The Viral ‘Goodbye Meta AI’ Copypasta Will Not Protect You

“Goodbye Meta AI” is the most recent Facebook copypasta to go viral online. A chunky wall of text pasted against a hazy orange-yellow gradient background, it’s complete with all the trend’s hallmarks: vague references to the legal system and unilateral declarations of personal protection. It almost feels nostalgic, a blast from the compulsory chain-email past. But, unfortunately, posting an image on Facebook, Instagram, or any social media platform is not how you actually opt out of having your posts be fed to AI models.

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'The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom' Trades Tropes for New Tricks

Nintendo, after nearly four decades, is taking The Legend of Zelda somewhere new. With Echoes of Wisdom, the video game company not only builds on the experimentation of its last Switch release, Tears of the Kingdom—it also does something no other Zelda title has done before: Give the princess power that was previously afforded to only Link.

“They gave Zelda a sword” has been the refrain for Echoes of Wisdom since it was announced back in June. But that isn’t the entirety of what makes the game unique. Rather, it’s part of a top-down 2D series for the franchise, one with a different look and feel than Tears of the Kingdom that still utilizes the freedoms that players got with previous games—like the ability to create everything from Korok prisons to giant mechs.

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X’s First Transparency Report Since Elon Musk’s Takeover Is Finally Here

Today, X released the company’s first transparency report since Elon Musk bought the company, formerly Twitter, in 2022.

Before Musk’s takeover, Twitter would release transparency reports every six months.These largely covered the same ground as the new X report, giving specific numbers for takedowns, government requests for information, and content removals, as well as data about which content was reported and, in some cases, removed for violating policies. The last transparency report available from Twitter covered the second half of 2021 and was 50 pages long. (X’s is a shorter 15 pages, but requests from governments are also listed elsewhere on the company’s website and have been consistently updated to remain in compliance with various government orders.)

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Trae Stephens Has Built AI Weapons and Worked for Donald Trump. As He Sees It, Jesus Would Approve

Trae Stephens’ origin story begins like the first volume of a spy thriller series. Galvanized by 9/11, he vowed as a high schooler to find a career that would let him defend his country. He applied to colleges with programs that could prep him for that heroic role. None were interested in a kid from a hardscrabble Ohio town, so he traveled uninvited to Washington, DC, barged into the applications office at Georgetown University, and talked his way into the School of Foreign Service, where among other things he learned Arabic. After graduating, he joined a US intelligence agency (he can’t say which one), where he used his education as a “computational linguist” to do a kind of desktop counterterrorism. But it wasn’t long before he became frustrated by the red tape—and the lousy IT setup.

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FTX Insider Caroline Ellison Sentenced to Two Years in Prison

A US federal judge in the Southern District of New York has sentenced Caroline Ellison, a member of the ring of executives who presided over the fraud that led to the collapse of crypto exchange FTX, to two years in prison. In addition, she has been ordered to forfeit $11 billion.

Ellison entered the courtroom Tuesday accompanied by her family, somber and quiet. The hour-long hearing was the culmination of a protracted downfall for the math whiz turned crypto executive. In the end, said presiding judge Lewis Kaplan, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried had been her “kryptonite.”

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The 52 Best Shows on Disney+ Right Now (September 2024)

Disney+, if you didn’t know, isn’t just for kids. With its ownership of the Lucasfilm brand and the Marvel titles, the streaming service offers plenty of grown-up content in its bid to compete with Netflix and Amazon—and we’re not just talking movies. Since launching the service, Disney has used the name recognition of Star Wars and Marvel to launch scores of TV shows, from The Mandalorian to Loki. In the list below, we’ve collected the ones we think are the best to watch, from those franchises and beyond.

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Teens Say John McEntee, Trump’s Former Personal Aide and Project 2025 Higher-Up, Made Them Uncomfortable in Chats

In October of 2023, when Grace Carter was an 18-year-old freshman at North Carolina State University, she received a message on Instagram from the business account of the conservative dating app The Right Stuff. It was reaching out to ask if she wanted some merchandise.

Carter didn’t know much about the app but was interested in a free hoodie. And as it turned out, she wasn’t just corresponding with a brand manager but with John McEntee—the app’s cofounder, a former official in the Donald Trump administration, and at one point, a senior adviser to Project 2025.

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Russia-Backed Media Outlets Are Under Fire in the US—but Still Trusted Worldwide

In the lead-up to the 2024 elections, the Biden administration has taken aim at several Russian information operations. Earlier in September, the Department of Justice unsealed an indictment against two employees of RT, a Russian state-backed news network formerly known as Russia Today. At the heart of the indictment was Tenet Media, a company promoting content from right-wing influencers. RT, prosecutors say, largely funded Tenet, and its employees “edited, posted, and directed” content. (The individual influencers deny they knew about the company’s ties to Russia.)

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What Really Happened While Filming Hodor’s Fateful 'Game of Thrones' Scene

The director for my final [Game of Thrones] episode is Jack Bender. As soon as I find out, I Google him. We’ve not met, but I try to second-guess how he’ll work. If this is to be an epic scene, I need to get it spot-on. His past accolades tell me what I need to know: He’s an old hand, a longtime director on the 1980s hit TV series Falcon Crest. The Sopranos is also in his back catalog. My hope is that he’ll draw out the best in me.

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Mapping the Marvel Universe in 6 Very Cool Charts

Mapping the Marvel universe is not the kind of thing one can do just by snapping their fingers.

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For starters, there are many Earths out there in the multiverse; there are also all kinds of mystical dimensions and other weird locations. But even on just one version of Earth there are many points of interest, from the hometowns of fan-favorite heroes to fictional nations that exist only in comic books. Trying to find every Marvel-ous hangout in New York City? Fuggedaboutit.

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