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 history repeating itself and Meta’s relationship with links. JOSEPH: I wanted to add a little bit from behind the scenes of this piece: Man Charged for Wiping…
Thursday afternoon House Democrats publicly released a new trove of photographs they’ve obtained from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein via Dropbox. They left the comments on so anyone who is signed into Dropbox and browsing the material can leave behind their thoughts. Given that the investigation into Epstein is one of the most closely followed…
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to a company that makes “AI agents” to rapidly track down targets. The company claims the “skip tracing” AI agents help agencies find people of interest and map out their family and other associates more quickly. According to the procurement records, the company’s…
The past few years have been very exciting for those who want to believe. The U.S. government has released tantalizing videos and held several gripping hearings showing and discussing UFOs. People who always thought the government was hiding evidence of alien life from the general population saw it as proof that what they’ve said was…
Scientists have discovered the underwater ruins of huge stone structures erected by humans at least 7,000 years ago in the coastal waters of France, according to a new study published in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology. The submerged granite ruins near Sein Island, a Breton island in the Atlantic Ocean, are among the oldest…
Doublespeed, a startup backed by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) that uses a phone farm to manage at least hundreds of AI-generated social media accounts and promote products has been hacked. The hack reveals what products the AI-generated accounts are promoting, often without the required disclosure that these are advertisements, and allowed the hacker to take control…
Joseph had to use a different mic this week, that will be fixed next time! We start this week talking about a very unusual case: someone is being charged for allegedly wiping a phone before CBP could search it. There are a lot of questions remaining, but a super interesting case. After the break, we…
A Discord community for gay gamers is in disarray after one of its moderators and an executive at Anthropic forced the company’s AI chatbot on the Discord, despite protests from members. Users voted to restrict Anthropic’s Claude to its own channel, but Jason Clinton, Anthropic’s Deputy Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and a moderator in…
The woman who helped coerce other women into the clutches of sex trafficking ring GirlsDoPorn will spend two years in prison, a federal judge ordered on Friday. GirlsDoPorn operated for almost a decade; its owners and co-conspirators were indicted on federal sex trafficking charges in October 2019. Over the years, its content became wildly popular…
Welcome back to the Abstract! These are the studies this week that got hosed with star spray, mounted a failed invasion, declined to comment, and achieved previously unknown levels of adorability. First, a study about how the solar system wasn’t destroyed 4.5 billion years ago (phew!). Then: a human touch on an ancient boat, the…
