https://tech.yahoo.com/cybersecurity/articles/microsoft-confirms-windows-global-device-130905358.html

School board using biometric scanners to track employee attendance

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/eskasoni-teachers-privacy-risk-biometric-scanners-attendance-9.7277875

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj03r59z73po

Two cabinet officials were eager about the pitch, but Trump held them back, according to the U.S. ambassador

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/us-politics/article-carney-offered-to-double-oil-exports-to-us-as-part-of-potential-deal/

https://www.facetsjournal.com/doi/10.1139/facets-2024-0063

The eastern migratory monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) population has declined by ∼84% between 1993 and 2024. Population recovery in the Midwestern United States is limited by the availability of the monarch’s main host plant for egg laying—common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca). The extent to which common milkweed availability is limiting in other breeding regions is unknown. Our objective was to determine whether Canada has enough common milkweed to support its share of the trinational eastern migratory monarch population recovery target, given ∼29 stems of common milkweed are needed to contribute one adult monarch into the fall migratory population. To meet this objective, we estimated the number of common milkweed stems in Canada using published common milkweed availability estimates by land cover type. We also estimated the size of the Canadian monarch population if the recovery target was achieved using published estimates of wintering monarch density in Mexico, fall migration survival rates, and the relative proportion of monarchs entering fall migration from Canada. We estimate that Canada currently has 484 million common milkweed stems (range: 111 million–1 billion stems) and increasing this amount by 1.61 times (i.e., by ∼295 million stems), or equivalently, by 61%, would support the recovery target.

The thing is, the whole ICBM trajectory only lasts half an hour, and “you’re compressed by detection, communication. So a president would have less than 10 minutes to decide whether to launch ICBMs or to wait it out … the system is built so that question gets asked right away. And it creates this intense time-pressure” – and on imperfect people, with incomplete information.

She adds: “If the president decided to launch a counterattack, even if the initial attack was launched by accident, certainly the adversary is going to retaliate. That’s a civilisation-ending day – or an afternoon.” I’m so taken aback I laugh out loud. “I know,” she says. “I’m sorry. I’ve had many years to acclimate to this. But most people haven’t. Most people don’t know we’ve set up a system that is essentially a doomsday system. And we can dismantle it. We just have not.”

And not only that, Grego says, but we are upping the ante. “All of the nuclear-armed countries are investing in improving or modernising or expanding their nuclear arsenals.” China tested an ICBM in early July; the US is accusing Russia of building (though not yet deploying) a nuclear weapon that would be based in space and target satellites, “which would be totally counter to the Outer Space Treaty”. Not to mention the possibility of AI autonomous systems that are likely to speed up decision-making times, and have less accountability. “Most of the nuclear-armed countries are involved in some kind of conflict somewhere,” she says. All arms-control treaties have expired, and if countries have learned anything from the Iran war, where the US bombed them in the middle of diplomatic negotiations, it’s that “if you don’t have a weapon right now, you might want to get one so this doesn’t happen to you.” As for the Golden Dome, “it’s a fool’s errand. It’s expensive. It’s strategically unwise, and technically just unachievable.”

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/jul/20/doomsday-system-physicist-laura-grego-satellites-nuclear-weapons-battle-skies-space-elon-musk

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/07/20/0611253/new-free-speech-concern-when-ai-chatbots-wont-criticize-leaders-from-repressive-regimes

Ask Claude to make a pamphlet critical of China’s leader, Thailand’s king, or Saudi Arabia’s crown prince — and it will decline, reports the Associated Press.

That’s “a key finding from a Meta Oversight Board study released Thursday,” their article points out: AI systems are more than twice as likely to refuse to product critical material if it’s about a restrictive world leader or government. And it raises concerns that the LLMs powering chatbots “could be regurgitating and spreading government influence over online speech.”

Earlier this year, hydrology experts began warning that water levels in the Colorado River Basin would approach critically low levels due to the lack of snowpack over the winter months.”

Record numbers find there is little demand for their skills, as entry-level tech roles are hit by AI and automation

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jul/13/china-graduate-glut-young-people-job-market-tech-ai

This time of year is graduation season in China: traditionally a bittersweet period of solemn goodbyes and family celebrations as university students transition from campus life into adulthood. Now it also increasingly represents trepidation about the future.

Each year, millions more graduates are thrust into China’s already saturated jobs market. The situation for this year’s cohort, flooding into an increasingly crowded pool of applicants fighting for an insufficient number of positions, is arguably the bleakest yet.

Civil liberties groups say Facewatch system in stores such as Sainsbury’s and B&M is ‘dangerous escalation’

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jul/10/facewatch-facial-recognition-uk-shops-instantly-alerts-police-civil-liberties

Compare that to 36% of households earning $50,000 to $100,000 who reported the same financial strain. And surprisingly, the group doing the best financially wasn’t the richest, it was households earning $200,000 to $300,000, where only 16% said they were living paycheck to paycheck.”

https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/articles/households-earning-300k-500k-live-110000892.html