Behind The Blog
Behind the Blog: Feeling Smart Along the Way
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 cheating in job interviews, "scary good" surveillance tech, and prudes in payment processing.
influencers
I Went to See ‘God’s Influencer,’ the Millennial Saint Carlo Acutis
Carlo loved Halo and programming, but he loved God more. I went to see him, lying under glass in his Nikes for eternity, at a church in Assisi.
News
4chan Is Down Following What Looks to Be a Major Hack Spurred By Meme War
Hackers claim to have obtained 4chan's code, emails of moderators, and internal communications.
News
The AI Tools CBP Is Using to Scan Social Media
Customs and Border Protection released more documents last week that show which AI-powered tools that agency has been using to identify people of interest.
News
Google DeepMind Is Hiring a 'Post-AGI' Research Scientist
Google is preparing for a future with AGI, ASI, and machine consciousness.
AI
Inside the Economy of AI Spammers Getting Rich By Exploiting Disasters and Misery
How AI spammers monetized the LA fires and other natural disasters.
News
I Tested The AI That Calls Your Elderly Parents If You Can't Be Bothered
inTouch says on its website "Busy life? You can’t call your parent every day—but we can." My own mum said she would feel terrible if her child used it.
The Abstract
The Ocean Spectacle that Has Entranced Sailors for Centuries
“It was like we were in the ‘Twilight Zone’ and peering at a negative of the real world,” said one mariner.
Behind The Blog
Behind the Blog: The Economy, Robot Umpires, and Monsters
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.
News
New 'Rape and Incest' Game Tests the Limits of Steam’s Sex Policy
“No Mercy” is shocking people who are not familiar with Steam’s adult game ecosystem, but it’s mostly just shovelware.
Interviews
How a $2,000 'Made in the USA' Phone Is Manufactured
"You could count the number of skilled electronics engineers on US soil, and there's probably a million in Shenzhen alone."
News
Scammers Used OpenAI to Flood the Web with SEO Spam
A new report from SentinelOne exposed the inner workings of AkiraBot, a program that bypassed CAPTCHAs and used AI-generated messages to target 420,000 websites.
News
Facebook Pushes Its Llama 4 AI Model to the Right, Wants to Present “Both Sides”
Meta’s Llama 4 model is worried about left leaning bias in the data, and wants to be more like Elon Musk’s Grok.