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As reported by the New York Times, a new complaint from the parents of a teen who died by suicide outlines the conversations he had with the chatbot in the months leading up to his death.

Oh. Oh no. Something is… wrong. Very wrong. Oh, boy. Yeah. No. Nope. Not okay. Don’t get up, Mom. You’re so Comfy On the couch. I… got this. I’ll just— Urg. Ugh. Oh boy. Ohboyohboyohboy. … … Actually. … Hold on just a second. … Maybe it’s fine. I think it’s gone. ...

Time for your weekly edition of the Defector Funbag. Got something on your mind? Email the Funbag. You can also read Drew over at SFGATE, and buy Drew’s books while you’re at it. Today, we're talking about mice in restaurants, Tulsa, Cracker BarrelGate, and more.

Before we get into this week’s bag, I’d be a fool if I didn’t mention that Defector’s fifth anniversary sale is still ongoing. New subscribers get their first three months for five bucks. This has been the most successful sales push we’ve ever had, and it’s not because we bought airtime on NFL games. It’s because there’s something always good to read on Defector, and five bucks ain’t shit. So tell your friends, your co-workers, your dog, everybody. Get them on the Defector train now to show them what they’ve been missing for the past five years. Also: tell them their team sucks.

Ileana Najarro, reporter for Education Week covering race and opportunity in U.S. schools, and Kate Menken, professor of linguistics and a research fellow at the Research Institute for the Study of Language in an Urban Society at Queens College of the City University of New York (CUNY) and co-editor in chief of the journal Language Policy, discuss the news that the Trump administration has rescinded a 2015 directive standards for English Language Learners in U.S. schools.

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The biggest story of the NBA offseason is the federal investigation into former Pistons guard Malik Beasley over some suspicious gambling activity around prop bets on his own statistical output. Beasley is at least the third player, along with Jontay Porter and Terry Rozier,...

CEO Mark Zuckerberg went on a recruiting blitz to lure top AI researchers to Meta. WIRED has confirmed that three recent hires have now resigned.

Our editors' favorite surround sound Sonos speaker is matching its lowest price ever from Amazon.

From environmental and safety concerns to noise and filters, there’s a lot to think about before buying a window AC. Our air quality expert walks you through the process.

Right on schedule: second Tuesday of September, so long as that second Tuesday doesn’t fall on September 11. (Last year’s event went on Monday 9 September, probably because the Harris-Trump debate was already scheduled for Tuesday the 10th.) There’s an interactive animated version of the “heat map” event logo on Apple’s homepage. (A little bit odd that the second item below the event announcement, after a back-to-school promotion, is a “Meet the iPhone 16 family” promotion.)

Expected announcements for this event include:

• iPhones 17 (regular, Pro, Air)
• Apple Watch Series 11 and Ultra 3
• AirPods Pro 3

After weeks of various outlets putting the silly in "F1 silly season" and reporting on reports of announcements, the American team Cadillac, which will be joining the Formula 1 grid in 2026, has officially confirmed its driver lineup for next year. In a huge win for both sec...

“What the hell is going on right now?” asked engineer David DeGraw, aka Catskull, in a blog post last week.

The post AI Contrarians on the Problems With Vibe Coding appeared first on The New Stack.

Nostalgia for the late '90s and early 2000s is roaringly popular among Gen Z right now. Listeners call in with stories of life before the internet and what it is about that era that younger listeners wish for today, and we hear from Clay Routledge, social psychologist, director of the Human Flourishing Lab at Archbridge Institute and author of Past Forward: How Nostalgia Can Help You Live a More Meaningful Life (Sounds True, 2023).

=>"Why Gen Z Is Resurrecting the 1990s" (NYT Opinion, 8/24/25)

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The New York Mets pretty well flattened the Philadelphia Phillies Monday night in Queens, in the first game of an important three-game divisional series. The Phillies struck first, tagging wayward Mets starter Kodai Senga for runs in the first and third innings, but the Mets...

CTOs I speak with often describe a similar challenge: Despite having hundreds or thousands of engineers and mature development processes,

The post Sustainable Scale: How To Grow Engineering Teams Strategically  appeared first on The New Stack.

Last month, my beloved dog Buster suddenly became unresponsive. He could barely move, and he refused to eat or drink. After an ultrasound, the vet told us she found an incurable cancerous mass on his spleen. “Take him home and give him all of his favorite treats,” she said, ...

A few months ago, I wrote a blog post about using AI for polish. The idea was to let AI help with taking care of lots of little details that can be tempting to skip in the rush to get a new feature out. Lately I’ve been thinking about another good use for AI. Not to finish a...

Big update today for Micro.blog folks who have multiple accounts. The iOS, Android, and Mac apps have long supported multiple accounts, but on the web you could only switch between separate blogs on the same account. Managing multiple accounts on the web was frustrating.

Now you’ll find a popover menu in the sidebar to add a new account and select between your accounts. Here’s a screenshot showing me signed into a couple of our official accounts in addition to my personal account:

And for all users, even if you only have a single Micro.blog account, we now have passkeys! This is the password-less standard for quickly signing in. No more waiting for a confirmation email from Micro.blog.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, on page 17 of her dissent in National Institutes of Health v. American Public Health Association:

In a broader sense, however, today’s ruling is of a piece with this Court’s recent tendencies. “[R]ight when the Judiciary should be hunkering down to do all it can to preserve the law’s constraints,” the Court opts instead to make vindicating the rule of law and preventing manifestly injurious Government action as difficult as possible. This is Calvinball jurisprudence with a twist. Calvinball has only one rule: There are no fixed rules.⁶ We seem to have two: that one, and this Administration always wins.

The footnote refers to the OED’s entry for “Calvinball”.

I think perhaps I should have one day every week where I never link to anything. Just to provide a demo of what the web would be like without linking. Which is most of the sites that say they are part of the web. I think that's a lie we should stop tolerating.

I'm working my way through Mr Robot, for the third time I think. If you want to know what I do, it's like what Elliot does, for about four hours pretty much every day. I used to work longer hours but I've found this amount of work is optimal. I make more mistakes after about 1PM. Anyway Mr Robot is a very good thing to watch for the times we live in. The technology is already a little outdated, but they thought of that, there are some settings where they use old PCs from the 80s, with total respect. I like that. And the utilities he uses are pretty much the same ones I use these days. And the context of a world in technological meltdown, I think that's a very realistic scenario. I don't see how our networks can't avoid breaking down. And our health care system, which these days is pretty much the same thing.