Redbox left 24,000 abandoned DVD rental kiosks. These are some of the people recovering them.

A Russian disinformation operation has set its sights on Stalker 2, which has become a symbol of Ukrainian perseverance.

"We have data on the performance of >50k engineers from 100s of companies. ~9.5% of software engineers do virtually nothing: Ghost Engineers.”

Niantic, the company behind Pokémon Go, is building an AI model based on user data; we discuss the rise of AI pimping, and a phone sold the U.S. military is expanding to the public.

A Hugging Face employee made a huge dataset of Bluesky posts, and it’s already very popular.

"X CORP. OWNS THE X ACCOUNTS."

Stake is an online casino and sportsbook that's using watermarks on viral meme accounts to advertise on social media. But it goes deeper than that.

The creator of a game that allows players to recreate “Operation al-Aqsa Flood” says it’s no different than Call of Duty.

A Niantic executive said he could see governments and militaries buying Niantic geospatial AI trained on player data, but the company said it’s still early days.

Tether is being used on a massive scale by large scale drug traffickers, to the point where Tether is sold cheaper in Mexico due to its links to drugs, according to court records reviewed by 404 Media.

This week, we’ll travel to ancient Mars, indulge in record-breaking “nanopasta,” check out nature’s version of fiber optic cables, and behold a galactic jellyfish.

This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we talk about conjuring gaming memories, AI-generated Birkin bags, and a rejection of a certain type of criticism.

The truck thieves also stole trucks hauling electronics from Microsoft and Logitech.

Playlists and "podcast" episode descriptions are hiding malware and piracy sites in plain sight on the streaming platform.

A small tech company called Cape has been selling a privacy-focused cellphone service to the U.S. military. Now Cape will be offering its product to high-risk members of the public.

We chat Buzzfeed's AI-powered ads, a big Graykey leak, and the wave of publishers making deals with AI companies.

AI-generated influencers that steal content from human models and adult content creators have taken over Instagram.

The non-profit, university press asked its authors for input on how they'd prefer to see any hypothetical AI training deals handled, and plans to base future decisions on what they say, MIT Press told 404 Media.

Niantic says it is using data generated by Pokémon Go players to create a “Large Geospatial Model” that can navigate the real world and power robots.

"The text on the top needs effects as well … shining … blood spots or a line surrounding it, etc."