does that feel like a fair situation?

The wage slaves of the Gilded Age had it easy

George Monbiot · The Guardian

There are many excuses for failing to tax the ultra-wealthy. The truth is that governments don’t tackle the problem because they don’t want to

Rhizome · Zoom

Citarella will give a presentation on his recent text A Multipolar Art World?, in which he argues that the era of globalization underpinning contemporary art as we know it is ending, giving way to a location-specific, multipolar art world. 

2026-01-16 2PM – 3PM EST
Online via Zoom
https://luma.com/aw_Joshua_Citarella

Cory Doctorow · 39C3

Trump has staged an unscheduled, midair rapid disassembly of the global system of trade. Ironically, it is this system that prevented all of America’s trading partners from disenshittifying their internet: the US trade representative threatened the world with tariffs unless they passed laws that criminalized reverse-engineering and modding. By banning “adversarial interoperability,” America handcuffed the world’s technologists, banning them from creating the mods, hacks, alt clients, scrapers, and other tools needed to liberate their neighbours from the enshittificatory predations of the ketamine-addled zuckermuskian tyrants of US Big Tech.

Well, when life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla. The Trump tariffs are here, and it’s time to pick the locks on the those handcuffs and set the world’s hackers loose on Big Tech. Happy Liberation Day, everyone!

We’re very much aware of Cory’s Enshittification concept. With everyone up to speed in this audience he’s able to chart the path out with the people who will take us there.

Vladimir Ivkovic & ISAbella · Soundcloud

. . . For the most part of the first 5 hours I figured out that it would be great to play for and with the sound guy, playing right and wrong records and figuring out which one sound good. Research and development mission for Addit Audio.

After 5 hours ISAbella joined for a brief back to back session. Everything can happen in the realm of paranormal. Luckily she stayed and we played together for the next 3 hours until the last song, the one for the deceased. Probably as close as it gets to transcendence.

My soundtrack for the next 8hrs

Cloudflare Learning Center

How does reCAPTCHA work without any user interaction?

The latest versions of reCAPTCHA are able to take a holistic look at a user’s behavior and history of interacting with content on the Internet. Most of the time, the program can decide based on those factors whether or not the user is a bot, without providing the user with a challenge to complete. If not, then the user will get a typical reCAPTCHA challenge.

If I were stopped and asked on the street to choose a CAPTCHA, image recognition reCAPTCHAs are by far my fav CAPTCHA. I consider it a success on my part whenever I’m confronted with these. Don’t get me wrong, these are annoying af, but it signals to me that they know little about me, something I go to great lengths, and forfeit a lot of convenience to achieve.

CAPTCHA me if you can.

Cooper Quintin · EFF

Standing at $28.7 billion dollars for the year 2025 (nearly triple their 2024 budget) and at least another $56.25 billion over the next three years, ICE’s budget would be the envy of many national militaries around the world. Indeed, this budget would put ICE as the 14th most well-funded military in the world, right between Ukraine and Israel.  

Downstream · Novara Media

Cory’s really gotten good at making this pitch. He’s always presented his case well, but this is a great gatling gun delivery.

FT

The MSS has been operating Salt Typhoon for several years. It allows China to access the unencrypted phone calls, texts and voicemails of almost every American, and in some cases enables access to email accounts.

Senator Mark Warner still seems to be the only person concerned with this.

CRITERION

And while we’re talking Kubrick …

Lisa Leone on collaborating with Stanley Kubrick on the pre-production for Eyes Wide Shut. Wonderful insights into how he works.

https://kubrick.life/

Quite a nice microsite dedicated to Stanley Kubrick

Amanpour and Company

Ken Klippenstein · Substack

Attorney General Pam Bondi is ordering the FBI to “compile a list of groups or entities engaging in acts that may constitute domestic terrorism,” according to a Justice Department memo published here exclusively.

Ken Klippenstein is sadly one of the only people reporting on NSPM-7.

Le Monde diplomatique

Big Tech is rewiring the American state; it’s not just a case of corporate capture but a transformation of sovereignty itself.

Personal portfolio

I’ve considered rebuilding it, but people are still discovering it. Not many had, I’d put quite a bit of effort into it, and thinking on it, I’m still quite happy with it.