Dianne Feinstein's office announced Friday morning that she has died at the age of 90, after more than 30 years representing California in the Senate. As her colleagues share memories of her, some huge, high-stakes questions are looming--namely, who will take her seat, and what will become of her spot on the powerful Judiciary Committee. Jim Newell walks us through what seems likely to happen, and what still remains unknown. Plus: The Waves reflects on the senator's legacy of fighting gun violence and conflict with her left-wing constituents. Unless Congress passes a bill to fund the government by Oct. 1, we're cruising for a government shutdown.

Joe Biden showed up on the United Auto Workers' picket line today--but even with the president's historic gesture of union support, a specter is looming. The shift to electric vehicles is coming, and "this future is not guaranteed to offer the same kinds of middle-class jobs and robust benefits that unionized autoworkers enjoy in many states," Nitish Pahwa writes. He takes a close look at what the EV transition is going to mean for organized labor. Fred Kaplan noticed three of his own books among the list of titles that Meta used to train its new large language model, LLaMA (basically its answer to ChatGPT). So he decided to ask it some questions--what did it think of his books?

When I learned that Meta's programmers downloaded 183,000 books for a database to teach the company's generative A.I. machines how to write, I was curious whether any of my own books had been fed into the crusher. Alex Reisner of the Atlantic has provided a handy search tool--type in an author's name, out comes all of his or her books that the LLaMA used. I typed "Fred Kaplan" and found that three of my six books (1959, Dark Territory, and The Insurgents) had been assimilated into the digital Borg. My first reaction, like that of many other authors, was outrage at the violation. However, my second reaction--also, I assume, like that of many other authors--was outrage that the program didn't include my other three books (The Bomb, Daydream Believers, and The Wizards of Armageddon). Were there really 182,997 books that were better than those three?

Slate and Future Tense are discussing Mr. Robot and the technological world it portrays throughout the show's second season. You can follow this conversation on Future Tense, and Slate Plus members can also listen to Hacking Mr. Robot, a members-only podcast series featuring Lily Newman and Fred Kaplan. In this episode of Hacking Mr. Robot, Fred and Lily discuss Episode 11. Fred Kaplan is the author of Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War.

Slate and Future Tense are discussing Mr. Robot and the technological world it portrays throughout the show's second season. You can follow this conversation on Future Tense, and Slate Plus members can also listen to Hacking Mr. Robot, a members-only podcast series featuring Lily Newman and Fred Kaplan. In this episode of Hacking Mr. Robot, Fred and Lily discuss Episode 8: "eps2.6succ3ss0r.p12." They're joined by special guest Matt Devost, a cybersecurity expert and the CEO of FusionX. Fred Kaplan is the author of Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War.

Slate and Future Tense are discussing Mr. Robot and the technological world it portrays throughout the show's second season. You can follow this conversation on Future Tense, and Slate Plus members can also listen to Hacking Mr. Robot, a members-only podcast series featuring Lily Newman and Fred Kaplan. In this episode of Hacking Mr. Robot, Fred and Lily discuss Episode 7. Fred Kaplan is the author of Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War.