Behind The Blog
Behind the Blog: Chat, Are We Cooked?
This week, we discuss Palantir scoops, coping mechanisms, and feeling God in this Samsung television.
pornhub
‘You Will Lose Access To Pornhub:’ Kentucky and Indiana Face a Porn Countdown
With age verification laws looming, visitors to Pornhub and all sites under the Aylo umbrella now see a popup stating how many days are left before the site blocks itself from access in their states.
AI
TikTok Introduces AI Avatars for Ads as FTC Warns Companies Not to Do That
One week after the FTC said companies should not use AI to form personal attachments with consumers, TikTok says its AI avatars can help brands build “real and native connections.”
News
Users ‘Jailbreak’ AI Video Generator to Make Porn
Luma Labs’ Dream Machine, an AI video generator that’s on the market before OpenAI’s Sora, can be tricked to generate explicit videos.
Investing
You Probably Unwittingly Voted to Give Elon Musk a Huge Raise
The rise of passive investing in retirement has given firms like Vanguard a huge amount of power at companies like Tesla.
News
AI Images in Google Search Results Have Opened a Portal to Hell
Google image search results are turning up AI-generated images of celebrities and leading users to sites that host AI-generated nudes celebrities made to look like children.
Behind The Blog
Behind the Blog: Finding Meds and Hiding 'Likes'
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 getting people to talk to us, and collapsing civilizations on the internet.
Deepfakes
GOP Candidate Claims Incest Arrangement Audio Is a ‘Deepfake’ Meant to Smear Him
John Lee, a Trump-endorsed candidate for Congress, is suing his former opponent for defamation.
Amazon Rainforest
‘Remote’ Amazonian Tribes Have Been Using the Internet for a Long Time
The Marubo people written about by the New York Times have been using the internet—and grappling with its implications—long before Starlink came to their village.
FOIA
Cops Released a Car’s Travel History to a Total Stranger
In a rare instance of too much transparency, an Ohio police department released the precise movements of a particular vehicle in response to a public records request, showing just how invasive license plate reading technology can be.
Instagram Experiments With Injecting Pop Up Ads Into Your Friends’ Stories
Ads for a game called "Super Rumble" are popping up into Instagram users' stories as Meta experiments with more invasive types of ads.
Perplexity
A Question About Disputed South China Sea Sends Perplexity AI Into a Sanitized Infinite Loop
The answer shows a conversation between a "human" and an "AI" about the proper way to answer a sensitive question.
Podcast
Podcast: Hacking the Adderall Shortage
People in the U.S. are outsourcing the hunt for Adderall to people in the Philippines; an Apple AirTag stalking case; and the Gateway Pundit's (alleged) bankruptcy.