So THIS just happened!

A stunning Mayor ⁦London Breed⁩ at the Grove Street Halloween party with our #YesonJ volunteers and a BABY DRESSED AS A BALLOT BOX! Perfection!

#ElectionDay is one week away— let’s keep the #JFKPromenade we all ❤️ forever! ⁦Safe Parks for All: YES ON J / NO ON I⁩

Dear Zuck: Break up your company. — Steven Levy wired.com/story/plaintex…

All quiet outside Twitter HQ

.Chris Stokel-Walker last week: 'Pushing paid messages on people is a break from Apple's usual pact with consumers'
wired.com/story/apple-is…

Apple this week:

Today WIRED launches the first in a six-part series: the epic story of the takedown of AlphaBay, the dark web's largest ever criminal marketplace, by Andy Greenberg (from his upcoming book, TRACERS IN THE DARK). Hi-tech detective non-fiction at its finest. wired.com/story/alphabay…

“It is now clear that Broeksmit had fallen in love with a mirage. Buffeted by personal adversities & financial difficulties, he had grasped for a miraculous fix and found the get-rich-quick delusion that permeates the worst corners of the crypto world.” wired.com/story/valentin…

California is poised to overtake Germany as the world's fourth-largest economy. While that is interesting in itself, it also highlights the core weirdness of the supposed American union, given the vast economic disparities.

THREAD: One individual or group, likely operating overseas, is behind a hundreds of hoax active shooter or bomb threats plaguing schools across the U.S. since the spring. No one knows why this is happening, but we pieced together how.

wired.com/story/school-s…

In 2020, after fights with Basecamp and Epic over app store rules, Apple added a way for developers to appeal app rejections for the first time.

Two years later, developers say little about Apple's capricious app review process has changed
wired.com/story/apples-a… tip @techmeme

Twitter ex-colleagues: chaos is a ladder. Ship your wildest product ideas now.

'the UK's next prime minister' according to Stable Diffusion

Is a #COVID19 surge coming? How worried should we be about these new variants?

tl;dr Variants are causing surges and the US/Europe are staring into a bad flu season!

A global thread is coming tomorrow from Pandemic Prevention Initiative, but I want to provide a quick, US-focused update. 1/9

Read Lauren's story: wired.com/story/i-uncove…

New investigation from @leonyin & me in The Markup reveals 4 major ISPs were charging customers wildly different prices for the same speed internet plans. The worst deals disproportionately went to lower-income, less White and historically redlined areas themarkup.org/still-loading/…

'The consequences of Siri or Alexa misunderstanding a user request are usually minor...mistakes by AI models that support doctors’ clinical decisions can mean life or death'
Visar Berisha & julie liss in Scientific American
scientificamerican.com/article/ai-in-…

Subbing in for Steven Levy this week for Wired's Plaintext newsletter—so if you have a burning question you want answered in the newsletter, send them my way!!

Amazon Labor Union lost the vote held at a warehouse in New York this morning.

Four warehouses have now held unionization votes but at only one has the union won. Two saw workers decline to unionize; another was rerun but not no result has been released.
wired.com/story/amazon-w…

Me reporting this story Muttville Senior Dog Rescue, San Francisco, getting some assistance from a very good boy called Bocce