Behind The Blog
Behind the Blog: Company Comments and a Party Recap
This week, we discuss companies' responses to being monitored by an ICE contractor, caring about the little things, weight loss drug ads, and how our SXSW shindig went.
insurance
Major Health Insurance Companies Take Down Leadership Pages Following Murder of United Healthcare CEO
Following the shooting of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, multiple major health insurance companies have taken their executive leadership pages offline.
Labor
CEO Attempted to Navigate Anti-LGBT Hate Incident By Telling Employees His Mentor Was a KKK Member
Recordings show that while he was the CEO of Digital Ocean, Yancey Spruill told staff that they should bend their values because "we love the company."
News
Deepfake YouTube Ads of Celebrities Promise to Get You ‘Rock Hard’
Deepfakes of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Mike Tyson, and Terry Crews are selling erectile dysfunction supplements on YouTube.
Podcast
Podcast: Your Bluesky Posts Are Probably Training AI
We talk about the big datasets of Bluesky posts being offered to AI; how people are breaking into Redbox systems; and how the U.S. government is clamping down on data brokers.
Zipcar
‘A Total Meltdown’: Black Friday Zipcar Outage Strands Customers in Random Places
"Went to buy a quick drink to the store and all of the sudden the car is locked. I’ve been waiting over 4 hours in the cold."
Bluesky
Your Bluesky Posts Are Probably In A Bunch of Datasets Now
After a machine learning librarian released and then deleted a dataset of one million Bluesky posts, several other, even bigger datasets have appeared in its place—including one of almost 300 million non-anonymized posts.
News
FTC Bans Location Data Company That Powers the Surveillance Ecosystem
Venntel is a primary provider of location data to the government or other companies that sell to U.S. agencies. The FTC is banning Venntel from selling data related to health clinics, refugee shelters, and much more.
News
U.S. Government Tries to Stop Data Brokers That Help Dox People Through Credit Data
A new proposed rule change from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) could curtail the sale of American's personal data. That's if the agency survives the Trump presidency.
OpenAI
Not Just 'David Mayer': ChatGPT Breaks When Asked About Two Law Professors
ChatGPT breaks when asked about "Jonathan Zittrain" or "Jonathan Turley."
The Abstract
The Rise of the Dinosaurs, Written in Poop
This week, we explore the digestive products of dinosaurs, the sartorial skills of prehistoric peoples, the superpowers of a supreme squirter, and the effects of “repeated social defeat” in fish.
Behind The Blog
Behind the Blog: How About Them Eggs
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 talk about traffic, a return to Azeroth, egg prices and bullying.
Black Friday
Happy Affiliate Marketing Day to All Who Celebrate
Black Friday: A good encapsulation of why the internet is the way it is.