Seattle friends! This event on May 17, with Shelley Fairweather-Vega at Folio: The Seattle Athenaeum should be really fun. Join us!

https://www.folioseattle.org/event-details/the-ai-con-emily-m-bender-in-conversation-with-shelley-fairweather-vega

It's less that atom/RSS is "dead", and more that its "done".

The protocol is finished. It works well. It's stable and unremarkable as opposed to trendy.

And to capitalists, that's "dead".

Nothing to hype, no wealth to extract.

Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB Gemini Nano AI model on your device

❌ No consent
❌ No opt-in
❌ No real opt-out for regular users

This isn’t a small experiment & it’s on billions of devices.

➡️ Read more: https://www.thatprivacyguy.com/blog/chrome-silent-nano-install/

😠 A tactic we've already seen with Gemini on Android. But at least you can disable it here, learn how: https://tuta.com/blog/how-to-disable-gemini-on-android

I'm fresh back from Japan, where I got a drizzly inside look at Toyota's Woven City. On first blush it has all the markings of a privacy nightmare (I counted eight cameras at one intersection!), but someday this future city could prove to be the ultimate maker space and startup goldmine.

Read all about it at @arstechnica

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2026/05/inside-toyotas-10b-private-utopia-big-ideas-few-people-cameras-everywhere/

The "Hello World" photo from #ArtemisII did not come alone. Here's an animation put together by fredk of multiple exposures (UMSF After Party https://discord.com/channels/1290524907624464394/1305654861496451182) showing a receding Earth in moonshine.

Crank up the brightness and behold lightning in Africa & South America, shifting aurorae at the poles... & satellite glints all over the place, most visible at 3 & 9 o'clock 🤯

I remember ppl suggesting using stuff like this to do SETI...
[EDIT: the "Clarke Exobelt" https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aaae66]