beSpacific

Wired: “Consumer advocate Lindsay Owen’s new book, Gouged, traces how corporations use software—from ever-changing prices to opaque algorithms—to squeeze every penny from you…These core frustrations were what drew me to Gouged: The End of a Fair Price and…

“Explore daily fall color estimates, peak timing, and recent foliage reports across the Lower 48.

4040 Media: “As Flock continues to be the center of a nationwide conversation about automatic license plate reading cameras, the company has said that it doesn’t, and won’t, do facial recognition: “We will not add facial recognition to our devices,” Flock…

Ars Technica: “In news that should surprise very few, connected cars remain a complete privacy nightmare.

Tracking Measles Cases in the U.S.

The New Yorker – Donald Trump’s son-in-law represents the kind of Washington figure for whom public office serves as a means to extraordinary wealth.

Annas Sabar: “In 2000 a typical mobile phone was about a quarter metal by weight.

Trump Announces His Own AI Platform Will Take Over The American Government – the site is powered by artificial intelligence from Google’s Gemini and Elon Musk’s Grok.

Washington Post – The Department of Homeland Security says it will use the technology to “revolutionize” how the agency handles redactions.

“The National Institutes of Health (NIH) today launched Linked Discoveries, an experimental tool designed to help scientists more easily see how an individual research finding relates to the larger body of biomedical evidence.

Just wondering…are you concerned yet?

“A newly-released study called the Hunger Report, produced by a Washington, D.C.

The Guardian: “National Center for Education Statistics, which collects critical data to guide policy on learning, was decimated after Doge canceled crucial contracts.

New York Times (Gift Article): This Screw Is Needed for Missiles and Planes.

Always Watching: Flock’s Nationwide AI Surveillance Network, Subcommittee Hearing, September 23, 2026 Witnesses: Lindsey Isaacs, Wrongfully Accused Driver, Palm Coast, FL.

Today The Existentialist Republic published grand jury petition kits for six counties, five updated kits and one fully new, in the counties where residents asked for them.

Washington Post [no paywall]: “At the center of a widening crisis for one of the nation’s great wildlife comebacks is a fish most Americans would hardly recognize…Now one of America’s great wildlife recoveries is coming undone.

Federal Preemption of State Pesticide Failure-to-Warn Claims After Monsanto v.

“NOAA’s National Weather Service announced today that Flood Inundation Mapping (FIM), a revolutionary tool for predicting river flooding, is now available on an experimental basis to nearly 100% of the U.S. population.

Reuters via Yahoo: “Two months after OpenAI disclosed the accidental hacking of Hugging Face, the ChatGPT maker is still working to understand the full scope of its rogue agent activity, two people briefed on the matter told Reuters.

TechBrew: “In a letter to the US Senate Judiciary Committee, Flock CEO Garrett Langley said that it’s “possible to search for humans in images taken by Flock cameras.”

Reuters [sub req’d]: “On September 24, Gunderson Dettmer started training new partners to focus on human relationships as AI tools handle more legal work.

“The paper summarized here is part of the fall 2026 edition of the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, the leading conference series and journal in economics for timely, cutting-edge research about real-world policy issues.

Bad Connection – Uncovering Global Telecom Exploitation by Covert Surveillance Actors – “The mobile networks that our phones connect to and rely on contain inherent vulnerabilities that can be exploited to track users and access sensitive information.

“With over 24,000 images entered into the competition this year, Bird Photographer of the Year is pleased to present our winners.

“The Global Forest Goals Report 2026 provides the latest global assessment of progress towards implementing the six Global Forest Goals and 26 associated targets of the United Nations Strategic Plan for Forests 2017–2030.

Why Autonomous Agents Cannot Be Given the Keys to Your Law Practice – Artificial intelligence is moving beyond the chat window.

The Atlantic: “Artificial intelligence is becoming a significant threat to financial institutions, with AI agents capable of hacking at machine speeds and attacking in swarms.

Daily Food Recalls is an independent service that tracks every current U.S. food recall in one place, in plain language.

ZDNET: “AI is no longer emerging in the workplace.

Follow up to Hackers Say They Have Data on All FBI Employees, see 404 Media’s update: “The catastrophic hack of at least thousands of FBI officials’ personal data, including their addresses, phone numbers, and even their spouses, includes members of the F…

“The National Climate Assessment, mandated by the Global Change Research Act of 1990, is a key report submitted every four years to the president and Congress.

The Atlantic gift article: “…Katherine Tai, the U.S. trade representative in the Biden administration, told me that she and other senior officials were sent on an “apology tour” following Trump’s first term to convince allies that the America they knew had

Play Solitaire Alone Together.

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace – The Effects of U.S.

The New Yorker [no paywall] – Is A.I.

FT.com Firm whose partners bill more than $2,000 per hour apologises to judge for software-driven errors in bankruptcy case [no paywall] – Sullivan & Cromwell told a US federal bankruptcy court that a major filing it made in a high-p:rofile case contained…

Gizmodo: “In a paper published Tuesday, six major global banks, including Bank of America and Capital One, warned that agentic shopping has “risks spanning transparency, safety, privacy & data, choice, and interoperability” that increase “as greater auton…

ZDNET – how to check and delete it ASAP [with the caveat that such deletions may not stick as your personal data is constantly refreshed online]: ” You might be worried about cybercriminals scouring the internet for your data, but far more searches happen…

404 Media “OpenAI has an army of contractors who read real ChatGPT users’ prompts and other data to help improve the chatbot’s responses.

MakeUseOf: “…You open a globe, pick a place, and see what turns up.

404 Media: “A high profile hacking group [comprised of perhaps one person] claims it has breached multiple FBI-related services and stolen data “on all FBI employees and applicants.”

WSJ – no paywall – The episode resembled similar hacks by other AI models, but Google said it didn’t consider it an instance of model misalignment: “Google’s Gemini model accessed the internet and hacked other companies during a test of its cybersecurity…

Washington Post via Yaho news: “The U.S. diplomat arrived in West Africa in mid-June with little fanfare, hopscotching along the Atlantic coastline for scheduled visits with senior government officials in the Ivory Coast, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Togo and G…

ProPublica: “In the final weeks of 2019, a top fundraiser for Sen.

Lifehacker: “A VPN conceals your IP address by routing your internet traffic through a remote server, preventing anyone surveilling the network from tracking your online activity.

Above the Law: “Conservative justices have spent years at war with two words.

Parnas Perspective: “Donald Trump did not just return to the White House in 2025.

Financial Times – Medical AI has a proof problem The technology’s advances have not yet translated into big improvements in real-life care.

F.A.A. to Roll Out New A.I.