News
“We Are Getting Lasered”: Nearly a Dozen Planes Lasered Last Night During New Jersey Drone Panic
Air traffic control audio reviewed by 404 Media shows 11 aircraft near New Jersey reporting people shining lasers at them during the ongoing drone panic.
The Abstract
An Alternate Theory for How Life-Giving Water Came to Earth
Come along for a tale of mammoth meals, Venusian deserts, orbital splash parks, and slingshot-wielding spiders.
Behind The Blog
Behind the Blog: Healthcare and its Stakeholders
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 health insurance.
Moderators Across Social Media Struggle to Contain Celebrations of UnitedHealthcare CEO’s Assassination
While Reddit mods and admin try to keep up with the site's "no violence" terms of use, Facebook and LinkedIn is reacting with tens of thousands of laughing emojis.
News
The Unauthorized Effort to Archive Netflix’s Disappeared Interactive Shows
A group of fans are reverse engineering Netflix and creating unauthorized archives of interactive shows like Battle Kitty and Minecraft: Story Mode
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.