Child Predators Turn to Open-Source AI to Make Unlimited Illegal Images

Open-source AI tools are fueling a rise in explicit child sexual images, and current laws are ill-equipped to stop it

A senator tried to ban gambling on prediction markets—now she's a Kalshi lobbyist

Sen. Blanche Lincoln wrote law that let US ban sports-event contracts. She lobbies for the other side now.

Mac Users Reclaim 12GB+ of Storage With Apple Intelligence Removal Tool

A new open-source tool is making waves in the Mac community by helping users reclaim valuable storage space taken up by Apple's AI models. Called "RemoveMacAI," the command line tool disables Apple Intelligence on macOS 27, removes its downloaded models, and prevents them from being downloaded again. In macOS 27, Apple removed the toggle to disable Apple Intelligence wholesale, and simply disabling individual features doesn't remove the models from your Mac's drive.

Revealed: Britain's contracts with Palantir hit £1bn

Newly surfaced disclosures reveal the government has spent or agreed to spend at least £992m with Peter Thiel’s controversial AI company – as pressure mounts on Andy Burnham to block them. Max Colbert reports

'We’re watching you’: MP Clive Lewis reveals Tom Watson has warned him over criticising Palantir

In a letter to his former Labour colleague, the peer, who joined Peter Thiel’s AI company this month, writes: ‘You have made the case against the company more or less continuously’. By Carole Cadwalladr

‘Doom Loop’: OpenAI and Microsoft Admits LLMs Are Destroying the Web and Built on Theft

"Millions of people around the world will soon consider large models ‘hoovering up’ all their work to be an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions."

Cory Doctorow: AI’s big beasts aren’t really scared of their products. They’re scared of their competition

The US giants would love to stop battling each other and be protected from China – and they might have hit on just the narrative to make that possible, writes our tech columnist

How AI Chatbots Are 'Deskilling' Human Empathy

Sherry Turkle's latest book, Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines, comes out on September 29.

Pluralistic: The Claude Delusion (21 Sep 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

One of the less remarked-upon aspects of becoming an atheist is how it changes the way you see a sunset. If you believe in an almighty, omnipresent God, then sunsets are one of God's intentional creations, which means that the beautiful colors refracting through the darkling sky were chosen to produce that effect.

Solar Power Is Getting So Cheap That It’s Almost Unbelievable

The cost of solar panels has dropped to just a few cents per watt, thanks to a massive supply of photovoltaics flooding the market.

The far right has put RNLI volunteers in the crosshairs

Online disinformation about channel rescues is no longer just poisonous rhetoric, it’s putting real people at risk

Serenity and the Myth of "Getting Out the Signal" - Reactor

We want to believe that knowledge will change the world for the better, but it's not always that simple.

Commentary: Cory Doctorow: Technopolitics

It's one thing to be anti-AI in the sense of believing that AI-generated slop, disinformation and deepfakes are bad; that AI companies that hope to con your boss into firing you and replacing you with AI that can't do your job are bad; that betting the economy on AI is bad; that betting the human-habitable planet Earth on AI is bad; that running roughshod over local environmental rules and seizing …Read More

Field Notes: The Architecture of Rationalization - Aaron Ross Powell

Marginalia on the internet turning bad, platform extraction, and existential restlessness.

And Then the Networks Started Talking | Jason G. Butterfield | Offprint

Gander, Eurosky, and interoperability is no longer theoretical

Don't be nice

Sometimes, it's more important to be good than it is to be nice.

Members of right-leaning parties prefer leaders with ‘dark triad’ personality traits

The ‘dark triad’ is made up of narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy.

How Three Brothers Built an AI Slop Empire by Buying Legitimate News Sites and Turning Them Into Zombie Content Farms That They Say Get 50 Million Page Views per Month

Brown Brothers Media is a media empire raking in millions of clicks with AI, fake writers, and plagiarism.

AI Doomsday Panic Is Completely Out Of Control

The press obsession with software-powered doomsday is a misdirection overshadowing a much deadlier reality: our public interest regulators no longer function.

Canada And The EU Come Together

The world decouples from America