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.'
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.
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.
repair
The Car Repair Apocalypse Could Soon Be Upon Us
The widespread availability of independent car repair needs to be protected from software-based DRM.
xz backdoor
The Xz Backdoor Highlights the Vulnerability of Open Source Software—and Its Strengths
The backdoor highlights the politics, governance, and community management of an ecosystem exploited by massive tech companies and largely run by volunteers.
AI
Shareholders Sue AI Weapon-Detecting Company, Allege It 'Does Not Reliably Detect Knives or Guns'
Evolv, which will be used by the NYC subway, is under investigation by the FTC and SEC, and also had to retract a claim that the UK government validated its product.
Crypto
‘Poof You’re a Millionaire’: Scammer Convinced Investors to Send Him $1.5 Million to Build Magic Money Making Bot
Surprise: The crypto-trading bot didn't exist and the scammer used the money to buy a $204,000 Denver Broncos suite, a luxury Jeep, and a Bahamas vacation, the FBI says.
News
YouTube Issues Cease and Desist to Bizarre Chinese YouTube Clone
Gan Jing World is linked to the Falun Gong, and has been cloning popular YouTube channels in the name of providing "wholesome content for all."
Baltimore
The Amateur Bridge Engineers Have Logged On
In Baltimore, we have a mix of official information, verifiable information obtained via reporting, random speculation from well-meaning experts, random speculation from well-meaning amateurs, actively bad conspiracy theories.
Announcements
404 Media Now Has a Full Text RSS Feed
We paid for the development of full text RSS feeds for Ghost-based publishers. Now we can offer them to our paid subscribers, and other Ghost sites can use the service too.
