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.”
Podcast
Podcast: Male Tech Conference Founder Runs Popular Woman-in-Tech Account (???)
In this week's episode, we talk about the bizarre tale of a tech conference founder who listed a fake, "auto-generated" woman as a speaker, and how he is also behind a popular woman-in-tech social media personality.
FOIA
CBP Is Testing Palmer Luckey's AI-Powered Surveillance Towers in the Great Lakes
Documents obtained by 404 Media show an expansion of Anduril's surveillance technology on the U.S.-Canada border.
Programming
Male Tech Conference Founder Is Behind Popular Woman Coding Influencer Account
IP logs show that accounts for Coding Unicorn, a female tech influencer who's built a following based on her coding advice and Instagram influencer posts, are run by a male developer and conference organizer.
Privacy
Plex Users Fear New Feature Will Leak Porn Habits to Their Friends and Family
"I can see that one of my friends is apparently watching a ton of cheesy, soft porn stuff," a user said of Plex's Week in Review email and Discover Together feature.
News
Tech Conference Collapses After Organizer Admits to Making Fake ‘Auto-Generated’ Female Speaker
Viral allegations that Devternity founder Eduard Sizovs fabricated female speakers to boost diversity have caused several big-name speakers to publicly drop out of the conference.
News
Sneakers and Armored Cars: How a Shoe Company Empire Allegedly Used a Chinese Money Laundering Ring
James Regis Whitner, Jr. is a known figure in the world of sneakers and fashion. A wide spanning investigation alleges his companies, including Social Status, used a Chinese money laundering ring to move massive amounts of cash.
Behind The Blog
Behind the Blog: Disney Copyright, Singing Xi, and the Wizarding World of Effective Altruists
This week, we're looking at OpenAI-adjacent Harry Potter fanfic, Disney's AI generated copyright, and questions about Hugging Face's selectively-enforced terms.
Podcast
Podcast: OpenAI, Harry Potter Fanfic, and Hackers Who Gamble
In this week's episode, we take a unique angle on the OpenAI drama, talk Twitter and sex work, then get into how hackers gamble away stolen Bitcoin at online casinos.
Gadgets
New Kodak Super 8 Film Camera Thought to Be Vaporware Is Actually Coming Out, Costs $5,495, Charges With MicroUSB
A new hybrid film-digital movie camera for a format invented in 1965 is actually coming. It's very weird, and very expensive.
repair
Consumer Rights Groups Petition Government to Create Formal Rules Protecting Right to Repair
The FTC and Biden have repeatedly argued repair monopolies are illegal. So why haven't they created formal regulations protecting right to repair?
OpenAI
OpenAI Announces Sam Altman Is Returning as CEO With a 'New Board'
OpenAI has replaced almost all of the members of the board that fired former and now-current CEO Sam Altman.
OpenAI
CEO Reminds Everyone His Company Collects Customers' Sleep Data to Make Zeitgeisty Point About OpenAI Drama
The Eight Sleep pod is a mattress topper with a terms of service and a privacy policy. The company "may share or sell" the sleep data it collects from its users.