Sunday, August 2, 2026

Today's news and jokes

The wait is over. Meet the #DEFCON34 badge! It’s the creation of hardware superstar Bunnie Huang, and it features his open-source, fully inspectable #baochip. What will you make with yours? www.wired.com/story/defcon... #defcon #badgelife

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— DEF CON (@defcon.bsky.social) July 31, 2026 at 10:04 AM


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Some of the AI companies still have a little shame (AI roundup)

UPDATE: After the publication of this piece, Google sent 404 Media a statement saying it was “rolling back this feature in Google Earth while we work on implementing stronger guardrails.” www.404media.co/google-earth...

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— 404 Media (@404media.co) July 31, 2026 at 11:21 AM

NEW: after our coverage of this company's little scheme to use printed books to train AI, it calls it a "test of the market" and walked the entire thing back: www.404media.co/ai-company-t...

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— Sam Cole (@samleecole.bsky.social) July 31, 2026 at 7:05 AM

AYFKM “Meta will be able to draw upon Newsmax's significant current reporting as well as archived content to support AI queries across Meta's apps and devices.” ir.newsmax.com/news/news-de...

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— Bill Grueskin (@bgrueskin.bsky.social) July 28, 2026 at 7:35 PM

This is some incredible in-the-room reporting from @elitan.bsky.social and Maureen Farrell on how Meta got its vast, six-square-mile data center cooking in Louisiana www.nytimes.com/2026/07/27/t...

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— Kashmir Hill (@kashhill.bsky.social) July 27, 2026 at 7:59 AM
("The upshot was a deal that was nearly ironclad for Meta because everyone else took on most of the potential downside. Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, also gave his company an escape hatch to get out of it years before its partners.")

Wild to create an AI tool that will so obviously be used to create disinfo and then to put the responsibility on a user to investigate — using more Google tools of course — whether the content was made with your AI tool!

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— Brandy Zadrozny (@brandyzadrozny.bsky.social) July 31, 2026 at 9:38 AM

NEW: A large trove of Claude-generated documents have been exposed to the web and indexed by Google. We reviewed what appear to be real medical records, the full names and phone numbers of school-aged children, and company documents marked for internal use only. futurism.com/artificial-i...

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— Maggie Harrison Dupré (@mharrisondupre.bsky.social) July 27, 2026 at 8:30 AM

ANTHROPIC: Our son loves humanity and for the low price of trillions and trillions of dollars will usher in an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity! OPENAI: Our horrible oafish son is hacking web sites without our permission. ANTHROPIC: (eyes narrowing) Our son is also evil

— ceej (@ceej.online) July 31, 2026 at 6:33 AM

Anthropic not wanting to be left behind by OpenAI, I see... No doubt someone in their marketing department was crying into their coffee that OpenAI got there first...

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— Graham Cluley (@grahamcluley.com) July 31, 2026 at 4:54 AM

Incredibly frustrating to see the way big orgs try to vacillate between 'AI is a tool, the human is responsible when it does harm' and 'no, the AI is responsible' based almost entirely on what it would cost them to own it. Humans are only a moral crumple zone (a la Elish) when they're not C suite.

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— Rich Harang (@rich.harang.org) July 26, 2026 at 6:12 AM

"We can just unplug the machine." That may not always work. Here are some scenarios in which it's not trivial to stop an agentic "loss of control" scenario, like the recent one where OpenAI's model escaped its sandbox and hacked multiple other companies' servers. 1/

— John Wiseman (@lemonodor.bsky.social) July 31, 2026 at 4:29 PM

lol www.404media.co/substackers-...

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— Jason Koebler (@jasonkoebler.bsky.social) July 28, 2026 at 8:35 AM

Avatar Aang is out TONIGHT, 12 AM PST / 3 AM EST! Being an artist on this new film has genuinely meant so much to me! Thank you everyone for supporting my art all these years and helping a kid’s dreams come true!! 🫶

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— Kat Tsai (@chuwenjie.bsky.social) July 24, 2026 at 8:40 AM

Excuse me Kat, do you happen to know to what extent A*I was used in the art/design process of the movie? It seems the Avatar team listed ChatGPT at the recent Comic Con panel as a creative source, and now there's a lot of confusion

— j (@alphaoblivion7.bsky.social) July 25, 2026 at 6:19 PM

Absolutely no AI whatsoever in the art / design process!

— Kat Tsai (@chuwenjie.bsky.social) July 25, 2026 at 6:22 PM

What's the context around this thing? I assume it's a weird joke? old.reddit.com/r/ATLA/comme...

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— Nobody Interesting (@reprehensibleworm.com) July 25, 2026 at 11:38 PM

I have no clue why it was on that slide or who put it there, and every member of the crew I worked with is 100% against AI. Every aspect of the animation is handcrafted by real artists and I hope that people don’t use this slide as a reason to detract from how much love and labor went into the film.

— Kat Tsai (@chuwenjie.bsky.social) July 26, 2026 at 1:27 AM

Update on this situation from our incredible PD Jake who is more qualified to speak on this than I. This is the last time I will be posting about this- thanks everyone for supporting our artists.

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— Kat Tsai (@chuwenjie.bsky.social) July 27, 2026 at 9:59 AM
("comes at an unfortunate time for [him], who is getting married this weekend, two sources confirmed. [He] is engaged to [the] chief of staff for Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei")

"TikTok is just AI slop, teenagers dancing, and political misinformation" SKILL ISSUE. MY TikTok feed is 100% the guy structuring an elephant puppet around a toddler carrier and using it to invade Italy via Hannibal Barca's 218BC route through the Alps. vm.tiktok.com/ZN8JcuTJd/

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— Sophie E. Hill (@sophieehill.bsky.social) July 27, 2026 at 6:37 AM

The audiobook for "The King of Attolia" is great all-ages fun

Fun book, well-performed by Steve West. 

Roughly, what if Columbo was playing the Game of Thrones, and had a ninja's skillset* (not even a regular ninja, a ninja seemingly blessed by the god of ninjas). (The third in a series of 7 by Megan Whalen Turner, but the first I've read.) 

Here's the Amazon link, although I enjoyed it in Libby.

*Now that I think about it, we see in the series that Columbo's an adept climber with great dart skills and knowledgeable about arcane poisons
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Saturday, August 1, 2026

Kate Beaton posted a wonderful comic about a summer job (and The Lord of the Rings)

At her Patreon.


And speaking of The Lord of the Rings (there's more in the thread):

If you’re a Gondorian soldier your experience with hobbits is a tiny guy shows up with a wizard and is immediately taken in the Steward’s counsel. He saves Faramir when the Steward goes mad. A second tiny guy arrives with the Rohirrim and kills the Witch King. The first one then goes on campaign …

— Vituperative Erb (@vituperativeerb.bsky.social) August 1, 2026 at 9:44 AM

…where he slays a troll. A giant eagle then brings two more tiny guys, who as far as you can tell personally defeated the Dark Lord. All four on on nickname-basis with the long-prophesied king who arrived around the same time as the first one

— Vituperative Erb (@vituperativeerb.bsky.social) August 1, 2026 at 9:46 AM



I’m having just done a rereading: (1) he shows up with Gandalf (2) they know he’s from way up North, so he’s like insanely well-traveled (3) the Westron in the Shire has dropped what was essentially a tu/usted distinction so he is speaking to Denethor the way like Prince Imrahil does

— Vituperative Erb (@vituperativeerb.bsky.social) August 1, 2026 at 12:01 PM
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Marvel Legends Scorpion with bendy tail up for preorder

An Amazon exclusive:


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Masters of the Universe Dream Date Skeletor in stock

Fabric purple suit, cane, and cat.
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Today's news and jokes

@lamaterialnews

Ghost Town Consultants is an unusual private company that has cleared dozens of homeless encampments in Venice over the last few years — using persistence, cash payments, and a team that includes ex-gang members. Clients all over Venice love them. The people they move do not. Read our full investigation from Hayes Davenport at the link in bio.

♬ original sound - L.A. Material


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Official miniatures based on Tom Bloom's Magnagothica: Maleghast TTRPG

Lots more images here, and just scroll down for links to the various free downloadable files (some are here, some are in the discord, some are here).


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