Pixel Envy

May 19, 2026 ⌥

Meta Secured Over $3 Billion in Tax Breaks in Louisiana to Build a Data Centre ⇥ sherwood.news

Jon Keegan, of Robinhood’s Sherwood News:

A Sherwood News analysis shows that the breaks afforded to Meta on just the sales tax of GPUs would come out to more than $3.3 billion — enough to build 33 new high schools, pay the salaries of all the state’s public school teachers for more than a year, or pay for more than seven years of the Louisiana State Police budget. (The secretary from the Parish committee that approved the financing plans declined to comment, and the chair of the committee didn’t respond to requests for comment.)

This is the very same project where Jonathan Weil, of the Wall Street Journal, found “aggressive accounting” that “strains credibility”. Neither of these advantages would be possible for a less-resourced competitor. Meta is a company so rich it benefits immensely without carrying nearly as much risk as the scale of this project would imply.

May 19, 2026 ⌥

Bill C–22 Can Be Corrected ⇥ thestar.com

Justin Ling, the Star:

Yet Bill C-22 doesn’t mandate backdoors nor force companies to introduce any. It explicitly states the government cannot compel companies to introduce “systemic vulnerability” into their services. And it doesn’t give cops or spies new authority to intercept Canadians’ communications; it simply creates a process enlisting companies to help out with doing so.

Ottawa is now scrambling to correct the record. Anandasangaree will reply to the Republicans, conveying “this legislation does not provide for indiscriminate access to devices or communications and does not require companies to weaken encryption and introduce so-called ‘backdoors,’” according to a spokesperson. (The U.S. and the U.K., they also noted, already have these powers; Signal hasn’t withdrawn from either country.)

So the bill is not quite the nightmare some have made it out to be. But there are still some big issues.

Whether Signal is crying wolf or simply believes the laws in those countries are strong enough to prevent mandated backdoors is a good question. In the U.K., for instance, Ofcom is not allowed to require a backdoor, but it is empowered to tell providers to weaken encryption for some without compromising the privacy of their platforms for all when “feasible technology” exists to do so. On the one hand, that technology probably cannot exist; on the other hand, Signal is banking on a privacy-friendly interpretation of that law if it is ever tested.

Apple, meanwhile, has not returned Advanced Data Protection to the U.K. despite the U.S. Director of National Intelligence’s claim that efforts to compromise its encryption have been withdrawn. This demand was made under a different law that, I suppose, Signal must not feel is immediately threatening.

Bill C–22 does, as Ling writes, provide an exemption for instances where compliance with interception demands would “require the provider to introduce a systemic vulnerability related to that service or prevent the provider from rectifying such a vulnerability”. This is the same language as appeared in the Strong Borders Act proposed last year, though C–22 has new powers requiring the retention of metadata. It seems to me that a systemic vulnerability — one that “creates a substantial risk that secure information could be accessed by a person who does not have any right or authority to do so”, according to this bill — might not be found in something like metadata retention, which is what apparently concerns Signal.

May 14, 2026 ⌥

Rich Guy Quote Journalism ⇥ stringinamaze.net

Peter Shamshiri:

The answer is that there’s an entire genre of media coverage best described as “rich guy has an opinion.” It’s surprisingly common, and once you notice it you’ll see it everywhere: entire news stories dedicated to the otherwise unremarkable opinion of a rich person, or news stories that fold the opinions of rich people into their otherwise neutral coverage. It’s taken for granted in many newsrooms that a person’s wealth imbues their opinions with newsworthiness.

Karl Bode has called this “CEO Said a Thing! journalism”, and it is all over the place. I think Shamshiri’s broader definition is useful, too, especially in lower-stakes situations.

This week, for example, the Calgary Herald published a whole entire article dedicated to the complaints of a local landlord about a new protected bike lane. She is quoted as saying “[t]here will be no parking whatsoever for any of the businesses that are already here” below a photograph of her standing in front of the large parking lot, which will remain unchanged following the bike lane upgrades. The only other person apparently interviewed for the article is the area’s councillor. This is just one wealthy person’s grievances treated as inherently newsworthy.

May 14, 2026 ⌥

Separate Lawsuits Claim OpenAI and Perplexity Are Sharing User Data With Third Parties for Targeted Advertising ⇥ techpolicy.press

Madeline Batt, Tech Policy Press:

The recent lawsuit Noel v. Perplexity brought the question of AI monetization onto a courthouse docket. Since voluntarily dismissed by the plaintiff, the details of the class action provided a window into how adtech in AI is likely to be challenged in the courts.

The lawsuit targeted generative AI company Perplexity, along with Meta and Google, alleging they disclosed transcripts of users’ conversations with chatbots for targeted advertising. […]

It is not clear to me why the anonymous plaintiff gave up on this case. Abandoning the suit does not necessarily mean its claims are unfounded.

Maggie Harrison Dupré, Futurism:

A new class action lawsuit accuses OpenAI of sharing data including user chat queries and personal identifying information like emails and user IDs with the tech giants — and targeted advertising behemoths — Meta and Google, without obtaining proper user consent.

Interestingly, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada recently concluded an investigation of OpenAI’s training on personal information and whether it can produce that information reliably. It seems to me like questions about third-party ad targeting were out of scope. This is notable, however:

OpenAI represented that ‘untraining’ or ‘reverse-training’ LLMs, so that they no longer use or generate specific personal information for which a deletion request has been submitted, is not currently feasible. OpenAI explained that this is because its models are trained through repeated adjustments of billions of weights (parameters) over successive runs of training datasets and do not contain or store copies of information that they ‘learned’ from.

I think we all knew this was the case, but it underscores the questionable effectiveness of robots.txt rules for website owners wishing to opt out of being a source for LLM training. It is not even clear OpenAI, for example, ensures data in its collection remains in compliance with opt-out requests when training new models.

May 13, 2026 ⌥

Signal Warns It Would Pull Out of Canada if Made to Comply With Bill C–22 ⇥ theglobeandmail.com

Marie Woolf, the Globe and Mail:

Secure messaging service Signal, which uses end-to-end encryption, is warning it would withdraw from Canada if asked to compromise its users’ privacy under Bill C-22, Ottawa’s proposed lawful access legislation.

[…]

The bill would require “core providers” — which would later be defined through regulations — to retain metadata for up to a year.

Are lawmakers capable of learning from their peers elsewhere? Do we have to do this kind of thing every year, country-by-country?

May 13, 2026 ⌥

We Are All Swimming in A.I. Murk ⇥ 404media.co

Jason Koebler, 404 Media:

To browse the internet today, to consume any sort of content at all, is to be bombarded with AI of all sorts. People think things that are fake are real, things that are real are fake. Much has been written about “AI psychosis,” the nonspecific, nonscientific diagnosis given to people who have lost themselves to AI. Less has been said about the cognitive load of what other people’s AI use is doing to the rest of us, and the insidious nature of having to navigate an internet and a world where lazy AI has infiltrated everything. Our brains are now performing untold numbers of calculations per day: Is this AI? Do I care if it’s AI? Why does this sound or look or read so weird? Does this person just write like this? Is this a person at all?

I imagine there are some people who do not much care if the news article they are reading or the music they are listening to was generated by A.I. — with or without their knowledge. I think it feels cheap and shameful. There are interesting uses for generating material based on known patterns and structures but we are stuck with a bunch of spam, and it makes everything feel inherently suspicious. Perhaps that is in some way a good thing; we should be more careful, in general. I think Koebler captures the feeling of being on constant high alert, and living in an increasingly artificial and scam-filled world.

May 12, 2026 ⌥

Aaron Vegh and Ben McCarthy Launch Indigo ⇥ aaron.vegh.ca

Maybe you are in the market for a great Bluesky client. Maybe you are in the market for a great Mastodon client. Maybe you are in the market for a combination great Bluesky and Mastodon client.

Aaron Vegh:

Today, Ben McCarthy and I are launching Indigo. It’s a full-featured client for both Mastodon and Bluesky, available on iPhone, iPad and macOS. Go get it on the App Store!

I have been using Indigo for a while as my primary iOS client for Bluesky and Mastodon, and I think it is terrific. I would happily use it as a standalone app for either. Mixing the two services in one app, though, is better than I had imagined. Everything feels right: posts are colour-coded, you can reply with either account, and there are clever ways of handling existing cross-posting.

Ben McCarthy:

Indigo will automatically detect when a post is duplicated across both networks. If the content is very similar and they both appear within a few minutes as each other, Indigo will merge them so you’re not seeing them twice. You can toggle between each version as well as perform actions like quoting or replying to both posts simultaneously. We’ve done a lot to make the experience of using two different services at once feel seamless.

This kind of app might not work for everyone. I understand the arguments for treating these worlds entirely differently. For me, though, this is a little bit like how I prefer reading email newsletters in my RSS app: my brain is not differentiating between articles on a website and articles sent by email when I just want to read all the new articles. Likewise, I am rarely thinking I need to check Bluesky or I need to check Mastodon; I am usually just in the mood to scroll through or post on social media. Indigo scratches that itch.

There is a caveat. Though Indigo supports multiple accounts of each type, only one of each can be active at a time. This makes sense and, I expect, would have no impact for most people. For those of us with accounts for different purposes, however, it does mean it is slightly more cumbersome than the way account switching typically works in a single-service client. This is, for me, a reasonable compromise.

Open standards are pretty great, hey?

May 11, 2026 ⌥

The New York Times Published an A.I.-Fabricated Quote Attributed to Pierre Poilievre ⇥ bsky.app

On 14 April, Matina Stevis-Gridneff, the New York Times’ Canada bureau chief, quoted Pierre Poilievre, leader of the Conservative Party, calling the spate of floor crossers “turncoats”. He apparently said this — and more — in a speech in March. This was printed on page A7 and sat for weeks on the web until 1 May when the Times corrected the paragraph by using actual quotes from Poilievre’s speech in April, not March.

Those earlier quotes? According to the editor’s note appended to the bottom, it was “an A.I.-generated summary of his views about Canadian politics that A.I. rendered as a quotation”.

The Walrus’ Michelle Cyca, on Bluesky [sic]:

personally I think it’s a very big deal that the Canada bureau chief for the @nytimes.com — certainly one of the highest-paid journalists in the country — asked an unspecified “AI tool” what Poilievre said & published its AI-hallucinated quotes in her reporting.

Cyca is not kidding about the pay. The Times is currently hiring a Western Canada correspondent with a base pay of between $158,000 and $235,000 Canadian; the bureau chief is surely a pay grade above that. For comparison, the Globe and Mail is hiring an Ottawa bureau chief with a maximum posted salary of $146,000.

How much more would the Times need to pay a reporter to verify the quotations they use in an article? Could the Times afford an editor to double-check these things? I was at an event this evening about A.I. and art, and one of the panelists — a university professor — said that he assumes that A.I. is now omnipresent and acts accordingly. Why is one of the most prestigious English-language newspapers not doing the same for its reporters, regardless of its policies?

May 11, 2026 ⌥

In a Privacy Improvement, Venmo Transactions Will Be Visible to Friends by Default ⇥ theverge.com

Jay Peters, the Verge:

Venmo is starting to test a big redesign of its app, and as part of the changes, it will be implementing a major new privacy measure: the onboarding process for new users will set their posts to only be viewable by their friends by default instead of being public.

I remain too dumb to understand why you would want financial transactions to be visible to anyone but yourself.

May 10, 2026 ⌥

Ed Zitron Is Not an A.I. Skeptic ⇥ theargumentmag.com

Kelsey Piper, the Argument:

At some point, pretending that how people use AI is a complete mystery is just lying to your audience. And at some point, [Ed] Zitron’s “layers of skepticism” attitude — where he is skeptical that AI is a thing at all, that it has any uses, that those uses provide any economic value, that the revenue numbers are real, that adoption is a fad, that training costs are a meaningful R&D expense, that the capital build-out is going to happen at all, that the market could sustain the capital build-out if it happened — leaves one buried in too many impossibility assertions to actually sort them by plausibility.

It is radical skepticism, ultimately arriving at “perhaps nothing we see is real,” rather than principled skepticism about the relatively weakest links in the companies’ case for investment.

My main problem with this piece is that it acknowledge Zitron’s own framing as an A.I. skeptic when he is not one. A skeptic is someone who asks good-faith questions and uses the answers to build an evidence-based view of something. They can separate reasoning from a narrative, while understanding the role it plays. For example, I do not regularly read the Argument because I think it a pretty mediocre website with an Atlantic-lite viewpoint, but that does not mean this article is itself poor or making an unfair case. I think Piper’s frustration with Zitron is entirely earned. However, it is a mistake to think of any of this in terms of skepticism when Zitron’s understanding is, especially now, much closer to conspiracy thinking.

Each of Zitron’s articles is an impenetrable wall of text often reaching into the tens of thousands of words. This volume of material feels substantial — it can be substantial — to the extent Zitron explicitly markets his newsletter on the basis of its word count. Weird.¹ He explores basically two major themes: A.I.’s economic case, and its usefulness. Zitron is zealously opposed to the possibility of either in real terms; while he will occasionally gesture at people or businesses doing something with A.I., his default position is more-or-less that it has little use.

There are real criticisms of what generative A.I. does: problems with its output, like its repetition of stereotypes or bugs in code. There are criticisms for what it does to our world, like its energy and water consumption, and what it does to society, like how easy it is to generate junk articles and videos. The societal pushback is also notable, and its unethical foundations continue to be a ripe source of pain. But, as Piper writes in the second footnote, Zitron’s articles are “a superficiality of analysis” despite the voluminous output. Like a lot of conspiracy thinking, they are rooted in fact but have a stricter adherence to supporting an existing narrative.

While I am writing about adequate skepticism, I am unsure of the apparent attention span crisis. We seem to be constantly circulating multi-thousand-word essays, barely-edited podcast episodes, and hours-long YouTube videos. People spend real time with media — a long time. Sometimes, a generous runtime is what it takes to make an argument; often, though, I think it becomes a filter for separating the committed from the not. And, then again, maybe extra-long takes the bubble I am in. ↥︎

May 8, 2026 ⌥

When OpenAI.com Was Just Some Guy Named Glenn ⇥ bsky.app

Slow news week? Sure.

Here is a fun Bluesky thread from Annie Rauwerda — who runs Depths of Wikipedia — with different domains before they belonged to notable brands. Like, before Claude.com was an Anthropic thing, it used to belong to a Boston-area computer consultant. Stuff like that.

May 7, 2026 ⌥

Canadian Alleges Legal Intimidation by U.S. Homeland Security Over Social Media Posts ⇥ cbc.ca

Chris Iorfida, CBC News:

A Canadian is fighting back in U.S. federal court over what he says is an attempt by the Department of Homeland Security, through Google, to seek “vast swaths of information” about his personal life following social media posts critical of Donald Trump’s administration.

[…]

On Jan. 30, the Canadian X user disparaged ICE in a post that received nearly 96,000 views, according to this week’s complaint.

[…]

The complaint at hand, however, states that John Doe was not seeking entry to the U.S. and has not done so since 2015.

The only details we have of this case are as alleged in the complaint (PDF) and the partially redacted summons (PDF), and they are incomplete. The tweet in question is not quoted, the account is not named, and, though there are enough clues that I tried to track it down, X’s search feature sucks, so I have no idea what it said. Perhaps there is another reason the Department of Homeland Security is trying to obtain details of the Gmail account; perhaps, too, the government was not aware it was targeting a Canadian. (Though, if it were targeting a U.S. resident for their speech, is that any better? Probably not!)

One thing that remains unclear is how the government obtained this email address. Iorfida writes of a previous case:

In the first Trump administration, CBP issued a summons to Twitter in 2017 requesting information regarding the account of a user on Twitter, which the company objected to.

It would be unsurprising if X was entirely compliant with the government’s request.

What is shocking to me is that the U.S. government is apparently going after someone whose X posts, according to the complaint, “have received tens of thousands of views or more; collectively, his posts have received well over 100,000 views”, and this single tweet might represent around half that total. I do not intend to be mean, but those are not the numbers of a notable X account. Officials in the most powerful country in the world are apparently going after some random Canadian for an unmemorable and basically unpopular tweet.

May 6, 2026 ⌥

Reddit Joins Other Social Media Platforms in Worsening Its Website and Pushing Visitors to Apps ⇥ arstechnica.com

Nate Anderson, Ars Technica:

The block seemed curious, given that Reddit began as a website, and websites generally want traffic. Few are in the practice of turning traffic away.

But some services, including X and Instagram, aggressively push users toward apps—or at least toward being logged in to them.

I reached out to the company to ask what was going on. According to a spokesperson, “We recently started running a test for a small subset of frequent logged-out mobile users that prompts them to download the app after visiting the site. These users are already familiar with Reddit and we’ve seen that the experience is much better for them in the app. The app offers a more personalized experience and users can more easily find communities that match their interests.”

Like other major social media platforms, this turns Reddit into a walled garden. Presumably, this is in part of the company’s aggressive strategy to license users’ posts for A.I. training, plus encouraging user growth. It sucks that the open web is getting torn apart because commercial websites are incentivized to direct people to apps where large-scale scraping is a bigger challenge. This whole thing used to feel so quaint.

May 5, 2026 ⌥

U.K. Age Verification on iOS 26.4 Appears to Be Passed to Websites, Not Just Apps ⇥ 404media.co

Samantha Cole, 404 Media:

Aylo, the parent company of Pornhub and other major porn sites, announced today that in the UK, iPhone and iPad users will be able to access its sites again, ending an over three month ban that Aylo initially enacted because of the region’s age verification law.

As of Tuesday, following the iOS 26.4 rollout in the UK, users on the new operating system can visit Pornhub and Aylo’s other sites from their iPhones.

Frustratingly, there is no explanation as to how Aylo’s websites are getting information from this iOS 26.4 API, the documentation for which is only for native apps. I may have missed something obvious, but the only mention I could find of this capability is in a February AppleInsider article. Also I could not find a way to trigger this verification step, even after changing my iPhone’s region, so I cannot test whether it is being passed through an HTTP header — which I presume it is — or another method.

May 4, 2026 ⌥

Lawful-Access Bill Could Threaten Encryption, Deter Investment, Chamber of Commerce Warns ⇥ theglobeandmail.com

Marie Woolf, the Globe and Mail:

In a letter to Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree and Justice Minister Sean Fraser, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce says that, as currently drafted, Bill C-22 “presents considerable risks to Canadian businesses, investment and the integrity of data systems.”

[…]

But the letter expresses concern that, as currently worded, the bill could be used to “require companies to create a back door, which would place encrypted systems at risk.” It says Canada should embrace strong encryption to catalyze growth of the Canadian tech sector.

Under the previous parliamentary session, the Consumer Privacy Protection Act was halted after 136 committee meetings. The current Canadian government is still arguing for updates to the Privacy Act, even as it pushes this hostile bill, but it has not resumed efforts to pass the CPPA.

May 4, 2026 ⌥

‘Knowledge Fight’ Is Over ⇥ patreon.com

Dan Friesen, writing on the “Knowledge Fight” Patreon page:

As discussed in today’s podcast episode, Dan and Jordan have decided that they had reached what they felt was the end of the show.

Sometimes, periodical media is created with an elaborate plan or story arc. Often, though, there is no predetermined structure and, especially in the case of reactive or commentary media, the next entry feels almost inevitable. Until it stops. Then we get to feel what our world is like without it and, if it leaves a void, it is a sign it was valued. The end of “Knowledge Fight” leaves a big void.

I will miss this show deeply. Friesen has a particular knack for assessing the world of Alex Jones and other conspiracy broadcasters as what they are: performers. Horrible and dangerous people, to be sure, but acting primarily in service of a performance. Holmes, his co-host, was a good foil for this show in his pure reaction to the inherent horror in this media. If everything goes to plan, a recording of an upcoming live show will be out later this month, and then it is done. What a run.

May 2, 2026 ⌥

The Proxy Battle Over A.I. Policy Is Brewing ⇥ wired.com

Lydia Moynihan, New York Post:

“You have this huge ecosystem pushing AI doomerism with zero regard for the consequences — the main one being that America will fall behind in the global AI race,” Nathan Leamer, executive director of Build American AI, told me. “And they genuinely don’t seem bothered by it.”

And according to a report released this week from the Bull Moose Project, doomers have been spending a fortune.

A tight network of donors, with former Facebook executive Dustin Moskovitz’s Coefficient Giving at the center, has already spent $5.9 billion and has $37.8 billion more publicly pledged, according to the report.

They have given out more than $611 million in donations to candidates (99.8% of whom are Democrats), dark money groups and so-called AI safety organizations such as Future of Life Institute, the report adds.

It is the Post, so you expect a degree of bad faith, but this is deceptive even for them.

The Bull Moose Project is one of several organizations sharing an address and financial connections with the Conservative Partnership Institute, which is overseen by the president’s former chief of staff, and to which the president gave $1 million. The Bull Moose Project’s website promotes a “plan to rejuvenate America” and, in the “American Revitalization” section, illustrates this with a lovely painting of a person launching a canoe beside a float plane. This is maybe only funny to me, but I had to track down that image — hotlinked from Pinterest — and it is a painting by Ross Buckland, who was born in Calgary and now lives in Ontario. I am pretty I recognize the mountain peaks as part of the Canadian Rockies.

Anyhow, its report largely concerns the political spending of Anthropic, CEO Dario Amodei, and various other executives, board members, and associated parties. It is so all-consuming it begins to look like a red string board, and is similarly difficult to follow. But it sounds ominous. There is a page dedicated to “the China connection”, but it is pretty weak.

Also, you will note that, instead of citing academics or subject matter experts, Moynihan favourably quotes the executive director of Build America [sic] AI. But Moynihan does not note the group’s funding sources nor explain anything more about it.

Emily Wilkins, CNBC:

The [Leading the Future] PAC, which has said it would support both Democratic and Republican candidates, is also connected to advocacy group Build American AI, which launched a $10 million campaign to push a uniform national AI policy.

Contributors to Leading the Future include private equity firm Andreessen Horowitz, Open AI co-founder Greg Brockman, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, SV Angel Founder Ron Conway and AI software company Perplexity.

Laura J. Nelson, Wall Street Journal:

While Congress hasn’t passed a comprehensive law for the fast-growing technology, some states have begun discussing or passing regulations rooted in concern about the need for more AI safeguards.

They include policies championed by nonprofit groups tied to the effective-altruism movement, a broad social and moral philosophy that has become divisive in Silicon Valley owing in part to its focus on potential worst-case scenarios in AI development. Pro-AI forces call them “doomers.”

An effort to punch back against Leading the Future went public Tuesday: an organization called Public First that plans to back candidates from both parties through two super PACs. The group, which is organized under section 501(c)(4) of the tax code and isn’t required to disclose its donors, is aiming to raise at least $50 million.

Anthropic gave $20 million to Public First.

Taylor Lorenz, Wired:

Marketing agencies are pitching influencers deals such as $5,000 per TikTok video to amplify Build American AI’s messaging about how China’s technological rise should be seen as a threat. The goal, according to a staffer from SM4, the influencer marketing agency running the campaign on behalf of Build American AI, is to subtly shift public debate by framing China’s AI advancement as a serious risk to the safety and well-being of Americans.

Lorenz learned about this because, she says, SM4 pitched her on the campaign. Leading the Future, which runs Build American AI, raised $125 million last year and it is spending it on this.

These influencers are being used to help settle an argument, among some of the world’s richest and least-likeable people, over whether OpenAI (its position backed by Build American AI and Bull Moose Project) or Anthropic (through Public First) should get to write A.I. policy and regulations. Apparently, “neither” is not an option. To its credit, that report from the Bull Moose Project correctly notes the ongoing “proxy war over A.I. policy”, though it stops short of admitting the part it plays.

What both sides appear to agree on is that they must treat A.I. from China as a threat. Those of us elsewhere, however, likely find both threatening, albeit for different reasons.

April 30, 2026 ⌥

Dispute Over Fate of Kenyan Workers Who Were Exposed to Intimate Meta Ray-Bans Recordings ⇥ bbc.com

Chris Vallance, BBC News:

In February, workers at the company, Sama, told two Swedish newspapers they had witnessed glasses users going to the toilet, and having sex.

Less than two months later, Meta ended its contract with Sama, which Sama said would result in 1,108 workers being made redundant.

Meta says it’s because Sama did not meet its standards, a criticism Sama rejects. A Kenyan workers’ organisation alleges Meta’s decision was caused by the staff speaking out.

It is abhorrent yet common to treat essential contractors and employees as disposable. Over a thousand people will be out of a job yet still be haunted by what they have been exposed to.