Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Martin Stabe

Ray Douglas @raydouglas.bsky.social · 1d

🇳🇴 Nobel Institute probes leak of peace prize winner’s name

The Nobel committee is supposedly super secret, a bastion of confidentiality and yet... 🤔

FT www.ft.com/content/afc7...

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Olaf Verhaeghe @olafverhaeghe.bsky.social · 1d

Via driehoeksverhoudingen willen ontwikkelaars, chipbouwers en investeerders zich verzekeren van expertise, kapitaal en vooral rekenkracht. Voor @tijd.be ontrafelen @thomasroelens.bsky.social, @raphael.cockx.com en Stephanie De Smedt het spinnenweb van belangen.

multimedia.tijd.be/interactief/...

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Matt TK Taylor @tk.gg · 3d

The easiest way to show your newsroom is actually thinking about AI isn't the 50th summarization tool or chatbot. It's automating the jobs people don't want to do.

Like, bluesky's favourite: alt text!

I wrote about how we built this at the FT, with an interactive demo: tk.gg/posts/ai-alt...

A screenshot of the FT's CMS showing an image component and a sparkled 'Alt text generator' button

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Katie Marriner @katiemarriner.bsky.social · 2d

Hi, I've been working on a lil' something.

FiftyPlusOne.news @fiftyplusone.news · 2d

new polls website just dropped fiftyplusone.news

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Martin Stabe @martinstabe.ft.com · 2d

Great piece of data journalism on the widespread anomalies in council tax banding, by @jonathanvincent.bsky.social and Sam Fleming and involving our great engineering teams on both the front- and back-end of the project. #ddj Plus a nod to some classic #dataviz design by @theboysmithy.ft.com:

A grid of small charts compares trends in house prices and council tax bills across UK local authorities since 1995. Each chart shows two indexed lines: one for average house prices (blue) and one for average council tax bills (grey), both normalised to 1 in 1995.

The top section displays towns and cities in northern England — such as Barnsley, Bradford, Burnley, County Durham, Northumberland, North Yorkshire, Preston, Redcar and Cleveland, and Sunderland — where the two lines rise together over time, indicating that house prices and council tax bills have increased broadly in line.

The lower section forms a cartogram map of London boroughs, where house prices have risen much faster than council tax bills. In boroughs such as Kensington and Chelsea, Westminster, Camden, Hackney, Islington, and Waltham Forest, the blue line representing house prices climbs steeply compared to the flatter grey council tax line. The layout mirrors the approximate geography of London, with boroughs like Enfield and Barnet at the top and Croydon, Bromley, and Sutton at the bottom.

Source: Financial Times analysis of data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the Valuation Office Agency (VOA). London cartogram design based on a concept by Max Gadney and Mike Gallagher.

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Joel Suss @joelsuss.ft.com · 12d

Great reporting here on the political pressure affecting prosecutions of white-collar crime in the US

Featuring also great use of LLMs for structuring data 👇👇

on.ft.com/3VFYuW3

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Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 16d

Good read on one of the most interesting characters in tech debate. As someone who used to read the housing bubble blogs like Calculated Risk back in 2005 /2006 (i.e. before the bubble burst), there's a similar vibe with @edzitron.com - and maybe he'll be proven right.

Ed Zitron is mad as hell

How a British-born hobbyist blogger became one of Big Tech’s punchiest critics

www.ft.com

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Chris Cook @chriscook.news · 17d

This is wrong.

a) The article literally states we did the analysis with AI. We used semantic search to ID paragraphs relating to a topic, then grouped text into categories by their meaning.

b) The model outputs were, as below, boolean indicators about whether something fit a category.

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Martin Stabe @martinstabe.ft.com · 17d

Please see the full thread where my colleague @chriscook.news corrects the misunderstanding of how this was done. The AI application here was classify and render semantically searchable the underlying documents.

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Sarah O'Connor @sarahoconnorft.ft.com · 18d

A cool use of AI in newsgathering, this. US companies are talking more and more about the risks rather than the benefits of AI in their SEC filings (while still being super-optimistic in earnings calls). By @melissahei.bsky.social @chriscook.news & @claradoodle.bsky.social www.ft.com/content/e93e...

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Sam Learner @samlearner.bsky.social · 29d

NEW: How prediction markets are shaking up sports gambling in America

@okr.bsky.social and I on prediction markets' entry into sports contracts under Trump's CFTC and the resulting legal fights with states, tribal groups, and the gaming industry

on.ft.com/4nwVxDk

How prediction markets are shaking up sports gambling in America

Kalshi is spearheading a legal battle to expand access to online betting, with support from some in Trump’s circle

www.ft.com

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Chris Cook @chriscook.news · Sep 4

our latest: black borrowers are twice as likely to be rejected for a US mortgage as white borrowers - even after you account for income, location etc etc. www.ft.com/content/217c...

Black applicants twice as likely to be rejected for a US mortgage

FT analysis finds all ethnic minorities have lower probability of being granted home loans than white counterparts

www.ft.com

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Nassos Stylianou @nassosstylianou.bsky.social · Aug 23

We've built a football game and it's free to play!

Can you run a Premier League club? Step into the boardroom, navigate financial regulations and guide your team to glory in our new game.

👉 ft.com/football-game ⚽️💸

Can you run a Premier League football club?

Step into the boardroom, navigate profit and sustainability rules and guide your club to glory

ft.com

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Derek Willis @dwillis.bsky.social · Aug 22

My going-away page from the NYT included a gently mocking reference to my evangelization of Scoop, the in-house CMS.

I was right then and it's still true: investing in your CMS is among the best decisions a news org can make.

Maggie Astor @maggieastor.bsky.social · Aug 22

Our CMS has a feature for fact-checking — once you've confirmed a name/fact/quote/whatever, you hit a button to underline and put a checkmark next to it.

I'm fact-checking an interactive that had to be produced in a different CMS, and being unable to put a visual indicator as I go is tormenting me

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Martin Stabe @martinstabe.ft.com · Aug 22

Thank you, @andrewvandam.bsky.social for providing much joy in the @data.ft.com Slack channel; though I'm disappointed at the exclusion of the distinguishing "r" before the censor’s dash in "A—hole." www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

Column | What are the most American and most British words?

Is American English really that different than its British ancestor? And if so, what words truly separate the American from the Brit? The Department of Data is on the case.

www.washingtonpost.com

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Martin Stabe @martinstabe.ft.com · Aug 20

Newsweek is hiring a UK-based “AI visual content producer”. Will be very interesting to see what the person in this role ends up doing. job-boards.greenhouse.io/newsweek/job...

AI Visual Content Producer

Remote, United Kingdom

job-boards.greenhouse.io

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Chris Cook @chriscook.news · Aug 12

We wanted to know if the money that the EU has put into rearmament is turning into production capacity — and the answer is: yes. Industry is rearming.

Financial Times @financialtimes.com · Aug 12

Analysis of radar satellite data shows rearmament on a historic scale, stretching over 7mn sq metres of new industrial development on.ft.com/3HsEbYG

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Jonathan Derbyshire @jderbyshire.ft.com · Aug 6

Trump's war on data will do lasting damage - former BLS commissioners @ericagroshen.bsky.social and William Beach write for @financialtimes.com on.ft.com/3UNbf0x

Former BLS commissioners: Trump’s war on data will do lasting harm

[FREE TO READ] Reliable government statistics are one of the cornerstones of the American economy

on.ft.com

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Molly White @molly.wiki · Jul 31

Newsletter: In a media landscape dominated by algorithmic feeds that aim to manipulate and extract, sometimes the most radical thing you can do is choose to read what you want, when you want, without anyone watching over your shoulder.

Here’s how to use RSS.
www.citationneeded.news/curate-with-...

Curate your own newspaper with RSS

Escape newsletter inbox chaos and algorithmic surveillance by building your own enshittification-proof newspaper from the writers you already read

www.citationneeded.news

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Clara Murray @claradoodle.bsky.social · Jul 24

New 📈✍️- we're hearing a lot about AI decimating graduate jobs. But the data paints a more complicated picture on what's behind the fall in entry-level roles

With Delphine Strauss, @jburnmurdoch.ft.com & Sarah Lim

on.ft.com/4f1wWmK

Is AI killing graduate jobs?

[FREE TO READ] Tech is blamed for destroying entry-level roles but economic uncertainty and offshoring are playing a part

on.ft.com

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Sam Learner @samlearner.bsky.social · Jul 16

NEW: inside America's immigration detention industry, where lawyers and detainees describe overcrowding and deteriorating conditions

Our visual investigation: ig.ft.com/us-immigrati...

Inside America’s booming immigration detention industry

The enormous US deportation programme is enriching companies as detainees complain of poor treatment

ig.ft.com

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Alison Killing @alisonkilling.bsky.social · Jul 16

NEW: Inside US’s booming immigration detention industry where increasing levels of incarceration are leading to deteriorating conditions, legal representatives and detainees say. ⁦
ig.ft.com/us-immigrati...

Inside America’s booming immigration detention industry

The enormous US deportation programme is enriching companies as detainees complain of poor treatment

ig.ft.com

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Alison Killing @alisonkilling.bsky.social · Jul 14

NEW: Inside Gaza’s ‘death traps’ via @FT
GHF’s plan forces hungry Palestinians to trek miles to aid sites, often through the IDF’s active military areas. Hundreds have been killed and thousands injured. This is how…
www.ft.com/content/6c74...

Inside Gaza’s ‘death traps’

[FREE TO READ] A US-backed scheme forces hungry Palestinians to trek kilometres for food aid. Many never make it back

www.ft.com

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Toby Nangle @tobyn.bsky.social · Jun 4

Politicians shouldn't rage-bait chart geeks. on.ft.com/4jrlz8h

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Jacob Harris @jacobharr.is · May 30

So, as you might know, I have been in the process of tracking the activities of DOGE staff across the federal government. And now I've built an auto-updating website to browse the data

It's not done (lots more content to write), but news is moving fast, so here it is dogetrack.info

Enjoy!

DOGE Track: Tracking The Damage

A website tracking the various activities of the DOGE wrecking crew across government. Sunlight is the best disinfectant!

dogetrack.info

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