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- What the JFK File Dump Actually Revealed
In 1962, the CIA had a driver’s license made for one of its officers, James P. O’Connell. It gave him an alias: James Paul Olds. We know this because the document containing the information was released to the public in 2017—part of an effort to declassify information related to John F. Kennedy’s assassination. But now, thanks to an executive order from President Donald Trump calling for the release of all the classified information pertaining to the incident, we know a bit more. It was, specifically, a California driver’s license.This is an irrelevant detail in an irrelevant document. As far as anyone knows, O’Connell had nothing to do with the assassination; the inclusion of his story was probably just a by-product of an overly broad records request. But there it was on Tuesday evening, when the National Archives and Record Administration uploaded to its website about 63,400 pages of “JFK Assassination… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.1 week ago - The Careless People WonPerhaps the biggest surprise of Careless People, the new tell-all memoir by the former Facebook executive Sarah Wynn-Williams, is that a book chronicling the social network’s missteps and moral bankruptcy can still make news in 2025.The tech giant—now named Meta—seems determined to make this happen itself. The company filed an emergency motion in court to halt the book’s continued publication, and in numerous statements, Meta’s communications team has derided it as the work of a disgruntled ex-employee. All of this has only generated interest: On Thursday, the book debuted at the top of the New York Times best-seller list for nonfiction and, as of this writing, was the third best-selling book on Amazon.A general theme of the pushback is that Wynn-Williams, who worked on global policy at Facebook, is guilty of the same sins she documents in the book. “Not only does she fail to take any responsibility for her… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.2 weeks ago
- The Unbelievable Scale of AI’s Pirated-Books ProblemEditor’s note: This analysis is part of The Atlantic’s investigation into the Library Genesis data set. You can access the search tool directly here. Find The Atlantic’s search tool for movie and television writing used to train AI here.When employees at Meta started developing their flagship AI model, Llama 3, they faced a simple ethical question. The program would need to be trained on a huge amount of high-quality writing to be competitive with products such as ChatGPT, and acquiring all of that text legally could take time. Should they just pirate it instead?Meta employees spoke with multiple companies about licensing books and research papers, but they weren’t thrilled with their options. This “seems unreasonably expensive,” wrote one research scientist on an internal company chat, in reference to one potential deal, according to court records. A Llama-team senior manager added that this would also be an “incredibly slow” process: “They… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.2 weeks ago
- Search LibGen, the Pirated-Books Database That Meta Used to Train AIEditor’s note: This search tool is part of The Atlantic’s investigation into the Library Genesis data set. You can read an analysis about LibGen and its contents here. Find The Atlantic’s search tool for movie and television writing used to train AI here.Disclaimer: LibGen contains errors. You may, for example, find books that list incorrect authors. This search tool is meant to reflect material that could be used to train AI programs, and that includes material containing mistakes and inaccuracies. It’s impossible to know exactly which parts of LibGen Meta used to train its AI, and which parts it might have decided to exclude; this snapshot was taken in January 2025, after Meta is known to have accessed the database, so some titles here would not have been available to download. ...[TheTopNews] Read More.2 weeks ago
- Forever 21’s Brief, Hideous LifeForever 21 opened in my hometown when I was in middle school, when the opening of a new store at the mall was still a big deal. When the sign first went up, nobody knew what “Forever 21” was. I remember thinking that it would be a store marketed to retirement-age women who felt young at heart—Forever 21! This was wrong, but not so far off: Do Won Chang, one of its founders, has said he chose the name because 21 is “the most enviable age.” And it is, especially if you are 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, or 20, which are the ages at which I bought most of my clothes there. I can still smell the polyester and hear the White Rabbits on the sound system.The clothes were, in theory, inexpensive versions of the latest trends. In practice, they were usually inexpensive versions of recently passed… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.2 weeks ago
- LeBron James Cracks Down on the PressI need you to watch this 13-second video of ESPN commentator Stephen A. Smith walking to his courtside seat at a Los Angeles Lakers game. I need you to notice how Smith, perhaps the biggest voice in sports—in sheer decibels, if not reach—savors the see-and-be-seen pleasures of the courtside experience. That was two years ago. Now imagine how he might have floated into the Lakers’ home arena the night of March 6. Only hours earlier, it had been reported that ESPN had agreed to a new contract with Smith worth more than $100 million. To celebrate, Smith’s agent, Ari Emanuel, had invited him to the game. Larry David would join them courtside, near the end of the Lakers bench. This should have been the perfect atmosphere for Smith to revel in his ascent to the pinnacle of sports media. Instead, his night took a bad turn.Early in the game, Smith… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.2 weeks ago
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