Culture

A look at the era of the non-disclosure agreement, subject of pop songs and nearly as common as water in Silicon Valley. Paradoxically, though, being as loud as possible makes it harder for the likes of Jeff Bezos to come after you.

How about you remain competitive by fixing your shit? I’ve met a lead data scientist with access to hundreds of thousands of sensitive customer records who is allowed to keep their password in a text file on their desktop, and you’re worried that customers are best served by using AI to improve security through some mechanism that you haven’t even come up with yet?

Lewis, the Post’s publisher and a former Murdoch henchman, forced out Sally Buzbee, the executive editor. As a result, a longstanding UK scandal around journalistic ethics resurfaced, as Lewis has allegedly attempted to suppress stories about it.

There’s now enough blood in the water that Bezos, WaPo’s owner, is involved. He’s supporting his British import.

Following on the reporting earlier this year from The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal profiles a teen influencer — whose mom is aware the account’s biggest fans are adult men.

Illinois has passed a law to protect child influencers, and more legislation is almost certainly forthcoming.

A remarkable essay on how an AI-generated video on kung fu led one family to order actual, physical encyclopedias.

Knowledge is not a market commodity. Moreover, “justified true belief” does not result from an optimization function. Knowledge may be refined through questioning or falsification, but it does not improve from competition with purposeful nonknowledge. If anything, in the face of nonknowledge, knowledge loses.

Inaccurate AI-generated stories were an important part of the BNN business model — “churning out hundreds, even thousands, of stories a day.” Some of BNN’s stories were republished by MSN.com or linked by reputable outlets.

What happens when remote villages get Starlink and all the good and bad that comes with unfettered internet access? The New York Times traveled deep into the Amazon rainforest to find out:

Modern society has dealt with these issues over decades as the internet continued its relentless march. The Marubo and other Indigenous tribes, who have resisted modernity for generations, are now confronting the internet’s potential and peril all at once, while debating what it will mean for their identity and culture.

The contrast and familiarity of the NYT’s photography is striking, seeing people hunched over their brightly lit rectangles hoping for just one more hit of dopamine.

It debuted on June 1st, 1999, and shut down two years later.

Its name lived on as a Best Buy brand, a re-named Rhapsody streaming service, and an attempt to cash in on NFT hype. But in my heart, it will always be a search engine for poorly-labeled, low-quality MP3s that take hours to download over AOL dial-up internet.

And yet, Matty Benedetto has amassed millions of subscribers with his Unnecessary Inventions. Tune into my new video series, Full Frame: Creators, where I spend a day with a creator to see how they have found success on the internet.

Despite Google’s AI expertise, it drastically overestimates how good its tech is — as anyone can see in its search results. And that’s with expertise. This doesn’t bode well for everyone else’s use of AI!

FTX lieutenant Ryan Salame, sentenced to 7.5 years in jail earlier today, has logged on to yell at people online. That’s some real poster game, folks. You might not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like. (via Molly White)

Remember this? I’ve been waiting for a good reason to share it on The Verge, and all of Kingdom Hearts coming to Steam seems like a good enough one to me! Spoilers, obviously.

Actually, no! io9’s ever-reliable James Whitbrook found legit reasons to love the Star Wars movie we don’t talk about. A slideshow that delivers:

The indie rock icon, Steely Dan hater, and prolific shitposter died of a heart attack. Among the records he engineered were Nirvana’s In Utero and Pixies’ Surfer Rosa. Here’s Albini on the recording industry in 1993, and a more recent feature on his growth since then.

The singer reshared fake AI images of herself at the Met Gala — an event she didn’t attend — along with a text showing her own mom fell for the synthetic image that was circulating. The official Instagram account commented, “a TRUE goddess.” Unclear if the person running it realized it was AI.

Watch out for the AI Met Gala disinformation!

G/O Media sold Deadspin, The A.V. Club, and The Takeout last month. Now Global Tetrahedron, which includes Twilio co-founder Jeff Lawson and former NBC News reporter Ben Collins, has acquired The Onion.

Taking over as CEO, Collins told the NYT:

We’re keeping all the writers, we’re going to work with the union, we’re going to make it so they can hopefully get paid a little bit more money, and we’re going to give them the room to grow.

The first article published? Give Us $1 Or ‘The Onion’ Disappears Forever.

We stan a relatable king. Who hasn’t had their whole day leveled by emails?

“Sunscreen, shades, ZZ Top’s Degüello album and beer is INCOMPATIBLE to emails! Natural adversaries!”

“No journalist is going to catch Swift in her sweatpants backstage and write about it.” I loved this profile of Tree Paine, perhaps the most influential celebrity publicist in the game. 

How did the N64’s Legacy of Darkness hide the ability to instantly unlock all its characters for a quarter-century? Well, this particular Up, Up, Down, Down required four Ups and four Downs, used C-buttons instead of D-pad, and you’ve gotta hit Z (not Start) at the end. Have yourself more Konami Code stories.

Though Truth Social has lost $3.5 billion in value, its shareholders say they aren’t worried. “This isn’t just another stock to me. … I feel like it was God Almighty that put it in my lap,” says Jerry Dean McLain, who’s invested “$25,000 — pretty much his ‘whole nest egg.’”