News
‘Things Are Going to Get Intense:’ How a Musk Ally Plans to Push AI on the Government
404 Media has obtained audio of a meeting held by Thomas Shedd, a Musk-associate who is now heading a team of government coders. In the call one employee pushed back and said one of the planned moves is an “illegal task.”
Surveillance
Researcher Turns Insecure License Plate Cameras Into Open Source Surveillance Tool
Privacy advocate draws attention to the fact that hundreds of police surveillance cameras are streaming directly to the open internet.
Facebook Deletes Internal Employee Criticism of New Board Member Dana White
"Insulting, criticizing, or antagonizing our colleagues or Board members is not aligned with the CEE."
News
Hackers Claim Massive Breach of Location Data Giant, Threaten to Leak Data
Gravy Analytics has been one of the most important companies in the location data industry for years, collating smartphone location data from around the world selling some to the U.S. government. Hackers say they stole a mountain of data.
News
‘Minion Gore’ Videos Use AI to Post Murder to Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube
People are using AI video generator Runway to post extremely violent Minionfied videos to social media.
AI
Instagram Begins Randomly Showing Users AI-Generated Images of Themselves
Meta AI put a Redditor into "an endless maze of mirrors" as part of a new AI feature it is testing.
News
Telegram Hands U.S. Authorities Data on Thousands of Users
The number of data requests fulfilled by Telegram skyrocketed, with the company providing data to U.S. authorities on 2,253 users last year.
News
Violent Hackers Are Using U-Haul To Dox Targets
Members of an underground criminal community are targeting U-Haul because of the wealth of non-public information it can hold on targets.
The Abstract
A 5,500-Year-Old Forest in Yellowstone Melted Out of the Ice
We begin 2025 with Amazonian garden cities, lost woods in the Rockies, battitude, and robot hoopers.
AI Slop
Meta's AI Profiles Are Indistinguishable From Terrible Spam That Took Over Facebook
The Meta AI profiles everyone is mad about are old, were a colossal failure, and many are already dead.
Behind The Blog
Behind the Blog: Magic Links and Building Shelves
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 talk more about magic links and building shelves offline. A light Behind the Blog today but we're back from the holiday on Monday.
Tesla
Elon Musk Uses Cybertruck Explosion to Show Tesla Can Remotely Unlock and Monitor Vehicles
Surveillance capabilities used and justified by extreme circumstances often trickle down to be used on lesser crimes.
Right to Repair
How (and Why) a Reverse Engineer 3D-Printed an iPhone
Scotty Allen reverse-engineered the interior case of an iPhone and has released the files to people wanting to make their own.