Technology

Interesting set of tools! I like the breakdown.

This month, USA Today published an excellent report that revealed how US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement delayed disclosing key information about the impacts of its detainment policies. The authors used the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine to compile and analyze detention statistics from ICE and track how the agency had changed under the Trump administration. The story is one of countless examples of how the Wayback Machine, which crawls and preserves web pages, has helped preserve information for the public good. It was also, Wayback Machine director Mark Graham says, “a little ironic.”

USA Today Co., the publishing conglomerate formerly known as Gannett that runs both its namesake paper and over 200 additional media outlets, bars the Wayback Machine from archiving its work. “They're able to pull together their story research because the Wayback Machine exists. At the same time, they're blocking access,” Graham says.

A number of other major journalism organizations have also recently moved to restrict the Wayback Machine from archiving their stories, including The New York Times. According to analysis by the artificial-intelligence-detection startup Originality AI, 23 major news sites are currently blocking ia_archiverbot, the web crawler commonly used by the Internet Archive for the Wayback project. The social platform Reddit is too.

Other outlets are limiting the project in different ways: The Guardian does not block the crawler, but it excludes its content from the Internet Archive API and filters out articles from the Wayback Machine interface, which makes it harder for regular people to access archived versions of its articles.

https://archive.ph/20260414104519/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-14/asml-shares-get-harder-to-value-as-firm-stops-disclosing-orders

Google, the owners of YouTube, has removed a channel on the platform belonging to a pro-Iran group producing Lego-themed videos mocking Donald Trump.

"Upon review, we’ve terminated the channel for violating our Spam, deceptive practices and scams policies," a YouTube spokesperson told Middle East Eye.

"YouTube doesn’t allow spam, scams, or other deceptive practices that take advantage of the YouTube community."

Explosive Media's content largely consists of animations ridiculing the US war effort against Iran and poking fun at the US president.

https://archive.ph/SY7fy

The story originally surfaced on a Taiwanese forum similar to Reddit, before being picked up by tech outlets.

“When I was squatting in the toilet, I suddenly heard the cat keep screaming, and when I opened the door, I saw the smoke and smell of plastic,” the user explained.

While the cat’s alert likely prevented a worse outcome, the incident highlights an issue that has followed NVIDIA’s flagship GPU since launch.

The RTX 4090 has been plagued by reports of its 16-pin 12VHPWR power connectors overheating or melting under certain conditions. Investigations previously suggested that improper cable seating or uneven power distribution across pins could lead to dangerous heat buildup.

Some Booking.com customers are being warned their personal information may have been accessed by unauthorised third parties, prompting fresh concerns about the security of travellers' data.

The company operates more than 28 million accommodation listings globally, connecting travellers to hotels, apartments and other properties across hundreds of countries, as well as flights, rental cars and attractions.

Due to rose-tinted retro spectacles, people may have forgotten their frustrations with Clippy.

"Brady Frey did not realize that his daughter lied about her age when she set up her Discord account. He only found out after her account got hacked and he got trapped in a spiraling support nightmare while trying to stop the hacker from targeting dozens of her young friends with financial extortion scams.

When Frey’s daughter signed up for Discord, she was 12 and technically not old enough to have an account. But like many kids who, regulators have found, commonly lie about their age to access social media platforms, she didn’t want to wait another year to join her friends on the messaging app. Hiding her age, she created an account that listed her as over 18 years old.

Now 13, the teen had been happily using the app for months when she suddenly got locked out of her account after clicking on a link from an attacker posing as Discord support. Since she didn’t enable two-factor authentication, the attacker was able to commandeer the account. Frey only found out what was happening when the attacker asked the teen to share her parents’ banking information if she wanted to get her account back.

Once Frey realized his daughter had been hacked, he assumed that Discord would promptly intervene, recognizing that many minor victims on her friends list could be harmed the longer the attacker kept control. Instead, Discord’s chatbot, Clyde, and a seeming human support member, Nelly, automatically closed her support tickets after telling her it would be best to report the issue from inside the app, which she could not access.

Frey told Ars he was shocked to see a platform as big as Discord relying on such poor support infrastructure.

“There’s no pathway for a parent to step in and advocate for a minor whose account has been compromised,” Frey told Ars."

Everyone laugh at Discord AI moderation

Reason number 5,386 to delete your Reddit account and encourage your friends & loved ones to do the same.

Via Tuta Mastodon