News roundup, 26 Feb 2026

- Anthropic AI, which has generally tried to position itself as the AI company with a conscience, has announced that it has abandoned its promise to never train AI systems unless adequate safety measures could be guaranteed in advance. The company was founded by people who left other AI companies that they believed weren't taking safely seriously; the reversal comes immediately after Pete Hegseth threatened to cancel the company's contract with the Pentagon if they didn't lift the limits placed on the military's use of their technology. Meanwhile, it has come out that AIs used in wargame simulations by the US military are way too quick to recommend nuclear escalation for comfort.

- A data centre under construction in Olds, Alberta is expected to consume as much electricity as Edmonton, a city of over a million people. And of course, Alberta being Alberta, it's going to be powered by natural gas.

- A Florida-registered speedboat entered Cuban territorial waters and its occupants apparently exchanged gunfire with the country's military. Four people from the boat were killed and six injured; one Cuban soldier was also wounded.

- Following a pilot study conducted in four neighbourhoods in 2023, City of Winnipeg staff have recommended that the default speed limit on residential streets be reduced from 50 to 40 km/h. This would require changes to provincial legislation to allow it, however. More promising, perhaps, is the fact that Coun. Janice Lukes, of all people, now claims to believe that a permanent bike lane on Wellington Crescent is warranted. Many of the folks in this Reddit thread are skeptical whether she's really onside, though. Given her suburban ward and sensibilities, some skepticism is probably warranted.

- A Hamilton police officer has been charged with possessing and distributing child pornography. He's been suspended without pay, something pretty rare in the police world, so I have to assume the evidence against him is pretty damning. I daresay he's not going to enjoy his time in jail. 

- When the US men's Olympic hockey team was invited to the White House, five members of the team declined the invitation. Probably no coincidence that all five have strong ties to Minnesota.

- Three people face charges of uttering threats after a series of hoax calls targeting Winnipeg schools. Two of them are teenagers, who probably thought it would be a clever way to get a day off school; oddly enough the third is a 30 year old woman from Toronto.

News roundup, 3 Feb 2026

- Much of the world is trying to distance itself from American tech companies. This is easier said than done, of course, but France has banned its public officials from using Zoom, Teams, and Google Meet in favour of their homegrown product, Visio. The Ford government in Ontario has yet to get on board with this, despite the premier's bleating - they've been storing cabinet records, which are supposed to stay secret for decades - on Google Docs, leading to fears about security.

- French authorities have raided X's offices in the country over allegations of complicity in the distribution of child pornography, deepfakes, and other illegal materials.

- The Mozilla Foundation is adding AI features to their Firefox web browser, but unlike other browsers you'll be able to turn said features off. That's the difference between a nonprofit like Mozilla and the more typical tech companies - they don't have the same need to dazzle investors.

- FAA administrator Bryan Bedford is refusing to say whether the agency is going to pull the airworthiness certificates of Canadian-made aircraft. I have to assume this means he thinks it would be absurd to do so but is unwilling to say so publicly for fear of incurring the wrath of Donald Trump.

- The number of unclaimed bodies in Ontario has more than tripled since 2019. One cemetery manager suggests that there are probably "socio-economic issues" involved here but doesn't speculate further. I wouldn't be surprised if some people just became more alienated from friends and family due to the pandemic and the political polarization around measures to contain it.

News roundup, 11 Dec 2025

 - A Winnipeg man has been sentenced to 3½ years for possession of child pornography and related materials. What makes this case different is that the charges included possession of several anatomically correct child sex dolls, as well as a large amount of AI-generated materials. The judge declared that this constitutes abuse "whether involving real or computer-generated images". At first blush this might seem like overreach until you consider the fact that the AI-generated porn likely required actual child sex abuse materials in order to train the AI in the first place - and even if it didn't, it would need actual images of children, so there's a risk that it would generate material that looks like the abuse of identifiable children. The existence of such material is, to say the least, not in the children's interest. The dolls are more of a grey area since no actual abuse would need to occur in order to make them. On the one hand, one could argue that they could prevent actual abuse by sublimating pedophiles' desires; on the other hand they could also cause future abuse by serving as a "gateway drug". Since determining which happens more often with any certainty would likely require unethical research methods, though, I'm OK with erring on the side of banning them. In any case the guy had plenty of real materials made by abusing real children so locking him up seems more than fair.

- Kirsten Hillman, Canada’s ambassador to the US, has announced that she is leaving her post in the new year. She didn't provide a specific reason for her resignation, but I think we all can guess the reason.

- A US District Court has struck down Trump's executive order that was intended to stop offshore wind development and limit that on land, calling the order "arbitrary and capricious". Unfortunately it will not immediately reactivate suspended projects, as the agencies involved are expected to put as many barriers in the way of development as possible while the regime appeals the decision, and at best the entities working on the projects will have to bring more lawsuits in order to get things moving again.

- Democrats in Minnesota are holding a primary to choose their candidate for the Senate next year as incumbent Tina Smith is retiring. Bernie Sanders has endorsed Peggy Flanagan, the state's lieutenant governor, while Pete Buttigieg has endorsed the more centrist Angie Craig. 

- Downsview Airport in Toronto, which served as a test facility for Bombardier until it was closed last year, is being redeveloped into a mixed use urban district with housing for more than 50,000 people as well as commercial buildings (which will be conversions of existing hangars on the site).

- A 12 year old boy in Lethbridge, Alberta has pleaded guilty to attempted murder after stabbing his 7 year old brother multiple times. The younger boy survived but was seriously injured.

- A 35 year old woman from Ochre River, Manitoba was turned away from a vendor in nearby Dauphin due to already being intoxicated. She proceeded to crash her truck into a parked car, a stop sign, and a telecommunications box, the latter knocking out internet service in the city for several hours. After blowing over the limit she was arrested, and then faced additional charges for threatening an officer and another prisoner as well as pulling a fire alarm while detained.

News roundup, 24 Dec 2024

- The outgoing Biden administration is trying to push through a new regulation that will require natural gas utilities to address leakage from distribution networks. There are already requirements for them to address large leaks (big enough to cause an explosion) but the administration wants them to take into account the climate impact of leakage. Of course, it's questionable whether the incoming administration will let such a regulation survive. On a positive note, though, the gas industry does seem to be losing the war in the long term; the total installed renewal energy capacity in the US is expected to exceed that of natural gas within a few years. And the owners of a coal-fired plant in Texas have received federal funding to convert the facility to a solar farm.

- The judge who will be hearing Luigi Mangione's murder trial is married to a former Pfizer executive. This has led to skepticism among some as to whether he will receive a fair trial. Meanwhile, someone claiming to represent United Healthcare is submitting takedown requests under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to suppress the sales of merchandise depicting Mangione's face and related materials. No explanation why United Healthcare has any copyright in such images, but they're not letting that stop them. And a poll has found that 41% of respondents between the ages of 18 and 29 consider Mangione's actions "acceptable".

- Donald Trump wants to take back the Panama Canal from Panama, saying that shippers are charged "ridiculous" fees to use the canal. Perhaps we'll soon be hearing accusations of drug trafficking against Panama's president; it's not like stuff like that hasn't happened before.

- Honda and Nissan are in merger talks in the hope of becoming the world's third largest automaker and thus increase their competitiveness against Toyota and Volkswagen, not to mention Tesla and Chinese upstart BYD.

- The gas tax will be returning to Manitoba in the new year, albeit at a lower rate than before the tax holiday brought in by the government. I still think a reduction in the PST would be a more equitable, not to mention more environmentally friendly, way of providing tax relief, but that's just me.

- A Flin Flon man has had his charges of possessing child pornography thrown out due to excessive delays in the case. This is in keeping with a 2016 decision of the Supreme Court of Canada that limits the time to prosecute to 18 months in most cases. A major factor in the delay was the RCMP's failure to hand over evidence in a timely manner.

What constitutes child abuse anyway?

Evan Emory, of Muskegon, Michigan, has been charged with manufacturing child pornography (h/t Ken at Popehat). Pretty serious stuff, one would think. Except that the "child pornography" in question isn't what most of us would call pornography - it's just a video of him singing a dirty song to elementary school children.

Still, one might think, that's a pretty bad thing to do, no? Except he didn't actually sing the song to the kids. He sang a perfectly innocent song, then edited the audio to make it appear that he sang the dirty lyrics. But the prosecution seems to think this is the same as actually molesting children on video.

As Ken points out, there might be grounds for a civil action here, on the basis of unauthorized use of the kids' images. But the idea that this is criminal (much less felony sexual abuse of children) is absurd, don't you think?