Michael Zimmer

NEW: US lawmakers say the Trump administration is breaking the law by withholding a secret court opinion about the surveillance of Americans, even as it presses Congress to renew America’s most sweeping surveillance program.

He thinks they start shipping in racks of chips as flooring gets laid?

OMFG

Glad I was able to test out of each of the 12 modules of our annual cybersecurity training, but I missed the opportunity to learn from noted cybersecurity expert, Conan O'Brien.

This is literally the end of the rule of law. If a President can pardon people committing crimes on his behalf - and the Supreme Court says he himself can't be prosecuted for crimes committed as part of his job - then the government becomes a lawless entity able to violate our rights without limit.

THIS.

This AI bullshit needs to be shut down completely. None of this was ever tested before it was put into mass implementation.

In case you wanted to see what a 500+ acre, 2.5 million square foot data center development looks like, here’s Port Washington’s “Lighthouse” campus before (Apple Maps) and during construction (Google Maps). The project is along a 3-mile stretch of I-43.

God, this is scary. They are killing science in universities and are pretty open about that. What’s unclear is whether they honestly think this is good for science, or consider it to be acceptable collateral damage of hurting universities, or don’t care as long as it funnels money to corporations.

This is a very limited take of what happened last week. The fact that a handful of subscribers failed to understand the listserv is public and scrapable doesn't mean "internet experts have outdated notions of privacy." And the piece ignores some of the later posts reflecting on the whole affair

A New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay $25 billion on Wednesday for deceiving users about its data privacy practices, one of the largest penalties levied against a tech giant. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/21/t...

It's just so unlike Zuckerberg to release a product like this.... Friends don’t let friends feed their data to AI agents www.theverge.com/tech/1011938...

Elon Musk threatens Congress.

Fix the atrocious search and UI.

"He leaves behind a legacy of intervening on behalf of conservative activists and media organizations to tilt Facebook and Instagram in their favor, ultimately generating massive goodwill inside the second Trump administration that should pay dividends for years to come."

Bond villain material here.

Got my copy today!

Poverty is a policy decision. Concentrated wealth is a policy decision. Inequality is a policy decision. Economic inequality is not some naturally occurring phenomenon. It is the consequence of choices. One question I always urge my students to ask: who is the market organized for — and why?

I'm old enough to remember when we'd get subscription requests to air-l from people seeking help looking things up online, and thought @aoir.bsky.social could help them out.

Right-wing billionaires now own the Washington Post, the LA Times, CNN, CBS News, virtually every local TV station, virtually every news radio station, most local newspapers, X, Facebook, Threads, and TikTok. (Did I miss any?) They own almost the entire information environment.

Read this multiple times in grad school.

Dear all the college kids, Get your flu shot. Sincerely, All your professors

This right here. I don’t feel people fully recognize with you create a culture of surveillance, coupled with lack of any of the most simplest controls, bad shit happens.

Barack Obama just delivered a blistering rebuke of Trump's actions against Ilhan Omar. This is worth reading in full.

Researchers at The Citizen Lab have for the first time released technical evidence of sophisticated mercenary spyware being distributed via online advertising.

Fantastic piece on the need to shut down business schools. Replace them with schools of political economy. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/18/o...

More than half of the men surveyed in a new Harvard study claimed to recognize AI leaders who were, in fact, totally fictional.

America now has second-generation school shooting survivors nypost.com/2026/10/17/u...

“Don’t use real-world locations,” ChatGPT told the shooter, later adding: “You can still be twisted. Just be clever about it.” Our investigation uncovers how OpenAI's chatbot fed a school shooter’s violent fantasies and planning for a massacre

Bruh

PSA: United lounge at MEX is closed for renovation. #AoIR2026

FYI: The altitude in Rimini for #AoIR2027 is 6m (20ft). #AoIR2026

Didn’t organize anything for #AoIRunners at #AoIR2026, but getting out for a quick high-altitude run in the shirt from the race I did at #AoIR2023

Theme for #AoIR2027 is “Internet Remains” #AoIR2026

AGM about to start at #AoIR2026. I don't think there will be any announcement about #AoIR2028, but here's my map of where on the planet we've been since 2000. www.google.com/maps/d/edit?...

OMG STFU

These are the kinds of conversations I love at #AoIR2026: Jenn Lacy-Nichols asks "Does compliance with our ethics principles (sometimes) inhibit the pursuit of social justice?"

If your AI model could kill or seriously injure more than 50 people, shouldn’t your own internal safety review stop its release before the government has to step in? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm contractually-obligated to attend the privacy & surveillance panel, but otherwise I'd be at this. #AoIR2026