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Google backtracks on plans to deactivate shortened goo.gl links

If a goo.gl link doesn’t already have a deactivation message, then it will keep functioning as normal.

Jay Peters
Opera is filing a complaint over Microsoft’s tricks that push you to use Edge

Opera has filed its anti-competition complaint in Brazil and says Microsoft is using ‘manipulative design tactics.’

Tom Warren

Latest In Web

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Emma Roth
The Internet Archive is now an official hub for government documents.

California Senator Alex Padilla granted the Internet Archive federal depository status, allowing it to more easily access and share government documents with the public.

“By being part of the program itself, it just gets us closer to the source of where the materials are coming from, so that it’s more reliably delivered to the Internet Archive,” Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle told KQED.

This ‘violently racist’ hacker claims to be the source of The New York Times’ Mamdani scoop

They say Columbia is just one of five universities they’ve penetrated.

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Perplexity’s CEO on why the browser is AI’s killer app

Aravind Srinivas on Perplexity’s new Comet web browser, the AI talent frenzy, and a future IPO.

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Jess Weatherbed
Tech services are failing to take nudify AI tools offline.

A report about how much money these websites are making found that 62 of the 85 websites it examined had hosting or content delivery services provided by Amazon and Cloudflare. Google’s sign-on system was also used on 54 of the websites, alongside several other services and payment systems provided by mainstream tech companies.

“They should have ceased providing any and all services to AI nudifiers when it was clear that their only use case was sexual harassment,” said Indicator co-founder Alexios Mantzarlis.

Inside the AI startup frenzy: ‘Everyone’s pivoting, then pivoting again’

Meaning founder and former Verge reporter Ellis Hamburger on the ethical vacuum in AI and what founders aren’t saying publicly.

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Ash Parrish
Even AO3 could not withstand the awesome power of horny.

Archive of our Own went down for a few days over the 4th of July weekend, upsetting the holiday fanfiction reading plans of the site’s millions of users before service was restored. AO3 goes down occasionally for all sorts of issues, but the reason for this outage was special and hilarious.

According to a post on Reddit, the site went down because someone tried to make 2,147,483,647th bookmark which was beyond the limit that specific database could support. And the bookmarked fic that caused all this: extremely graphic One Direction erotica.

Why Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg went to war over WordPress

The head of the WordPress project on the WP Engine lawsuit, Automattic turning 20, and what’s next for the web.

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Adi Robertson
“Be Yourself is not recommended for most people. Take a look at our other avatars before deciding.”

Thanks to Metafilter for introducing me to The Box. Wearable technology for women will never be the same.

An image of a woman wearing a gigantic box with an LCD screen over most of her body.
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Emma Roth
DuckDuckGo’s scam blocker now covers fake ecommerce sites and more.

The tool, which is built into DuckDuckGo’s browser, displays a warning message when you click on potentially dangerous sites. In addition to blocking phishing sites, malware, and common online scams, DuckDuckGo has expanded the tool to protect against fake online stores, phony crypto exchanges, and those obnoxious sites that falsely claim your device has a virus.

Image: DuckDuckGo
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David Pierce
“It’s speech in the way Doritos are food.”

This whole Trevor Noah / Jon Stewart pod is a good listen. But there’s a big chunk — starting about 13 minutes in — that turns into a really great chat about how we experience the internet. And Stewart makes a comparison I truly love:

We think [social media] is free speech, but it’s not speech. It’s ultra-processed speech. It’s speech in the way that Doritos are food — it’s something that has been designed by people in lab coats to get past the parts of your brain that protect you.”

This is what it looks like to be colorblind

Apparently, the very idea of colorblindness is hard to visualize. Take a shot at looking through my eyes.

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Emma Roth
Wikipedia halts experiment with AI-generated article summaries.

Following a slew of complaints from editors, a Wikimedia Foundation spokesperson confirmed to 404 Media that it’s pausing the two-week test, which began on June 2nd.

The experiment put AI-generated summaries at the top of articles for users who opted in. One editor responded to the idea by saying, “Just because Google has rolled out its AI summaries doesn’t mean we need to one-up them.”

The Dia browser is a big bet on the web — and an even bigger bet on AI

First, The Browser Company tried to overhaul the web browser. Now it aims to change the way we think about computers.

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Adi Robertson
Political cheapfakes aren’t dead yet.

The New York Times surveyed the ecosystem of disinformation around the LA anti-ICE protests, and the results are striking for looking... pretty much exactly like the pre-AI world: old recirculated photos, fabricated quotes, and a shot from an ‘80s action movie. The Washington Post did its own social media look-around and found mostly people supporting dueling narratives with real footage. There’s still time for generated fakes to cause problems, but at the moment, reality seems to be eye-catching enough.

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Emma Roth
Automattic has resumed contributions to the WordPress project.

The company, which runs WordPress.com, paused contributions to the WordPress open-source project in January, citing the “significant time and money” it spent due to its ongoing legal battle with WP Engine.

In a post on Thursday, Automattic announced it’s ready to “return fully” to the WordPress project, where it will provide contributions across WordPress Core, Gutenberg, WordPress.org, and other parts of the ecosystem.

Returning to Core

[automattic.com]

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Emma Roth
WordPress now has a team dedicated to AI.

Mary Hubbard, the executive director of WordPress.org, said the group will work on “accelerating and coordinating artificial intelligence projects across the WordPress ecosystem.” The team will also maintain a public roadmap of its AI plans and plugins, which it will share on its new page for “Core AI.”