THE ATLANTIC – Technology | Internet & Technology

Some generations get a nationally televised car chase featuring O. J. Simpson fleeing police in a white Bronco. Others get the communal adrenaline rush of frantically “CTRL-F”-ing a House Oversight Committee trove of Jeffrey Epstein’s emails.Yesterday, lawmakers released more than 20,000 pages of documents related to Epstein, including thousands of emails between him and his powerful contacts in the government, Silicon Valley, and the British royalty. There is an obvious voyeuristic thrill to reading them, but these documents have a deeper relevance. They are a skeleton key for understanding the dynamics of Donald Trump’s America, one in which the wealthy and powerful appear not as master operators but as bumbling sycophants, eager to cozy up to influence no matter how villainous or depraved.Like Epstein’s birthday book, published in September by the House Oversight Committee, the messages are often enthusiastic, even fawning (unlike the birthday book, these messages were sent long… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

Delayed two hours, hunched over my laptop in the Dallas Fort Worth C-terminal Admirals Club, I was frantically rearranging my plans. The government shutdown, still ongoing at the time, had caused major disruptions at U.S. airports. If my flight were canceled, the airline would refund me for my ticket. But my hotel room in Charlotte, North Carolina, appeared to be another matter. I clicked around the booking website on my screen. Its policy on cancellation was austere: You could void your reservation only if you did so three days in advance. If your plans happened to fall through unexpectedly the night before (because, let’s say, your nation’s legislature had failed to pass a budget), then you’d be out of luck.This felt new. In the past, a hotel booking had been an easy thing to cancel. Up until the day before check-in, you could generally modify your plan without incident, and… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

Early last year, Grant Smith received an alarmed message from his wife. She had gotten a text notification about a delayed package, clicked the link, and paid a fee. Then she realized that it was not, in fact, the United States Postal Service asking for her credit-card information—that she had no idea who had just collected her payment info. She quickly canceled the card.The Smiths had been smished. Short for “SMS phishing”—cyberattacks that arrive via text message—smishing refers to a particular type of spam message that you’ve probably received once or twice, if not dozens of times. They impersonate brands or federal agencies, such as Citigroup or USPS, in the hopes of getting people to hand over their personal information.Smith, it so happens, is a sort of hacker himself—he works in cybersecurity. He opened the fake USPS website that the scammers had sent and began rooting around in its code,… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

On September 12, Jay Edelson received what he expected to be a standard legal document. Edelson is a lawyer representing the parents of Adam Raine; they are suing OpenAI, alleging that their 16-year-old son took his life at the encouragement of ChatGPT. OpenAI’s lawyers had some inquiries for the opposing counsel, which is normal. For instance, they requested information about therapy Raine may have received, and Edelson complied.But some of the asks began to feel invasive, he told me. OpenAI wanted the family to send any videos taken at memorial services for Raine, according to documents I have reviewed. It wanted a list of people who attended or were invited to any memorial services. And it wanted the names of anyone who had cared for or supervised Raine over the past five years, including friends, teachers, school-bus drivers, coaches, and “car pool divers [sic].”“Going after grieving parents, it is despicable,”… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

There are many fair questions following Zohran Mamdani’s decisive victory. Will his campaign be a template for others? Will he be able or allowed to follow through on his campaign promises? Will the Democratic establishment accept that its future could look something like this proud 34-year-old democratic socialist? But there is at least one very clear takeaway, and it’s best captured by one of the campaign’s final videos.It opens in the Bronx, five days after the 2024 election. Mamdani is holding a microphone in one hand and a handwritten sign in the other. It says Let’s Talk Election. Most of the passersby don’t bother to talk with him; the ones who do, at least the ones included in the video, speak about why they didn’t vote (“I lost faith”) or their decision to cast a ballot for Donald Trump. Mamdani listens with a furrowed brow.Then the video cuts to October… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.