Tootfinder

Sources: Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is quietly meeting with AI hyperscalers to advance Trump's push for data centers on federal lands, despite a backlash (The Washington Sun)
https://washingtonsun.com/technology/data-centers-public-lands-trump

Inside Trump’s Aggressive Push to Build Data Centers on Public Lands
The Interior secretary is quietly meeting with AI hyperscalers while seeking to accommodate them on his department’s land.

Dozens of staff at HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Hachette: without author consent, publishers are quietly using AI to make back-cover copy, cover art, more (Adam Morgan/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/book-publishers-are-quietly-using-more…

Book Publishers Are Quietly Using More AI. Staff Are Revolting
Workers at three major publishing houses tell WIRED that LLMs are being used for publicity, cover art, back cover copy, and emails, as some execs push junior staff to champion the tech.

Dozens of staff at HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Hachette: without author consent, publishers are quietly using AI to make back-cover copy, cover art, more (Adam Morgan/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/book-publishers-are-quietly-using-more…

Book Publishers Are Quietly Using More AI. Staff Are Revolting
Workers at three major publishing houses tell WIRED that LLMs are being used for publicity, cover art, back cover copy, and emails, as some execs push junior staff to champion the tech.

A colleague once wrote {% break %} in a Shopware template and I called foul in code review — except it worked. Turns out Shopware quietly teaches Twig a pile of PHP tricks, everywhere, and it's documented for exactly one edge case that isn't this one.
http://wink…

Fighting for reelection,
GOP Rep. Young Kim has quietly scrubbed references to President Trump from her campaign website,
a striking effort to broaden her appeal as she faces a Republican rival for her Orange County seat.
It’s the latest example of a Republican distancing themselves from a historically unpopular president
less than two months out from the midterm elections.
Elsewhere in California,
David Valadao is strategically distancing himself from Trump…

Elon Musk contributed $276M since July to Republican entities, including $158M to the Senate Leadership Fund; sources: he is taking a more hands-off approach (Theodore Schleifer/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/…

Inside Elon Musk’s $276 Million Midterm Rescue Mission for Republicans
The world’s richest person has quietly become by far the biggest known midterm donor, trying to save Republicans’ Senate majority with some of the largest donations in American political history.

Sources and internal docs: TikTok cut the violations for which an advertiser could be immediately banned from 37 to 13 last fall, leading to a surge in scams (Katharine Schwab/Forbes)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/iainmartin/20

How TikTok’s Weakened Ad Rules Allowed Fake E-Commerce Sites To Scam Tens Of Thousands
Last year, TikTok’s executives quietly defanged its advertising rules, opening the floodgates to fraudsters that target American users with fake sales of products that never arrive. Sources told Forbes the change was understood internally as a way to make more money.

California invests big in battery energy storage — and leaves rolling blackouts behind
Over the last few years, California has quietly but dramatically increased the resiliency of its electrical grid through a significant expansion in battery energy storage.
https://www.…

California invests big in battery energy storage
Batteries that pair with clean solar and wind energy or just bolster electrical grids in general have completely taken off and are making a big difference on the California grid.

Sources and internal docs: TikTok cut the violations for which an advertiser could be immediately banned from 37 to 13 last fall, leading to a surge in scams (Katharine Schwab/Forbes)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/iainmartin/20

How TikTok’s Weakened Ad Rules Allowed Fake E-Commerce Sites To Scam Tens Of Thousands
Last year, TikTok’s executives quietly defanged its advertising rules, opening the floodgates to fraudsters that target American users with fake sales of products that never arrive. Sources told Forbes the change was understood internally as a way to make more money.

OpenAI quietly updates its evaluation metrics for GPT-6 Astra, making changes that appear to favor Astra and continuing to revise other metrics after launch (Emily Forlini/Fortune)
https://fortune.com/2026/09/04/openai…

OpenAI quietly boosts some of Astra’s evaluation metrics, and continues to change others post-launch
Performance metrics on OpenAI's blog about Astra kept changing. In some cases, the changes made Astra look better and rival models look worse.