Late last night, House Republicans introduced new language to the Budget Reconciliation bill that will immiserate the lives of millions of Americans by cutting their access to Medicaid, and making life much more difficult for millions more by making them pay higher fees when they seek medical care. While a lot of attention will be…
In April, Coca-Cola proudly launched a new ad campaign it called “Classic,” celebrating famous authors and the sugary drink’s omnipresence in culture by highlighting classic literary works that mention the brand. The firm that produced the ad campaign said it used AI to scan books for mentions of Coca-Cola, and then put viewers in the…
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 death of Mr. Deepfakes, introducing kids to the Manosphere, and working on big, difficult, high-brain-power scoops. SAM: I’m gonna use my time to give a huge…
Ricardo Prada Vásquez, a Venezuelan man whose family says he was “disappeared” and who wasn’t included on a previously leaked government list of people sent to a notorious mega prison in El Salvador, was included on a private airline’s flight manifest to the country, according to hacked airline data obtained and analyzed by 404 Media. …
On Wednesday, The Information reported that Meta is working on facial recognition for the company’s Ray-Ban glasses. This sort of technology—combining facial recognition with a camera feed—is something that big tech including Meta has been able to technically pull off, but has previously decided to not release. There are serious, inherent risks with the idea…
Job hunting can be a dehumanizing, demoralizing experience even if you’re interacting with an empathetic recruiter on the other end. For the 1.7 million people slogging through long-term unemployment in the U.S., the process is grueling at best. Add to this the advent of AI-generated recruiter avatars that glitch out on you before you even…
An AI avatar made to look and sound like the likeness of a man who was killed in a road rage incident addressed the court and the man who killed him: “To Gabriel Horcasitas, the man who shot me, it is a shame we encountered each other that day in those circumstances,” the AI avatar…
Earlier this week TeleMessage, the company that creates modified versions of messaging apps like Signal and adds an archiving ability to them, made a video private on its YouTube channel that explained how its Signal message archiving tool worked, and how the company says it is able to copy messages securely. The hiding of the…
Dora the Explorer, the cute Nickelodeon cartoon character, is teaching kids what it means to be “Sigma,” a slang term describing an extremely toxic male archetype which originates in the darkest corners of the so-called “manosphere.” “Hola, grown-ups! Today I have a super cool word for you! Sigma,” a 3D rendered version of Dora says…
We start this week’s episode with our massive story on TeleMessage, the Signal clone the Trump administration uses to archive messages which was hacked. We have more detail than anyone else on that story. After the break, Jason tells us about another hack, this time GlobalX Air, one of the airlines used by ICE for…
