Content warning: This article contains mentions of self-harm and suicide. Joanne Chew found deepfakes of herself online the same way many women have found themselves face-swapped into porn: She was searching her own name after a big accomplishment. “Sometimes I just Google my name to see what comes up,” Chew told me in a phone…
A “vibe coded” AI app developed by entrepreneur and Y Combinator group partner Tom Blomfield has generated recipes that gave users instruction on how to make “Cyanide Ice Cream,” “Thick White Cum Soup,” and “Uranium Bomb,” using those actual substances as ingredients. Vibe coding, in case you are unfamiliar, is the new practice where people,…
This article was produced in collaboration with Court Watch, an independent outlet that unearths overlooked court records. Subscribe to them here. Two former OnlyFans subscribers are suing the platform in a class-action lawsuit, claiming that they were defrauded because creators allegedly weren’t interacting directly with them, but were instead employing agencies to “impersonate” the models they thought…
The creator of an open source genetic database is shutting it down and deleting all of its data because he has come to believe that its existence is dangerous with “a rise in far-right and other authoritarian governments” in the United States and elsewhere. “The largest use case for DTC genetic data was not biomedical…
It’s probably not a coincidence that some of the most famous tech company CEOs have instantly recognizable looks. Steve Jobs’s black turtleneck and blue jeans. Palmer Lucky’s Hawaiian shirts and flip flops. Mark Zuckerberg’s wedgieable jeans and t-shirt era followed by his current hypebeast transformation. Much like infamous dictators throughout history, the leaders’ style at…
Welcome back to the Abstract! You’ve probably been reading a lot about humans this week. Most of the news seems to revolve around humans. Fair enough, we do seem to get up a lot of hijinx. But now, we’re going to check in on what some other Earthlings have been doing with their time. Some…
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 getting fooled, the ‘one big story’ of the week, and Ghibli. SAM: I remembered earlier this week that it’s almost April Fools’ Day, because Joe showed us…
This article was produced in collaboration with Court Watch, an independent outlet that unearths overlooked court records. Subscribe to them here. The FBI managed to track down and freeze millions of dollars of cryptocurrency Caesars Entertainment sent to a group of hackers that held the casino’s computer systems ransom, according to a 404 Media and Court Watch…
In a video that fills me with wonder at being alive in 2025, someone in an inflatable Pikachu costume was seen loping down the street in Turkey alongside anti-Erdoğan protesters fleeing from the cops. Pikachu was spotted amongst anti-Erdoğan protesters fleeing from police in Antalya, Turkey last night. — Adam Schwarz (@adamjschwarz.bsky.social) 2025-03-27T14:36:22.725Z The protests—reportedly…
On Tuesday, OpenAI updated ChatGPT with new AI image generation capabilities that make it especially good at recreating specific visual styles. People trying the new feature immediately flooded social media with images in the style of Studio Ghibli and Japanese animation legend Hayao Miyazaki, who famously called artificial intelligence “an insult to life itself.” Miyazaki’s…
