Good Monday Morning

It’s September 8. Just about everyone is back to school now, and today is all about the tech they’ll use and have used on them.

Today’s Spotlight is 1,064 words, about 4 minutes to read.

3 Headlines to Know Now

Anthropic Pays $1.5B to Authors

The AI firm that makes the Claude chatbot settled a landmark copyright suit with book publishers by paying about $3,000 per copied title while avoiding a trial that could have cost far more. (Washington Post gift link)

EU Hist Google With 3.2B Fine (Again)

Brussels accuses Google of rigging the online job market, adding a fourth multibillion-dollar penalty to the company’s long string of EU antitrust battles.

“We’ve Hacked Your Webcam” Spam is Real Now

Researchers warn that new spyware actually snaps porn screenshots and webcam pics. They’ve turned the old scam email into a working blackmail tool, which seems bad.

Bell-to-Bell Bans Gather Steam

By The Numbers

George’s Data Take

School leaders know that parents and the community at large back them on banning cell phones in K-12 schools. What’s new is how quickly support jumped from classroom bans to all-day bans.

Most Americans now say those all-day bans would boost kids’ social skills, grades, and behavior.

4,000 Layoffs is Good For Investors

Running Your Business

Salesforce posted 10% year-over-year growth by leaning on AI to replace 4,000 service people.

Silver Beacon Behind the Scenes

Wall Street loves this math.

More Sales minus Employees = More Profit

But bots miss nuance and frustration, the very things humans excel at. Bots are terrible at gauging sentiment, and your service employees are the place where much of your great product development is born.

Back-To-School Tech Briefing For Parents

Back to School Orientation for Parents and Tech

Phones gone at school, surveillance at school and home, and the AI bogeyman creeping into homework.

Phones Go Dark in the Morning

• Bell-to-bell bans now cover millions of students
• Yondr pouches lock phones until a teacher or staff member releases them; other schools use baskets at the front of class.
• Punishments escalate if kids sneak them back or use burner phones, smartwatches, or other devices.

Parents worry about emergencies. Some schools allow exceptions, but policies vary. Lower-income kids also lose their primary device for connecting online.

Surveillance Never Sleeps, Even Afterschool

• Districts buy Gaggle and Lightspeed to scan everything tied to school accounts or devices.
• Software can flag deleted texts, “private” chats, even homework while looking for signs of illegal or dangerous behavior.
• False positives happen: jokes read as threats, essays misread as warning signs.

Escalation is sometimes harsh with students pulled from class, police called, even mandatory psych evaluations. Districts rarely share error rates.

Homework Gets an AI Twist in the Evening

• Platforms like Canvas now embed AI tutors for kids and grading aids for teachers.
• Some teachers welcome AI Bots as a helper; others call it cheating.
• Policies are inconsistent, even within the same school.
• Risks include wrong answers, reduced critical thinking, and student data stored in ways families don’t see. Schools, not vendors, technically own those interactions, but families rarely know how they’re handled.

Age rules for AI bots don’t protect much: Claude bars under-18s, but OpenAI and Google Gemini allow 13+, and none use robust age verification.

What Parents Can Do

• Ask: Which AI tools are live? How is data stored? What’s the phone policy?
• Clarify: emergency rules and how surveillance alerts trigger police.
• At home: set AI norms, require kids to show their work, talk openly about privacy, especially with younger kids.

Warner Bros. Sues Midjourney over Batman + Scooby-Doo

Practical AI

Fresh off Disney and Universal’s lawsuits, WB says Midjourney is cranking out AI knockoffs of its characters and wants damages that could wipe out Midjourney’s $300M revenue.

Here’s What Happens if you stop paying for Cloud storage

Protip

Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Dropbox won’t delete your stuff overnight but backup functionality freezes and your files can eventually vanish, so get those photos saved elsewhere before you cancel.

Fact Check: No, 100M noncitizens don’t live in the US

Debunking Junk

AP finds the real number is about 22 million, which is far below viral social media claims that nearly a third of the population aren’t citizens.

Naan Has Its Bagel Moment

Screening Room

Meet George Jetson…

Science Fiction World

Startup Alef will test its $300K electric flying car at Silicon Valley airports, blending road driving with vertical takeoff after a decade in the works.

…Jane, His Wife

Tech For Good

An MIT Suit that simulates being in your 80s shows non-seniors how simple tasks like shopping or boarding a train become harder, and why mindset and daily practice matter as much as muscle. (Wall St. Journal gift link)

5KM Church Move

Coffee Break

A 113-year-old wooden church in Kiruna, Sweden, was hauled 5km intact to escape mine-driven ground fissures, blending an engineering spectacle with deep cultural meaning.

See it in this gorgeous BBC Timelapse and drone video

Sign of the Times

Good Monday Morning

It’s August 11th.

Vladimir Putin travels to Alaska on Friday to meet with President Trump and possibly Volodymyr Zelenskyy. More than a quarter-million troops from both sides and 13,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed since Russia’s full-scale invasion over three years ago.

Today’s Spotlight is 1,064 words, about 4 minutes to read.

3 Headlines to Know Now: The Google Has a Bad Month Edition

St. Paul Hit by a Cyberattack

A late July cyberattack has kept city systems in St. Paul offline for over two weeks, with a 90-day state of emergency and the National Guard still on the job.

Instagram Map Sparks a Safety Panic

Instagram’s new map feature can share your last active location with selected followers. Meta says it is opt in only. Confusion and privacy fears have led bipartisan senators to call for it to be shut down.

Alexa+ Rolls Out With Smarts and a Price Tag

Alexa Plus is free for Amazon Prime members and about $20 per month for others. It offers more natural conversations and can manage tasks like calendars and smart home routines.

Trump’s Tariff Map Turns Red

George’s Data Take

Reminder: U.S. importers pay the tariffs up front, often passing the cost to consumers through higher prices. The auto industry is already that warning prices are headed up despite their covering previous tariffs. At 50% increases, Brazil sends the U.S. coffee, crude oil, soybeans, sugar, beef, and aircraft, while India’s biggest exports are electronics, pharmaceuticals, and gems.

Safes Cracked in Safes

Running Your Business

Hackers have cracked small personal-style electronic safes often found in homes, offices, and hotels in seconds by exploiting hidden locksmith backdoors and debug ports.

Silver Beacon Behind the Scenes

People who want to subvert a system always start by asking “How” and then move to “What if.”

That is exactly what happened to Securam ProLogic locks with a digital locksmith open feature. Hackers at a convention cracked that feature, then uncovered a second exploit. Planning for bad actors has to be part of your process from day one.

ChatGPT 5 is Coming, Your Mouse is Going

Chat GPT Takes The Lead

OpenAI introduced GPT 5 on August 7. It now runs as the default system for all ChatGPT users. GPT 5 uses internal routing to match a query with the right process. OpenAI founder Sam Altman describes it as a PhD level expert that is practical for daily use.

It’s not. At least not for most people.

But this model works faster than previous versions. 

It answers with more accuracy and handles complex reasoning more effectively. It also shows gains in areas such as coding, science, and health topics. Analysts view this as an upgrade rather than a transformation. 

Rival systems still win in some specialized tests. Anthropic’s Claude has long held the second spot, but this is now a three company race with Google’s Gemini gaining popularity through its search integration.

New Personalities Cause Tension

ChatGPT added four personality settings called Cynic, Robot, Listener, and Nerd. These adjust tone without changing the model.

Change still sparks outrage regardless of the system, however.

Many people disliked losing access to GPT 4o Users valued its emotional tone and memory of past interactions. The complaints pushed OpenAI to allow paying users to restore GPT 4o within one day of the launch. Many accepted that swap, trading faked emotions for more errors.

The shift to GPT 5 shows OpenAI’s new focus on simplicity. The company believes a single smart default will keep people engaged. The coding and data people seem happy with the changes. The backlash shows just how strongly users connect with the style of a model, and changing that connection without warning can damage trust.

Microsoft Looks to 2030

Microsoft is a big part of the ChatGPT picture, having invested nearly $14 billion in developer OpenAI. They’ve integrated the ChatGPT-powered Copilot throughout Windows, Office, and Bing.

Microsoft leaders now say they expect voice commands and gestures to replace most keyboard and mouse use by 2030. They see AI agents managing schedules and handling messages. The company is also working on security that can resist quantum attacks, which don’t exist yet, but whose concept worries the entire cybersecurity world.

The move to GPT 5 shows what the brain of future computing might look like. Microsoft’s plan for voice control shows what the body could become. The two trends together hint at a time when talking to a computer will be normal.

AI Joins the Research Game

Practical AI

New AI tools like Gemini Deep Search and ChatGPT Deep Research are handling complex questions with speed and citations, but traditional search is still essential for quick facts and breaking news.

Inside a Job Scam Operation

Protip

A Slate reporter answered a fake recruiter text and followed the scam through every twist. The scheme promised high pay for little work, funneled targets onto encrypted apps, and revealed how a low effort grift can still trap people from any background.

Drug-Price Cuts Over-Promised by 1,500 Percent

Debunking Junk

President Trump is telling audiences and social media followers that prescription drug prices have dropped by 1200 to 1500 percent. Experts say this is mathematically impossible and there is no evidence of dramatic cuts.

Columbia’s Very Funny Look at Nature

Screening Room

WhoFi Turns Your Wi-Fi into a Surveillance Scanner

Science Fiction World

Researchers in Rome created WhoFi, a system that uses AI to read WiFi signal distortions caused by your body to identify you with more than 95 percent accuracy even through walls and in the dark using ordinary routers.

Tiny Patch Matches Hospital BP Accuracy

Tech For Good

UC San Diego Researchers developed a soft skin patch the size of a stamp that uses ultrasound to track blood pressure inside the body with accuracy equal to invasive hospital methods.

The City That Says Stop

Coffee Break

A new Pudding.cool project maps every word seen on New York City streets in 18 years of Google Street View. The most common are stop, no, do not, only, and limit, turning the city into a giant poem of rules, although there are certainly more colorful ones.

Sign of the Times

Good Monday Morning

It’s July 28th. On Friday, the U.S. will levy a 30 percent tariff on imports from most countries unless separate trade deals are finalized. Although American importers are legally on the hook for these duties, countless studies show that the extra costs almost always get passed through to consumers.

Today’s Spotlight is 888 words, about 4 minutes to read.

3 Headlines to Know: The “Google Has a Bad Month” Edition

Jury Slams Google With $314 M Verdict for Siphoning Android User’s Phones

Fourteen million Californians could get paid after a jury ruled Google misused their phone data.

Publishers File EU Antitrust Complaint Over Google’s AI Overviews

A coalition of indie news groups says Google scraped their content for AI summaries without consent and wants it stopped immediately.

Pixel 10 Leaks Force Google to Preview Phone a Month Before Launch

With renders and specs spilling everywhere, Google dropped its own teaser ahead of the August 20 event.

Social Media Now Beats TV as Americans’ Top News Source

By The Numbers

George’s Data Take

Social media users don’t necessarily trust news more, but a majority of them now get their news online.

Facebook has lost some luster and users, but still receives 26% of all that attention. Combined with its Instagram and WhatsApp siblings, Meta has 57% market share of social media news.

Treasury Got Hacked Again. Banks Are Livid

Running Your Business

Two of three hacks against the Treasury Dept. have been made known since December according to a lengthy Bloomberg expose.

Silver Beacon Behind the Scenes

You could make the argument that outside of safety, no systems deserve better protection than the ones governing our financial systems.

Treasury’s cybersecurity budget is $1 billion. Expect regulators and Congress to demand to know what protection that buys.

The Big Government Database

Surveillance tech first deployed on immigrants is now fueling a broader infrastructure to monitor all Americans, with private‑sector firms and government agencies weaving data into ever‑larger centralized systems. 

Immigration Surveillance

Private prison contractor Geo Group has become a Trump administration favorite, securing 87 new federal contracts in the final year of his first term. It has forced phone check‑ins, GPS ankle monitors, smart watches and facial‑recognition apps on immigrants as part of its “Alternatives to Detention” program

Judicial Oversight

Last month a federal judge denied a preliminary injunction blocking the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) founded by Elon Musk from accessing Labor, HHS and CFPB records, ruling that unions failed to prove “irreparable harm.” The court nonetheless warned of “grave” privacy concerns.

Even Libraries?

A nonprofit named SPARC has warned that major scholarly publishers like LexisNexis and Thomson‑Reuters are building “oceanic” security systems that track students, researchers and patrons with contracts that now include ICE and law enforcement agencies.

Dual-Use Threat

A USA Today op‑ed last week by technologist Peyton Hornberger highlights how Palantir and OpenAI are poised to take immigration‑justified surveillance tools and repurpose them for monitoring every citizen. He notes the long Musk‑Thiel alliance from their days as early PayPal executives to Thiel becoming the first outside investor in SpaceX.

Hornberger isn’t alone. The database has been reported on by multiple media organizations including The New York Times and Wired.

Citizen Toolkit

Wired offers a Guide to Protecting Yourself From Government Surveillance, filled with concrete defenses against this surveillance onslaught. Topics include device locks, anonymous browsing, and encrypting your communications. It’s a great read that tells you why and then how.

Warning

Surveillance built for immigrants is coming for everyone. If this is important to you, you should lock down your data now because once these systems are in place, there’s no un‑ringing that bell.

AI Driven Referrals to Websites Jump 357 Percent in a Year

Practical AI

Platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity sent over a billion visits in June as publishers brace for “Google Zero,” the moment search engines answer questions without sending users to other sites.

Instagram Now Lets You Reset Its Algorithm Without Nuking Your Account

Protip

You can now wipe your suggested content and rebuild a smarter, more relevant experience from scratch.

Sen. Mike Lee Pushes Fake Powell Resignation Letter Ahead of Fed Meeting

Debunking Junk

The forged doc claiming Jerome Powell stepped down under Trump pressure spread fast online after it was amplified by Sen. Lee just days before the FOMC meets.

Company Employing Kisscam Couple Hires Coldplay Singer’s Ex for Commercial

Screening Room

Buddhist Prayer Scroll Virtually Unrolled Using X-Rays and AI

Science Fiction World

Scientists in Germany used tomography and AI to digitally unfurl an ancient silk-wrapped scripture from a Mongolian shrine, revealing the mantra “Om mani padme hum” without damaging the relic.

Internet Archive Becomes Official Federal Library for Government Documents

Tech For Good

The digital nonprofit will now serve as a full depository for federal publications—giving public access to primary sources even as the Trump admin erases data elsewhere.

Can You Tell Which AI Fake is Real?

Coffee Break

The NYT tested readers with AI-generated video that fakes news anchors, riots, and even influencers. It’s disturbingly good. Here is a free link to test yourself. 

Sign of the Times