News
Iran Is Winning the AI Slop Propaganda War
“White House videos—AI or otherwise—are like group-chat in-jokes aimed at keeping cohesion.”
News
Institute That Pioneered AI ‘Existential Risk’ Research Shuts Down
The Future of Humanity Institute, which along with philosopher Nick Bostrom taught the world to fear existential AI risks, is finished.
Podcast
Podcast: The 'Com World War'
This week we cover a 'world war' inside nebulous crime culture the Com; Google's miss on AI science; and a sex box.
News
A Spy Site Is Scraping Discord and Selling Users’ Messages
404 Media tested the service, called Spy Pet, and verified it is collecting information on Discord users, including the messages they post across usually disparate servers.
sex
This Man Wants to ‘Save the World’ By Letting You Jerk Off Into a Computer
The creator of the gimmicky DIY sex sleeve says any criticism against the Orifice is “gene warfare."
TV
The Dystopian Future of TV Is AI-Generated 'FAST' Garbage
TCL's new AI-generated movie "Next Stop Paris" is the next evolution in the algorithmification of TV.
AI
Review Used By UK to Limit Gender Affirming Care Uses Images of AI-Generated Kids
One image depicts a non-binary child with short pink hair, consistent with how generative AI tends to represent queer people. In another image, a child’s fingers blend together.
Amazon
All Bad Bosses at Amazon Are Now Named ‘Wayne’
The newly-fabricated dispatcher, named Wayne, represents every manager who assigns incompletable routes and package loads. But he’s based in reality.
Behind The Blog
Behind the Blog: Serious Science and Hanging Out With Hackers
This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss big science and hanging out with hackers.
AI
OpenAI Training Bot Crawls 'World's Lamest Content Farm' 3 Million Times in One Day
"If you were wondering what they're using to train GPT-5, well, now you know."
News
How a Money Laundering Crew Allegedly Moved Millions Through FanDuel
While sports betting has opened up for fans around the country, it has also introduced a greater attack surface for money laundering.
AI
Is Google's AI Actually Discovering 'Millions of New Materials?'
"In the DeepMind paper there are many examples of predicted materials that are clearly nonsensical."
repair
Apple Announces Half Measure to Make iPhones More Repairable Immediately After Law Banned Its Repair Practices
Apple will partially ease its "parts pairing" policy on the same day Colorado is considering a right-to-repair bill that would ban parts pairing, and weeks after Oregon banned the practice.