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The Department of Justice has removed a study showing that white supremacist and far-right violence “continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism” in the United States. The study, which was conducted by the National Institute of Justice and hosted on a DOJ website was available there at least until September…
A bill introduced by Michigan lawmakers last week would ban pornography, ASMR, depictions of transgender people, and VPNs for anyone using the internet in the state. House Bill 4938, called the “Anticorruption of Public Morals Act,” would prohibit distribution of “certain material on the internet that corrupts the public morals,” the bill states. It was…
OpenAI has announced it is introducing new safety measures for ChatGPT after the a wave of stories and lawsuits accusing ChatGPT and other chatbots of playing a role in a number of teen suicide cases. ChatGPT will now attempt to guess a user’s age, and in some cases might require users to share an ID…
Some international sellers on large platforms like eBay and Etsy have jacked up their shipping costs to the United States to absurd prices in order to deter Americans from buying their products in an effort to avoid dealing with the logistical headaches of Trump’s tariffs. A Japanese eBay seller increased the shipping cost on a…
A software engineer in Austin has hooked up Animal Crossing to an AI and breathed new and disturbing life into its villagers. Using a Large Language Model (LLM) trained on Animal Crossing scripts and an RSS reader, the anthropomorphic folk of the Nintendo classic spouted new dialogue, talked about current events, and actively plotted against…
This week, we talk about how ‘Boring History’ AI slop is taking over YouTube and making it harder to discover content that humans spend months researching, filming, and editing. Then we talk about how Meta has totally given up on content moderation. In the bonus segment, we discuss the ‘AI Darwin Awards,’ which is, uhh,…
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 “free speech,” keeping stupid thoughts in one’s own head, and cancel culture. JASON: In August 2014, I spoke to Drew Curtis, the founder of Fark.com, a timeless,…
There is an aggrieved cry reverberating through the places on the internet where gamers gather. To hear them tell it, Hollow Knight: Silksong, the sequel to the stone-cold classic 2017 platformer, is too damned hard. There’s a particular jumping puzzle involving spikes and red flowers that many are struggling with and they’re filming their frustration…
Thursday morning, Ezra Klein at the New York Times published a column titled “Charlie Kirk Was Practicing Politics the Right Way.” Klein’s general thesis is that Kirk was willing to talk to anyone, regardless of their beliefs, as evidenced by what he was doing while he was shot, which was debating people on college campuses….
Freelance developers and entire companies are making a business out of fixing shoddy vibe coded software. I first noticed this trend in the form of a meme that was circulating on LinkedIn, sharing a screenshot of several profiles who advertised themselves as “vibe coding cleanup specialists.” I couldn’t confirm if the accounts in that screenshot…
