2026-03-18 17:03:25
John Rush has been scanning his receipts for 25 years. He did something with the collection this year.
Everyone needs a rewarding hobby. I’ve been scanning all of my receipts since 2001. I never typed in a single price – just kept the images. I figured someday the technology to read them would catch up, and the data would be interesting.
This year I tested it. Two AI coding agents, 11,345 receipts. I started with eggs. If you can track one item across 25 years of garbled thermal prints, OCR failures, and folder typos, you can track anything.
This made me think about those science fiction stories with people who freeze themselves hoping to wake in an era when cures to their terminal disease become available. It’s the sales receipt data version. Twenty-five years is a long time to collect data.
[Thanks, Charlotte]
2026-03-18 00:51:10
Researchers at GovAI and Brookings estimated vulnerability to job displacement due to AI. For the Washington Post, Kevin Schaul and Shira Ovide charted the estimates on two dimensions: exposure and adaptability.
Estimating vulnerability is difficult, because a single factor like exposure isn’t enough. A job might have high exposure to AI tools, but that doesn’t always mean the job is at risk. You might just have new responsibilities and use the tools more.
I don’t think firefighting is in the cards for me. Maybe I’ll get into manicures. Although “other mathematical science occupations” has lowest vulnerability and high adaptability so maybe I have a few years left.
Tags: Brookings, GovAI, Washington Post, work
2026-03-17 15:44:57
Julia Angwin is suing Grammarly. For NYT Opinion, Angwin explains the reasons and why we need better laws to protect ourselves from AI companies.
In this global crisis of consent, we must make use of the few anchors we have for enforcement. The right of publicity is one of them, but it needs to be strengthened into a federal law — not just a patchwork of state laws. In some states, it applies only to advertising; in others, to all types of commercial uses. In some, it covers only celebrities; in others, it applies to everyone.
Thus far, the proposed updates to the law have been too narrow. The No Fakes Act, introduced last year by a group of senators, including Minnesota’s Amy Klobuchar, would prohibit “A.I.-generated digital replicas” of people without their consent, but would not cover the use of people’s names in text-based services like Grammarly. The Student Athlete Fairness and Enforcement (SAFE) Act, proposed by several senators, including Washington’s Maria Cantwell, would prohibit the use of people’s names without their consent — but only for student athletes.
And a new term coined by Ingrid Burrington came to light: sloppelgänger.
Tags: ethics, Grammarly, Julia Angwin, lawsuit, New York Times
2026-03-17 01:46:46
For the New York Times, Ben Casselman reports on a previously undisclosed change in data source by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which led to an inflation estimate that was lower than expected.
Data on legal services usually comes from the consumer index. But the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which has struggled with budget cuts and staff attrition, hasn’t been able to collect enough data in recent years to publish the legal services index consistently. It has continued to provide the data to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, but the monthly readings have been volatile.
In January, the C.P.I. for legal services jumped more than 11 percent, according to analyses of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics conducted by private-sector forecasters.
As a result, the Bureau of Economic Analysis decided to base its estimate of legal prices in January on the producer price data, which has been less volatile. Mr. Davis said that the jump in legal services prices in the C.P.I. data — and the absence of a clear reason for such a big increase — made that the right decision.
The challenge with comparing data over time is that methodology needs to stay the same or at least get a footnote so that analysts can adjust. The BEA responded that this was not a methodology change and just a substitute for volatile data, which seems convenient given the current state of government data.
Tags: Bureau of Economic Analysis, economy, inflation, New York Times
2026-03-16 15:32:17
xkcd continues to answer the important questions.
2026-03-14 00:41:54
Iran is starting to deploy mines in the Strait of Hormuz. For the New York Times, Samuel Granados, John Ismay, and Agnes Chang illustrate how four types of naval mines work to damage tankers.
The geography of the strait and the surrounding waters works to Iran’s advantage. A long southern coastline affords ample opportunity for small boats to dart out with mines.
Tight shipping lanes leave little room to navigate. And the water at the strait’s narrowest point is only about 200 feet deep — shallow enough to lay minefields.
As one might expect, clearing mines with potential attacks from above is not as straightforward as clicking on a Minesweeper game grid.
Tags: Iran, mines, New York Times, Strait of Hormuz
