Scientists have discovered the underwater ruins of huge stone structures erected by humans at least 7,000 years ago in the coastal waters of France, according to a new study published in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology. The submerged granite ruins near Sein Island, a Breton island in the Atlantic Ocean, are among the oldest…
The selloff caused by Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek wasn’t just limited to technology stocks like Nvidia Corp. Shares in energy companies key to the AI buildout were hammered too, leaving some on Wall Street wondering if their valuations are too high.
We start this week with news of our zine! We’re printing it very soon, and walk you through the process. Independent media is turning back to physical zines as a way to subvert algorithms. After the break, Emanuel tells us about some very weird Instagram changes. In the subscribers-only section, Joseph explains ICEBlock’s lawsuit against…
We start this week with Joseph’s article about landlords and income verification companies demanding login details from potential renters so the companies can log in and scrape their paystubs. That has some potential legal issues for everyone involved! After the break, 18 lawyers tell us why they used AI. In the subscribers-only section, Emanuel breaks…
This article was produced in collaboration with Court Watch, an independent outlet that unearths overlooked court records. Subscribe to them here. A family in Utah is suing the Republican National Convention for sending unhinged text messages soliciting donations to Donald Trump’s campaign and continuing to text even after they tried to unsubscribe. “From Trump: ALL…
Aylo, the parent company of Pornhub and many of the most popular adult sites in the world, announced today that starting February 2 it will restrict people visiting the site from the UK. In a call on Tuesday, leadership at Aylo and Ethical Capital Partners (ECP), which acquired Aylo in 2023, said that after six…
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 an exciting revamp of The Abstract, tech betrayals, and the “it’s for cops” defense. EMANUEL: Most of you already know this but we are expanding The Abstract,…
Welcome back to the Abstract! I’m trying out something a little different this week: Instead of rounding up four studies per usual, I’m going deep on one lead study followed by a bunch of shorter tidbits. I’m hoping this shift will make for a more streamlined read and also bring a bit more topic diversity…
Datasets aggregated on data.gov, the largest repository of U.S. government open data on the internet, are being deleted, according to the website’s own information. Since Donald Trump was inaugurated as president, more than 2,000 datasets have disappeared from the database. As people in the Data Hoarding and archiving communities have pointed out, on January 21,…
In this week’s interview episode, Sam talks to Kolina Koltai. Kolina is an investigator, senior researcher and trainer at Bellingcat. Her investigations focus on the people and systems behind AI companies and platforms that peddle non-consensual deepfake explicit imagery. Kolina walks us through how a OSINT investigation into non-consensual AI imagery site administrators work, why…
