Welcome back to the Abstract! Sad news: the marriage between the Milky Way and Andromeda may be off, so don’t save the date (five billion years from now) just yet. Then: the air you breathe might narc on you, hitchhiking worm towers, a long-lost ancient culture, Assyrian eyeliner, and the youngest old fish of the…
Over the weekend, Elon Musk shared Grok altered photographs of people walking through the interior of instruments and implied that his AI system had created the beautiful and surreal images. But the underlying photos are the work of artist Charles Brooks, who wasn’t credited when Musk shared the images with his 220 million followers. Musk…
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 the phrase “activist reporter,” waiting in line for a Switch 2, and teledildonics. JOSEPH: Recently our work on Flock, the automatic license plate reader (ALPR) company, produced…
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) are researching an incredibly wild virtual reality technology that would allow TSA agents to use VR goggles and haptic feedback gloves to allow them to pat down and feel airline passengers at security checkpoints without actually touching them. The agency calls this a “touchless…
Apple provided governments around the world with data related to thousands of push notifications sent to its devices, which can identify a target’s specific device or in some cases include unencrypted content like the actual text displayed in the notification, according to data published by Apple. In one case, that Apple did not ultimately provide…
A crowd of people dressed in rags stare up at a tower so tall it reaches into the heavens. Fire rains down from the sky on to a burning city. A giant in armor looms over a young warrior. An ocean splits as throngs of people walk into it. Each shot only lasts a couple…
Subscribe Join the newsletter to get the latest updates. Success Great! Check your inbox and click the link. Error Please enter a valid email address. The IRS open sourced much of its incredibly popular Direct File software as the future of the free tax filing program is at risk of being killed by Intuit’s lobbyists…
We start this week with Sam’s dive into a looming piece of anti-porn legislation, prudish algorithms, and eggs. After the break, Matthew tells us about the open source software that powered Ukraine’s drone attack against Russia. In the subscribers-only section, Emanuel explains how even pro-AI subreddits are dealing with people having AI delusions. Listen to…
A metal fork drags its four prongs back and forth across the yolk of an over-easy egg. The lightly peppered fried whites that skin across the runny yolk give a little, straining under the weight of the prongs. The yolk bulges and puckers, and finally the fork flips to its sharp points, bears down on…
Open source software used by hobbyist drones powered an attack that wiped out a third of Russia’s strategic long range bombers on Sunday afternoon, in one of the most daring and technically coordinated attacks in the war. In broad daylight on Sunday, explosions rocked air bases in Belaya, Olenya, and Ivanovo in Russia, which are…
