More from Go Read This: The Verge’s favorite reads from all over the web
The claim that the Titanic was swapped with a sister ship and intentionally sunk for an insurance payout is, according to Reuters, a long-running and meritless rumor.
But it’s entirely new to me! And extremely hilarious! You should treat this (and anything else on that cursed site) with the gravity and weight of fanfiction, but let’s be real, fanfiction is fun.
[The Unredacted]
And they’re worried that everybody else got really worried for a minute, too, and then just kind of moved on. And so maybe the worriers missed their only chance:
“There was almost a dog-that-caught-the-car effect,” she said. “This community had been trying so long to get people to take these ideas seriously, and suddenly people took them seriously, and it was like, ‘Okay, now what?’”
[The Atlantic]
I’m gonna go out on a limb and say US whistleblower laws weren’t intended to be used by people like “Richard Overum,” who has turned himself into a super spy one whistleblower reward at a time. But he’s making it work! And he’s recruiting.
I can’t decide if this is a Robin Hood story or kind of scammy or both, but I can’t get enough.
After The New York Times reported that Walz was a Dreamcast fan, IGN did the legwork to find that he apparently really liked Crazy Taxi. Now I’m wondering if Walz knows all the lyrics to “Escape From the City,” too.
Author and journalist Malcolm Harris found a bag filled with Project 2025 merch and documents on the street this week — apparently nothing top secret, but interesting nonetheless.
The Washington Post reports that the Heritage Foundation, the right wing think tank spearheading Project 2025, filed a police report for “theft.” Then the cops showed up.
[The Washington Post]
Jessica Grose writes in the NYT about educators struggling with students using AI in the classroom. One major worry expressed is that relying on it for brainstorming and writing could make students less likely to power through tough assignments on their own.
It’s almost as if the speed of available technology is making them assume that their human brains should have all the answers.
Right now, teachers have to deal with this issue on their own; some policymakers “appear to have drunk the Kool-Aid on artificial intelligence.”
[The New York Times]
For more of the backstory and ambition behind Worldcoin, the eyeball-scanning-for-cryptocurrency startup that Sam Altman thinks could one day save us all from an AI-controlled world, check out this piece from Bloomberg’s Ashley Vance:
Blania and Altman, who formally outlined their Worldcoin master plan a year ago, have since received feedback that might be generously described as mixed. On one hand, they’ve already persuaded more than 6 million people to go before an Orb and sign up for a World ID, and the sign-up rate has been surging this year. The total value of the digital currency (WLD) is more than $550 million. At a factory in Germany, Orbs are heading toward mass production and will soon be dispersed around the globe in a bid to push these numbers even higher.
Just weeks after the NYT profiled Blake Benthall about his Silk Road 2.0 role and post-prison endeavors, 404 Media has identified a co-founder, Thomas White, as its “Dread Pirate Roberts 2.0.”
Between his 2014 arrest and receiving a five-year prison sentence in 2019, White apparently launched DDoSecrets with Emma Best, which was eventually tagged a “criminal hacker group” after publishing the “BlueLeaks.”
I had to the good fortune of reading an early copy of Andrew Chow’s smartly researched and brightly written new book, Cryptomania (which I always say to the tune of “Lisztomania”). It joins Zeke Faux’s Number Go Up as one of the great chronicles of the crypto boom, and it’s out this week.
The New York Times profiled the guy who ran Silk Road 2.0 — apparently after eight months in prison he worked for the feds as “a full-time, ankle-monitor-wearing cybercrime consultant, paid in freedom and a stipend that covered dollar pizza slices, toothpaste and subway rides.”
Now he’s shilling his crypto compliance startup, arguing that “his criminal experience can help unmask fraud before it leads to another scam like FTX.”
[The New York Times]
JD Vance’s former coworkers say the vice presidential candidate wasn’t very good at being a venture capitalist. One person said he was too consumed with his book tour around Hillbilly Elegy to show up to work.
I nodded a lot at this Max Read piece about how we perceive the world now, particularly the current “vibe shift” in politics but also just... everything. I feel like we’ve been debating “is Twitter really the world?” for 15 years now, but the answer feels more slippery than ever.
One way of thinking about every American election since 2015 is as a referendum on whether or not Twitter is real. Did the “prevailing vibes” on Twitter reflect the electoral choices of millions of Americans?
[maxread.substack.com]
According to The Information, OpenAI is in discussion with Broadcom and other semiconductor designers about developing its own artificial intelligence chip to address shortages in its supply chain and reduce dependency on Nvidia. OpenAI has apparently also hired former Google chip staffers.
Bloomberg previously reported in January that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was planning to raise billions of dollars to set up a network of chip factories.
[The Information]
Apparently J. D. Vance didn’t read my PSA about Venmo. Among his contacts? The elites he claims to loathe, execs from Anthropic and AOL, lobbyists, Tucker Carlson, and the people pushing Project 2025.
The police department in Anaheim, California, apparently wants to “be the first” with a Cybertruck, according to an email sent to Tesla modification company Up.Fit and obtained by 404 Media.
Up.Fit has already shown what a Cybertruck for police use may look like. The Anaheim PD later confirmed to 404 Media that the email was “a joke” but that it would still like a Cybertruck for “community engagement.”
[404 Media]
The Wall Street Journal reports that Disney is trying to make its streaming platforms work and feel more like Netflix. For example:
New features in the works at Disney include a more-personalized algorithm to power content recommendations, customized promotional art for new shows and movies based on subscriber’s tastes and usage history, and emails sent to viewers who stop watching in the middle of a series reminding them to finish, according to people familiar with the matter.
There’s lots more in the full story.
A report from Bloomberg highlights how a couple’s washable swim diaper business suffered after Amazon’s returns service recirculated a used diaper, leading to a scathing review that hurt sales:
The Barons told Amazon repeatedly that they weren’t at fault and that the review should be taken down. Yet it remains on the site, inflicting lasting harm. The couple says they’re $600,000 in debt, including a loan secured by their home that complicates the prospect of filing for bankruptcy.
Software engineer Robert Heaton wrote a tool that gives him “free, unbelievably stupid wi-fi” on planes, by... repeatedly updating fields in his Air Miles account without paying for in-flight Wi-Fi.
Go read this blog recounting how his PySkyWiFi tool uses data tunneled through the limited space of his Air Miles account information to a proxy computer on the ground. It’s apparently very slow. And it sounds a little familiar.
A group of international enforcers including the US’s Federal Trade Commission evaluated 642 websites and apps offering subscriptions. They found that almost 76% used at least one potential dark pattern — design tricks meant to steer consumers to a desired outcome — and nearly 67% used more than one possible dark pattern. The most common dark pattern they found were “sneaking practices,” where sites hide or delay information that could sway a consumer’s decision.
Fair warning: this MIT Tech Review history / explainer on all things AI is humungous and complicated. But in the vein of Bloomberg’s great “What Is Code?” and “The Crypto Story,” this is as good an all-things-AI opus as I’ve seen yet. Bookmark it, read it, take notes.
[MIT Technology Review]
According to The Information, VC firm Andreessen Horowitz has “secured thousands of AI chips” — including highly sought after Nvidia H100s — to dole out to its AI portfolio companies in exchange for equity. The initiative is aptly named Oxygen, because these chips are that integral to AI companies. The chips are almost impossible to secure for small startups too, because Big Tech companies hoover up all the supply.
That didn’t pan out, but if you’re curious what it could have looked like, AppleInsider published some pictures of a purported prototype iPhone 15 Pro Max with haptic buttons for the volume rocker and the power button. The report also includes some details on how the buttons might have worked.
A CNN investigation found that Airbnb routinely ignores or silences, through settlements and NDAs, guests who find hidden cameras in their rentals’ bedrooms and bathrooms.
In one case, Airbnb told guests who found a camera pointed at their bed it wanted to get the host’s side of the story. It allowed him to continue hosting for months, even after being told he was under police investigation. Police eventually raided his property:
Among the more than 2,000 recovered images, law enforcement identified more than 30 victims, including several children. Many guests – who booked the same property either through Airbnb or Vrbo – were captured in various stages of undress. Some were recorded having sex.
Update: Altered the text for clarity.
If you’ve been wrestling with the recent revelations about Alice Munro, Michelle Dean might have put it down best over at The Cut.
This piece is many things: a close reading of Munro’s work, an argument for what we can separate between an artist and their art, and ultimately a personal struggle evoked with lucidity in the face of moral ambiguity.