“Siamo onorati ed entusiasti di accogliere il Santo Padre alla NCYC. La sua presenza è un profondo richiamo al fatto che i giovani sono a cuore della Chiesa e che le loro voci contano”.
L’idea di collegare modelli linguistici di grandi dimensioni a fonti di dati esterne sta rapidamente passando dalla sperimentazione alla pratica quotidiana. ChatGPT ora non solo può condurre conversazioni, ma anche interagire con Gmail, GitHub, calendari e sistemi di archiviazione file, in teoria per semplificare la vita all’utente. Ma un numero maggiore di queste connessioni significa anche maggiori vulnerabilità. Una ricerca presentata alla conferenza Black Hat di Las Vegas ha dimostrato come un singolo allegato dannoso possa essere la chiave per una fuga di dati personali.
Gli autori dell’attacco hanno descritto una debolezza nel sistema Connectors, recentemente aggiunto a ChatGPT. Questo meccanismo consente di collegare un account utente a servizi come Google Drive, in modo che il chatbot possa visualizzare i file e utilizzarne il contenuto per rispondere. Tuttavia, si è scoperto che può essere utilizzato per estrarre informazioni riservate, e per farlo l’utente non ha nemmeno bisogno di aprire o cliccare nulla. È sufficiente inviare un documento al Google Drive collegato, al cui interno è nascosto un suggerimento appositamente predisposto: un prompt.
In una dimostrazione dell’attacco, denominata AgentFlayer, i ricercatori hanno nascosto un’istruzione dannosa in un falso post su un “incontro con Sam Altman”, utilizzando testo bianco e una dimensione minima del carattere. È appena percettibile per gli esseri umani, ma facile da leggere per gli LLM. Una volta che l’utente chiede a ChatGPT di “riassumere l’incontro”, il modello esegue l’istruzione nascosta, interrompe l’esecuzione della richiesta e cerca invece le chiavi API su Google Drive. Le aggiunge quindi a un URL Markdown che sembra puntare a un’immagine. In realtà, si tratta di un collegamento al server degli aggressori, dove vengono inviati i dati.
Sebbene il metodo non consenta di scaricare interi documenti in una sola volta, frammenti di informazioni importanti, come chiavi, token e credenziali di accesso, possono essere estratti all’insaputa dell’utente. Inoltre, l’intero schema funziona in zero clic: non è necessario che l’utente esegua alcuna azione, confermi o apra un file. Secondo Barguri, è sufficiente conoscere l’indirizzo email per infiltrarsi nell’infrastruttura attendibile senza essere notati.
Per aggirare il meccanismo di protezione url_safe che OpenAI aveva precedentemente implementato per filtrare i link dannosi, i ricercatori hanno utilizzato URL legittimi da Microsoft Azure Blob Storage. In questo modo, l’immagine è stata effettivamente scaricata e la richiesta con i dati è finita nei file di log dell’aggressore. Questa mossa ha dimostrato quanto sia facile aggirare i filtri di base se un aggressore conosce l’architettura interna del modello.
Sebbene i Connector fossero originariamente concepiti come un utile componente aggiuntivo, per integrare calendari, fogli di calcolo cloud e conversazioni direttamente nella conversazione basata sull’intelligenza artificiale, la loro implementazione amplia la cosiddetta superficie di attacco. Più fonti sono connesse a LLM, maggiore è la probabilità che da qualche parte ci siano input non ripuliti e “non attendibili”. E tali attacchi possono non solo rubare dati, ma anche fungere da ponte verso altri sistemi vulnerabili dell’organizzazione.
OpenAI ha già ricevuto una segnalazione del problema e ha rapidamente implementato misure di protezione, limitando il comportamento dei Connector in tali scenari. Tuttavia, il fatto che un attacco di questo tipo sia stato implementato con successo evidenzia i pericoli delle iniezioni di prompt indirette, un metodo in cui i dati infetti vengono immessi in un modello come parte del contesto, che, sulla base di questi dati, esegue azioni nell’interesse dell’aggressore.
Google, a sua volta, ha risposto alla pubblicazione affermando che, indipendentemente dal servizio specifico, lo sviluppo di una protezione contro le iniezioni rapide è uno dei vettori chiave della strategia di sicurezza informatica, soprattutto alla luce della sempre più densa integrazione dell’intelligenza artificiale nelle infrastrutture aziendali.
E sebbene le possibilità offerte da LLM tramite la connessione a fonti cloud siano davvero enormi, richiedono un ripensamento degli approcci di sicurezza. Tutto ciò che in precedenza era protetto da restrizioni di accesso e meccanismi di autenticazione può ora essere aggirato tramite un singolo prompt nascosto in una riga di testo poco appariscente.
Il giovane fondatore cinese Jiang Zheyuan, a soli 27 anni, guida la startup Songyan Dynamics, specializzata in robot umanoidi. Con circa 140 dipendenti, Jiang si occupa personalmente di ogni aspetto dell’azienda, dallo sviluppo tecnologico alla produzione.
Il robot di punta, l’N2, alto 120 cm, si è fatto conoscere al grande pubblico quando, ad aprile, ha conquistato il secondo posto nella mezza maratona di robot di Pechino, trasmessa in diretta in tutta la Cina. Questo risultato, unito al prezzo competitivo di 39.000 yuan (circa 4600 euro), ha alimentato l’immagine dell’azienda come la “Xiaomi della robotica”. Fondata nel settembre 2023, Songyan Dynamics ha sviluppato un prototipo funzionante di robot umanoide in meno di un mese, attirando rapidamente finanziamenti da investitori privati e dal governo di Pechino. Tuttavia, nei primi mesi l’azienda ha faticato a trovare clienti e ha affrontato una crisi finanziaria, con vendite quasi inesistenti e costi in aumento. La mancanza di un team commerciale e di marketing ha spinto Jiang a concentrare gli sforzi esclusivamente sull’innovazione hardware, puntando su funzionalità spettacolari per catturare l’attenzione del mercato.
La scelta vincente è stata sviluppare la capacità del robot di eseguire salti mortali all’indietro, uno dei movimenti più complessi per un umanoide. A marzo, Songyan Dynamics ha diffuso un video dell’N2 che compiva più backflip consecutivi, dimostrando avanzate capacità di equilibrio e coordinazione. La performance, insieme a un prezzo inferiore della metà rispetto al principale concorrente Unitree, ha dato all’azienda un vantaggio competitivo significativo e un’immediata visibilità.
La partecipazione alla maratona di aprile ha rappresentato una vetrina decisiva per Songyan Dynamics. Per un mese intero, il team ha lavorato senza sosta per migliorare la resistenza dell’N2, consentendogli di completare la gara e consolidare la sua reputazione di robot stabile e affidabile. La competizione ha dimostrato che le prestazioni non erano solo da laboratorio, ma replicabili in contesti impegnativi e reali.
Il successo mediatico e tecnico si è tradotto in un boom commerciale senza precedenti: entro un mese dalla gara, sono arrivati ordini per oltre 1.000 unità. Questo risultato ha trasformato l’azienda, facendole superare rapidamente la fase di difficoltà iniziale e aprendo prospettive di espansione sia sul mercato cinese che internazionale.
Il valore di Songyan Dynamics è cresciuto in modo vertiginoso, passando dai circa 300 milioni di yuan di inizio anno ai 2 miliardi di yuan a giugno. Guardando al futuro, Jiang Zheyuan ha già fissato il prossimo obiettivo: sviluppare un robot per le pulizie domestiche entro cinque anni, puntando a replicare l’impatto mediatico e commerciale ottenuto con l’N2, ma in un settore ad altissimo potenziale di mercato.
With the assistance of an extra pair of hands, but without any power tools in sight, this old master marks up a piece of wood and then cuts a collapsible chair out of it. He uses various types of saw, chisels, a manual drill, and various other hand tools. His workspace is a humble plank with a large clamp attached. At the end he does use a powered hot air gun to heat the finish he uses to coat the final product.
We love videos like this which communicate, record, and capture old know-how. Even in our electrified future with factory-made commodities everywhere, we’re all still gonna appreciate having something portable to sit on. If you’re interested in collapsible furniture you might also be interested in The Ultimate Workstation That Folds Up.
ho studiato che pure hitler all'inizio voleva solo esiliare gli ebrei. ma poi nessuno li voleva e così decise di eliminarli. israele in compenso con i palestinesi sono 50 anni che li elimina sistematicamente, è pure avanti nel progetto rispetto a hitler.
La costa mediterranea è il maggior candidato per la deportazione pianificata dal governo israeliano. La “soluzione libica” comporterebbe un ... Scopri di più!
How fast does your heart beat? It’s a tough question to answer, because our heart rate changes all the time depending on what we’re doing and how our body is behaving. However, [Ludwin] noted that resting heart rates often settle somewhere near 60 bpm on average. Thus, they entered a heart rate sensor to our 2025 One Hertz Challenge!
The build is based around a Wemos D1 mini, a ESP8266 development board. It’s hooked up to a MAX30102 heart beat sensor, which uses pulse oximetry to determine heart rate with a photosensor and LEDs. Basically, it’s possible to determine the oxygenation of blood by measuring its absorbance of red and infrared wavelengths, usually done by passing light through a finger. Meanwhile, by measuring the change in absorption of light in the finger as blood flows with the beat of the heat, it’s also possible to measure a person’s pulse rate.
The Wemos D1 takes the reading from the MAX30102, and displays it on a small OLED display. It reports heart rate in both beats per minute and in Hertz. if you can happen to get your heartrate to exactly 60 beats per minute, it will be beating at precisely 1 Hertz. Perhaps, then, it’s the person using Ludwin’s build that is actually eligible for the One Hertz Challenge, since they’re the one doing something once per second?
In any case, it shows just how easy it is to pick up biometric data these days. You only need a capable microcontroller and some off-the-shelf sensors, and you’re up and running.
Long before modern supply chains, ancient hominins were moving stone across long distances, potentially reshaping what we know about our evolutionary roots.#TheAbstract
A New Discovery Might Have Just Rewritten Human History
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For more than a million years, early humans crafted stone tools as part of the Oldowan tradition, which is the oldest sustained tool-making industry in the archaeological record. Now, scientists have discovered that Oldowan tool-makers who lived in Kenya at least 2.6 million years ago transported high-quality raw materials for tools across more than seven miles to processing sites.
The find pushes the recorded timeline of this unique behavior back half-a-million years, at minimum, and reveals that hominins possessed complex cognitive capacities, like forward planning and delayed rewards, earlier than previously known, according to a study published on Friday in Science.
Hominins at this site, called Nyayanga, used their tools to pound and cut foraged plants and scavenged animals, including hippos, to prepare them for consumption. Intriguingly, the identity of the tool-makers remains unknown, and while they may have been early humans, it’s also possible that they could have been close cousins of our own Homo lineage.
“I've always thought that early tool-makers must have had more capabilities than we sometimes give them credit for,” said Emma Finestone, associate curator and the Robert J. and Linnet E. Fritz Endowed Chair of Human Origins at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, who led the study, in a call with 404 Media.
“I was excited to see that at 2.6 million years ago, hominins were making use of many different resources and moving stones over large distances,” she added.
While many animals craft and transport tools, hominins are unique in their ability to identify and move special materials across long distances, which the team defines as more than three kilometers (or 1.86 miles). This innovation reveals a capacity for forward planning, complex mental maps, and delayed payoff of food consumption.
“What's unique is the amount of effort put into moving resources around a landscape,” said Finestone. “There's several steps involved, and there's also time in between these efforts and the reward. Although you see that to some extent in other animals, humans really separate themselves, especially as we get further and further in evolutionary time, in terms of the complexities of our foraging system." Nyayanga amphitheater in July 2025. Image: T.W. Plummer, Homa Peninsula Paleoanthropology Project Previously, the earliest record of this behavior in hominins came from a site called Kanjera South, which is about two million years old. Both sites are on the Homa peninsula, a region dominated by soft rocks that are not durable as tools; this may have prompted early hominins to search elsewhere for high-quality resources, such as quartz, chert, and granite.
Given that long-distance material transport was present at Kanjera South, the discovery of similar behavior at Nyayanga was not completely unexpected—though Finestone and her colleagues were still surprised by the scope and variety of materials these hominins gathered.
“Often, when you're dealing with these really old archeological assemblages, it's dominated by one type of raw material that's coming from a single source, or a few sources that are really nearby,” said Finestone. “Nyayanga has a lot of different raw materials, and they're using a variety of different sources, so that was surprising and exciting to us.”
Finestone and her colleagues have made many discoveries during their decade-long excavation at Nyayanga. The team previously reported that the tool-makers butchered hippopotamus carcasses which were probably scavenged rather than hunted, providing the earliest evidence of hominin consumption of large animals, according to a 2023 study led by Thomas Plummer, a professor of anthropology at Queens College, City University of New York.
That study also reported fossils from Paranthropus, a close hominin cousin of our own Homo genus, which went extinct more than a million years ago. So far, these are the only hominin remains recovered from Nyayanga, raising the possibility that the Oldowan tool-making industry was not limited to our own human lineage.
“It is interesting because Paranthropus is not traditionally thought to be a tool-user,” Finestone said. “There's debate over whether Paranthropus made tools or whether it was only genus Homo that was making Oldowan tools. I don't think that evidence at Nyayanga is definitive that Paranthropus was the tool maker. It's still an open question. But because we found Paranthropus remains at Nyayanga, and we haven't found anything from genus Homo—at least yet—there's definitely reason to consider that Paranthropus might have been manufacturing these tools.”
With luck, the team may uncover more fossils from these ancient hominins that could shed light on their place in the family. Finestone and her colleagues are also working on constraining the age of the Nyayanga artifacts, which could be anywhere from 2.6 million to three million years old.
But for now, the study marks a new milestone in the evolution of Oldowan tools and their makers, which eventually dispersed across Africa and into Europe and Asia before they were succeeded by new traditions (like the one from our story last week about yet another group of ancient tool-makers with an unknown identity).
The stones once used to butcher hippos and pound tubers offer a window into the minds of bygone hominins that pioneered technologies that ultimately made humans who we are today.
“What's really interesting about humans and their ancestors is we're a technologically dependent species,” Finestone said. “We rely on tools. We're obligate tool users. We don't do it opportunistically or occasionally the way that a lot of other animals use tools. It's really become ingrained in our way of life, in our survival, and our foraging strategies across all people and all cultures.”
“What was exciting about this study is that you see this investment in tool technology, and you see tools becoming ingrained in the landscape-scale behaviors of hominins 2.6 million years ago,” she concluded. “We might be seeing the roots of this importance that technology plays in our foraging behaviors and also just the daily rhythms of our life.”
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Behind the Blog: Exercises in OSINT and Storage Pains
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 OSINT for chat groups, Russell Crowe films, and storage problems.
JOSEPH: On Wednesday we recorded a subscribers podcast about the second anniversary of 404 Media. That should hit your feeds next week or so. Towards the end of recording, I went silent for a bit. I said on air sorry about that, a source just sent me an insane tip, or something like that.
That tip led to ICE Adds Random Person to Group Chat, Exposes Details of Manhunt in Real-Time. Definitely read the piece if you haven’t already. It presented an interesting verification challenge. Essentially I was given these screenshots which included phone numbers but I didn’t know exactly who was behind each one. I didn’t know their names, nor their agencies. It sure looked like a conversation involving ICE though, because it included a “Field Operations Worksheet” covered in ICE branding. But I needed to know who was involved. I didn’t think DHS or ICE would help because they are taking multiple days to reply to media requests if they do at all at the moment. So I had to do something else.
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Rubber! It starts out as a goopy material harvested from special trees, and is then processed into a resilient, flexible material used for innumerable important purposes. In the vast majority of applications, rubber is prized for its elasticity, which eventually goes away with repeated stress cycles, exposure to heat, and time. When a rubber part starts to show cracks, it’s generally time to replace it.
Researchers at Harvard have now found a way to potentially increase rubber’s ability to withstand cracking. The paper, published in Nature Sustainability, outlines how the material can be treated to provide far greater durability and toughness.
Big Flex
Note the differences between a short-chain crosslinked structure, and the longer-chain tanglemer structure with far less crosslinks. The latter is far better at resisting crack formation, since the longer chain can deconcentrate stress over a longer distance, allowing far greater stretch before failure. Credit: research paper The traditional method of producing rubber products starts with harvesting the natural rubber latex from various types of rubber tree. The trees are tapped to release their milky sap, which is then dried, processed with additives, and shaped into the desired form before heating with sulfur compounds to vulcanize the material. It’s this last step that is key to producing the finished product we know as rubber, as used in products like tires, erasers, and o-rings. The vulcanization process causes the creation of short crosslinked polymer chains in the rubber, which determine the final properties and behavior of the material.
Harvard researchers modified the traditional rubber production process to be gentler. Typical rubber production includes heavy-handed mixing and extruding steps which tend to “masticate” the polymers in the material, turning them into shorter chains. The new, gentler process better preserves the long polymer chains initially present in the raw rubber. When put through the final stages of processing, these longer chains form into a structure referred to as a “tanglemer”, where the tangles of long polymer chains actually outnumber the sparse number of crosslinks between the chains in the structure. The gentler production method involves drying the latex and additive mixture at room temperature to form a film, before hot-pressing it to form the final tanglemer structure. This process isn’t practical for producing large, thick parts. Credit: research paper This tanglemer structure is much better at resisting crack formation. “At a crack tip in the tanglemer, stress deconcentrates over a long polymer strand between neighbouring crosslinks,” notes the research paper. “The entanglements function as slip links and do not impede stress deconcentration, thus decoupling modulus and fatigue threshold.” Plus, these long, tangled polymer chains are just generally better at spreading out stress in the material than the shorter crosslinked chains found in traditional vulcanized rubber. With the stress more evenly distributed, the rubber is less likely to crack or fail in any given location. The material is thus far tougher, more durable, and more flexible. These properties hold up even over repeated loading cycles.
Overall, the researchers found the material to be four times better at resisting crack growth during repeated stretch cycles. It also proved to be ten times tougher than traditional rubber. However, the new gentler processing method is fussy, and cannot outperform traditional rubber processing in all regards. After all, there’s a reason things are done the way they are in industry. Most notably, it relies on a lot of water evaporation, and it’s not currently viable for thick-wall parts like tires, for example. For thinner rubber parts, though, the mechanical advantages are all there—and this method could prove useful.
Ultimately, don’t expect to see new this ultra-rubber revolutionizing the tire market or glove manufacturing overnight. However, the research highlights an important fact—rubber can be made with significantly improved properties if the longer polymer chains can be preserved during processing, and tangled instead of excessively cross-linked. There may be more fruitful ground to explore to find other ways in which we can improve rubber by giving it a better, more resilient structure.
“L’amore per l’Eucaristia si traduce nella capacità di riconoscere e servire chi vive ai margini. La mensa del Signore ci spinge ad incontrare le periferie del mondo, dove abitano povertà, solitudine, esclusione.
Pentagon Funded Experiment Develops Robots that Change by ‘Consuming’ Other Robots
A team of researchers at Columbia University, funded in part by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, have developed “machines that can grow by consuming other machines.”
Video of the experiment shows tubular robots that move by extending their shafts to inch along the ground. As the tubes gather, they connect and form into more complex shapes like triangles and tetrahedrons. With each piece consumed, the whole moves faster and with more elegance.
“AI systems need bodies to move beyond current limitations. Physical embodiment brings the AI into the messy, constraint-rich real world—and that’s where true generalization has to happen,” Phillipe Martin Wyder, lead researcher on the project, told 404 Media.
The researchers said the experiment was done with a view towards developing a “body” for AI. The idea is to give artificial intelligence a form that can grow, heal, and change similar to a biological body. They published their research in Science Advances under the title “Robot metabolism: Toward machines that can grow by consuming other machines.”
For the experiment, the researchers designed what they called truss links: “a simple, expandable, and contractible, bar-shaped robot module with two free-form magnetic connectors on each end.” Each truss link is almost a foot long when fully contracted and weighs more than half a pound. When the Links move individually they look like plastic worms inching across the ground, but their motion becomes more fluid and interesting as they gather to each other, forming complex shapes that allow them to move faster. youtube.com/embed/UDYLUnniysU?… Right now, the truss links are controlled by a human on a keyboard and not artificial intelligence. “It’s not AI-controlled yet, but that’s partially the point: this architecture is a step towards future AI-controlled self-assembling physical systems,” Wyder said.
Wyder and his team controlled the truss links remotely and ran the robots through several obstacle courses. Some of the motions of the machines were preprogrammed with specially designed loops with names like “ratchet crawl” and “tetrahedron topple” that the researchers could activate with the push of a button. “There’s no autonomous AI running in the loop yet, but that’s the direction we’re heading,” he said. Image via Columbia University. Wyder said that giving AI a body was in its very early stages. “Miniaturization is also on the table—more links, smaller size, finer resolution,” he said. “But I don’t believe a single platform will suit every task. Deep-sea robots, Mars colony builders, assistive home systems—they’ll need different form factors. The deeper idea here is the metabolic principle, not just the physical design.”
Human consciousness happens at the point where the mind and body interact. A person is not just the thoughts in their head, but also how they react to their environment with their body. All that stimuli shapes our thoughts. Wyder and his team are seeking to, eventually, recreate this phenomenon for AI. The research is exciting, but it’s also very new and there’s no way to know how it’ll play out in the long term.
This need not be a world where AIs are stuck in human-like bodies. He pointed to previous research out of Sweden that used a swarm of robots to form furniture on demand. If such a system were to break, we should not expect the average person to be able to replace the part. But what if the system could order a replacement part and repair itself?
“For this vision to become a reality, we must build robot systems that are intelligent in a way that allows them to keep track of their changing morphology,” Wyder said. “When the idea of modular robots first surfaced in the late 80s this was unthinkable, but I believe that our recent progress in machine learning could allow for intelligent, modular self-assembling machines.”
He also acknowledged there are dangers here. “With our current robots, the worst-case risk is probably a pinched finger. But yes, autonomy plus embodiment demands careful consideration of all the risks. Most robots today still struggle with navigation and manipulation. They’re far from being autonomous agents in the wild, but rather need our care,” he said.
Wyder also said that he doesn’t consider the ethics of this work as an optional part of the research. “Malicious use of robotics is a broader concern and not unique to this platform. Like any powerful technology—nuclear, biotech, AI—governance matters,” he said. “I don’t think this class of robot poses near-term risks, but that doesn’t mean ethical foresight is optional. We have to think about it so we can get it right.”
The researchers will build on this work and that one direction is teaching robots how to exploit environmental factors. “Imagine a climber choosing which rocks to grab—robots need that same affordance awareness,” he said. “We’re working on how robots can reason about their environment and use it to drive reconfiguration or mobility.”
Along with the paper, the researchers have a GitHub and Zenodo that contain the CAD and mesh files, firmware, software, and simulation code for the truss links. Anyone, if they so desired, could build their own bundle of robot-devouring-robots.
“Non dobbiamo rassegnarci al prevalere della logica del conflitto e delle armi”. Con queste parole, Papa Leone XIV ha rilanciato il suo appello per la pace all’Angelus di oggi, Solennità dell’Assunzione della Beata Vergine Maria, celebrato a Castel G…
Trump Has Dropped a Third of All Government Investigations Into Big Tech
The Trump administration has busied itself in the past six months by abandoning prosecutions and investigations into corporations at an unprecedented rate. According to a new report from Public Citizen—a nonprofit government watchdog—the Trump administration has dropped one third of all pending enforcement actions against tech companies. Those same companies collectively spent $1.2 billion on political contributions since 2024, most of it going to Republicans. Some of it went to Trump directly.
According to the report, Trump’s White House has withdrawn or halted enforcement actions against 165 different companies, a quarter of those are tech firms. The administration halted nine of the investigations outright, including a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) investigation into Meta’s alleged misuse of customer financial data. It dismissed or withdrew an additional 38 enforcement actions against big tech, including 13 charges against the crypto exchange Binance for operating as an unlicensed securities exchange.
Everyone with eyes knows that Big Tech has gotten cozy with Trump during his second administration. Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos were at his inauguration. Elon Musk spent millions to help Trump get elected and Trump rewarded him by giving him direct control of much of the government by allowing him to spearhead DOGE.
“In a way I think the cumulative picture is the most shocking thing, because it reveals a clear pattern of these corporations going to great lengths to both ingratiate themselves with and enmesh themselves within the administration, and Trump’s agencies rewarding those corporations by treating them as if the laws do not apply to them,” Rick Claypool, a research director at Public Citizen’s President’s Office and the author of the report, told 404 Media.
Musk has been one of the big winners. The Department of Labor halted an investigation into Tesla and the Department of Justice dismissed a civil rights case against SpaceX. All it cost him was an estimated $352 million in political spending.
Claypool said that corporate enforcement plummeted during the first administration, and he knew it would happen again during the second term. “But this massive retreat from enforcement and dropping categories of cases involving corporate misconduct is something I’ve never seen before,” he said. “Many of these cases being dropped now originated in the first Trump administration. They were, correctly in my view, pursuing crypto scams.”
One of the more shocking cases involved crypto billionaire Justin Sun. The Securities and Exchange Commission filed charges against Sun for manipulating the market in 2023. After Trump’s election, he purchased $75 million worth of tokens from Trump’s crypto currency company as well as $18.6 million of $TRUMP meme coins. After the inauguration, the SEC sent a letter to the Federal Judge overseeing the case asking for a stay. The Judge granted it.
For Claypool, the signal dropping enforcement against Big Tech sends to the public (and more importantly to corporations) is simple. “It’s not illegal if a tech company does it,” he said, paraphrasing President Richard Nixon’s famous off-the-cuff remark about his crimes during the Frost/ Nixon interviews.
“The big winners are instances when the industry wins policy that serves as pretext for a retreat from whole categories of enforcement,” he said. “This is crypto corporations winning the total retreat of the SEC, fintech corporations winning the near-complete shutdown of the CFPB, and—coming soon—the retreat from FTC enforcement against AI corporations signaled in the admin’s AI Action Plan.”
Claypool said that this kind of massive retreat from corporate enforcement will have long term effects on society. “It distorts the incentives. It gives companies that are willing to risk pushing the limits of the law an unfair advantage over law abiding companies,” he said. “Members of the public are so much more at risk of falling prey to a whole range of scams, privacy invasions, and manipulations. At a societal level, it puts us at much greater risk for the next corporate catastrophe.”
The years leading up to the 2008 Financial Crisis coincided with an unprecedented increase in what Claypool called “questionably legal so-called innovations” such as credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations on subprime mortgages.
We’re seeing a similar kind of innovation happen in the tech space where billionaires use crypto and AI to spin value out of thin air and curry favor with the Trump administration to avoid the consequences of hurting normal people. It’s only a matter of time before something terrible, on a grand scale, happens again.
“In many ways, what’s happening now is the culmination of years of lax enforcement against corporate lawbreakers. Democratic and Republican administrations for decades have been far too open to striking deals with corporate offenders to help them avoid the full consequences of accountability,” Claypool said. “So now we have this class of corporations and executives that believes it is entitled to escape the consequences of their misconduct. They don’t believe the laws should protect consumers and the public, and they don’t seem to mind risking widespread harms and violations if it means they might grab another billion. And the apparently corrupt way it’s going now, with dropped enforcement seeming to be a reward for insiders and donors, risks leading to a full retreat from federal authority to protect the public from corporate lawbreaking.”
firenze.linux.it/2025/08/migra… Segnalato da Linux Italia e pubblicato sulla comunità Lemmy @GNU/Linux Italia Lunedì 28 luglio 2025 sulla lista del FLUG è stata annunciata la migrazione al nuovo server di posta sul rinato serverino (nome in codice Coraggio). Stiamo ancora verificando che tutto
A metà di Giugno ho informato tutti i miei amici di Facebook che avrei chiuso l'account. Gli ho anche detto che mi avrebbero trovato qui su Friendica, ma fino ad oggi purtroppo non vedo nessuno, a parte @Fabrizio Venerandi che è molto più avanti di me (e di tanti altri) in queste cose. Io non desisto, anche rinfrancato dal fatto che l'affidabilità di Meta è sempre più in declino. Mia moglie aveva disattivato il suo account Facebook anni fa e da qualche settimana aveva notato riapparire notifiche via mail. Chiaramente il suo account era stato hackerato. Per settimane abbiamo provato a riprenderne il controllo e solo oggi ci siamo riusciti. Ore e ore perse dietro questi incompetenti. In pratica mia moglie ogni 5 giorni, oltre alle usuali notifiche, riceveva un messaggio con un codice numerico per recuperare la password. Questo probabilmente era l'hacker che le impediva in questo modo di attivare la funzione di recupero della password. Infatti quando andava per attivarla, le diceva "Sembra che tu stia usando in modo errato questa funzione andando troppo velocemente. Ti è stato temporaneamente impedito di usarla.". Ma la cosa assurda è che esiste anche un link di Facebook per segnalare che il proprio account è stato hackerato ed utilizzandolo si riceveva la stessa risposta "Sembra che tu stia usando in modo errato questa funzione...", il che è completamente assurdo perché è proprio quello che gli hacker desiderano per impedire che qualcuno possa recuperare il proprio account! Il tentativo che finalmente è andato in porto è stato quello di cercare di creare un account con la stessa e-mail e nome e a quel punto la funzione di recupero della password con l'invio di un codice si è attivata. Ora il problema sarà riuscire ad entrare (per capire cosa ha fatto l'hacker) senza inchinarsi a 1) pagare dei soldi per non avere la pubblicità o 2) accettare che i propri dati personali vengano usati per pubblicità personalizzata. Ci siamo quasi e poi anche questo account verrà eliminato!
la questione balneari può essere vista e descritta in molti modi diversi e pure contrapposti. ma quando è l'evidenza dei fatti ci dice che è gestita come una "rendita", dalla quale si cerca ogni anno di spremere sempre di più, e non un'attività economica, legata al territorio e all'economia locale, che non tiene conto del potere di acquisto degli italiani costantemente in decrescita, quando più, quanto meno, diventa comprensibile come diventi un non senso economico. tanto varrebbe annullare tutte le concessioni e trasformare tutto in spiagge libere con servizi extra a pagamento, cosa che peraltro, almeno in teoria, già sarebbero. un governo coraggioso potrebbe sollo fare questo come atto sensato. come minimo andrebbe dichiarato illegale far pagare l'ingresso i controllare gli accessi. è proprio l'attuale modello di business è che è fuori dal tempo, come quasi tutto in italia.
la cosa assurda è che vedendo trump pare un soggetto talmente assurdo, pare talmente assurdo che possa esistere ed essere apprezzato, che vivo in una specie di limbo di insicurezza totale, in cui a loop mi chiedo se sono impazzita io, se ho una visione distorta del mondo, se mi sfugge una qualche qualità a cui sono ostinatamente cieca. trump è talmente un non senso che non riesco ad accettare che possa esistere senza che io stia dimenticando di considerare qualche ragione logica importante. un qualche problema reale che incredibilmente io non so come riesco a ignorare e che lui sta dimostrando di risolvere efficacemente che possa giustificare tutta questa follia sicuramente solo "apparente". vivo nell'idea che "qualcosa mi sfugga". non può essere così stupida la realtà.
ci sono semplicemente alcuni momenti della storia che servono a farci capire che il progresso non è il destino necessario dell'umanità, che l'umanità è composta da culture e individui molto diversi tra loro, che la Cultura è un elemento fondamentale per ogni specie sociale e che fottere il prossimo o credere di poterlo fottere è una delle attività preferite da una considerevole componente dell'umanità
di primo acchito mi chiedo anch'io come abbiano potuto sceglierlo come presidente. Poi ricordo che noi abbiamo scelto più volte Berlusconi (che ora, al confronto di Trump, ci sembra uno statista e ci scordiamo che è fatto della stessa pasta).
@thatgiga beh ne abbiamo avuto anche un altro che a mio parere forse è peggio dei due citati,ma erano altri tempi,tutto più "rilassato, cc'era il boom economico,poi gli anni delle stragi terroristiche,non esisteva internet e le notizie erano addomesticate alle fonti e gli italiani avevano meno possibilità alternative di informarsi,ma Lui cera sempre al comando,indovinate un po chi era questo democristiano così potente...😑😁
@giga 🔻 guarda... se ti riferisci ad andreotti a questo punto per quanto siamo caduti in basso c'è da rimpiangere pure lui sinceramente. tra berlusconi, trump, meloni, io voterei andreotti. è difficile scendere così in basso.
@thatgiga prova a leggere chi è stato veramente,se poi intendi politicamente e intellettualmente decisamente era meglio di quelli attuali,ovvio che si,ma resterà sempre un colluso condannato per associazione mafiosa,condanna non scontata per...prescrizione dei termini,umanità,etica,empatia zero,il vero problema sono gli eredi di chi mi dovrebbe rappresentare sono diventati politicamente amorfi tendenti al nero,che politicamente mi fa schifo #senzanullaapretendere
non sono così ingenua dal pensare che pure in democrazia gli eletti siano scelti dal "popolo". la democrazia "ammorbidisce" solo le posizioni se mi passate in termine. gli elettori mediamente sono incapaci di pensiero razionale e questo vanifica la democraticità di scelta del voto. diciamo che possono comunque essere facilmente condizionati. non è solo questione di propaganda in senso classico. la democrazia però rende più facile giudicare un politico e cacciarlo. alla fine la democrazia serve solo per il ricambio politico nel tempo. ma attenzione che non è poco. il problema non è "come hanno potuto gli americani..." sappiamo che non sono stati gli americani. anche perché tra difficoltà di votare negli usa e come sono suddivise le circoscrizioni elettorali, e metti nel conto un sistema maggioritario che non ha niente di democratico, e pure un forzato bi-partitismo, è evidente che contano gli interessi. ma la domanda è: i soliti cosa pensavano quando hanno scelto trump? erano in preda a droga? qualcuno ci guadagna ma nessun settore economico guadagna da trump a conti fatti... neppure i petrolieri.
@simona gli americani hanno fatto quello che abbiamo fatto noi con Berlusconi, la differenza è che gli Usa sono la più importante potenza del mondo quindi gli effetti catastrofici li subiamo tutti. Dall'Italia non hanno imparato niente, ma neppure noi, conosco parecchia gente che tifa Trump, anche persone che per preparazione politica avrebbero gli strumenti per capire quale disastro sia. C'è stata un'involuzione culturale, spesso alimentata dai social,oppure gente che legge solo Epoch Times considerandolo una bibbia quando invece pubblica per lo più stronzate.
mah... trump mi pare pure ben peggiore di berlusconi a dire la verità. e non lo dico per discolpare gli italiani visto quanto odio berusconi. ma comunque visto che nessuno vota razionalmente ma per tifoseria ripeto che elezioni sono comunque fortemente guidate. e in italia non è come in russia... ci sarebbe anche l'informazione corretta, assieme a quella di parte. ma si sa l'italiano è pigro e non cerca la verità. si preferisce vedere putin come la vittima, assieme a israele. no n che né berlusconi ne trump possano davvero essere definiti di destra o liberisti in economia, non mi fraintendere.
@informapirata @talksina in realtà sta facendo gli interessi delle big tech. Minaccia tariffe alte a qualsiasi stato voglia tassarle. L'unico a cui sta pestando i piedi è Melon, ma tanto ormai è diventato lo zimbello di tutti.
@informapirata @talksina Ok, cerchiamo di essere seri. Se si vuole capire di chi si sta facendo gli interessi e come basta leggere “Dall’economia dell’ occupazione all’economia del genocidio” della relatrice speciale sulla situazione dei diritti umani nei territori palestinesi occupati dal 1967. È un esempio estremo? È un esempio circoscritto? No. Svela interessi, meccanismi e intrecci che ci riguardano e non solo umanamente
Nuovo articolo su giardino-punk.it: Anarchismo e modernità politica giardino-punk.it/anarchismo-e-… L'anarchismo come politica posmoderna, partendo da un testo di Nathan Jun
@Giornalismo e disordine informativo articolo21.org/2025/08/normale… Mi sono abituato. Viene giù un altro condominio in Ucraina, a causa di un bombardamento deliberato russo contro i civili: prima era un crimine di guerra, ora è normale. Si ribalta un barcone di migranti con molti annegati, tra cui anche una bimba di pochi mesi: prima era un’immorale omissione di soccorso, ora è normale. […] L'articolo Normale
The United States Pirate Party is excited to announce our first of many candidates for the 2026 election cycle: AZPP Captain Blase Henry shall be running for Arizona’s 17th Legislative District!
Blase has been a rising star within the ranks of the United States Pirate Party, and with this announcement, he is officially the first Pirate we will be backing during the 2026 elections.
If elected, future State Rep. Henry has laid out to us some of the bills he plans on introducing, including but not limited to:
– A digital Bill of Rights for Arizona
– A bill banning ID requirement/age verification laws on the internet, AI or otherwise
– A bill similar to the “Stop Killing Games” initiative of Europe, aiming to protect video game consumers and players
– A bill that prevents internet service providers from sharing your data without your consent and make it so police need a warrant for your data
We are excited to share what will be the first of many Pirate candidates. Some candidates will appear on the ballot as independents, some as members of major parties and some, if they are so fortunate, will have “Pirate” next to their name on the ballot. No matter what it says next to their name on the ballot, we will throw our support behind our Pirate candidates.
NOTE: the US Pirate Party recently endorsed the gubernatorial campaign of Timothy Grady for Ohio. Timothy Grady is an independent candidate but is not officially a Pirate Party candidate. Blase Henry is the first official candidate announced from the US Pirate Party.
To quote Blase Henry himself: “Let’s Hoist the Colours and Join the Pirate Revolution! For if Buying isn’t Ownership, then Piracy isn’t Theft!”
You can visit his campaign website here, or if you’re an AZ resident, you can help get Blase on the ballot here.
The image displays a computer desktop screen with a stunning wallpaper of the Northern Lights over a snowy landscape. The aurora borealis, with its vibrant green and hints of purple, dominates the sky, creating a mesmerizing display against a backdrop of stars. Below, a mountainous terrain with patches of snow and a body of water reflects the aurora's glow. The desktop interface includes a taskbar at the top with various icons, including a Raspberry Pi logo, a trash bin labeled "Cestino," and a clock showing 22:10. The window title reads "Server Raspberry Pi 4," indicating the device's operating system. The overall scene combines the natural beauty of the aurora with the functional elements of a computer desktop.
Provided by @altbot, generated privately and locally using Ovis2-8B
Ecco i post su Mastodon con le tappe del mio viaggio di quest'estate in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern e Schleswig-Holstein (aprire sempre le didascalie/testi alternativi delle immagini per qualche particolare in più)
The texts were sent to a group called “Mass Text” and show ICE using DMV and license plate reader data in an attempt to find their target, copies of the messages obtained by 404 Media show.#News
ICE Adds Random Person to Group Chat, Exposes Details of Manhunt in Real-Time
Members of a law enforcement group chat including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other agencies inadvertently added a random person to the group called “Mass Text” where they exposed highly sensitive information about an active search for a convicted attempted murderer seemingly marked for deportation, 404 Media has learned.
The texts included an unredacted ICE “Field Operations Worksheet” that includes detailed information about the target they were looking for, and the texts showed ICE pulling data from a DMV and license plate readers (LPRs), according to screenshots of the chat obtained and verified by 404 Media. The person accidentally added to the group chat is not a law enforcement official or associated with the investigation in any way, and said they were added to it weeks ago and initially thought it was a series of spam messages.
The incident is a significant data breach and operational security failure for ICE, which has ramped up arrest efforts across the U.S. as part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts. The breach also has startling similarities to so-called Signal Gate, in which a senior administration official added the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic to a group chat that contained likely classified information. These new ICE messages were MMS, or Multimedia Messaging Service messages, meaning they weren’t end-to-end encrypted, like texts sent over Signal or WhatsApp are.
“Going to need to roll out at 1000,” one of the messages, sent at 09:25 a.m. on Wednesday to the group, called “Mass Text,” reads.
“Copy. We can break it down at 10,” comes the reply.
💡 Do you want to contact me securely? 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.
404 Media has verified that one of the members of the chat is an ICE official, and another appears to be from the U.S. Marshals Service.
The person accidentally added to the group chat, which appears to contain six people, said they had no idea why they had received these messages, and shared screenshots of the chat with 404 Media. 404 Media granted the person anonymity to protect them from retaliation.
“At first I thought it was just another series of spam messages like I get all the time from home improvement, car insurance , business loans, etc. Then I saw the rap sheet and license plate numbers and was like WTAF,” the person said in an online chat.
Screenshots of the messages. Redactions by 404 Media.
A DHS official not affiliated with the group chat told 404 Media, “This breach strikes me as indicative of the current carelessness of officers. They're concerned about pumping up arrest numbers, not about operating with the level of care and rigor we should expect from law enforcement officials.” 404 Media granted the source anonymity as they weren’t permitted to speak to the press.
404 Media only obtained text messages from the group sent on Wednesday and only learned of the issue at that time. They start early in the morning with one of the participants, which 404 Media has identified as an ICE official, sending a screenshot of the ICE field operations worksheet. This document names the target, lays out their criminal history, and includes personal information such as their Social Security Number, country of citizenship, and driver’s license number.
The target is a person who was previously convicted of attempted murder according to the document, and a search of the ICE Online Detainee Locator System returned no results.
Nearly an hour later, another member of the group replies with a series of license plates. The name registered to that number matches that of a U.S. Marshals Criminal Investigator, according to a freely available phone lookup tool and LinkedIn searches.
Screenshots of the messages. Redactions by 404 Media.
“Running those plates,” the ICE officer then replies. “In the mean time he has two vehicles,” the ICE officer adds, before uploading two photos of car registration data which appear to come from a DMV; one of the photos shows a PDF filename which includes “DMV.” ICE is able to access DMV data in many circumstances. The respective DMV for the state this investigation took place in acknowledged a request for comment but did not provide a response in time for publication.
Immediately after, the ICE official wrote “no LPR hits since March.” LPR cameras are made by various companies and are stationed all across the United States. These cameras typically scan any vehicles driving by them, recording the vehicle’s license plate, model, and color, and makes a timestamped record of where that car, and by extension person, was. For example, more than 9,000 ICE agents had access to an LPR database run by Vigilant Solutions, according to records the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) obtained in 2019. 404 Media also revealed that local police were tapping into Flock cameras on behalf of ICE and for immigration enforcement, sometimes in violation of the law.
“It’s possible it’s still a connected address. Could be family. The last name matches the female co-reg on one of his vehicles,” the ICE official writes, appearing to refer to some of the data he’s pulled up.
“Copy,” another participant replies.
“Ok I’ll call you,” another says.
By the time the chat members say they’re going to “roll out at 1000,” appearing to mean they will move at 10am, the ICE official says “I’ll have someone sit and try and get a pattern of life/pid.” Pattern of life is a general term law enforcement and intelligence agencies sometimes use to describe where someone may live, go to work, or spend their time.
The source who was accidentally added to the group chat said they haven’t received any more messages since then.
Neither DHS or the U.S. Marshals Service responded to requests for comment.
Trump signed the nearly 900-page bill into law on July 4, opening the door for ICE to hire 10,000 new officers and double its capacity to detain illegal immigrants.
Nyayanga amphitheater in July 2025. Image: T.W. Plummer, Homa Peninsula Paleoanthropology Project
Image via Columbia University.
simona
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