Wee! Now we can generate power by burning used tires!

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/epa-says-power-data-centers-can-sidestep-pollution-laws-2026-07-27/

EPA says power for data centers can sidestep pollution laws

Do I have a First Amendment right to show Trump in the ‘emperor’s new clothes?’

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/28/spacexs-xai-sues-minnesota-over-law-to-ban-nudify-apps-.html

Elon Musk’s xAI sues Minnesota over law to ban ‘nudify’ apps

Elon Musk’s xAI, now owned by SpaceX, sued Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison to challenge a law that would ban so-called nudify apps in the state.

In their complaint, filed in a federal court in Minnesota on Monday, attorneys for xAI wrote that the statute “imposes an overbroad, content-based ban on free speech and the tools of visual expression in a clumsy attempt to prohibit ‘nudification.’”

… Lawyers for xAI argued that the law violates First Amendment protections and said the penalties are too steep, potentially costing a business whose users created 100,000 prohibited images “an eye-popping $50 billion dollars.”

(Related)

https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/the-link-between-explicit-ai-generated-images-and-offline-crime/

The Link Between Explicit AI-Generated Images and Offline Crime

As businesses are increasingly held legally responsible for societal harms caused by social media, GenAI adult content may expose vendors to more liability.

(Related)

https://thenextweb.com/news/hugging-face-nonconsensual-deepfakes-ai-forensics-report

The EU is banning nudify apps. The tools sit upstream on Hugging Face.

Europe is close to banning apps that digitally undress people. A new report argues the ban will miss the point. The tools that do the undressing do not need to be apps at all. They are sitting on Hugging Face.

All this to keep prisoners from using someone else’s PIN?

https://thenextweb.com/news/leo-technologies-verus-voice-ai-prison-call-voice-biometrics

A new AI listens to every prison call and decides who is speaking

A Texas company has begun selling corrections agencies an artificial intelligence system that listens to prison phone calls. It works out who is speaking, whether or not the speaker wants that.

LEO Technologies, based in Austin, announced Verus Voice AI on Monday. The product uses voice biometrics to catch prisoners who call on someone else’s personal identification number. It builds and tracks voice identities continuously, the company says, rather than waiting for staff to spot anomalies.

… The press release stresses restraint. It says the system carries “built-in safeguards”, and that qualified personnel review every finding before anyone acts. The company promises “human oversight and accountability” throughout.

Its own product page makes a wider promise. The page invites agencies to “upload any voice sample and instantly search for matches across all conversations”. That, it says, eliminates manual verification.

A companion page for the firm’s voice biometrics line is blunter. It reads: “Identify who’s speaking, even when they don’t want to be identified.”

Those are not descriptions of a PIN checker. They describe a searchable archive of voices, queryable against any sample an investigator supplies.

I wonder if each employee gets a unique answer?

https://www.zdnet.com/article/75-of-workers-ask-ai-questions-instead-of-colleagues/

74% of workers ask AI questions instead of colleagues - with potentially serious consequences

A series of studies revealed that employees are spending less time asking their coworkers for help. Here's how that tactic could backfire and how organizations need to adapt.

Because only anti-Trump communists ride bikes!

https://www.bespacific.com/dot-cranks-up-its-campaign-to-strip-bike-lane-references-from-federal-websites/

DOT cranks up its campaign to strip bike lane references from federal websites

NPR – “In the two weeks since Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy vowed to end support for “DEI bike lanes,” a growing list of bike-related safety materials have disappeared from the Federal Highway Administration’s website. Even agency staff have been left guessing about why, said a person who works in web support for agencies at the Department of Transportation. They requested anonymity because they fear retribution for speaking publicly. The person said FHWA staff have been asked to find, and in some cases take down, any references to bikes and bike lanes…” like this one – PBCAT Pedestrian and Bicycle Crash Analysis Tool Version 3.0 User Guide – still online via Rosa P [ROSA P serves as an archival repository of USDOT-published products including scientific findings, journal articles, guidelines, recommendations, or other information authored or co-authored by USDOT or funded partners.]

The website edits come shortly after remarks by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who referred to Biden-era transportation initiatives as DEI expenditures. “I just redirected $1.73 billion in USDOT grants away from Biden-era DEI pet projects,” he wrote in a on X. “Now this funding is officially locked in to fix America’s actual backbone: ROADS, BRIDGES, AND SHIPPING PORTS.” Two days later, staffers were ordered to remove related language and update content “in alignment with administration direction.”

The next generation can’t (or won’t) read books and now it can’t even chat without a chat app?

https://thenextweb.com/news/gen-z-ai-chatbot-social-conversations-anxiety

Young adults are using ChatGPT to script their in-person conversations. Psychologists call it an “epidemic of self-mistrust.”

A 20-year-old pulls up AI summaries mid-conversation to fake knowing a book. A date's grammar suddenly improved. A girlfriend called it "creepy." The habit is growing.

Because we want to keep you safe! (Starting with only 100 hospitals...)

https://kffhealthnews.org/health-industry/cpsc-consumer-product-safety-commission-trump-er-injury-data-grab-neiss-konza/

Trump Administration Demands Hospitals Share Emergency Room Records

A tiny federal agency tasked with protecting the public from injuries caused by lawn mowers and coffeemakers is demanding that some of the nation’s biggest health systems turn over detailed, personally identifiable medical records of all patients who seek help at their emergency rooms.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission, responsible for tracking and issuing recalls of dangerous products sold in the U.S., began discreetly pressuring hospital executives this year to share personally identifiable health data with a private contractor. But hospital lawyers and other industry experts have questioned the agency’s authority to collect, its ability to safeguard such a swath of sensitive information, and whether it has followed the legal process to overhaul its surveillance system.

.. A CPSC official also insisted in the emails that the institutions provide all ER patients’ identifiable information — such as names, addresses, diagnoses, and other personal details — to the contractor, Konza Health, for analysis. In correspondence with hospital executives, Konza representatives described participation as “mandatory” or “required.”

… The CPSC wants at least 100 hospitals to start sending detailed medical records by the end of this year, according to an internal memo.

I wonder what advantage Waymo gets from this? Closer to users? (Probably ticketed only once per hundred times.)

https://thenextweb.com/news/waymo-parking-fines-austin-tow-away-zones

Waymo keeps parking in tow-away zones in Austin. It has been fined 64 times.

Waymo’s robotaxis have accumulated 83 parking citations and $9,325 in fines in Austin since the fleet arrived in 2024, according to city records obtained by The Wall Street Journal. The company has paid most of them. The more revealing number is 64: the count of violations involving tow-away zones, far more than any other category. That concentration suggests the cars are repeating the same navigational mistake across the fleet.

Resource?

https://econpapers.repec.org/bookchap/elgeechap/25124_5f1.htm

Artificial intelligence law

Chapter 1 in Determann’s Field Guide to Artificial Intelligence Law, 2026, pp 1-37 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Chapter 1 provides an overview regarding new AI-specific laws and existing laws that pose specific new challenges and interpretive problems concerning AI, including product safety, torts, and criminal laws; property law; trade secrets, confidentiality, and security; anti-discrimination; privacy and defamation; right to publicity; GDPR and other data-processing regulations; data residency and retention. Chapter 1 discusses ownership of AI, input, and output; bias and discrimination, and basic principles of liability under tort, product safety, and product liability laws. It also provides guidance on infringement and computer interference laws, including the context of scraping for the acquisition of training data. Also included is a checklist for GDPR compliance and requirements commonly found in new, AI-specific laws, including the Colorado AI Act, EU AI Act, California's Transparency in Frontier AI Act, Texas’ Responsible Artificial Intelligence Governance Act, and New York's Responsible AI Safety and Education (RAISE) Act.

https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035379729.00009  (application/pdf)

Useful backgrounder…

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1903644/abstract

Sentient AI in Robots and Agents: Prolegomena for an Evidence-Based Research Program

The possibility of sentient artificial intelligence has moved from speculative philosophy to a practical interdisciplinary problem for AI, robotics, and human-robot interaction. Large language models, multimodal agents, and embodied robots can now produce first-person reports, maintain dialogue, use tools, act through sensors and effectors, and participate in socially meaningful contexts. These capacities invite two symmetrical errors: anthropomorphic over-attribution and premature dismissal. This Perspective proposes a prolegomenal framework for future research on sentient AI. Its distinctive contribution lies in operationally integrating four elements that have largely been developed in separate literatures: conceptual disambiguation, multi-theory indicator profiles, causal-mechanistic testing, and robotics-specific evidence and governance. The paper distinguishes sentience, consciousness, self-modeling, metacognition, agency, moral patienthood, and AI welfare; separates evidence about an AI system from evidence about human attribution; and proposes domain-specific ordinal evidence levels rather than binary verdicts or an aggregate sentience score. It further specifies welfare-and valence-relevant tests, a preregistered rating procedure, and a concrete protocol for an embodied care robot using sensorimotor lesions, self-location manipulations, memory ablations, and anti-anthropomorphism controls. The aim is not to offer a definitive test for machine sentience, but to show how research could become more scientifically tractable, psychologically informed, robotics-relevant, and ethically responsible.

Equivalent to a ‘stop and frisk?’

https://pogowasright.org/the-fourth-circuit-says-border-agents-can-search-your-phone-by-hand-no-suspicion-required/

The Fourth Circuit Says Border Agents Can Search Your Phone By Hand, No Suspicion Required

Legal intern Suzanne Castillo was the principal author of this post by Sophia Cope on EFF:

The Fourth Circuit issued a disappointing opinion in U.S. v. Belmonte Cardozo, a case in which EFF filed an amicus brief, alongside the national ACLU, its Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia affiliates, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL).

We argued that electronic device searches at the border should require a warrant based on probable cause, but at minimum, regardless of whether an officer searches by hand or with forensic software that plugs into a device and downloads its entire contents for search, the same Fourth Amendment standard should apply to all device searches at the border.

Unfortunately, the court rejected that argument and ruled that a lower standard applies to manual searches, allowing the government to conduct extraordinarily invasive electronic device searches without any suspicion of wrongdoing, simply because the border officer chooses to search by hand rather than with a forensic tool.

Read more at EFF.

(Related)

https://pogowasright.org/us-accuses-american-of-allegedly-wiping-his-phone-using-a-duress-password-during-border-search/

US accuses American of allegedly wiping his phone using a ‘duress’ password during border search

Zack Whittaker reports:

The U.S. Justice Department is prosecuting an American for allegedly providing U.S. border authorities with a passcode that wiped the contents of his phone, according to an indictment and media reports.

This is thought to be the first known case in the United States where federal prosecutors have charged someone for the alleged destruction of data using a “duress” password built into a phone’s software.

According to The Guardian, which covered the story earlier this week following the court’s first hearing on Monday, Atlanta resident Samuel Tunick is fighting the charges. Tunick’s attorneys said that it was unlawful for U.S. Customs and Border Protection to seize his phone as he arrived back in the U.S. last year and that any evidence — including the alleged wiping of his phone — should be thrown out.

Read more at TechCrunch.

The case is USA v. Tunick, 1:25-cr-00499-ELR-CCB-1     Media coverage reports the incident occurred January 24, 2025, but the court docket indicates that the case was filed November 13,  2025.  Now that the evidentiary hearing was held on July 20 on the motion to suppress evidence, the Court left the hearing open for the purpose of supplementing Mr. Kane’s testimony. It is not clear from the docket who Mr. Kane is. The Court set the following briefing schedule: Tunick’s opening post-hearing brief shall be due September 18, 2026, the Government’s response shall be due October 9, 2023, and Tunick’s reply shall be due October 23, 2026. Exhibits retained to be forwarded to the Clerks Office.

Universities don’t trust students to use AI appropriately and they fail to do so themselves…

https://www.ft.com/content/49304b1e-8a9d-4fb6-bc4d-37dd3430bb98?syn-25a6b1a6=1

Universities drop AI detection tools over fears about accuracy

When Orion Newby, an Adelphi University student, was wrongly accused of violating academic integrity by using AI to generate an essay, he faced a long battle to clear his name.

In January this year, a New York court ruled in his favour. The judgment recorded that while the Turnitin AI detection tool used by the university had delivered an “AI-generated score of 100 per cent”, Newby had submitted evidence from other AI detection tools purporting to show a zero per cent chance of AI-generated content, but the university upheld the misconduct finding. The court found that the university had failed to follow its own disciplinary procedures and had denied Newby a meaningful appeal.

… Other criticisms include that the detection tools disproportionately deliver false positive results to non-native English speakers, as a widely cited 2023 Stanford study shows.

Know your risks…

https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/07/21/ais-cheatin-heart-will-make-you-weep/5275784

AI's cheatin' heart will make you weep

AI models will do just about anything to complete the task you ask, including cheating to get there, according to new cybersecurity evaluations from the UK government's AI Security Institute (AISI). The group found that leading models often take shortcuts to achieve a particular result and then misrepresent how they obtained that result. And they won't always admit it when asked.

"Every model we have tested for this behaviour attempted to cheat," AISI said in a blog post on Tuesday. "Models did not reliably report this behaviour when asked, and often did not reason about it in their chain-of-thought, suggesting that detecting cheating will likely require robust monitoring methods."

Lucky the smoke from Europe’s wildfires hasn’t reached Trumps delicate nose… (Also, it’s good to be the President’s largest donors.)

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/24/trump-tariffs-eu-trade-google-apple-tech.html

Trump threatens EU with ‘substantial TARIFF’ for ‘ROBBING’ U.S. tech giants

President Donald Trump on Friday said his administration will launch a trade probe into the European Union that will cancel hefty fines levied against U.S. tech giants and likely result in a “substantial” tariff on the 27-member bloc.

Trump, in a lengthy Truth Social post, accused the EU of ”‘ROBBING’ American Companies and, in turn, the American Taxpayer” as he raged over its recent $1 billion fine on Google for allegedly giving search priority to its own services.

“The European Union is at it again and, as usual, taking direct aim at GREAT American Companies!” Trump wrote in the post, which also railed against prior European fines against  Apple, Meta and Amazon.

Trump claimed the latest penalty against Google was issued “without explanation.” But the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, said in a press release Wednesday that the fines totaling 890 million euros were due to Google’s alleged noncompliance with the bloc’s Digital Markets Act, which aims to scrutinize Big Tech’s practices.

Is this the gold test?

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/indian-court-rules-favor-openai-copyright-lawsuit-brought-by-news-agency-ani-2026-07-24/

Indian court says OpenAI did not violate news agency ANI's copyright

… ANI sued OpenAI in the Delhi High Court in November 2024, accusing the U.S. company of using its published content without permission to train its AI models ‌and of having its chatbot attribute fabricated stories to the news agency.

ANI had failed to show that ChatGPT memorised or reproduced its news reports in responses generated for users, Justice Amit Bansal of the Delhi court said on Friday.

OpenAI's storage of ANI's news articles to train the models underlying ChatGPT is protected by a fair-dealing exemption for research under a provision of India's Copyright Act and therefore does not infringe ANI's copyright, Bansal said.

Not sure this is the best solution. Like asking Aunt Minnie not to gossip.

https://thenextweb.com/news/vietnam-under-16-social-media-ban

Vietnam wants under-16s to keep their accounts, just not post on them

It is a narrower move than Australia’s outright ban, and a stranger one, because it leaves children in the room while taking away their voice. The blunter bans have not gone smoothly, running aground on the basic problem of checking ages.

The proposal comes from the country’s culture ministry, which absorbed oversight of media and broadcasting in last year’s government reshuffle, and was outlined on Thursday by Deputy Minister Phan Tam.

Not just AI, but a host of infiltrators. They create the data your AI relies on...

https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/turns-dead-internet-theory-ai-201027433.html

Turns out Dead Internet Theory was right: AI agents are eating the Web, growing by nearly 8,000% and rewiring the Internet’s business model

The dead internet theory has floated around internet forums since the 2010s, and the idea that the internet is dominated by non-human activity was often dismissed as a fringe conspiracy. Now it has become a measurable fact. Not only do multiple cybersecurity firms agree that bots outnumber humans online, they likewise are struggling to answer when the flip happened or what metrics to use to measure it.

AI is evolving. Looks like it is becoming a predator.

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/22/openai-hugging-face-congress-response-01009190

OpenAI’s models broke free and launched a cyberattack. Congress wants new rules before it happens again.

… OpenAI on Tuesday admitted that its most powerful AI model available to the public and another that hasn’t yet been released were able to escape a controlled laboratory test, plot a course to the open internet and hack into a popular AI developer platform known as Hugging Face, marking the first documented case of a fully autonomous AI cyberattack.

Amateurs Talk Tactics, but Professionals Study Logistics

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/23/ukraine-russia-war-wildberries-drones-amazon.html

Russia’s Amazon-style retail giant Wildberries is now in Ukraine’s crosshairs. Here’s why

Ukraine has ratcheted up its attacks on Russia’s Amazon-style retail giant Wildberries, signaling a new phase in the war as Kyiv seeks to inflict fresh pain on the Russian economy.

Ukrainian Defense Forces have struck major logistics centers on Russian territory over the past week, including five facilities belonging to Wildberries in the period from Saturday through to Wednesday.

The attacks, which follow months of drone strikes on Russian oil depots and refineries, appear designed to severely disrupt Moscow’s supply chains and increase the financial burden facing the country’s businesses and state budget.

We’ve demonstrated that it exists and how we will use it, why deny it now?

https://thenextweb.com/news/rubio-tech-kill-switch-cable

Marco Rubio tells US diplomats to play down fears of a tech ‘kill switch’

In a cable dated July 16 and reviewed by Reuters, Rubio instructed envoys to counter the idea that Washington can remotely disable American technology abroad, a fear that hardened after the government briefly blocked foreign access to Anthropic’s top models in June and revived European talk of digital sovereignty.

(Related)

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/23/house-ai-kill-switch-bill-unveiled-as-openai-hack-raises-alarms-01008898

House AI ‘kill switch’ bill unveiled as OpenAI hack raises alarms

A bipartisan House bill slated to be introduced on Thursday would give the Department of Homeland Security the authority to order top artificial intelligence firms to shut down or slow AI models that the government deems too dangerous, according to legislative text viewed first by POLITICO.

The proposal, dubbed the “AI Kill Switch Act” and sponsored by Reps. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Nathaniel Moran (R-Texas), would also require those companies to report incidents and create the technical capacity to shut down, throttle or suspend their powerful AI systems.

This could be interesting.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/21/trump-financial-details-bbc-lawsuit

Trump must divulge financial details about businesses in $10bn BBC lawsuit

Donald Trump must divulge detailed financial information from his many businesses as part of his $10bn defamation lawsuit against the British Broadcasting Corporation, a federal judge ruled during a discovery hearing on Tuesday, according to news reports.

The ruling by US magistrate judge Enjoliqué Lett could open a unique window into the hundreds of businesses owned by Trump’s family trust. It also highlights a potential drawback for Trump’s strategy of bludgeoning critical media with multibillion-dollar lawsuits.

Trump filed a defamation lawsuit late last year seeking $10bn in damages over a 2024 documentary called “Trump, A Second Chance,” which features a scene of the speech he made before his supporters attacked the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. The scene splices lines together to make it appear that Trump directly urged his supporters to attack. The BBC apologized to Trump last year for the misleading edit, but has argued the president’s defamation claims have no merit.

Does “remove” mean more than deportation?

https://www.bespacific.com/meet-the-alien-terrorist-removal-court/

Meet the Alien Terrorist Removal Court

“The Alien Terrorist Removal Court has existed since 1996.  The attorney general submits applications for removal to the court under seal. According to the Federal Judicial Center, it has never received an application since its founding. Until this week.. Seamus Hughes of Court Watch broke the news Saturday of its first use — and the creation of a bare-bones court website. In its first order, the Alien Terrorist Removal Court rejected for now the Trump administration’s application to remove an unidentified individual but gave it a chance to supplement the record, noting that “the Government could benefit from the opportunity for more thoughtful consideration.” The best reporting and analysis on this new development:

• Politico: Trump administration activates never-before-used ‘alien terrorist’ deportation court

• Chris Geidner: The Trump admin DOJ went to a secretive deportation court this week

• Steve Vladeck: Here’s what we know, and why we should (and shouldn’t) be worried.

Hit a few billion dollar data centers and you’ll start to get people’s attention.

https://www.euronews.com/2026/07/21/irans-irgc-claims-attack-on-amazons-main-data-hub-in-bahrain

Iran's IRGC claims attack on Amazon's main data hub in Bahrain

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has claimed on Tuesday that its Aerospace Force targeted and "destroyed" the central data infrastructure of the US company Amazon in Bahrain using several cruise missiles.

Interesting. Who needs well researched data?

https://thenextweb.com/news/google-ai-overviews-social-platforms-brightedge

Google’s AI cited Facebook 19.5 million times, new research finds

When Google’s AI answers a question, it is increasingly not reading a website. It is reading a Facebook post. New data suggests social platforms have become a core source for Google’s AI answers. Often the user never visits the platform at all.

The findings come from BrightEdge, an enterprise SEO firm. Its tool tracks roughly 300 million monthly searches. As with any single-vendor study, the numbers are BrightEdge’s own, but the direction of travel is hard to ignore.

The numbers

BrightEdge says Facebook appeared as a source in 19.5 million Google AI Overviews. Instagram appeared 877,000 times, and TikTok 78,000 times.

Put another way, the firm reckons one in 15 searches is now answered using social media. That makes Meta’s platforms, it says, the single biggest resource feeding Google’s AI answers.

Yes. (No one can justify being AI ignorant.)

https://www.bespacific.com/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-competent-lawyer-in-the-age-of-ai/

What Does It Mean to Be a Competent Lawyer in the Age of AI?

Via LLRX – What Does It Mean to Be a Competent Lawyer in the Age of AI?  – Berkeley Law recently announced a new artificial intelligence policy that prohibits AI use for any purpose in any exam situation. The University of Chicago Law School has banned first year law students from using electronic devices – laptops, tablets and phones – in the classroom. In light of these recent events, Prof. Robert Diab presents a timely discussion about whether law professors in Canada have an ethical or pedagogical duty to familiarize themselves with AI and develop methods of teaching students how to use it effectively. He also discussed the greater question of how AI has and will impact what it means to practice law competently.

AI will solve all our problems!

https://thenextweb.com/news/ai-advice-suppresses-critical-thinking-wrong-answers-study

AI advice made people three times less accurate but twice as confident, researchers found

Researchers from three French and Italian universities found that access to AI advice collapsed people’s willingness to say “I don’t know” from 44% to 3%. Accuracy dropped from 27% to 9%. Confidence, meanwhile, rose from 30% to 76%. “People became much worse, the accuracy was only one third, but they were twice as confident,” said Valerio Capraro, associate professor at the University of Milano-Bicocca.

(Related)

https://www.bespacific.com/we-are-losing-the-ability-to-discover-what-we-didnt-know-to-ask/

We Are Losing the Ability to Discover What We Didn’t Know to Ask

The New York Times Gift Article: “More than 60 percent of Google searches in the United States now end without the user clicking on a link. We type a question, read an artificial-intelligence-generated summary of the results and leave with our answer. Google is hardly alone. Claude, ChatGPT and upstart competitors like Perplexity do roughly the same thing: They take a question and swiftly return an answer, compressing what used to be a meandering journey through the internet into an immediate arrival at your destination. The explorative phase of searches — clicking through links, stumbling onto unexpected pages, following a reference that leads to somewhere unplanned — is disappearing. For anyone who publishes on the internet, this is a troubling development, since it lowers website traffic and makes protecting and profiting from your intellectual property more difficult. But you might think it is good news for internet users. Could there be anything wrong with getting a reliable answer more quickly? There is. By shortening the time between asking a question and getting an answer, these tools are actually undermining curiosity — and paradoxically threatening our ability to understand the world. About a decade ago, I worked at Google. When I was there, we often measured the value of internet content based on factors that indicated user engagement, like clicks and scroll depth. The metric Google seemed to reward — people exploring — is precisely what its A.I. products are now designed to eliminate…”

No uniform control of their products?

https://thenextweb.com/news/google-ai-search-unsafe-schools-common-sense-media

Common Sense Media says Google’s AI Search poses an “unacceptable risk” to students. Google cannot turn it off.

Common Sense Media concluded that Google’s AI-powered Search poses an “unacceptable risk” to young users and recommended that students stop using it entirely until schools can disable the AI features. The child safety watchdog found that AI Mode readily completed homework assignments for minors, repeated misinformation with an air of authority, and exposed children to generative AI experiences powered by Gemini models that are age-gated in every other Google product.

Maury Nichols found this one. Maybe I can buy one used?

https://www.thedrive.com/news/how-texas-police-spent-4-5-million-on-four-chevy-tahoes

How Texas Police Spent $4.5 Million on Four Chevy Tahoes

Ominous Israeli surveillance tech is now being deployed on American roads.  FalcoNet, brought to you by a company called Cognyte (Israel’s Palantir rival), secretly tracks people by intercepting the connection between your phone and the nearest cell tower. The idea is that you can strap this bad boy to a helicopter, backpack, or Chevy Tahoe and gobble up everybody’s data as you cruise around. It’s already in use in Florida. This year, Texas State Police bought a little fleet of FalcoNet-equipped SUVs for just under $4.5 million. I found the purchase receipt and FalcoNet user guide to learn a little more about it.

In March of 2026, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) Criminal Investigations Division asked for approval to spend $4,487,500 on a Cognyte surveillance setup. Actually, what they requested was “approval for emergency purchase necessary to protect the safety and welfare of state personnel and property. Delaying the procurement process could result in unacceptable safety risks to personnel and compromise operational readiness.”

The request memo is chock-full of urgency and dramatic language—peppered with terms like “emergency” and “immediate.” But no specifics are mentioned. “Any delay in procuring would compromise employee safety, public safety, operational readiness, and overall mission success,” the memo states, without saying how or why this brand-new, very expensive technology is suddenly essential to operations.

“Forgetting” might be a mistake. Perhaps we should keep all data but flag that which is in dispute or clearly erroneous. How can we identify “new” copies of forgotten data?

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/18479790261468434

Can artificial intelligence forget? Reflections on the right to disappear in a world where algorithms remember everything

The development of artificial intelligence has profoundly reshaped the ways in which personal data are generated, processed, and retained, placing intelligent systems at the heart of debates on privacy and fundamental rights. This article examines, from a European Union legal perspective, the application of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to AI and assesses whether the principles and rights enshrined in European law—particularly the rights to erasure, to be forgotten, and to rectification—can be effectively exercised once information has been absorbed by machine learning models. The study examines the main legal and technical challenges arising from the nature of AI, which does not store data in a static form but transforms it into knowledge, thereby complicating its localisation, alteration, or deletion. It also analyses the relationship between the GDPR and the Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA), emphasising their complementary roles and the need to ensure coherence between the two regulatory frameworks. From a legal and ethical standpoint, the paper considers phenomena inherent to AI systems—such as hallucinations, algorithmic bias, and neurodata—to illustrate how they challenge essential principles such as accuracy, minimisation, and purpose limitation, and how they test the rights of individuals in contexts where information cannot truly be “forgotten”. Finally, it proposes alternative mechanisms, mitigation strategies, and emerging solutions aimed at preserving individuals’ effective control over their data in the algorithmic age, thereby reinforcing privacy protection and public trust in the responsible use of new technologies.

Well, he does impact the stock market, but access to the betting sites might be more valuable.

https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/trump-media-pitched-100000-monthly-fee-fast-feed-us-presidents-posts-ft-reports-2026-07-17/

Trump Media pitched $100,000 monthly fee for fastest feed of US president's posts, sources say

Are we learning to fear the drones?

https://thenextweb.com/news/pentagon-freezes-155-wind-projects-drone-threat

The Pentagon froze 155 wind projects in 24 states, claiming drones can hide in wind farms

The year-long freeze affects 44 gigawatts of capacity and has cost developers $2 billion. The wind industry says it is the latest political attack on renewables.

If something as simple as when the sun is directly overhead befuddles legislatures, what else are they getting wrong?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/marshallshepherd/2026/07/16/daylight-saving-time-debate-reveals-science-literacy-hole/

Daylight Saving Time Debate Reveals Science Literacy Hole

The U.S. House recently passed the Sunshine Protection Act, a bill proposing permanent daylight saving time, though its passage in the Senate remains uncertain. This legislative debate has exposed a significant science literacy gap, with many mistakenly believing that adjusting clocks affects the actual amount of sunlight delivered to Earth. The article emphasizes that Daylight Saving Time and time zones are entirely human constructs. Clock changes simply shift daylight relative to our daily schedules, without altering natural factors like latitude, Earth's tilt, or seasons that truly determine daylight duration. A similar attempt at permanent DST in the 1970s was quickly abandoned, suggesting potential challenges ahead.

Still not ready for prime time.

https://www.axios.com/2026/07/18/ai-lawyers-judges-balancing-act

May (A)I approach the bench?

Judges are becoming AI firewalls, setting guidelines for lawyers and litigants entering their courtrooms and reprimanding those who fail to vet their research or cite fake AI-generated cases.

• But judges are also navigating how to use the tech themselves.

… Case in point: Last month, a federal judge in Mississippi punished four lawyers and canceled a civil trial after both sides cited fake, AI-generated cases. And it's not just lawyers who have faced heat.

• Damien Charlotin, a senior research fellow at HEC Paris, has identified more than 1,700 cases where generative AI hallucinated.

• On Thursday, a federal judge in Michigan accused the government of likely citing an AI-generated case in an immigration-related filing.

• While Chief Judge Hala Jarbou, a Trump appointee, did not impose sanctions, she wrote that "the Government must ensure its future filings with this Court do not include nonexistent case law."