How Clearview AI is stealing your face
Clearview AI technology knows your face!
A great interview between Kashmir Hill and Adam Conover about the dangers of facial recognition technology, specifically that of Clearview AI.
If you missed it, I wrote about the incredible book Kashmir wrote recently called Your Face Belongs To Us.
A cross section of a typical NYC street
A great cross section view of a typical street in Manhattan.
A lovely cross-section illustration from the book Decoding Manhattan. See more from The New Yorker in Manhattan as a Muse.
Your Face Belongs To Us
The scary reality of facial recognition technology today.
I just finished this book by Kashmir Hill about the rapidly advancing field of AI and face-recognition technology. I first heard about Kashmir’s research from a 2024 Search Engine podcast episode called “Should this creepy search engine exist?” where it was revealed that there is technology readily available that can put a name to a face in even the most obscure pictures.
The majority of this book builds up to the insane and scary practical implications of a technology in secret use today known as Clearview AI. For most of us who have been on the internet through all of its various stages in the 2000s, the fix is long gone. We are in some database somewhere even if we’ve tried to curb our internet uploads at some point. If you’ve uploaded a photo to Flickr, Facebook, Instagram, Venmo, or any social media platform in the last 10 years, we are cooked! Done. Finished. No going back.
If you are curious about how every public and private space has been eroded of every privacy assumption we’ve ever come to know, then pick up this book and read it.
Sean Baker: The Greatest Filmmaker of Our Time
Just a quick celebration of one of my favorite directors and movie-makers.
The Genius of “Chop Suey” by System of a Down
Sometimes I still am amazed that this song made it onto the radio.
A true moment in time of pop music (yes, it was on the radio). I remember listening to this song a lot but having literally no other music like it in my collection.
The very rare Toyota Avalon NYC yellow cab
A loook at one of the rarest NYC taxi cabs in the fleet.
Have a look at the recently capture Toyota Avalon NYC yellow taxi cab (Medallion # 6E72). This cab is super rare and not long for the streets as Toyota has recently discontinued this model completely from their line-up. For now, you can keep your eyes peeled to the NYC streets and see if you get a chance to witness this huge sedan in person.
macOS Screenshot thumbnail bug and how to fix it
Fix this annoying macOS bug.
There is a long-standing multi-version bug in macOS that randomly resets the “Show Floating Thumbnail” option for screengrabs and it has understandably driven some people mad (including myself). You can set it to your preference all you want, but macOS will randomly decide to reset it back to SHOW floating thumbnail which adds a few seconds before the file is available on your desktop (or saved area).
To combat this, it seems like the only solution is to lock the plist file under your User folder.
Navigate to: (~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.screencapture.plist), click Get Info, and then lock the file so even macOS can’t make any changes to it. Worked for me!
MTA now has two separate types of NYC Subway maps
Two Subway map styles still exist.
In 2025, the MTA officially launched the “Vignelli'-style” map that they’ve been testing in various parts of the NYC Subway (you can check it out here). It replaces the old geographic-style map with a more stylistic diagram layout that makes it easier to see connections.
The new diagram version is clear enough to do away with a “large type” variant, but if you still want that, the geographic version still exists (for now).