Behind The Blog
Behind the Blog: In Our Lane
This week, we discuss choosing what to cover, fishing expeditions, and the library.
apps
Pocket, One of the Only Apps I Ever Liked, Is Shutting Down
Pocket, the app for saving articles to read later, announced it is shutting down on July 8.
News
Hacker Conference HOPE Says U.S. Immigration Crackdown Caused Massive Crash in Ticket Sales
One scheduled speaker has also pulled out of the New York-based event and specifically pointed to Trump’s mass deportation efforts.
News
Why Does Google’s New Veo 3 AI Video Generator Love This Dad Joke?
“I went to the zoo the other day, there was only one dog in it…”
sex work
Sweden Expands Anti-Sex Work Law to Criminalize Paying for Custom OnlyFans Clips and Camming
The Nordic Model criminalizes buyers of sex in multiple European countries (and Maine). Sweden just voted to expand its reach to the internet.
News
Kids Say They're Using Photos of Trump and Markiplier to Bypass 'Gorilla Tag' Age Verification
Popular VR game Gorilla Tag partnered with the company k-ID to comply with age verification laws.
News
Researchers Scrape 2 Billion Discord Messages and Publish Them Online
A Brazilian team used Discord’s API to scrape 10% of its open servers.
Podcast
Podcast: AI Slop Summer
How the Chicago Sun-Times printed an AI-generated summer guide; how schools were not prepared for ChatGPT; and those funny little guys from Star Wars.
News
Scientists Explain Why Trump's $175 Billion Golden Dome Is a Fantasy
Shooting missiles out of the sky from space could require a constellation of 36,000 satellites.
AI
Viral AI-Generated Summer Guide Printed by Chicago Sun-Times Was Made by Magazine Giant Hearst
The Chicago Sun-Times said "we understand this is unacceptable for us to distribute."
News
Civitai, Site Used to Generate AI Porn, Cut Off by Credit Card Processor
Civitai, a huge platform for sharing AI models and generating videos and images, has been cut off from its payment processor.
News
Chicago Sun-Times Prints AI-Generated Summer Reading List With Books That Don't Exist
"I can't believe I missed it because it's so obvious. No excuses," the writer said. "I'm completely embarrassed."
News
'Configuration Issue' Allows Civitai Users to AI Generate Nonconsensual Porn Videos
404 Media found that people were using Civitai to create nonconsensual AI porn videos of anyone for a small price.