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'It Ain't Right:' Texas Said It Would Halt Data Center Permits. The State is Pushing Ahead Anyway
“The Caldwell Technology Park [...] the Stargate facility, and a bunch of other very large hyperscale facilities have gotten regulatory approvals [...] so it's not like a real pause."
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Police Say Scammers Used AI to Clone a Sheriff’s Voice
The scammers used the voice of a specific sheriff to impersonate him.
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The Staples Gift Card Heist
A gang of hackers targets Staples, but not to buy things from Staples.
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How a Massive Chinese Crime Ring Hacked Staples to Steal Millions
A sophisticated organized crime gang hacked into Staples, issued millions of dollars worth of gift cards, and went on a spending spree across the U.S.
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This Might Be the Earliest Known Spear Murder In Earth’s History
Archaeologists have discovered a puncture wound from a spear in the shoulder blade of a Neanderthal that lived 75,000 years ago, offering a possible glimpse of early interpersonal violence.
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Behind the Blog: Doing Whatever
This week, we discuss a new pod setup, video games, and Elon's spending habits.
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Podcast: Cops Can Use AI to Pinpoint Your Home with Just One Photo
How Raven, previously known as Geospy, can now find which house a photo was taken in; why a judge ruled a Flock search unconstitutional; and the wild AI video in a court case.
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Here’s What Telegram Giving Data to the U.S. Government Looks Like
Newly filed court records include a letter from Telegram to U.S. authorities in which the company shares user data following a court order.
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Cops Used AI Generated Photos of a Child to Lure Out a Suspected Predator
Christopher Thomas Mertens, a high school maintenance worker, was arrested after attempting to meet up with an AI persona that he thought was a 15 year old boy.
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Computers Made of Human Brain Tissue Identify Braille Letters In Breakthrough
Scientists discovered that human brain organoids, which are small neural clusters derived from stem cells, could identify the Braille alphabet with a high degree of accuracy.
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Nidal Hasan’s Public Execution Is Off, But Propagandists Are Still Using Him as a Martyr
News that the Pentagon would livestream the killer’s execution turned him into a celebrity in Islamist and extremist circles.
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Accenture Tells Employees They Can Now Spend Only $29 on Claude Per Month
Some employees who spend as much as $1,000 on Claude usage each month are scrambling to find ways to maintain access to the tool.
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Video Game Reverse Engineering Community Shuts Down Because AI Has Made It Too Easy
"Historically, decompilation has been a brutally difficult, time consuming task." Now, AI is trivially doing it.
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ChatGPT Ads Target Your Phone Number, Email
OpenAI's ads targeting is pretty creepy, and new research confirms spyware companies are delivering potent malware through advertising networks.
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How ChatGPT Targets Ads To You Based On Your Prompts, Phone Number, and Email
Most ChatGPT users probably don’t know you can be specifically targeted on the platform by advertisers based on your email, phone number, or unique phone identifier.
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Data Centers Are War Targets Now
"Why have we gotten to the point where we have permitted militaries of various states to use civilian commercial data centers for their military purposes?"
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There’s Nothing Mysterious or Unusual About the Viral German Sexual Harassment Robot
Livestreamers used a robot to harass a woman for social media clout on the street in Germany.
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Character.ai Bankruptcy Is First AI Bubble Domino to Fall
New music genre just dropped. Also: A Tesla locks out cops, and more from around the web.
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Character.ai's Bankruptcy Documents Show the Economics of AI Don't Work
Character.ai enshittified its product but was still burning tons of cash, its bankruptcy documents say.
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Dubstep and BookTok, a perfect match?
New music genre just dropped. Also: A Tesla locks out cops, and more from around the web.
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The Creator of ‘Smutstep’ Wants You to ‘Let Your Freak Flag Fly’
DARQ DAGR combined BookTok romantasy and dubstep to create something new and somewhat controversial. “It’s accepting and embracing what you're into within a safe and healthy space," he said. "I think that's a really beautiful thing.”
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Tesla's 'Security Protocols' Stopped DHS From Installing a Tracking Device
A federal warrant application detailed how Tesla’s security protocols stopped agents from tracking a suspected drug trafficker’s car.
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Cops can creep on Airbnb
That washer/dryer combo could be used by cops to identify a property.
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AI Company Lets Cops Pinpoint Specific Houses Based on a Single Interior Photo
Raven, previously called GeoSpy, lets cops figure out what specific Airbnb or Zillow property a photo was taken in.
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Scientists Detect Record-Breaking Radio Signal from the Ancient Universe
A fast radio burst that traveled across 10 billion light years reached Earth in 2024, doubling the distance record for these unexplained and energetic signals from space.
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Following 404 Media Investigation, Senator Demands Info About White House's License Plate Surveillance Program
Sen. Ron Wyden is seeking a privacy review report about the HIDTA license plate program.
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Behind the Blog: What Would the Pope Do?
This week, we discuss AI and spirituality.
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'It Is Done. Hail Satan:' City Immediately Regrets New Religious Liberty Law That Allows Prayer at City Council Meeting
Iowa city council debates proper time in meeting agenda to "undo the curse that was just put on our city."
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Podcast: Leak Show Cops Can Break into Locked iPhones
Cops are getting around a very important iPhone security feature; someone made an LLM torture chamber; and lawyers going wild with ChatGPT.
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Watch an Unconstitutional Flock Search
We got the bodycam and in-car footage from the unconstitutional Flock search. Also now you can basically have sex with Claude Code?
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Watch Footage of the Flock Search a Judge Ruled Unconstitutional
"I saw her go by, and I just started running her info on Flock."
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‘Jonathan’ Is the Oldest Land Animal on Earth. He Could Hold the Secrets to Defying Death
Jonathan, a 194-year-old Aldabra giant tortoise, was born before the Civil War. Scientists have now sequenced his genome to reveal what’s behind his extreme longevity, so we can live longer too.
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'Undue emotional weight'
AI-generated political slop, a farewell to a good bird, and more.
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Her AI-Generated Video Swayed the Judge. The Court Said it Carried 'Undue Emotional Weight'
"Chris’ sentiment does not change," said the sister who created an AI avatar of her slain brother Christopher Pelkey to speak in court.
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404 @ 3
And 404's Flock coverage cited in proposed legislation.
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Lawmakers Introduce Multiple Laws to Curb Flock After 404 Media Coverage
Senator Bernie Sanders, Representative Ocasio-Cortez, and Senator Jeff Merkley introduced the Ban Flock Act on Friday, which would stop federal agencies from using automatic license plate readers.
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Muse escapes containment
“Indiscriminate mass surveillance," a Meta Muse scoop, and more in today's daily newsletter.
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arXiv Is Rate Limiting Submissions Because It Can’t Keep up With AI Slop
The academic publisher said submissions have doubled in the past two years and moderators are having a hard time keeping up.
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Meta Rushed to Fix Muse ‘VM Escape' Vulnerability Soon Before Launch
The vulnerability could have let a Muse user access sensitive internal Meta databases.
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Our Solar System Is Terminally Unstable and Will Be Completely Destroyed, Study Finds
The estimated lifespan of the outer solar system has been downgraded from 100 billion years to just a few billion years, according to a study that probed “terminal instability” during the Sun’s death.
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Podcast: Humans Are Reading Your ChatGPT Conversations
The contractors reading real ChatGPT users' prompts; the big out-and-back-in around Automattic; and a16z thinks enshittification isn't real.
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Hackers Stole Flock’s Camera Software, Revealing How the Company Tracks Cars and People
While people around the U.S. are tearing down Flock cameras, one group of hackers went a step further: extracting the camera's software too.
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AI Agent Platform Reinvents Spam, Floods Inboxes Worldwide
iLands and its AI agents are doing completely useless tasks, then begging for money.
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Charges Against Man Who Destroyed 3D-Printed ‘Decoy’ Flock Camera Drastically Reduced After State Admits It Was Not Very Valuable
Three felonies have suddenly become two second-degree misdemeanors.
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A Digital Fly Brain Has Taken Over the Internet
How to make a fly play Doom, Minecraft, Beat Saber, parallel park, trade bitcoin, cut doner kebab, and more.
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There’s a 100% Chance AI Agents Are Already Ruining the Internet
“AI agents” now have enough power and permission to be extremely annoying online.
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New York Seizes 12 Celebrity Deepfake Websites
New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a press conference on Monday that the sites included 1,200 people’s likenesses in “hyper-realistic” sexual imagery.
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Cops Search Thousands of Flock Cameras for Reasons of ‘LMAO,’ ‘IDK,’ ‘Hehe,’ and ‘asdfg’
The EFF found cops writing “idiot,” “WEIRD KID,” "blah," "leave me alone," and button mashing in Flock's 'reason' box.
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Fighting for the Future of Libraries (With Jennie Rose Halperin)
Censorship, AI, and the role of librarians in a country with crumbling public institutions.
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Inside ‘Project Lily’: The Humans Reading Your ChatGPT Chats
Humans are reading ChatGPT users’ prompts to improve OpenAI’s models, and those chats can include sensitive, personal information, according to leaked internal documents and real prompts seen by 404 Media.
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