Monday, the genetic pharmaceutical company Regeneron announced that it is buying genetic sequencing company 23andMe out of bankruptcy for $256 million. The purchase gives us a rough estimate for the current monetary value of a single person’s genetic data: $17. Regeneron is a drug company that “intends to acquire 23andMe’s Personal Genome Service (PGS), Total…

A Kansas mother who left an old laptop in a closet is suing multiple porn sites because her teenage son visited them on that computer. The complaints, filed last week in the U.S. District Court for Kansas, allege that the teen had “unfettered access” to a variety of adult streaming sites, and accuses the sites…

A student has made a tool, which they call PrismX, which scans for users writing certain keywords on Reddit and other social media networks, assigns those users a so-called “radical score,” and can then deploy an AI-powered bot to automatically engage with the users in conversation in an attempt to de-radicalize them. The news highlights…

Welcome back to the Abstract!  I’m trying out something a little different this week: Instead of rounding up four studies per usual, I’m going deep on one lead study followed by a bunch of shorter tidbits. I’m hoping this shift will make for a more streamlined read and also bring a bit more topic diversity…

This week, we discuss Star Wars’ weird little guys, catharticles, and spectacular views.

Customs and Border Protection seized a shipment of t-shirts from a streetwear brand that sells an “Eliminate ICE” t-shirt and multiple shirts critical of police and capitalism. Among the shirts seized was a design that features a swarm of bees attacking a police officer. Emails seen by 404 Media indicate that the shirts are going…

Doom: The Dark Ages, Bethesda’s recently released prequel to the demon slaughtering first-person shooter, is using anti-piracy software that’s locking out Linux users who paid for the game.  According to multiple posts on Reddit, Doom: The Dark Ages uses the infamous anti-piracy software Denuvo. One Reddit user on the Linux gaming subreddit said that they…

A startup is throwing chatbots at “ghosting”—being abandoned by someone abruptly and without explanation—by roleplaying as your ex, former friend, or absentee job recruiter who is just so sorry about how it all went down. Closure is currently in open beta, and launched on Product Hunt on Thursday. The company has been running ads on…

For a few hours on Wednsday, X’s Grok AI wouldn’t stop talking about about white genocide. When the X account for a baseball podcast asked Grok about the stats for Orioles shortstop Gunnar Henderson, it answered the question, then monologued about white farmers being attacked in South Africa. “Gunnar Henderson’s 2025 season WAR is approximately…

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