(((Is this a good geo-political sign, or a bad one?)))
Inside the Muslim Manosphere Policing Women Online
From Red Pill coaches to “Dawah Bros,” influencers are dressing up hypermasculinity and misogyny in religious language—and finding audiences across social platforms.
Maysaa Ajjan
Mistral Says Its AI Model ‘Le Chonk’ Has Leapfrogged China in the Open-Weight Race
The French AI lab claims its latest release matches or outperforms even the best models from DeepSeek and Z.ai in coding and cybersecurity.
Joel Khalili
Meta’s Ad Sales Are Suffering Now That Europeans Can Pick Less Personalization
An earnings briefing on Wednesday revealed ad revenue has slowed since the European Union introduced the Less-Personalized Ads model at the beginning of this year.
Isabella Ward
Demi Adejuyigbe Thinks You Should Only Post 3 Times a Day
The comedian sees being online as similar to visiting the zoo. “I don’t need to interact with that,” he says. “It’s just a thing that I enjoy, and then I walk away.”
Miles Klee
The Man Behind a West Bank Telegram Channel Trying to Keep Palestinian Drivers Safe
With no accurate Big Tech mapping app to help him, Anas Hattab launched a Telegram group to get himself home at night. Now nearly 350,000 Palestinians rely on it to navigate the occupied West Bank.
Lama Rabah
WhatsApp Help Pages Leaked Hidden Instructions for a Meta Chatbot
Around 80 pages on WhatsApp’s website exposed instructions that were designed for its chatbot, including “WHAT NOT TO SAY.” Meta says a bug caused the issue.
Matt Burgess
The PHP Meltdown Shows How AI Makes Bugs More Exploitable
Security researchers used AI tools to help uncover years-old vulnerabilities in the PHP web scripting language. Then the AI-assisted attacks began.
Lily Hay Newman
Over $600 Million in Polymarket Election Trades Took Place After Races Ended
Contracts tied to elections in Ethiopia and Romania saw massive trading volumes after the outcomes were decided. “It’s obviously some form of volume manipulation,” one expert says.
Kate Knibbs
Mistral Says Its New AI Model ‘Le Chonk’ Is the Best Open-Weight Offering Outside of China
With the release of its new trillion-parameter model, Mistral is hoping to demonstrate it’s “still in the race” to build frontier-level artificial intelligence.
Joel Khalili
Anthropic’s IPO Prospectus Reveals What’s Under the Hood
Anthropic on Monday filed documents ahead of a blockbuster IPO that offers insight into the company’s financials, risk factors, and views on the future of AI.
Joel Khalili
Wikipedians Believed AI Would Come and Go. They Were Wrong
In a world of AI Overviews, Wikipedia usage declines. But the real loss may be far more existential than website traffic.
Richard Cooke
Polymarket Halted International Trading After Hackers Drained Accounts
The company says an unnamed third-party provider was compromised. Trading has resumed, and Polymarket says affected traders will be made whole.
Kate Knibbs