Podcast: A Massive Archiving Effort at National Parks (with Jenny McBurney and Lynda Kellam)

If you’ve been to a national park in the U.S. recently, you might have noticed some odd new signs about “beauty” and “grandeur.” Or, some signs you were used to seeing might now be missing completely. An executive order issued earlier this year put the history and educational aspects of the parks system under threat–but…

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A Small Town Is Fighting a $1.2 Billion AI Datacenter for America’s Nuclear Weapon Scientists

Ypsilanti, Michigan resident KJ Pedri doesn’t want her town to be the site of a new $1.2 billion data center, a massive collaborative project between the University of Michigan and America’s nuclear weapons scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratories (LANL) in New Mexico. “My grandfather was a rocket scientist who worked on Trinity,” Pedri said…

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OpenAI’s Sora 2 Floods Social Media With Videos of Women Being Strangled

Social media accounts on TikTok and X are posting AI-generated videos of women and girls being strangled, showing yet another example of generative AI companies failing to prevent users from creating media that violates their own policies against violent content.  One account on X has been posting dozens of AI-generated strangulation videos starting in mid-October….

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One of the Greatest Wall Street Investors of All Time Announces Retirement

Nancy Pelosi, one of Wall Street’s all time great investors, announced her retirement Thursday. Pelosi, so known for her ability to outpace the S&P 500 that dozens of websites and apps spawned to track her seeming preternatural ability to make smart stock trades, said she will retire after the 2024-2026 season. Pelosi’s trades over the…

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Automattic Inc. Claims It Owns the Word ‘Automatic’

Automattic, the company that owns WordPress.com, is asking Automatic.CSS—a company that provides a CSS framework for WordPress page builders—to change its name amid public spats between Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg and Automatic.CSS creator Kevin Geary. Automattic has two T’s as a nod to Matt. “As you know, our client owns and operates a wide range…

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AI Is Supercharging the War on Libraries, Education, and Human Knowledge

This story was reported with support from the MuckRock Foundation. Last month, a company called the Children’s Literature Comprehensive Database announced a new version of a product called Class-Shelf Plus. The software, which is used by school libraries to keep track of which books are in their catalog, added several new features including “AI-driven automation and…

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