The Conde Nast-owned tech publication Ars Technica has retracted an article that contained fabricated, AI-generated quotes, according to an editor’s note posted to its website. “On Friday afternoon, Ars Technica published an article containing fabricated quotations generated by an AI tool and attributed to a source who did not say them. That is a serious…
Welcome back to the Abstract! These are the studies this week that kept it reel, fertilized the land, established Martian law, and cooked up an extraterrestrial tempest in a teapot. First, ever wondered how cities are represented in Soviet propaganda? Look no further. Then: the path to civilization runs through the bums of birds, what…
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 support and saying RIP to FPDS. JOSEPH: I think I might make this into a more full article in a couple weeks when it actually happens, but…
Jesse Van Rootselaar, the 18-year-old suspected of killing eight people and injuring 25 in a mass shooting in a secondary school in Canada, created a Roblox game that allowed players to simulate a mass shooting in a level that looks like a shopping mall, Roblox has confirmed. “We have removed the user account connected to…
A newly released tool claims it can bypass Discord’s age verification system by allowing users to control a 3D model of a computer-generated man in their browser instead of scanning their real face. On Monday, Discord announced it was launching teen-by-default settings globally, meaning that more users may be required to verify their age by…
The legal saga over surveillance footage from within an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in suburban Chicago has reached new levels of Kafkaesque absurdity, with the federal government losing three hard drives it was supposed to put footage on, refusing to provide footage from five critical surveillance cameras, and delivering soundless video of a…
🌘 Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week. For decades, scientists have puzzled over the “density deficit” in Earth’s core, an unexplained discrepancy between the expected density of a solid iron core and the much lower density that is…
In the first week of January, Kylie Brewer started getting strange messages. “Someone has a only fans page set up in your name with this same profile,” one direct message from a stranger on TikTok said. “Do you have 2 accounts or is someone pretending to be you,” another said. And from a friend: “Hey…
We start this week with exciting news: we bought a Super Bowl ad! For… $2,550. We explain how. After the break, Jason tells us about Ring’s recently launched Search Party feature, and gives us a very timely reminder of what Ring really is and how we got here. In the subscribers-only section, Joseph breaks down…
The Department of Health and Human Services’ new AI nutrition chatbot will gleefully and dangerously give Americans recommendations for the best foods to insert into one’s rectum and will answer questions about the most nutrient-dense human body part to eat. “Use AI to get real answers about real food,” a new website called realfood.gov proclaims….
