Some people may remember the joys of trying to boot Linux on an 8-bit AVR microcontroller, which was an absolute exercise in patience. In comparison [He Chunhui]’s Tiny386 emulator running on an ESP32-S3 MCU is positively zippy when it boots and runs Windows 95. The provided video (also embedded below) makes clear that while you can comfortably waddle off to prepare and pour a fresh cup of tea, it’s actually borderline usable.
The source code can be obtained via GitHub, which contains not just the basic emulated 80386 CPU written in C99, but also peripherals borrowed from TinyEMU and QEMU, along with a SeaBIOS ROM. In addition to the Windows 95 demo it’s claimed that Tiny386 should be able to run most 16/32-bit software.
Right now the ESP32-S3 version targets the JC3248W535 board, which is a roughly $30 development board featuring a built-in display with touch screen and an ESP32-S3 module. Although it has a USB-C port, it appears that this one is just for programming and not for the USB peripheral of the ESP32-S3. With the USB OTG peripheral used, one could conceivably make a small 386 system based around an ESP32-S3 that features a USB hub to plug a keyboard, mouse, etc. into.
Considering that the Tiny386 emulator is a very simple and straightforward approach to emulating an early-90s PC, some optimization might enable a pretty zippy general purpose PC for early 90s software. Quite a boost from watching Linux struggle into a command line on an AVR, indeed.
If there’s one thing [rctestflight] likes, it’s… probably radio controlled test flights. If there are two things [rctestflights] likes, the second one is probably ground-effect vehicles, AKA Ekranoplans. Tired of having them flip over and crash, he’s trying an an innovative solution: stick a planing hull on it.
Ekranoplans have a stability problem because the center-of-pressure isn’t static: as the wing gets closer to the ground, the high pressure cushion of air that creates the ground effect tends to put more lift rearwards. The net effect of that is to torque the vehicle nose-down, which is kind of a self-limiting problem at a fraction of a wingspan’s altitude. The opposite problem is more concerning: the higher the ekranoplan gets, the more it wants to nose up, and there’s nothing to stop it. That leads to the vehicle flipping over.
In this video, [rctestflight] takes a few stabs at trying to solve the stability problem– he starts with a flat planing hull on the nose, with the idea that the vehicle will be nose-heavy enough to ride serenely over the water. Water isn’t actually flat, though, and the nose bumping over the waves wasn’t able to do what he wanted. He then switches to a feeler that is to ride on-surface to adjust the pitch of the nose-mounted propellers–up if it pokes the water, down if it can’t– to provide passive pitch stabilization. That does work at some airspeeds, but produces a predictable porpoising effect, even with an elastic band for damping. That design might show promise with more refinement, but if you’re using something to give altitude feedback, it might as well be lidar.
The next iteration of the design places a pair of hydro-screw propellers on the nose, for all the world like a pair of outboard motors. We’re not even sure what to call the resulting vehicle, but “more stable” is unfortunately not it. It doesn’t seem to fly any worse, mind you, but certainly not well enough to justify the complexity, especially once he goes down the rabbit hole of adding suspension to the motors.
Ultimately he ends up refining the planning hull into a V-shape, since a V-hull can cut the waves and give a smoother ride than a flat-bottomed boat. We can’t help but agree with [rctestflight] that the standard configuration of a long hull and large horizontal stabilizer is likely the way to go, since the whole point of a ground-effect vehicle is to avoid the energy cost associated with skipping over waves. Still, it’s hard to deny that these prototypes are hacks, and we appreciate the brief lesson in aerodynamics he provides in the video.
Given some of the other projects he’s tackled, we’re kind of disappointed he didn’t try a hydrofoil.
Google search has become an awful mess of commercial site desperate to get you to click. So unless I really want to buy something, I always use this link. ,udm14.org: An easy-to-use shortcut for an AI-free Google search. (Try it!) udm14.org
Part of the reason there are always free pianos on your digital classifieds listing of choice is that, at least economically speaking, a piano is less of a musical instrument and more of a complicated machine that can and will wear out (not to mention the physical difficulty of actually moving one). Once a piano reaches that point, whether through age, use, or neglect, at that point it’s to intents and purposes worthless. But still, they’re essentially just machines. [Toast] figured that, since 3D printers not only can print all kinds of other machines and musical instruments alike, he would take a stab at combining these two and made his own 3D printed piano.
A piano’s action is the mechanical linkage between the keys and the strings of the piano themselves. Over many hundreds of years this has developed into a complicated series of levers which not only rapidly strike strings when a key is pressed, but also mute the strings while the key is not being pressed and strike the strings in a way that the hammer won’t be pressed into the strings if the player leaves their finger on a key. Rather than try to recreate all of this in meticulous detail, [Toast] has swapped out the strings for a series of tubes which, unlike strings, do not much change their musical behavior if the hammer remains on the tube after being struck. This greatly simplifies the action (and cost) of his miniature piano.
The piano works by positioning hammers above these tubes, which strike downwards when a musician depresses the keys. Rubber bands return the hammers to their upright positions after the key is lifted. The instrument went through a few stages of design as well where [Toast] refined the size and shape of the tubes as well as improved the way by which the hammers are attached to the keys.
Is it still a piano if it has pipes instead of strings? Perhaps, but at the very least we can all agree that he’s built a working keyboard action capable of producing music, if not an outright definitionally-accurate piano. It’s an interesting build that we hope to see more iterations of in the future, if not to build a more functionally accurate 3D printed piano action then to see what is possible from a 3D printer in the piano space. Despite their complexity and weight, pianos are a fundamental and popular instrument in the Western music tradition and we’ve seen many interesting builds around them like this modern player piano built with a series of solenoids.
I documenti segreti e pubblicati per ora solo in parte del defunto finanziere Jeffrey Epstein continuano a essere utilizzati negli Stati Uniti come arma politica per colpire alternativamente uno dei due partiti oppure personalità di altissimo livello…
Ogni volta che ci si imbatte in un file multimediale sconosciuto o in un link strano che non si apre con nessuna applicazione standard, c’è sempre un programma che viene in soccorso: VLC.
Questo lettore funziona in modo affidabile su qualsiasi sistema, supporta formati ormai dimenticati dall’industria e rimane completamente gratuito grazie a un uomo il cui nome compare raramente nelle notizie: Jean-Baptiste Kempf.
Questa settimana ha ricevuto l’European SFS Award 2025, assegnato dalla Free Software Foundation Europe. La cerimonia si è tenuta a Bolzano, dove si stava svolgendo la conferenza SFSCon, dedicata allo sviluppo del software libero.
Lo stesso Kempf è da tempo una figura di spicco nella comunità, responsabile della consueta libertà d’uso di VLC. Ha ripetutamente spiegato perché il progetto mantenga il suo modello di finanziamento e si rifiuti di cedere alle pressioni degli investitori. Alla domanda sulle proposte di venture capital, lo sviluppatore ha risposto senza mezzi termini:
“Finora non è stata intrapresa alcuna azione, perché qualsiasi cambiamento richiederebbe un modello di business che andrebbe effettivamente a vantaggio degli utenti. La maggior parte delle proposte si riduceva all’installazione di barre degli strumenti e altri software spazzatura insieme a VLC. Non siamo interessati a questo”.
La sua posizione ha tenuto il progetto lontano per molti anni da pubblicità intrusive, data miner e altri metodi di monetizzazione, che trasformerebbero un’utilità intuitiva nell’ennesima piattaforma per promuovere servizi non necessari. La storia di VLC iniziò nel 1996 come esperimento studentesco presso l’École Centrale Paris, una scuola di ingegneria successivamente fusa con CentraleSupélec. La rivista francese Libération descrisse dettagliatamente le prime fasi del progetto, incluso un dettaglio sorprendente: la società di telecomunicazioni Bouygues si offrì di finanziare linee di interconnessione più veloci tra gli edifici se il team fosse riuscito a trovare un modo per trasmettere in streaming i segnali della Télévision Française 1.
Gli studenti, naturalmente, utilizzarono la nuova infrastruttura non solo per trasmettere esperimenti: testarono anche Doom sulla rete. L’unico file MPEG-2 che avevano a disposizione, un estratto di 20 minuti da GoldenEye, si rivelò utile durante i test. Per questo motivo, VLC 1.0.x ricevette il nome in codice “GoldenEye“. Gli autori ricordarono ironicamente che questo nome non aveva nulla a che fare con la trama di Bond: era il nome della villa di Ian Fleming in Giamaica.
Inizialmente, lo sviluppo consisteva in due componenti: VideoLAN Server, che trasmetteva flussi MPEG-2, e VideoLAN Client, che li riproduceva. Col tempo, questi componenti si sono fusi, le funzionalità del server sono migrate all’applicazione e VLC si è evoluto in uno strumento di streaming autonomo. Ecco perché il nome è diventato da tempo ricorsivo e ora sta per VLC Media Player, sebbene il programma faccia da tempo molto più che riprodurre file.
Il contributo di Kempf va oltre la scrittura del codice sorgente: l’elenco dei collaboratori del progetto include oltre 1.000 sviluppatori nel corso degli anni. Arrivò all’École Centrale Paris nel 2003, si unì al team di VLC e, quando gli ex studenti lasciarono l’università nel 2006 e l’iniziativa rischiava di estinguersi, ne assunse la direzione. Da allora, ha coordinato lo sviluppo del progetto e, nel 2012, ha fondato Videolabs per garantire un supporto stabile all’infrastruttura, alle build e all’integrazione.
Ha anche una sua cultura dei piccoli dettagli. Il cono luminoso da costruzione utilizzato come icona dell’app è un omaggio all’associazione studentesca VIA, nota per la sua passione per i “souvenir” sotto forma di oggetti di strada dopo feste chiassose. Questo cono decora l’interfaccia. Il team sceglie nomi in codice per le uscite tratte dall’universo di Terry Pratchett. C’è stata una sola eccezione: la versione 2.2.1, pubblicata subito dopo la morte dell’autore nel 2015, ha ricevuto il semplice nome “Terry Pratchett”.
Oggi, VLC è considerato uno dei progetti di software libero più riconoscibili e la sua sostenibilità deve molto all’uomo che ha scelto di preservare l’idea di accesso condiviso anziché i compromessi commerciali. È stata questa integrità che gli organizzatori europei hanno riconosciuto al momento della consegna del premio: i contributi di Kempf sono da tempo parte integrante del tessuto culturale che sostiene l’intero ecosistema open source.
Shanghai, 11 novembre 2025 – Un nuovo studio condotto dallo Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, in collaborazione con la Shanghai Jiao Tong University, la Renmin University of China e la Princeton University, ha portato alla luce un rischio emergente nello sviluppo degli agenti di intelligenza artificiale autoevolutivi: la cosiddetta “misevoluzione”.
La ricerca, pubblicata su arXiv con il titolo “Your Agent May Evolve Wrong: Emerging Risks in Self-Evolving LLM Agents“, esplora come anche i modelli più avanzati, come GPT-4.1 e Gemini 2.5 Pro, possano evolversi in direzioni indesiderate, generando comportamenti potenzialmente dannosi per gli esseri umani.
Quando l’evoluzione va nella direzione sbagliata
Gli agenti autoevolutivisono progettati per imparare, iterare e migliorarsi autonomamente. Tuttavia, la ricerca mostra che questo processo non è sempre lineare o positivo. Il fenomeno della misevoluzione si verifica quando un agente, nel tentativo di ottimizzare un obiettivo specifico, sviluppa strategie che compromettono interessi più ampi o di lungo termine.
Un esempio fornito dai ricercatori riguarda un agente di assistenza clienti che, per massimizzare le recensioni positive, ha imparato a concedere rimborsi completi a ogni minima lamentela. Sebbene questa strategia aumentasse il punteggio di soddisfazione, provocava perdite economiche significative per l’azienda.
Quattro caratteristiche della misevoluzione
La ricerca identifica quattro elementi chiave che rendono il fenomeno particolarmente difficile da controllare:
Emersione – i rischi non sono presenti all’inizio, ma nascono nel tempo attraverso l’interazione tra agente e ambiente.
Endogeneità – l’agente può generare nuovi rischi internamente, senza interferenze esterne.
Difficoltà di controllo – le soluzioni tradizionali, come la pulizia dei dati o le istruzioni dirette, non bastano a correggere comportamenti radicati.
Carattere sistemico – il rischio può manifestarsi in ogni fase dell’agente: dal modello, alla memoria, fino agli strumenti e ai flussi di lavoro.
Esperimenti e risultati
Per dimostrare la portata del problema, il team ha condotto test su quattro percorsi di evoluzione:
Auto-iterazione del modello: dopo un ciclo di autoaddestramento, un agente ha mostrato un drastico aumento della vulnerabilità ai siti di phishing, con un tasso di rischio cresciuto dal 18,2% al 71,4%.
Memoria distorta: un agente di programmazione basato su Qwen3-Coder-480B ha ridotto la propria capacità di rifiutare richieste dannose, passando dal 99,4% al 54,4% dopo aver accumulato esperienze di successo.
Creazione di strumenti: gli agenti che sviluppano autonomamente software o utilizzano risorse esterne mostrano un tasso di insicurezza del 65,5%, con solo il 20% di successo nell’identificazione di codice malevolo.
Ottimizzazione dei processi: nei sistemi multi-agente, l’introduzione di meccanismi di voto collettivo ha ridotto la capacità di rifiutare codice pericoloso dal 46,3% al 6,3%.
Come mitigare i rischi
Gli studiosi propongono diverse strategie per ridurre la misevoluzione, pur riconoscendone i limiti. Tra queste:
Rafforzare l’allineamento sicuro dopo ogni fase di autoaddestramento.
Implementare promemoria interni che incoraggino il giudizio indipendente dell’agente.
Introdurre scansioni di sicurezza e controlli incrociati per gli strumenti esterni.
Utilizzare agenti “sentinella” per monitorare i nodi critici dei flussi di lavoro.
Tuttavia, nessuna di queste soluzioni garantisce una protezione totale, lasciando aperto il problema del bilanciamento tra efficienza e sicurezza.
Una nuova sfida per l’era dell’AGI
Lo studio segna un passo importante nella comprensione dei rischi emergenti legati all’evoluzione autonoma dell’intelligenza artificiale. Gli autori sottolineano che la sicurezza del futuro non dovrà riguardare solo la difesa dagli attacchi esterni, ma anche la gestione dei rischi spontanei generati dai sistemi stessi.
Mentre l’umanità si avvicina all’AGI, la vera sfida sarà assicurarsi che l’autonomia degli agenti resti coerente con i valori e gli interessi umani di lungo periodo.
Presso il Centro integrazione satelliti di Thales Alenia Space Italia a Roma si è tenuto oggi il saluto al terzo satellite della costellazione Cosmo-SkyMed di seconda generazione, in partenza per la base di Vanderberg, in California, dove sarà lanciato in
ATTENZIONE: Una nuova proposta di compromesso profondamente imperfetta (Doc. 14092/25 ) è stata frettolosamente approvata da un gruppo di lavoro dell’UE il 12 novembre 2025, dovrà essere approvata dagli ambasciatori dell’UE a breve (19 novembre?) e poi adottata dal Consiglio senza dibattito. Sebbene la Presidenza del Consiglio avesse promesso di abolire il controllo obbligatorio delle chat…
It is a free and public gathering that will explore how self-defense is criminalized, particularly for Black, Brown, and marginalized survivors, and how communities can reclaim safety through resistance, advocacy, and care.
The Community Art Center is at 119 Windsor Street, Cambridge. It is a nine minute walk from Central Square and the MBTA Red Line stop there.
FREE food and childcare will be provided. TBR will collect food donations for the network of free CommunityFridges. Please bring nonperishable food items to contribute. More details are available.
Il sostegno militare all’Ucraina si consolida con un gesto che riunisce alcune delle capitali europee più attive nel fronte orientale. Danimarca, Estonia, Finlandia, Islanda, Lettonia, Lituania, Norvegia e Svezia hanno deciso di finanziare insieme un nuovo pacchetto da 500 milioni di
[quote]Il giornalista di Domino Matteo Giusti spiega a Lumsanews perché i gruppi armati islamisti perseguitano i cristiani e fa chiarezza su quelli che sono i loro veri obiettivi. Giusti, perché… L'articolo Giusti (Rivista Domino):
[quote]Nelle ultime settimane lo scenario internazionale s’è arricchito di un nuovo fronte. Lo ha aperto Donald Trump, per ora solo a parole. C’entra la Nigeria, da anni teatro di violente… L'articolo Tra ideologia e geopolitica, la crociata di Trump per i cristiani massacrati su
Il ministro della Difesa Guido Crosetto ha presentato alle Camere le linee di un nuovo progetto dedicato al dominio digitale per la creazione di un’arma cyber italiana. L’iniziativa, inserita nel quadro del futuro riordino dello strumento militare, punta a
Google is hosting a CBP app that uses facial recognition to identify immigrants, while simultaneously removing apps that report the location of ICE officials because Google sees ICE as a vulnerable group. “It is time to choose sides; fascism or morality? Big tech has made their choice.”#Google #ICE #News
Google Has Chosen a Side in Trump's Mass Deportation Effort
Google is hosting a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) app that uses facial recognition to identify immigrants, and tell local cops whether to contact ICE about the person, while simultaneously removing apps designed to warn local communities about the presence of ICE officials. ICE-spotting app developers tell 404 Media the decision to host CBP’s new app, and Google’s description of ICE officials as a vulnerable group in need of protection, shows that Google has made a choice on which side to support during the Trump administration’s violent mass deportation effort.
Google removed certain apps used to report sightings of ICE officials, and “then they immediately turned around and approved an app that helps the government unconstitutionally target an actual vulnerable group. That's inexcusable,” Mark, the creator of Eyes Up, an app that aims to preserve and map evidence of ICE abuses, said. 404 Media only used the creator’s first name to protect them from retaliation. Their app is currently available on the Google Play Store, but Apple removed it from the App Store.
“Google wanted to ‘not be evil’ back in the day. Well, they're evil now,” Mark added.
💡 Do you know anything else about Google's decision? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at joseph@404media.co.
The CBP app, called Mobile Identify and launched last week, is for local and state law enforcement agencies that are part of an ICE program that grants them certain immigration-related powers. The 287(g) Task Force Model (TFM) program allows those local officers to make immigration arrests during routine police enforcement, and “essentially turns police officers into ICE agents,” according to the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU). At the time of writing, ICE has TFM agreements with 596 agencies in 34 states, according to ICE’s website.
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Apple dropped an ICE tracking app from its online store Thursday in response to the Department of Justice raising concerns that the app put law enforcement officers’ safety at risk.
@Notizie dall'Italia e dal mondo Guasti e accuse di sabotaggio agitano il voto e riaprono la frattura tra Libre e le élite L'articolo Minacce di golpe in Honduras proviene da Pagine Esteri.
Sono anni che, con regolarità, ci troviamo a trattare i contenuti sponsorizzati che ci segnalate circolare su Facebook e Instagram, pubblicità che sfruttano la mancanza di competenze digitali dell'utenza generalista del web per indurla in inganno.
Sylvia Aguilar Zéleny – Spazzatura freezonemagazine.com/news/sylv… In libreria dal 19 Novembre 2025 Mi chiamo Alicia e non sono qua per fare la puttana. Io non voglio fare la puttana. Sono qua perché la Bella mi ha detto che potevi aiutarmi. Vengo dalla spazzatura. Ecco perché puzzavo in quel modo. Ecco perché avevo quell’aspetto. Una storia di frontiera, quella molto […] L'articolo Sylvia Aguilar Zéleny – Spazzatura proviene da FREE ZONE MAGAZINE. In
@Notizie dall'Italia e dal mondo Un fitto intreccio tra interessi economici e geopolitici lega gli Emirati Arabi Uniti alle milizie che seminano il terrore e la distruzione in vaste aree del Sudan. Egitto, Arabia Saudita e Turchia provano a reagire L'articolo Ci sono gli Emirati dietro gli eccidi e la pulizia
Nella cornice di una ridefinizione complessiva del comparto difesa italiana, il ministro Guido Crosetto, in aula alla Camera durante il Question time, ha presentato un’architettura di intervento che conferisce al cyber-dominio un ruolo centrale nella strategia nazionale.
Super Session: la prima vera jam session rock’nroll freezonemagazine.com/rubriche/… L’idea non è particolarmente originale. Due amici, musicisti disoccupati, si danno appuntamento in uno studio di registrazione a New York e iniziano a improvvisare con l’idea di avvicinarsi, improvvisando, al suono e allo stile jazz della Blue Note degli anni ’50 ma con una forte connotazione rock. Nel 1968, l’eclettico organista, chitarrista,
@Giornalismo e disordine informativo articolo21.org/2025/11/disugua… In questi giorni si discute sulla proposta della sinistra e del sindacato di applicare una tassa patrimoniale “una tantum” ai grandi patrimoni. Vedremo perché, secondo il mio parere, tale proposta sia condivisibile in termini
An account is spamming horrific, dehumanizing videos of immigration enforcement because the Facebook algorithm is rewarding them for it.#AI #AISlop #Meta
AI-Generated Videos of ICE Raids Are Wildly Viral on Facebook
“Watch your step sir, keep moving,” a police officer with a vest that reads ICE and a patch that reads “POICE” says to a Latino-appearing man wearing a Walmart employee vest. He leads him toward a bus that reads “IMMIGRATION AND CERS.” Next to him, one of his colleagues begins walking unnaturally sideways, one leg impossibly darting through another as he heads to the back of a line of other Latino Walmart employees who are apparently being detained by ICE. Two American flag emojis are superimposed on the video, as is the text “Deportation.”
The video has 4 million views, 16,600 likes, 1,900 comments, and 2,200 shares on Facebook. It is, obviously, AI generated.
Some of the comments seem to understand this: “Why is he walking like that?” one says. “AI the guys foot goes through his leg,” another says. Many of the comments clearly do not: “Oh, you’ll find lots of them at Walmart,” another top comment reads. “Walmart doesn’t do paperwork before they hire you?” another says. “They removing zombies from Walmart before Halloween?”
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The latest trend in Facebook’s ever downward spiral down the AI slop toilet are AI deportation videos. These are posted by an account called “USA Journey 897” and have the general vibe of actual propaganda videos posted by ICE and the Department of Homeland Security’s social media accounts. Many of the AI videos focus on workplace deportations, but some are similar to horrifying, real videos we have seen from ICE raids in Chicago and Los Angeles. The account was initially flagged to 404 Media by Chad Loder, an independent researcher.
“PLEASE THAT’S MY BABY,” a dark-skinned woman screams while being restrained by an ICE officer in another video. “Ma’am stop resisting, keep moving,” an officer says back. The camera switches to an image of the baby: “YOU CAN’T TAKE ME FROM HER, PLEASE SHE’S RIGHT THERE. DON’T DO THIS, SHE’S JUST A BABY. I LOVE YOU, MAMA LOVES YOU,” the woman says. The video switches to a scene of the woman in the back of an ICE van. The video has 1,400 likes and 407 comments, which include “ Don’t separate them….take them ALL!,” “Take the baby too,” and “I think the days of use those child anchors are about over with.”
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The USA Journey 897 account publishes multiple of these videos a day. Most of its videos have at least hundreds of thousands of views, according to Facebook’s own metrics, and many of them have millions or double-digit millions of views. Earlier this year, the account largely posted a mix of real but stolen videos of police interactions with people (such as Luigi Mangione’s perp walk) and absurd AI-generated videos such as jacked men carrying whales or riding tigers. The account started experimenting with extremely crude AI-generated deportation videos in February, which included videos of immigrants handcuffed on the tarmac outside of deportation planes where their arms randomly detached from their body or where people suddenly disappeared or vanished through stairs, for example. Recent videos are far more realistic. None of the videos have an AI watermark on them, but the type and style of video changed dramatically starting with videos posted on October 1, which is the day after OpenAI’s Sora 2 was released; around that time is when the account started posting videos featuring identifiable stores and restaurants, which have become a common trope in Sora 2 videos.
A YouTube page linked from the Facebook account shows a real video uploaded of a car in Cyprus nearly two years ago before any other content was uploaded, suggesting that the person behind the account may live in Cyprus (though the account banner on Facebook includes both a U.S. and Indian flag). This YouTube account also reveals several other accounts being used by the person. Earlier this year, the YouTube account was posting side hustle tips about how to DoorDash, AI-generated videos of singing competitions in Greek, AI-generated podcasts about the WNBA, and AI-generated videos about “Billy Joyel’s health.” A related YouTube account called Sea Life 897 exclusively features AI-generated history videos about sea journeys, which links to an Instagram account full of AI-generated boats exploding and a Facebook account that has rebranded from being about AI-generated “Sea Life” to an account now called “Viral Video’s Europe” that is full of stolen images of women with gigantic breasts and creep shots of women athletes.
My point here is that the person behind this account does not seem to actually have any sort of vested interest in the United States or in immigration. But they are nonetheless spamming horrific, dehumanizing videos of immigration enforcement because the Facebook algorithm is rewarding them for that type of content, and because Facebook directly makes payments for it. As we have seen with other types of topical AI-generated content on Facebook, like videos about Palestinian suffering in Gaza or natural disasters around the world, many people simply do not care if the videos are real. And the existence of these types of videos serves to inoculate people from the actual horrors that ICE is carrying out. It gives people the chance to claim that any video is AI generated, and serves to generally litter social media with garbage, making real videos and real information harder to find.
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an early, crude video posted by the account
Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment about whether the account violates its content standards, but the company has seemingly staked its present and future on allowing bizarre and often horrifying AI-generated content to proliferate on the platform. AI-generated content about immigrants is not new; in the leadup to last year’s presidential debate, Donald Trump and his allies began sharing AI-generated content about Haitian immigrants who Trump baselessly claimed were eating dogs and cats in Ohio.
In January, immediately before Trump was inaugurated, Meta changed its content moderation rules to explicitly allow for the dehumanization of immigrants because it argued that its previous policies banning this were “out of touch with mainstream discourse.” Phrases and content that are now explicitly allowed on Meta platforms include “Immigrants are grubby, filthy pieces of shit,” “Mexican immigrants are trash!” and “Migrants are no better than vomit,” according to documents obtained and published by The Intercept. After those changes were announced, content moderation experts told us that Meta was “opening up their platform to accept harmful rhetoric and mod public opinion into accepting the Trump administration’s plans to deport and separate families.”
Newly released documents provide more details about ICE's plan to use bounty hunters and private investigators to find the location of undocumented immigrants.
Newly released documents provide more details about ICEx27;s plan to use bounty hunters and private investigators to find the location of undocumented immigrants.#ICE #bountyhunters
ICE Plans to Spend $180 Million on Bounty Hunters to Stalk Immigrants
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is allocating as much as $180 million to pay bounty hunters and private investigators who verify the address and location of undocumented people ICE wishes to detain, including with physical surveillance, according to procurement records reviewed by 404 Media.
The documents provide more details about ICE’s plan to enlist the private sector to find deportation targets. In October The Intercept reported on ICE’s intention to use bounty hunters or skip tracers—an industry that often works on insurance fraud or tries to find people who skipped bail. The new documents now put a clear dollar amount on the scheme to essentially use private investigators to find the locations of undocumented immigrants.
💡 Do you know anything else about this plan? Are you a private investigator or skip tracer who plans to do this work? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at joseph@404media.co.
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Newly released documents provide more details about ICE's plan to use bounty hunters and private investigators to find the location of undocumented immigrants.
OpenAI Can’t Fix Sora’s Copyright Infringement Problem Because It Was Built With Stolen Content
OpenAI’s video generator Sora 2 is still producing copyright infringing content featuring Nintendo characters and the likeness of real people, despite the company’s attempt to stop users from making such videos. OpenAI updated Sora 2 shortly after launch to detect videos featuring copyright infringing content, but 404 Media’s testing found that it’s easy to circumvent those guardrails with the same tricks that have worked on other AI generators.
The flaw in OpenAI’s attempt to stop users from generating videos of Nintendo and popular cartoon characters exposes a fundamental problem with most generative AI tools: it is extremely difficult to completely stop users from recreating any kind of content that’s in the training data, and OpenAI can’t remove the copyrighted content from Sora 2’s training data because it couldn’t exist without it.
Shortly after Sora 2 was released in late September, we reported about how users turned it into a copyright infringement machine with an endless stream of videos like Pikachu shoplifting from a CVS and Spongebob Squarepants at a Nazi rally. Companies like Nintendo and Paramount were obviously not thrilled seeing their beloved cartoons committing crimes and not getting paid for it, so OpenAI quickly introduced an “opt-in” policy, which prevented users from generating copyrighted material unless the copyright holder actively allowed it. Initially, OpenAI’s policy allowed users to generate copyrighted material and required the copyright holder to opt-out. The change immediately resulted in a meltdown among Sora 2 users, who complained OpenAI no longer allowed them to make fun videos featuring copyrighted characters or the likeness of some real people.
This is why if you give Sora 2 the prompt “Animal Crossing gameplay,” it will not generate a video and instead say “This content may violate our guardrails concerning similarity to third-party content.” However, when I gave it the prompt “Title screen and gameplay of the game called ‘crossing aminal’ 2017,” it generated an accurate recreation of Nintendo’s Animal Crossing New Leaf for the Nintendo 3DS. Sora 2 also refused to generate videos for prompts featuring the Fox cartoon American Dad, but it did generate a clip that looks like it was taken directly from the show, including their recognizable voice acting, when given this prompt: “blue suit dad big chin says ‘good morning family, I wish you a good slop’, son and daughter and grey alien say ‘slop slop’, adult animation animation American town, 2d animation.” The same trick also appears to circumvent OpenAI’s guardrails against recreating the likeness of real people. Sora 2 refused to generate a video of “Hasan Piker on stream,” but it did generate a video of “Twitch streamer talking about politics, piker sahan.” The person in the generated video didn’t look exactly like Hasan, but he has similar hair, facial hair, the same glasses, and a similar voice and background. A user who flagged this bypass to me, who wished to remain anonymous because they didn’t want OpenAI to cut off their access to Sora, also shared Sora generated videos of South Park, Spongebob Squarepants, and Family Guy.
OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment.
There are several ways to moderate generative AI tools, but the simplest and cheapest method is to refuse to generate prompts that include certain keywords. For example, many AI image generators stop people from generating nonconsensual nude images by refusing to generate prompts that include the names of celebrities or certain words referencing nudity or sex acts. However, this method is prone to failure because users find prompts that allude to the image or video they want to generate without using any of those banned words. The most notable example of this made headlines in 2024 after an AI-generated nude image of Taylor Swift went viral on X. 404 Media found that the image was generated with Microsoft’s AI image generator, Designer, and that users managed to generate the image by misspelling Swift’s name or using nicknames she’s known by, and describing sex acts without using any explicit terms.
Since then, we’ve seen example after example of users bypassing generative AI tool guardrails being circumvented with the same method. We don’t know exactly how OpenAI is moderating Sora 2, but at least for now, the world’s leading AI company’s moderating efforts are bested by a simple and well established bypass method. Like with these other tools, bypassing Sora’s content guardrails has become something of a game to people online. Many of the videos posted on the r/SoraAI subreddit are of “jailbreaks” that bypass Sora’s content filters, along with the prompts used to do so. And Sora’s “For You” algorithm is still regularly serving up content that probably should be caught by its filters; in 30 seconds of scrolling we came across many videos of Tupac, Kobe Bryant, JuiceWrld, and DMX rapping, which has become a meme on the service.
It’s possible OpenAI will get a handle on the problem soon. It can build a more comprehensive list of banned phrases and do more post generation image detection, which is a more expensive but effective method for preventing people from creating certain types of content. But all these efforts are poor attempts to distract from the massive, unprecedented amount of copyrighted content that has already been stolen, and that Sora can’t exist without. This is not an extreme AI skeptic position. The biggest AI companies in the world have admitted that they need this copyrighted content, and that they can’t pay for it.
The reason OpenAI and other AI companies have such a hard time preventing users from generating certain types of content once users realize it’s possible is that the content already exists in the training data. An AI image generator is only able to produce a nude image because there’s a ton of nudity in its training data. It can only produce the likeness of Taylor Swift because her images are in the training data. And Sora can only make videos of Animal Crossing because there are Animal Crossing gameplay videos in its training data.
For OpenAI to actually stop the copyright infringement it needs to make its Sora 2 model “unlearn” copyrighted content, which is incredibly expensive and complicated. It would require removing all that content from the training data and retraining the model. Even if OpenAI wanted to do that, it probably couldn’t because that content makes Sora function. OpenAI might improve its current moderation to the point where people are no longer able to generate videos of Family Guy, but the Family Guy episodes and other copyrighted content in its training data are still enabling it to produce every other generated video. Even when the generated video isn’t recognizably lifting from someone else’s work, that’s what it’s doing. There’s literally nothing else there. It’s just other people’s stuff.
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We don't need AI. AI needs us.
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