We start this week with news of our zine! We’re printing it very soon, and walk you through the process. Independent media is turning back to physical zines as a way to subvert algorithms. After the break, Emanuel tells us about some very weird Instagram changes. In the subscribers-only section, Joseph explains ICEBlock’s lawsuit against the U.S. government.

YouTube version: https://youtu.be/lseEXc-ZzsQ

Timestamps:

28:01 - 2nd Story - ⁠Instagram Is Generating Inaccurate SEO Bait for Your Posts⁠

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This week Sam is in conversation with Noelle Perdue. Noelle is a writer, producer, and internet porn historian whose works has been published in Wired, the Washington Post, Slate, and more, and you’re probably familiar with her work if you’ve been paying attention to the plot in your favorite pornographic films. She’s writing on Stubstack so look her up there!

YouTube Version: https://youtu.be/9eqMXBwWtkA

Noelle and Sam discuss everything from sexbots and AI porn to censorship, age verification legislation, and their favorite parody porn flicks.  

Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Become a paid subscriber for access to this episode's bonus content and to power our journalism. If you become a paid subscriber, check your inbox for an email from our podcast host Transistor for a link to the subscribers-only version! You can also add that subscribers feed to your podcast app of choice and never miss an episode that way. The email should also contain the subscribers-only unlisted YouTube link for the extended video version too. It will also be in the show notes in your podcast player.

Noelle Perdue on Substack

Michigan Lawmakers Are Attempting to Ban Porn Entirely

New Bill Would Make All Pornography a Federal Crime in the U.S.

OpenAI Catches Up to AI Market Reality: People Are Horny

ChatGPT’s Hail Mary: Chatbots You Can Fuck

The Egg Yolk Principle: Human Sexuality Will Always Outsmart Prudish Algorithms and Hateful Politicians

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We start this week with Joseph’s very weird story about Apple Podcasts. The app is opening by itself, playing random spirituality podcasts, and in one case directing listeners to a potentially malicious website. After the break, Matthew tells us how it sure looks like a map of Ukraine was manipulated in order to win a bet on Polymarket. In the subscribers-only section, Sam breaks down how half of the U.S. now requires a face or ID scan to watch porn.

Timestamps:
2:00 - Story 1 - Someone Is Trying to ‘Hack’ People Through Apple Podcasts
24:40 - Story 2 - 'Unauthorized' Edit to Ukraine's Frontline Maps Point to Polymarket's War Betting

SUBSCRIBER'S STORY - Half of the US Now Requires You to Upload Your ID or Scan Your Face to Watch Porn

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Joseph speaks to Michael Bobbitt, a former FBI official who worked directly on Operation Trojan Shield. In this operation the FBI secretly ran its own encrypted phone company for organized crime, backdoored the phone, and collected tens of millions of messages. Michael and Joseph discuss how Michael handled intelligence sourced from the phones, how to navigate an operation that complex, and its fallout.

YouTube Version: https://youtu.be/bLeueG5V4QY

Dark Wire: The Incredible True Story of the Largest Sting Operation Ever

Podcast: Signal's President Meredith Whittaker on Backdoors and AI

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We start this week with Sam's piece about a massive leak of an AI chatbot, and how it showed that people were taking ordinary women’s yearbook photos and using them to make AI porn. After the break, Jason explains how a recent change on X exposed a bunch of grifters all around the world. In the subscribers-only section, we talk about how our reporting contributed to the shut down of a warrantless surveillance program.

YouTube version: https://youtu.be/UgOtR_bDft4

Timestamps:

1:23 - Intro: Please, please do our reader survey

3:57 - Story 1: Massive Leak Shows Erotic Chatbot Users Turned Women’s Yearbook Pictures Into AI Porn

34:42 - Story 2: America’s Polarization Has Become the World's Side Hustle

SUBSCRIBER'S STORY: Airlines Will Shut Down Program That Sold Your Flights Records to Government

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Jason talks to Chris Gilliard, the author of the upcoming book Luxury Surveillance. Gilliard has studied the rise of companies like Ring and Flock, as well as the dynamics that lead people to surveil themselves and each other.

YouTube Version: https://youtu.be/4kBgnjn5cC0

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We start this week with a rant from Jason about how the latest dump of Epstein emails were released. It would be a lot easier to cover them if they were published differently! After the break, we talk about Joseph’s piece about a contractor hiring essentially randos off LinkedIn to physically track immigrants for $300. In the subscribers-only section, Sam tells us about a new adult industry code of conduct that has been a long time coming.

Timestamps:

0:00 - Intro

3:08 - First Segment

34:23 - Second Segment

YouTube version: https://youtu.be/_6tVI4jh__Y

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The video game industry has had a turbulent few years. The pandemic made people play more and caused a small boom, which then subsided, resulting in wave after wave of massive layoffs. Microsoft, one of the major console manufacturers, is shifting its strategy for Xbox as the company shifts its focus to AI. And now, Electronic Arts, once a load-bearing publisher for the industry with brands like The Sims and Madden, is going private via a leveraged buyout in a deal involving Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and Jared Kushner.

Video games are more popular than ever, but many of the biggest companies in the business seem like they are struggling to adapt and convert that popularity into stability and sustainability. To try and understand what the hell is going on, this week we have a conversation between Emanuel and Jason Schreier, who reports about video games for Bloomberg and one of the best journalists on this beat.

Jason helps us unpack why Microsoft is now aiming for higher-than-average profit margins at Xbox and why the company is seemingly bowing out of the console business despite a massive acquisition spree. We also talk about what the EA deal tells us about other game publishers, and what all these problems tell us about changing player habits and the future of big budget video games.

YouTube Version: https://youtu.be/6ydF7hD6cFI

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Microsoft Pushes Xbox Division to Hit Higher Profit Margins

EA's Deal to Go Private Could Be Good for Investors, Bad for Employees

EA Buyout Highlights Gaming Struggles as Growth Slows

The Video-Game Industry Has a Problem: There Are Too Many Games

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We start with Matthew Gault’s dive into a battle between a small town and the construction of a massive datacenter for America’s nuclear weapon scientists. After the break, Joseph explains why people are 3D-printing whistles in Chicago. In the subscribers-only section, Jason zooms out and tells us what librarians are seeing with AI and tech, and how that is impacting their work and knowledge more broadly.

YouTube version: https://youtu.be/rHk580uKwHw

6:03 - Our New FOIA Forum! 11/19, 1PM ET
7:50 - A Small Town Is Fighting a $1.2 Billion AI Datacenter for America's Nuclear Weapon Scientists
12:27 - 'A Black Hole of Energy Use': Meta's Massive AI Data Center Is Stressing Out a Louisiana Community
21:09 - 'House of Dynamite' Is About the Zoom Call that Ends the World
30:35 - The Latest Defense Against ICE: 3D-Printed Whistles

SUBSCRIBER'S STORY: AI Is Supercharging the War on Libraries, Education, and Human Knowledge

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If you’ve been to a national park in the U.S. recently, you might have noticed some odd new signs about “beauty” and “grandeur.” Or, some signs you were used to seeing might now be missing completely. An executive order issued earlier this year put the history and educational aspects of the parks system under threat–but a group of librarians stepped in to save it. 

This week we have a conversation between Sam and two of the leaders of the independent volunteer archiving project Save Our Signs, an effort to archive national park signs and monument placards. It’s a community collaboration project co-founded by a group of librarians, public historians, and data experts in partnership with the Data Rescue Project and Safeguarding Research & Culture. 

Lynda Kellam leads the Research Data and Digital Scholarship team at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries and is a founding organizer of the Data Rescue Project. Jenny McBurney is the Government Publications Librarian and Regional Depository Coordinator at the University of Minnesota Libraries. In this episode, they discuss turning “frustration, dismay and disbelief” at parks history under threat into action: compiling more than 10,000 images from over 300 national parks into a database to be preserved for the people.

YouTube Version: https://youtu.be/xrCElwgY5Co

‘Save Our Signs’ Archive and Submission Site

'Save Our Signs' Wants to Save the Real History of National Parks Before Trump Erases It

‘Save Our Signs’ Preservation Project Launches Archive of 10,000 National Park Signs

Archivists Work to Identify and Save the Thousands of Datasets Disappearing From Data.gov

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