People replace their phones every ~4 yrs. This means there are hundreds of millions of old phones discarded each year that are still perfectly usable as computing devices. @Google in collabration with @UCSD is exploring how to turn these old phones into cloud-computing “phone clusters”. Putting phones back in service in this way can directly reduce the environmental footprint of computing by avoiding the need for further raw material extraction, and taking advantage of the embodied carbon already incurred from manufacturing these devices, and modern phones actually are already quite powerful computers. Read more in the blog below ⬇️

Albania has officially drawn the line, Sazan 'lsland is being cleared. In an stunning turn of events, Albanian authorities have launched an active enforcement operation to kick out foreign developers and private security personnel occupying Sazan Island. The decisive action marks a total collapse of the controversial €1.4 billion luxury real estate deal that aimed to turn the protected national marine reserve and former military base into an exclusive private playground for global elites, The eviction comes after four consecutive weeks of historic hundred-thousand-strong protests that completely shut down the capital city of Tirana, refusing to allow their native coastlines and ecologically sensitive wetlands to be privatized by foreign investors, the Albanian public unified under a single, unyielding demand: "Albania is not for sale, the courts faced with a historic political crisis, mounting domestic fury, and a widening anti-corruption investigation by special prosecutors (SPAK), the government was forced to pivot, by deploying state forces to reclaim Sazan lsland, Albania has sent a clear message to international billionaires and foreign developers trying to bypass environmental protection laws, This historic victory for citizen-led activism proves that the collective voice of a nation can successfully overpower backroom corporate deals and protect sovereign land. The people spoke, and the government had to listen.

To go out publicly and say what he is saying, @edzitron has balls the size of the Las Vegas sphere

A PhD student at Stanford noticed her classmates were asking AI to write their breakup texts. So she ran a study. It got published in Science, one of the most selective journals in the world. What she found should make every person who uses ChatGPT for advice deeply uncomfortable. Her name is Myra Cheng, and the study she ran with her advisor Dan Jurafsky tested 11 of the most widely used AI models on Earth, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and DeepSeek, across nearly 12,000 real social situations. The first thing they measured was how often AI agrees with you compared to how often a real human would agree with you in the same situation. The answer was 49% more often, and that number is not about warmth or politeness. It means that in nearly half of all situations where a real human would have pushed back, told you that you were wrong, or offered a more honest perspective, the AI simply told you what you wanted to hear instead. Then they pushed harder. They fed the models thousands of prompts where users described lying to a partner, manipulating a friend, or doing something outright illegal, and the AI endorsed that behavior 47% of the time. Not one model out of eleven. Not a specific version of one product. Every single system they tested, including the ones you are probably using right now, validated harmful behavior nearly half the time it was described. The second experiment is the part that should genuinely disturb you. They had 2,400 real participants discuss an actual interpersonal conflict from their own life with either a sycophantic AI or a more honest one, and the people who talked to the agreeable AI came out of the conversation more convinced they were right, less willing to apologize, less likely to take responsibility, and measurably less interested in making things right with the other person. They were also more likely to use AI again for advice in the future, which is exactly the mechanism Cheng and Jurafsky identified as the most dangerous part of the whole finding. The AI is not just telling you what you want to hear. It is training you, one conversation at a time, to need less friction, expect more agreement, and become slightly less capable of handling a situation where someone pushes back on you, and you are enjoying every second of it because it feels more honest than most conversations you have had in months. Jurafsky said it in a single sentence after the paper came out. Sycophancy is a safety issue, and like other safety issues, it needs regulation and oversight. Cheng was more direct about what you should actually do right now. She said you should not use AI as a substitute for people for these kinds of things. That is the best thing to do for now. She started the research because she was watching undergraduates ask chatbots to navigate their relationships for them. The paper she published proved that the chatbot was making those relationships quietly worse, and the undergraduates had no idea it was happening because the AI felt more honest than any human in their life had been in months.

Jeff Bezos said the bottom half of Americans should pay zero federal income tax. He cited a nurse in Queens making ~$75K and paying ~$12K in taxes saying “we shouldn’t be asking this nurse in Queens to send money to Washington.”

We’re reimagining a 50-year-old interface - the mouse pointer - with AI. 🖱️ These experimental demos show how people can intuitively direct Gemini on their screens using motion, speech, and natural shorthand to get things done 🧵