News
Iran Is Winning the AI Slop Propaganda War
“White House videos—AI or otherwise—are like group-chat in-jokes aimed at keeping cohesion.”
layoffs
Best Buy Geek Squad Agents ‘Going Sleeper’ After Mass Layoffs
Laid-off employees say they weren't given notice, and were instead given notice via email about a "work from home" event.
Behind The Blog
Behind the Blog: Posting, and Pissed Off About Art
This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss posting through it, art that pisses people off, and convos with the FBI.
News
This Camera Turns Every Photo Into a Nude
NUCA, a 3D printed prototype camera and art project, uses AI to instantly generate a nude of any subject.
AI
A ‘Law Firm’ of AI Generated Lawyers Is Sending Fake Threats as an SEO Scam
Backlink scams are now leveraging fake, AI-generated 'lawyers' and DMCA trolling to try to pressure site owners to link to their 'clients.'
News
Google Books Is Indexing AI-Generated Garbage
Google said it will continue to evaluate its approach “as the world of book publishing evolves.”
open source
Bullying in Open Source Software Is a Massive Security Vulnerability
The Xz backdoor and a near miss on the F-Droid app store show how the entitled attitude of some people in the open source community can be used to push malicious or insecure code.
Zodiac Killer
Cryptographers Who Solved Zodiac Killer Cipher Publish Paper About How They Did It
The paper details the "authors’ many years of failed experiments and dead-end ideas."
Kagi
Friendship Ended With GOOGLE Now KAGI Is My Best Friend
I replaced Google with Kagi, a search engine that has no ads and costs $10 per month.
Podcast
Podcast: The Xz Backdoor and the AI Peer-Review Crisis
The fascinating Xz backdoor; a looming AI crisis in peer-review; and news around the infamous Lena image. That's all on this week's episode.
News
Google Bans Face Swap App for Inviting Users to Make Deepfake Porn
After 404 Media reporting, Google banned an app that advertised its ability to “Make any porn you want” on a deepfake porn site.
News
ChatGPT Looms Over the Peer-Review Crisis
Research shows that academics might be using generative AI tools to cut corners on a fundamental pillar of the scientific process.
FOIA
Officer Screamed ‘Stop Shooting Her’ While Police Killed Unarmed Teen After Car Chase
404 Media has obtained newly released video and audio material related to the 2022 killing of Savannah Graziano.