ICE
Contractor Recruiting People on LinkedIn to Physically Track Immigrants for ICE, Will Pay $300
“The more I listened to it, the more I’m like, something doesn’t sound right,” a person who was briefed on the pilot plans told 404 Media.
The Abstract
Scientists Report Surreal Scenes In the World’s Most Northern Town
Researchers witnessing warming in Svalbard worry that “we have been too cautious” with climate warnings.
Behind The Blog
Behind the Blog: Don't Record Me, Bro
This week, we discuss smart glasses for frat bros, Amazon comms messiness, and more.
News
Women Dating Safety App 'Tea' Breached, Users' IDs Posted to 4chan
“DRIVERS LICENSES AND FACE PICS! GET THE FUCK IN HERE BEFORE THEY SHUT IT DOWN!” the thread read before being deleted.
News
Credit Card Companies Are Hurting the Future of Video Games
By going after Itch.io, “we’re really hamstringing the future of arts and communication.”
grindr
Grindr Won’t Let Users Say 'No Zionists'
An error message appears saying "The following are not allowed: no zionist, no zionists" when users try to add the phrase to their bios, but any number of other phrases about political and religious preferences are allowed.
News
Lawsuit Alleges Roblox Hosted Digital 'Diddy Freak-Off' Themed Games
The games were mentioned in a 2024 report and are now part of a new lawsuit in which a 11 year old girl was allegedly groomed and sexually assaulted after meeting a stranger on Roblox.
AI Slop
LeBron James' Lawyers Send Cease-and-Desist to AI Company Making Pregnant Videos of Him
Viral Instagram accounts making LeBron 'brainrot' videos have also been banned.
The Abstract
Humans Have Shifted Earth's Rotation, Scientists Discover. Here's How.
Over the past few centuries, dams have pulled the poles a few feet off of Earth’s rotational axis.
News
Google’s AI Is Destroying Search, the Internet, and Your Brain
Google’s AI Overview, which is easy to fool into stating nonsense as fact, is stopping people from finding and supporting small businesses and credible sources.
News
Hacker Plants Computer 'Wiping' Commands in Amazon's AI Coding Agent
The wiping commands probably wouldn't have worked, but a hacker who says they wanted to expose Amazon’s AI “security theater” was able to add code to Amazon’s popular ‘Q’ AI assistant for VS Code, which Amazon then pushed out to users.
News
ChatGPT Hallucinated a Feature, Forcing Human Developers to Add It
Welcome to the era of ‘gaslight driven development.’ Soundslice added a feature the chatbot thought it existed after engineers kept finding screenshots from the LLM in its error logs.
Podcast
Podcast: Spotify Is Publishing AI Tracks of Dead Artists
Spotify is publishing AI-generated tracks of dead artists; a company is selling hacked data to debt collectors; and the Astronomer CEO episode shows the surveillance dystopia we live in.