‘Highly Plausible’ Aliens on Europa Are Earthlings’ Descendants, Study Says
A new study suggests that bacteria dispersed through space on dust grains could potentially arrive intact and alive on Jupiter’s moon Europa.
Cities Are Covering Flock Cameras With Trash Bags
Regretful cities aren't sure how to cancel their surveillance contracts, so they are literally covering their cameras.
The Sun Is Undergoing a Mysterious Change and Nobody Knows Why
Astronomers discovered that magnetic activity in the Sun is being squeezed into a more tightly confined area under its surface, which has implications for space weather forecasts…
Headway Therapy Patients Forced to Scan Their Faces to Keep Getting Care
A popular virtual therapy platform is telling providers and patients they'll have to do facial scanning soon, forcing some to choose between handing over their data and continuing…
New Study Reveals the Manipulative ‘Dark Patterns’ of AI Chatbots
A new study by the Center for Democracy & Technology shows how chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini, Replika and more can lead users down paths they didn't intend.
‘Cracked Oura’ Is an App For Using the Oura Ring Without the Monthly Subscription
On Thursday Oura announced the nearly $500 Ring 5. But what if you don't want to pay a monthly subscription to access your health data?
Behind the Blog: Being New and Some Numbers
This week, we discuss going deeper and Google's search changes.
‘Lobotomized’: Character.AI Is Showing What AI Enshittification Looks Like
Ads everywhere. Usage limits. Frustrating guardrails. Less model choice. Users of the Character.AI chatbot app are revolting after a series of changes they say have made the app…
Millions of People Are Installing Malware on Their Partners’ Phones (with Zack Whittaker)
Joseph talks to Zack Whittaker all about stalkerware, the pervasive malware that ordinary people install on their partners' phones.
‘BusPatrol’ Put AI Cameras in Tens of Thousands of School Buses. Now They Want to Give Cops Access
BusPatrol plans to scan the license plates of all vehicles the buses drive past, and then let law enforcement search that data. The plan would essentially turn school buses into…
An Incomplete List of Successful Anti-Data Center Legislation
No one wants to live next to a noisy computer warehouse and communities across the country are successfully fighting them.
‘Corpse Point’ In the Arctic Is Melting, Disturbing Centuries-Old Bodies
Whalers buried in the Norwegian Arctic in the 1600s and 1700s are thawing out of the permafrost, underscoring the threat of climate change to archaeological sites around the world.
The Oldest Evidence of Animal Sex Has Been Found, and It’s Mind-Boggling
Fossils unearthed in the Northwest Territories push the origins of animal sex back by 5-10 million years and reveal the earliest examples of locomotion in the fossil record.
After Town Bans Flock, Councilmember Crashes Out, Proposes Internet and Phone Ban
A Texas councilmember will propose “a total ban on all cellular and GPS-capable devices for all operations within city limits" and"a total termination of all internet services."
Behind the Blog: The Attention Wars
This week, we discuss Spencer Pratt, bricking phones, and the FTC.
The FBI Wants to Buy Nationwide Access to License Plate Readers
Only a couple vendors could likely fulfill what the FBI is after, namely Flock and Motorola.
How Deepfakes Tore a High School Apart
After five teen girls were targeted by AI-generated child sexual abuse material, Radnor Township High School in Pennsylvania has become a case study in how schools and police…
Researchers Wanted Preschool Teachers to Wear Cameras to Train AI
“With your permission, your child’s lead teacher may wear a small teacher-worn camera that captures the teacher's approximate first-person perspective, and/or we may place a fixed…
Lawyer for Guy Who Sued Women Who Called Him ‘Psycho’ Caught Using AI
The attorney for Nikko D’Ambrosio, who tried and failed to sue women for posting about him in an “Are We Dating the Same Guy” Facebook group, has apparently been using AI to file…
Township Leader Resigns in Tears Over OpenAI Data Center Death Threats
"I can’t take it anymore. The threats," the treasurer said. The planned data center is part of OpenAI and Oracle's Stargate initiative.
Here's the Bodycam Footage of the Cybertruck That Drove Into a Lake
“Obviously I wasn’t thinking at all,” the driver told police, according to the footage.
This Archivist Has Saved 175,000 Articles from 30 Years of Writing about Magic: The Gathering
The Library of Leng contains old usenet posts and forgotten articles from Magic: the Gathering's long history.
Scientists Discover Strange New Crystal Formed by Nuclear Blast
A type of crystal lattice called a clathrate structure has been found for the first time in the fallout of a nuclear detonation.
Streamer Realtime Deepfakes Himself into Mr. Beast, Says He Loves 'Touching Little Boys'
The software, called Delulu, is marketed specifically to streamers and lets them easily transform into other people including George Floyd, Jeffrey Epstein, and other streamers.
Podcast: The Physical Politics of the Internet with Britt Paris
Britt Paris's new book 'Radical Infrastructure: Imagining the Internet from the Ground Up' tells the story of the physical internet, and how it can benefit people, not…
Podcast: Elites Just Don't Get AI
Commencement speeches, poop images to train AI, and cameras stuck to preschool teachers also to train AI.
Podcast: How Deepfakes Destroyed a High School
How deepfakes rocked a high school; BusPatrol giving AI camera data to cops; and a big time crash out.