News
‘BusPatrol’ Put AI Cameras in Tens of Thousands of School Buses. Now They Want to Give Cops Access
BusPatrol plans to scan the license plates of all vehicles the buses drive past, and then let law enforcement search that data. The plan would essentially turn school buses into roaming surveillance vehicles.
The Abstract
The Sun Is Undergoing a Mysterious Change and Nobody Knows Why
Astronomers discovered that magnetic activity in the Sun is being squeezed into a more tightly confined area under its surface, which has implications for space weather forecasts and heliophysics.
News
‘Cracked Oura’ Is an App For Using the Oura Ring Without the Monthly Subscription
On Thursday Oura announced the nearly $500 Ring 5. But what if you don't want to pay a monthly subscription to access your health data?
biometrics
Headway Therapy Patients Forced to Scan Their Faces to Keep Getting Care
A popular virtual therapy platform is telling providers and patients they'll have to do facial scanning soon, forcing some to choose between handing over their data and continuing care.
AI
‘Lobotomized’: Character.AI Is Showing What AI Enshittification Looks Like
Ads everywhere. Usage limits. Frustrating guardrails. Less model choice. Users of the Character.AI chatbot app are revolting after a series of changes they say have made the app worse.
Podcast
Podcast: How Deepfakes Destroyed a High School
How deepfakes rocked a high school; BusPatrol giving AI camera data to cops; and a big time crash out.
Podcast
Millions of People Are Installing Malware on Their Partners’ Phones (with Zack Whittaker)
Joseph talks to Zack Whittaker all about stalkerware, the pervasive malware that ordinary people install on their partners' phones.
News
‘BusPatrol’ Put AI Cameras in Tens of Thousands of School Buses. Now They Want to Give Cops Access
BusPatrol plans to scan the license plates of all vehicles the buses drive past, and then let law enforcement search that data. The plan would essentially turn school buses into roaming surveillance vehicles.
News
An Incomplete List of Successful Anti-Data Center Legislation
No one wants to live next to a noisy computer warehouse and communities across the country are successfully fighting them.
The Abstract
‘Corpse Point’ In the Arctic Is Melting, Disturbing Centuries-Old Bodies
Whalers buried in the Norwegian Arctic in the 1600s and 1700s are thawing out of the permafrost, underscoring the threat of climate change to archaeological sites around the world.
Cybertruck
Here's the Bodycam Footage of the Cybertruck That Drove Into a Lake
“Obviously I wasn’t thinking at all,” the driver told police, according to the footage.
Behind The Blog
Behind the Blog: The Attention Wars
This week, we discuss Spencer Pratt, bricking phones, and the FTC.
Deepfakes
How Deepfakes Tore a High School Apart
After five teen girls were targeted by AI-generated child sexual abuse material, Radnor Township High School in Pennsylvania has become a case study in how schools and police around the country grapple with how to response to deepfake crimes involving children.