Newsom has his beady eel eyes laser-focused on 2028
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proactive defense in the face of multiple federal investigations — the governor is accusing President Trump of lawfare and rampant corruption — is starting to draw pushback, as the California leader’s own record has frequently raised questions of pay to play.
President Trump joked Wednesday that he will blame Vice President Vance if the preliminary deal with Iran falls through. “I like that idea, sure,” Trump said when asked by Fox News’s Peter Doocy if his vice president would take the fall if the deal fails. “If it works out, I’m going to take the credit.…
The 'behested payments' corporations made at the behest of the governor included contributions to a non-profit run by the governor's wife.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris is reportedly “not surprised” that California Governor Gavin Newsom and his wife are being investigated by the Justice Department. During an Austrian […]
Embattled California Gov. Gavin Newsom and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, are reportedly currently worth $30 million, making the governor’s $245,929 annual salary look like chump change. […]
Part of what makes Fitbit Air so good is the new Google Health app. Google Health is a complete overhaul of the original Fitbit app, taking Fitbit’s core features and expanding on them with a new design. Plus, paid users get a nifty AI upgrade that provides clarity to their data, and it can even help users get in better shape. Here are my thoughts after testing the app for two full weeks.Now, a quick disclaimer before we dive too deep — many users didn’t like the new Google Health app when it first launched, and some even reported several pretty egregious bugs with missing data, unfinished UI elements, and clutter. From what I can tell, iPhone users had more trouble getting the app to work properly than Android users, signaling a possible development issue between platforms. Personally, I tested the app on my Google Pixel 10 Pro XL, and it was mostly bug-free.Most data in the app is collected automatically.There are two experiences you’ll find in the Google Health app. Free users get access to all the tracking features you’d expect in a fitness band, including everything we covered in the Fitbit Air review. There is also a subscription option called Google Health Premium (available as an add-on for all users and included for free on all Google AI Pro and AI Ultra accounts), which unlocks a Gemini-powered AI coach that looks through your data, builds custom fitness plans, and serves as a personal trainer through your fitness journey. Before you raise the red flag on privacy, Google states that it is “committed to not use Fitbit users’ health and wellness data for Google Ads. The Fitbit app is now the Google Health app, and we’ll continue to keep this commitment.” Take that as you will. Screenshots by Zach Laidlaw/Google Health appThe good Information tabs: At first glance, Google Health is packed with information. The “Today” view offers quick glances at customizable tiles that show useful data like steps, sleep, heart rate, readiness score, etc. The “Fitness” tab shows a running list of weekly activities, as well as cardio and fitness metrics that highlight your overall heart health and output for the day. The “Sleep” tab provides neat daily graphs of your sleep quality from the previous night, along with a sleep score that tells you how rested you are. Finally, if you want even more information, check the “Health” tab for an entire wall of everything your fitness tracker knows about you. There’s a lot.Google Health Coach: Like having your own personal trainer, the AI-powered Google Health Coach is great at building workout plans and tuning them based on how your body reacts and recovers. Coach looks at your data every morning, measuring yesterday’s activity against last night’s sleep quality to determine how hard you can push today. Coach is also flexible, so if your body isn’t responding well to the current plan, it can use your data and feedback to make a new one. The coolest part is that Coach is always available to chat about anything related to your health, whether it’s exercise routines, diet, illnesses, mental health, etc. Although Coach is powered by Gemini, all health data and conversations stay within the Google Health app; the main Gemini app doesn’t have access to this information.Food log: If you’ve ever used a food tracking app to watch your calories and maybe lose some weight, you’ll know that the worst part is logging the data by hand. If you spring for the AI plan, Coach makes food logging more accessible with a new photo feature that lets you take a picture of your food, describe what it is, and it’ll log the calories for you. That said, accuracy was a mixed bag during testing, with some foods marked accurately while others were tens to hundreds of calories off. Your mileage will vary depending on the foods you eat, but at the very least, this feature has made me more conscious of my food choices over the last two weeks.Interoperability: Since Google Health is replacing the Fitbit app, it has to work across platforms. It’s currently available for Android and iPhone, and it can track health metrics directly from existing Fitbit devices, the new Google Fitbit Air, and Google Pixel watches. For iPhone users, it even has the ability to pull health data from Apple Watch via the Apple Health app and analyze it in the Google Health app. Screenshots by Zach Laidlaw/Google Health appThe bad Clutter: While the app provides a lot of health data, the user interface is busier than I’d like. The Health tab in particular is just a wall of information that’s sometimes more daunting than informative, especially when searching for a specific metric among the mess. Google needs to overhaul the layout and allow users to group data together into organized sections — heart, activity, sleep, energy input and output, etc.Manual data: Most data in the app is collected automatically via a fitness tracker, but manual data is a different story.
Word is now out that many popular “smart” TV brands, including LG and Samsung, allow for third-party apps on their devices. These apps usually contain a Software Development Kit that runs constantly in the background once the app is downloaded. When your TV is plugged in, connected to WiFi, and idle, the SKU is made available to others. The setup allows — if you can believe it — for the selling of access into genuine home IPs, like yours. Simply stated: You pay for the television, the internet connection, and the house in which it is all arrayed and sustained; they use your possessions while you’re not looking and profit heavily. Look for terms: proxy, SKD, opt-out.Believe it or not, they would really prefer you not look more closely into this situation.When your TV becomes their computerPerhaps it’s merely the latest confirmation that mainstream digital American life operates on an ethos oscillating between the poles “use this to rot your brain” and “something-for-nothing favoring us.” But given that so few are aware that their very own idle internet-connected televisions are being scraped, proxied, and used as free equipment for others’ profit, this one really strikes close to home. And who’s buying? Customers for this secretive access include, you guessed it, data-harvesting operations for AI firms and other large businesses that presumably harvest and manage their own type of market data analysis. Israeli-owned company Bright Data (formerly Luminati) runs the scheme by paying makers of various free games, apps, and screensavers a monthly fee derived from the number of users who installed their apps. Bright Data boldly lists “API Scraper Pricing” in its drop-down menu. It's merely the latest step down in the hierarchy of mercantile ethics: A few years ago, court documents revealed that Meta used Bright Data despite decrying its practices and actually sued Bright Data despite using its services.But it's all perfectly legal insofar as you accept the terms and conditions. According to data security investigators at Includesecurity.com, buried in the near-universally ignored small print is a statement of consent to allow Bright Data to use your TV and IP address to download things from the internet in exchange for something like a free or ad-free app experience. Even X lost its own lawsuit against Bright Data on the face of the law.RELATED: Livid judge cancels trial and busts lawyers for faking briefs with AI — on both sides Melina Mara/Washington Post/Getty Images; Grok/xAI You’re wondering, but why? Why would anybody go to such lengths? Why is it not illegal to abscond with the paid-for resources of individuals and families, unbeknownst to them? The secret life of scrapersWell, much of the world’s data is accessible only through the massive server farms known as data centers. Huge operators such as Amazon AWS, Google, and so forth hang their reputations on the security and control they can exercise over their enormous data flows. They’re highly competent at turning away scrapers: legions of bots and digital creepy-crawlies programmed to act like parasites, inserting into data tranches and harvesting the morsels there that their designers seek out. Often their designers are commercial actors or governments acting by proxy. Sometimes it’s an AI firm bent on feeding its models ever more specific and “authentic” data. Authentic because it’s more useful in mimicking or simulating human beings. So from residential proxy IPs, AI harvesters can insert into positions to scrape the precise form of information they require to keep elaborating AIs in pre-training, agent grounding, and search capacity. AI firms need fresh content in a way rather analogous to the vampire’s need for warm blood. It’s not negotiable. That’s why it’s not discussed, and why Bright Data is rewarded in the market for its labyrinthine infiltration, cloaking, and re-marketing capacities. No one quite seems to be sure why one little-known firm gets the virtual monopoly on this scam-like meta-market. Would we be a little out of our lanes to notice that Israeli software organizations, with well-understood and documented ties to the CIA, NSA, and GCHQ, seem to play central parts in an inordinate number of such specifically located operations?Basic hygieneSo what can you do about Bright Data and similar outfits? It starts with the simple if annoying fact that, yes, you should actually read the fine print. Check the various apps you’ve installed on your devices. Look for terms: proxy, SKD, opt-out. And be ready for the next iteration of the scheme, which will certainly still require your authenticity and human input, but will likely be buried even deeper in the digital subterrain.
Newsom accused the nation's top law enforcement official of applying double standards in their handling of investigations and public accountability.