Behind The Blog
Behind the Blog: Getting Political
This week: getting "political" and what it means to be technology journalists in this day and age.
LobbyMatic
Big Tech ‘Clients’ of Jacob Wohl’s Secret AI Lobbying Firm Say They've Never Heard of It
Pfizer, Microsoft, Palantir, Home Depot, and Lockheed Martin were all shown as "clients" of LobbyMatic. All of them say they haven't worked with the company.
News
NaNoWriMo Says Condemning AI Is ‘Classist and Ableist’
The organization that runs National Novel Writing Month, a November challenge to write 50,000 words, said "the categorical condemnation of Artificial Intelligence has classist and ableist undertones."
News
Massive AI Dataset Back Online After Being ‘Cleaned’ of Child Sexual Abuse Material
LAION-5B is back, with thousands of links removed after research last year that showed it contained instances of abusive content.
Behind The Blog
Behind the Blog: Bobbleheads and Maxed-Out Gaming
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 generative AI in gaming, getting into sports events, and good laptops.
News
Apple’s Huge “Dual Use” Face Swap App Problem Is Not Going Away
Maybe Apple should ban face swapping apps entirely.
Telegram
Podcast: Is the Arrest of Telegram Founder Pavel Durov an Attack on Encryption?
The 404 Media podcast discusses France's crackdown on Telegram.
News
This Is Doom Running on a Diffusion Model
GameNGen is an interesting proof-of-concept for a diffusion model-based “game engine.”
Car Repair
Appliance and Tractor Companies Lobby Against Giving the Military the Right to Repair
The U.S. military deals with the same repair monopolies consumers do.
News
1 in 10 Minors Say Their Friends Use AI to Generate Nudes of Other Kids, Survey Finds
A new survey attempts to quantify just how common it is for minors to AI-generate nudes of other minors.
Telegram
How Telegram's Founder Pavel Durov Became a Culture War Martyr
Conservatives have spent months championing Telegram as an app that more closely aligns with their values than Signal.
Court Watch
FBI Uses January 6 Rioter’s Self-Published Amazon Book as Evidence Against Him
The Kindle book has been taken down by Amazon but the author's children's books remain up.