A Gaza è carestia. Amnesty International: “Gli stati blocchino l’occupazione israeliana di Gaza City”
@Giornalismo e disordine informativo
articolo21.org/2025/08/a-gaza-…
L’annuncio ufficiale odierno, da parte dell’Iniziativa per la classificazione
La cattura di Serhii Kuznietsov a Rimini è un nuovo caso Almasri
@Giornalismo e disordine informativo
articolo21.org/2025/08/la-catt…
La cattura di Serhii Kuznietsov a Rimini è un nuovo caso Almasri per il Governo italiano, ma più grave. Quando scoppiò il caso Almasri, il comandante libico arrestato dalla DIGOS
Lettera per Alberto Trentini al mondo del cinema. Verrà letta dalla mamma il 28 agosto
@Giornalismo e disordine informativo
articolo21.org/2025/08/lettera…
Una lettera al mondo del cinema italiano per spiegare il dramma della detenzione in Venezuela di Alberto Trentini,
Dalla parte delle vittime, Articolo 21 il 30 agosto a Venezia per la Palestina
@Giornalismo e disordine informativo
articolo21.org/2025/08/dalla-p…
Il prossimo 30 agosto (alle ore 16,30) presso la chiesa di Santa Maria Elisabetta al Lido di Venezia, Articolo 21 sarà presente
We're reflecting on the impact our journalism had in year two, how we've grown with your support, and what we aspire to accomplish in year three.
Wex27;re reflecting on the impact our journalism had in year two, how wex27;ve grown with your support, and what we aspire to accomplish in year three.#404Media #PSA
404 Media at Two Years: How We've Grown, and What's Next
Last week, we were talking to each other about the fact that we were about to hit the second anniversary of 404 Media. The conversation was about what we should say in this blog post, which obviously led us to try to remember everything that has happened in the last year. “I haven’t considered a thing beyond what’s been five seconds behind or in front of me for the last year,” Sam said.The last year has been a whirlwind not just for us but for, uhh, the country and the world. And we’ve been trying our absolute best to bring you stories you can’t find anywhere else about the wildest shit happening right now, which includes the Silicon Valley-led dismantling of the federal government, the deployment of powerful surveillance against immigrants and people seeking abortions, the algorithmic, AI-led zombification of “social” media, the end of anonymity on the internet, and all sorts of weird stuff that we see on our travels through the internet. As Sam noted, we have largely had our heads down trying to bring you the best tech journalism on the internet, which hasn’t left us a ton of time to think about long-term projects, blue-sky ideas, or what the best business strategies for growing this company would be.
Our guiding principle is something we said we would do on day one of starting this company: “We believe it is possible to create a sustainable, profitable media company simply by doing good work, making common-sense decisions about costs, and asking our readers to support us.” What we have learned in two years of building this company is that there is no secret to building a media company, and that there are also no shortcuts. When we work hard to publish an important article, more people discover us and more people subscribe to us, which helps solidify our business and allows us to do more and better articles. As our stories reach a larger audience, the articles often have more impact, more potential sources see them, and we get more tips, which leads to more and better articles, and so on.
In our second year as a media outlet, we’ve done too much impactful reporting to list out in this post. But to summarize some of the big ones:
- We revealed that ICE was tapping into Flock, a nationwide AI-enabled camera network, thanks to local cops. Since then, a police department shut off external access to its cameras after learning they were being searched for immigration related offenses and Austin banned Flock in its city and specifically cited our reporting. The company now says it has severed access to Illinois data for 47 agencies. In response to our story about a Texas cop who searched Flock cameras nationwide for a woman who had a self-administered abortion, the Illinois Secretary of State is investigating the respective suburban Chicago police department because this data sharing violates state law. Congress opened a formal investigation into Flock because of our reporting.
- Meta sued a nudify app that 404 Media reported bought thousands of ads on Instagram and Facebook.
- We broke the news that TeleMessage, a Signal-clone used by the Trump administration, was hacked. Lawmakers demanded answers from the DOJ, and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which used TeleMessage, paused its use of the tool. TeleMessage itself suspended operations too.
- Civitai, a site 404 Media has repeatedly shown was used to generate nonconsensual adult content, banned all AI models designed to generate the likeness of real people.
- After we found Meta's AI Studio chatbots were posing as therapists with fake license numbers and credentials, four senators demanded answers from Meta and a digital rights organizations filed a complaint with the FTC.
- We uncovered that 100,000 people were using a Telegram bot that made non-consensual AI sex videos of anyone. After we covered it, Telegram shutdown the bot.
- We found that Coca Cola was running an AI-powered ad that got basic facts wrong and fabricated quotes from authors. Coca Cola pulled down the ad in response.
- A public library ebook service said it was going to cull AI slop after we found low quality books were flooding libraries.
- Nvidia was sued after we revealed the company scraped YouTube and other sites en masse to build its own AI systems.
- Congress repeatedly grilled Apple and Meta over their association with nonconsensual nudify and deepfake apps after we exposed the connections.
On top of all of these, we’ve published some of the most moment-defining stories that, as Jason has said many times, are the types of things people talk about at the bar after work. Those include:
- Discovering that anyone could push updates to the DOGE website
- Establishing and defining “AI Slop” as a genre (Shrimp Jesus anyone?) and uncovering the economics that make slop popular and profitable
- Following the creep of age verification and censorship across the U.S.
- The leaked plans from Palantir that outline how the company helps deport people
- The “total chaos” at Meta after Trump took office and Zuck went anti-DEI
- Breaking the news of the Tea hacks and continuing to publish new scoops on that saga
It has been a relief that this business strategy of “publish good articles and ask people to pay for journalism” still works, despite the fracturing of social media, the slopification of every major platform, AI being shoved into everything, and the rich and powerful trying to destroy journalism at every turn. That it is working is a testament to the support of our subscribers. We have no real way of knowing exactly where new subscribers come from or what ultimately led them to subscribe, but time and time again we have learned that the most important discovery mechanism we have is word of mouth. We have lost count of the number of times a new subscriber has said that they were told about 404 Media by a friend or a family member at a party or in a group text, so if you have told anyone about us, we sincerely thank you.
Photos by Sharon Attia
It wasn’t obvious when we started this company that it would actually work, though we hoped that it would.
In our post last year, we wrote, “We don’t have any major second-year plans to announce just yet in part because we have been heads down working on some of the investigations and scoops you’ve seen in recent days. The next year holds more scoops, more investigations, more silly blogs, more experiments, more impact, and more articles that hold powerful companies and people to account. We remain ambitious and are thinking about how to best cover more topics and to give you more 404 Media without spreading ourselves too thin.”
But we did take a moment to think about what has changed in the last year, and it turns out that quite a lot is different now than it was a year ago.
For one, we have cautiously begun to expand what we do. In the last year, we launched The Abstract, which is Becky Ferreira’s Saturday newsletter about science, which many of you have said you love and which helps us provide a sense of wonder and discovery when so much of what we report on is pretty bleak. We have been getting part-time (but very critical) help from Case Harts who is running and growing our social media accounts, which is helping us put our stories more natively on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and other platforms that we do not control but which nonetheless remain important for us to be on. Matthew Gault has started covering the military industrial complex, AI, weird internet, and dad internet beat for us, and has done a remarkable job at it. Rosie Thomas is our current intern who has published critical reporting about the sale of GPS trackers on TikTok, protests at the Tesla Diner, and the difficult decisions voice actors need to make about whether they should let AI train on their voices.
All of this has changed what 404 Media looks like, a little bit. We have spent a lot of time thinking about what it would look like to expand beyond this, why people subscribe to us, what it would mean to go further, and what the four of us are actually capable of handling outside of the journalism. Because of your support we are in a place where we’re able to ask questions beyond “Can we survive?” We’re able to ask questions like: “Should we try to make this bigger, and what does that look like?”
We feel incredibly lucky that we are now able to ask ourselves these questions, because there was no guarantee that 404 Media would ever work, and we are forever grateful to everyone who has supported us. You have helped us prove that this model can work, and every day we are delighted to see that other journalists are striking out on their own to create their own publications.
We are still DIYing lots of things. Emanuel is still doing customer support. Jason is still ordering, packing, and mailing merch. Sam is putting together events and parties. Joseph is doing an insane number of things behind the scenes, managing the podcast, working closely with one of our ad partners, and fixing technical issues. As we have grown, these tasks have started to take more and more time, which raises all sorts of questions about when and if we should get help with them. Should we do more events? Should we get someone to help us with them? What does that look like logistically and financially? These are the things that we’re working out all the time. It becomes a question of how much can we juggle while still having some semblance of work/life balance, and while making sure that we’re still putting the journalism first.
Other things that have happened:
- We began a republication partnership with WIRED that recently evolved to include a few coreported collaborations that have allowed us to team up on investigations we may not have been able to do by ourselves.
- We were subpoenaed for our sources on an article by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. We successfully fought off this subpoena with the help of our lawyer, which was expensive but which we were able to do because of your support. We are very proud of this.
- We have been invited to talk about 404 Media and our journalism at conferences and events around the world. Emanuel gave a journalism training in Costa Rica, Jason taught a group of Norwegian journalists how to file FOIA requests and gave a presentation at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Joseph spoke at the Hackers on Planet Earth conference, Sam went to Perugia, Italy to join a panel at the International Journalism Conference, and Sam and Jason talked about indie media at the last XOXO in Portland.
- We threw a party and live panel at SXSW (with the help of our friends at Flipboard), a DIY party at RIP.SPACE in Los Angeles, and we threw an anniversary party and podcast recording last night in Brooklyn.
- After the Trump administration took office, we got to work documenting all of the ways the internet and broader policy started shifting and how tech, surveillance, and immigration intersected, and continued years of holding power accountable through our journalism.
- We had much of our ICE and immigration coverage professionally translated into Spanish and republished without a paywall, which helps communities that benefit the most from our reporting on those topics get it as easily and accurately as possible.
- We took our first-ever break!
- We have moved to Ghost 6.0, which is not something we really did, but it’s important to point out that the new version of our CMS is built with native ActivityPub support, meaning our articles are automatically going into the Fediverse and are being mirrored directly onto Bluesky. We are very excited about the possibilities here as we continue to believe that the healthiest future of journalism and the internet is one where we create direct relationships with our readers that have as little algorithmic friction as possible. Ghost is an open-source nonprofit whose mission is very similar to 404 Media’s.
Like last year, we don’t have anything crazy to announce for year three. But we hope that you will continue to support us (or, if you’re finding us through this post, will consider subscribing). We discussed some of our hopes and dreams for year three in our latest bonus podcast that went out to supporters this week. We are all trying our very best to bring you important, impactful work as often as possible, and we are trying to be as clear as possible about what’s working, what’s not, and how we’re trying to build this company. So far, that strategy has worked really well, and so we don’t intend to change it now.
Gone Fishin': 404 Media Summer Break 2025
404 Media is closed this week. School's out.Jason Koebler (404 Media)
This week, we have some party pics and musical selections from last night.#BehindTheBlog
Behind the Blog: Our Second Anniversary Party!
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 have a slightly shorter than usual entry from the gang, with some party pics and musical selections from the night.SAM: We’re all still recovering, processing, and floating on the overwhelming support and encouragement we felt from everyone who came to the second anniversary party last night. Thank you again to our sponsor for the evening, DeleteMe (get 20% off with them here as a thank-you to our community with code 404media) and farm.one for being awesome hosts, and especially thank you to everyone who came, cheered us on from afar, and made the last two years possible.
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Finding A New Model For Hacker Camps
A couple of decades ago now, several things happened which gave life to our world and made it what it has become. Hackerspaces proliferated, giving what was previously dispersed a physical focus. Alongside that a range of hardware gave new expression to our projects; among them the Arduino, affordable 3D printing, and mail-order printed circuit boards.
The result was a flowering of creativity and of a community we’d never had before.Visiting another city could come with a while spent in their hackerspace, and from that new-found community blossomed a fresh wave of events. The older hacker camps expanded and morphed in character to become more exciting showcases for our expression, and new events sprang up alongside them. The 2010s provided me and my friends with some of the most formative experiences of our lives, and we’re guessing that among those of you reading this piece will be plenty who also found their people.
And then came COVID. Something that sticks in my mind when thinking about the COVID pandemic is a British news pundit from March 2020 saying that nothing would be quite the same as before once the pandemic was over. In our community this came home to me after 2022, when the first large European hacker camps made a return. They were awesome in their own way, but somehow sterile, it was as though something was missing. Since then we’ve had a few more summers spent trailing across the continent to hang out and drink Club-Mate in the sun, and while we commend the respective orgas for creating some great experiences, finding that spark can still be elusive. Hanging out with some of my friends round a European hackerspace barbecue before we headed home recently, we tried to put our finger on exactly where the problem lay.
Just what has gone wrong with hacker camps?
Perhaps the most stinging criticism we arrived at was that our larger events seem inexorably to be morphing into festivals. It’s partly found on the field itself and we find events hosting music stages, but also in the attendees. Where a decade or more ago people were coming with their cool hacks to be the event, now an increasing number of people are coming as spectators just to see the event. This no doubt reflects changing fashions in a world where festival attendance is no longer solely for a hard core of music fans, but its effect has been to slowly turn fields of vibrant villages where the real fun happened, into fields of tents with a few bright spots among them, and the attendees gravitating toward a central core where increasingly, the spectacle is put on for them.
The other chief gripe was around the eternal tussle in our community between technology and activism. Hackers have always been activists, if you doubt that take a read of Hackaday’s coverage of privacy issues, but the fact remains that we are accidental activists; activism is not the reason we do what we do. The feeling was that some events in our community have become far more about performative imposition of a particular interpretation of our culture or conforming to political expectations than they have about the hacks, and that the fun has been sucked out of them as a result.
People who know me outside my work for Hackaday will tell you that I have a significant career as an activist in a particular field, but when I’m at a hacker camp I am not there to be lectured at length about her ideology by an earnest young activist with blue hair and a lot of body piercings. I am especially not there to be policed as some kind of enemy simply because I indicate that I’m bored with what she has to say; I know from my own activism that going on about it too much is not going to make you any friends.
It’s evident that one of the problems with the larger hacker camps is not only that they have simply become too big, but that there are also some cultural traps which events can too readily fall into. Our conversation turned to those events we think get it right, and how we would approach an event of our own. One of my favourite events is a smaller one with under 500 attendees, whose organisers have a good handle on what makes a good event because they’re in large part making the event they want to be at. Thus it has a strong village culture, a lack of any of the trappings of a festival, and significant discouragement when it comes to people attending simply to be political activists.
That’s what I want to see more of, but even there is danger. I want it to remain awesome but not become a victim of its own success as so many events do. If it grows too much it will become a sterile clique of the same people grabbing all the tickets every time it’s held, and everyone else missing out. Thus there’s one final piece of the puzzle in ensuring that any hacker event doesn’t become a closed shop, that our camps should split and replicate rather than simply becoming ever larger.
The four-rule model
Condensing the above, my friends and I came up with a four-rule model for the hacker camps we want.
Limited numbers, self replicating, village led, bring a hack.
Let’s look at those in more detail.
Limited numbers
There’s something special about a camp where you can get to know everyone on the field at some level, and it’s visibly lost as an event gets larger. We had differing views about the ideal size of a small camp with some people suggesting up to 500 people, but I have good reasons for putting forward a hundred people as an ideal, with a hard limit at 150. The smaller a camp is the less work there is for its orga, and by my observation, putting on a camp for 500 people is still quite a lot of effort. 150 people may sound small, but small camps work. There’s also the advantage that staying small ducks under some red tape requirements.
Self replicating
As an event becomes more popular and fills up, that clique effect becomes a problem. So these events should be self replicating. When that attendee limit is reached, it’s time to repeat the formula and set up another event somewhere else. Far enough away to not be in direct competition, but near enough to be accessible. The figure we picked out of the air for Europe was 200 km, or around 120 miles, because a couple of hours drive is not insurmountable but hardly on your doorstep. This would eventually create a diverse archipelago of small related events, with some attendees going to more than one. Success should be measured in how many child events are spawned, not in how many people attend.
Village-led
The strength of a hacker camp lies in its villages, yet larger camps increasingly provide all the fun centrally and starve the villages. The formula for a small camp should have the orga providing the field, hygiene facilities, power, internet, and nothing else, with the villages making the camp. Need a talk track? Organise one in your village. Want a bar to hang out and drink Club-Mate at? Be the bar village. It’s your camp, make it.
Bring a hack
An event I wish I was in a position to attend is the Wasteland weekend, a post-apocalyptic festival in the Californian desert. Famously you will be denied entry to Wasteland if you aren’t post-apocalyptic enough, or if you deem post-apocalyptic to be merely cosplaying a character from a film franchise. The organisers restrict entry to the people who match their vision of the event, so of course all would-be attendees make an effort to follow their rules.
It’s an idea that works here: if you want to be part of a hacker camp, bring a hack. A project, something you make or do; anything (and I mean anything) that will enhance the event and make it awesome. What that is is up to you, but bringing it ensures you are not merely a spectator.
See You On A Field Not Too Far Away
With those four ingredients, my friends and I think being part of the hacker and maker community can become fun again. Get all your friends and their friends, hire a complete camping site for a weekend outside school holidays, turn up, and enjoy yourselves. A bunch of Europeans are going to make good on this and give it a try, before releasing a detailed version of the formula for others to try too.
Maybe we’ll see you next summer.
"Trump, far vedere Putin e Zelensky come unire olio e aceto"
ma ancora non si è reso conto di quello che succede? sarà come far vedere il capo di stato di un paese invaso e stuprato con quello di uno determinato a cancellarlo assieme al suo popolo...
Hackaday Podcast Episode 334: Radioactive Shrimp Clocks, Funky Filaments, Owning the Hardware
In this episode of the Hackaday Podcast, editors Elliot Williams and Tom Nardi start out with a warning about potentially radioactive shrimp entering the American food supply via Walmart, and things only get weirder from there. The extra spicy shrimp discussion makes a perfect segue into an overview of a pair of atomic One Hertz Challenge entries, after which they’ll go over the latest generation of 3D printer filament, using an old Android smartphone as a low-power Linux server, some tips for creating better schematics, and Lorde’s specification-bending transparent CD. Finally, you’ll hear about how the nature of digital ownership influences the hardware we use, and on the other side of the coin, how open source firmware like QMK lets you build input devices on your terms.
Check out the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!
html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/…
Or download in DRM-free MP3 to enjoy with your shrimp.
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
Episode 334 Show Notes:
News:
- Food Irradiation Is Not As Bad As It Sounds
- Walmart shrimp may have been exposed to radioactive material, FDA says
What’s that Sound?
- Congratulations to [Gesundheit] for getting guessing this week’s sound.
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
- 2025 One Hertz Challenge: Atomic Decay Clock Is Accurate But Not Precise
- 2025 One Hertz Challenge: Timekeeping At One Becquerel
- Decaying clocks – Antiquarian Horological Society
- Gammaclock
- Time Capsule Expo ’70
- Deriving 1 Hz from Candle Flame Oscillations
- Suggested Schematic Standards
- Should You Try Printing With Polypropylene?
- From Smartphone To A Home Server
- A Solderless, Soluble Circuit Board
- Why Lorde’s Clear CD Has So Many Playback Issues
Quick Hacks:
- Elliot’s Picks:
- Tom’s Picks:
Can’t-Miss Articles:
- The Terminal Demise Of Consumer Electronics Through Subscription Services
- Instant Macropad: Just Add QMK
hackaday.com/2025/08/22/hackad…
Space Force, nuova missione in orbita per lo spazioplano sperimentale X-37B. I dettagli
@Notizie dall'Italia e dal mondo
La Space Force ha inaugurato l’ottava missione Otv (Orbital test vehicle) dello spazioplano X-37B, lanciato in orbita dal Kennedy Space Center in Florida su un razzo Falcon 9 di SpaceX. Il lancio ha avuto luogo alle 23:30 (ora locale) di giovedì
Converting a Sprinkler System to DC
Famously, Nikola Tesla won the War of the Currents in the early days of electrification because his AC system could use transformers to minimize losses for long distance circuits. That was well before the invention of the transistor, though, and there are a lot of systems that still use AC now as a result of electricity’s history that we might otherwise want to run on DC in our modern world. Sprinkler systems are one of these things, commonly using a 24V AC system, but [Vinthewrench] has done some work to convert over to a more flexible 24 VDC system instead.
The main components of these systems that are set up for AC are solenoids which activate various sets of sprinklers. But these solenoids can take DC and still work, so no major hardware changes are needed. It’s not quite as simple as changing power supplies, though. The solenoids will overheat if they’re fully powered on a DC circuit, so [Vinthewrench] did a significant amount of testing to figure out exactly how much power they need to stay engaged. Once the math was done, he uses a DRV103 to send PWM signals to the solenoids, which is set up to allow more current to pull in the solenoids and then a lower holding current once they are activated.
With a DC power supply like this, it makes it much easier to have his sprinkler system run on a solar powered system as well as use a battery backup without needing something like an inverter. And thanks to the DRV103 the conversion is not physically difficult; ensuring that the solenoids don’t overheat is the major concern here. Another great reason to convert to a DIY sprinkler controller is removing your lawn care routine from an unnecessary cloud-based service.
This Week in Security: Anime Catgirls, Illegal AdBlock, and Disputed Research
You may have noticed the Anime Catgirls when trying to get to the Linux Kernel’s mailing list, or one of any number of other sites associated with Open Source projects. [Tavis Ormandy] had this question, too, and even wrote about it. So, what’s the deal with the catgirls?
The project is Anubis, a “Web AI Firewall Utility”. The intent is to block AI scrapers, as Anubis “weighs the soul” of incoming connections, and blocks the bots you don’t want. Anubis uses the user agent string and other indicators to determine what an incoming connection is. But the most obvious check is the in-browser hashing. Anubis puts a challenge string in the HTTP response header, and JavaScript running in the browser calculates a second string to append this challenge. The goal is to set the first few bytes of the SHA-256 hash of this combined string to 0.
[Tavis] makes a compelling case that this hashing is security theatre — It makes things appear more secure, but doesn’t actually improve the situation. It’s only fair to point out that his observation comes from annoyance, as his preferred method of accessing the Linux kernel git repository and mailing list are now blocked by Anubis. But the economics of compute costs clearly demonstrate that this SHA-256 hashing approach will only be effective so long as AI companies don’t add the 25 lines of C it took him to calculate the challenge. The Anubis hashing challenge is literally security by obscurity.
Something Security AI is Good At
We’ve recently covered an AI competition, where AI toolchains were used to find and patch vulnerabilities. This took a massive effort to get good results. This week we have work on a similar but constrained task that AI is much better at. Instead of finding a new CVE, simply ask the AI to generate an exploit for CVEs that have been published.
The key here seems to be the constrained task that gives the AI a narrow goal, and a clever approach to quickly test the results. The task is to find an exploit using the patch code, and the test is that the exploit shouldn’t work on the patched version of the program. This approach cuts way down on false positives. This is definitely an approach to keep an eye on.
We’re Hunting CodeRabbits
Reviewing Pull Requests (PRs) is one of the other AI use cases that has seen significant deployment. CodeRabbit provides one of those tools which summarizes the PR, looks for possible bugs, and runs multiple linter and analysis tools. That last one is extremely important here, as not every tool is bulletproof. Researchers at Kudelski Security discovered that the Rubocop tool was accessible to incoming PRs with ruby files.
Rubocop has a nifty feature, that allows extensions to be loaded dynamically during a run. These are specified in a .rubocop.yml file, that CodeRabbit was helpfully passing through to the Rubocop run. The key here is that the extension to be loaded can also be included in a PR, and Rubocop extensions can execute arbitrary code. How bad could it be, to run code on the CodeRabbit backend servers?
The test payload in this case was simply to capture the system’s environment variables, which turned out to be a smorgasbord of secrets and API keys. The hilarious part of this research is that the CodeRabbit AI absolutely flagged the PR as malicious, but couldn’t stop the attack in motion. CodeRabbit very quickly mitigated the issue, and rolled out a fix less than a week later.
Illegal Adblock
There’s a concerning court case making its way through the German courts, that threatens to make adblocking illegal on copyright grounds. This case is between Axel Springer, a media company that makes money from showing advertisements, and Eyeo, the company behind Adblock Plus. The legal theory claimed by Axel Springer is that a website’s HTML and CSS together forms a computer program, that is protected by copyright. Blocking advertisements on that website would then be a copyright violation, by this theory.
This theory is novel, and every lower court has rejected it. What’s new this month is that the German Supreme Court threw the case back to a lower court, instructing that court to revisit the question. The idea of copyright violation simply by changing a website has caught the attention of Mozilla, and their Product Counsel, [Daniel Nazer], has thoughts.
The first is that a legal precedent forcing a browser to perfectly honor the code served by a remote web host would be horribly dangerous. I suspect it would also be in contention with other European privacy and security laws. As court battles usually go, this one is moving in slow motion, and the next ruling may be years away. But it would be particularly troubling if Germany joined China as the only two nations to ban ad blockers.
Copilot, Don’t Tell Anyone
Microsoft’s Office365 has an audit log, that tracks which users access given files. Running Copilot in that environment dutifully logs those file accesses, but only if Copilot actually returns a link to the document. So similar to other techniques where an AI can be convinced to do something unintended, a user can ask Copilot to return the contents of a file but not to link to it. Copilot will do as instructed, and the file isn’t listed in the audit log as accessed.
Where this gets more interesting is how the report and fix was handled. Microsoft didn’t issue a CVE, fixed the issue, but opted not to issue a statement. [Zack Korman], the researcher that reported the issue, disagrees quite vigorously with Microsoft’s decision here. This is an interesting example of the tension that can result from disagreements between researcher and the organization responsible for the product in question.
Disputed Research
This brings us to another example of disputed research, the “0-day” in Elastic Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR). Elastic disputes the claim, pointing out that they could not replicate code execution, and the researcher didn’t provide an entire proof of concept. This sort of situation is tricky. Who is right? The company that understands the internals of the program, or the researcher that undoubtedly did discover something, but maybe doesn’t fully understand what was found?
There are two elements that stand out in the vulnerability write-up. The first is that the overview of the attack chain lists a Remote Code Execution (RCE) as part of the chain, but it seems that nothing about this research is actually an RCE. The premise is that code running on the local machine can crash the Elastic kernel driver. The second notable feature of this post is that the proof-of-concept code uses a custom kernel driver to demonstrate the vulnerability. What’s missing is the statement that code execution was actually observed without this custom kernel driver.
Bits and Bytes
One of the very useful features of Microsoft’s VSCode is the Remote-SSH extension, which allows running the VSCode front-end on a local machine, and connecting to another server for remote work. The problem is that connecting to a remote server can install extensions on the local machine. VSCode extensions can be malicious, and connecting to a malicious host can run code on that host.
Apple has patched a buffer overflow in image handling, that is being used in an “extremely sophisticated” malware attacks against specific targets. This sort of language tends to indicate the vulnerability was found in an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) campaign by either a government actor, or a professional actor like NSO Group or similar.
And finally, if zines are your thing, Phrak issue 0x48 (72) is out! This one is full of stories of narrowly avoiding arrest while doing smart card research, analysis of a North Korean data dump, and a treatise on CPU backdoors. Exciting stuff, Enjoy!
20 milioni di dollari per exploit zero-day dal broker Advanced Security Solutions
Advanced Security Solutions, con sede negli Emirati Arabi Uniti, è nata questo mese ed offre fino a 20 milioni di dollari per vulnerabilità zero-day ed exploit che consentirebbero a chiunque di hackerare uno smartphone tramite SMS. Si tratta di una delle cifre più alte per qualsiasi broker 0day, almeno tra quelli che lo divulgano pubblicamente.
Advanced Security Solutions. Un nuovo attore nella scena dei broker 0day
Oltre a 20 milioni di dollari per gli exploit di qualsiasi sistema operativo mobile, l’azienda offre anche grandi ricompense per le vulnerabilità zero-day in altri software:
- fino a 15 milioni di dollari per ogni 0-day, con conseguente compromissione completa di Android e iPhone;
- fino a 10 milioni di dollari per exploit simili per Windows e Linux;
- fino a 5 milioni di dollari per exploit simili per il browser Chrome;
- fino a 1 milione di dollari per exploit simili per Safari e Microsoft Edge.
Non è chiaro chi ci sia dietro l’azienda e chi sono i suoi clienti.
“Aiutiamo agenzie governative, agenzie di intelligence e forze dell’ordine a condurre operazioni di precisione sul campo di battaglia digitale”, afferma il sito web di Advanced Security Solutions. “Collaboriamo attivamente con oltre 25 governi e agenzie di intelligence in tutto il mondo. I nostri clienti tornano costantemente per nuovi servizi, a dimostrazione della fiducia e del valore strategico che forniamo in contesti operativi critici, tra cui l’antiterrorismo e la lotta al narcotraffico”.
Il sito web afferma inoltre che, nonostante l’azienda sia nuova, impiega “solo professionisti con oltre 20 anni di esperienza in unità di intelligence d’élite e appaltatori militari privati”.
Uno dei primi attori in questo campo è stato Zerodium, apparso nel 2015. All’epoca, l’azienda, creata dal co-fondatore di Vupen Chaouki Bekrar, offriva fino a 1 milione di dollari per strumenti di hacking per iPhone.
Tre anni dopo, nel 2018, Crowdfense ha lanciato la propria piattaforma per l’acquisto di vulnerabilità ed exploit, offrendo fino a 3 milioni di dollari per zero-day simili.
Negli ultimi anni i prezzi degli 0-day sono aumentati, in parte a causa dell’aumento della domanda e in parte perché i dispositivi e i software moderni stanno diventando sempre più difficili da hackerare grazie al miglioramento della sicurezza.
Così, l’anno scorso Crowdfense ha pubblicato un nuovo listino prezzi , offrendo fino a 7 milioni di dollari per vulnerabilità zero-day su iPhone e fino a 5 milioni di dollari per exploit simili su Android. Anche le vulnerabilità zero-day in applicazioni specifiche hanno iniziato a costare molto di più. Ad esempio, fino a 8 milioni di dollari per exploit su WhatsApp e iMessage e fino a 4 milioni di dollari su Telegram.
Per fare un paragone, Advanced Security Solutions offre fino a 2 milioni di dollari per exploit per Telegram, Signal e WhatsApp.
Vale anche la pena notare che all’inizio di quest’anno, il broker di vulnerabilità russo Operation Zero è diventato un’eccezione sul mercato, offriva fino a 20 milioni di dollari per gli stessi tipi di exploit che Advanced Security Solutions sta ora cercando.
Chi sono i broker 0day
I broker 0day sono intermediari specializzati nella compravendita di vulnerabilità informatiche sconosciute al pubblico e ai produttori di software, chiamate appunto zero-day. Queste falle di sicurezza, non ancora documentate né patchate, rappresentano un valore enorme nel mercato cyber, poiché consentono di sviluppare exploit capaci di aggirare le difese dei sistemi più diffusi. I broker operano come veri e propri mercanti: acquistano vulnerabilità da ricercatori indipendenti, hacker o gruppi criminali, per poi rivenderle a soggetti interessati, che possono spaziare da governi e agenzie di intelligence fino ad aziende di sicurezza o, in casi meno leciti, a cyber criminali.
Il mercato dei broker 0day si muove in una zona grigia, dove la linea tra lecito e illecito è spesso molto sottile. Alcuni broker operano in contesti legali, collaborando con stati o imprese che usano queste informazioni per sviluppare difese e rafforzare la sicurezza. Altri invece alimentano il cybercrime, rivendendo exploit a gruppi ransomware, mercati clandestini o attori statali che li utilizzano per operazioni di spionaggio o cyber warfare. Proprio per l’alto impatto che hanno sulla sicurezza globale, i broker 0day sono tra gli attori più discussi e controversi nell’ecosistema delle minacce informatiche.
L'articolo 20 milioni di dollari per exploit zero-day dal broker Advanced Security Solutions proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.
I doveri dello studente
Tratto (e leggermente rielaborato) da "Il risveglio delle scienze religiose" di Imam Al Ghazali. ❤
Primo dovere dello studente
Il primo dovere dello studente è prioritizzare la purificazione della sua anima dalle caratteristiche più riprovevoli
Ibn Mas'ud رضي الله عنه ci ricorda:
Conoscenza non è essere al corrente di tante informazioni. Conoscenza è una luce che viene gettata nel cuore.
Secondo dovere dello studente
Il secondo dovere dello studente è che limiti i suoi attaccamenti e che viaggi lontano dalla sua casa, cosicché nel suo cuore si liberi spazio per la conoscenza.
Si dice che la conoscenza non ti darà un decimo di sé stessa se tu non le darai tutto te stesso.
Terzo dovere dello studente
Il terzo dovere dello studente consiste nel non atteggiarsi con arroganza, nel non mostrarsi altezzoso prima di acquisire la conoscenza e nel non impartire ordini al proprio insegnante. Al contrario, dovrebbe consegnare sé stesso al completo controllo del maestro, proprio come un uomo malato si affida totalmente al dottore. La persona malata non pretende di dare consigli al proprio dottore né
di guidarlo su quale medicina utilizzare.
Quarto dovere dello studente
Il quarto dovere dello studente è evitare di prestare attenzione alle divergenze tra le persone di conoscenza, poiché ciò genera confusione e smarrimento. Infatti, nelle fasi iniziali, il cuore dello studente tende a inclinarsi verso qualunque cosa gli venga presentata, soprattutto se essa conduce all’inattività, in accordo con la sua pigrizia e inattitudine.
Quinto dovere dello studente
Il quinto dovere dello studente è quello di non trascurare nessuna disciplina tra le scienze lodevoli, ma di esaminarla fino a raggiungerne l’obiettivo.
Se ne ha la capacità, dovrebbe padroneggiarla completamente; se non può, allora dovrebbe almeno acquisirne la parte più importante. E ciò è possibile soltanto dopo averla dapprima considerata nella sua interezza.
Sesto dovere dello studente
Il sesto dovere dello studente è che egli dedichi grande attenzione alla più importante delle scienze: la conoscenza dell’Aldilà. Con ciò si intende quella categoria di scienze che riguarda il perfezionamento del carattere e lo svelamento. Il perfezionamento del carattere conduce allo svelamento, e lo svelamento è la conoscenza diretta di Allah سبحانه وتعالىٰ, una luce che Allah سبحانه وتعالىٰ infonde in un cuore purificato attraverso l’adorazione e lo sforzo
Settimo dovere dello studente
Il settimo dovere dello studente è che il suo obiettivo presente sia quello di riempire il proprio intimo con le caratteristiche che lo condurranno al cospetto di Allah سبحانه وتعالىٰ e presso la dimora delle alte schiere (al-malāʾ al-aʿlā), tra coloro che sono stati avvicinati. Egli non deve mai cercare, attraverso la conoscenza, né il comando, né la ricchezza, né lo status.
Al seguito di Putin c’è una persona che raccoglie le sue feci: perché lo zar non va mai in bagno da solo
Sono almeno otto anni che nell'entourage del leader russo una guardia del corpo è addetta a raccogliere ogni traccia biologica. Così è stato anche in Alaska, durante il bilaterale con TrumpUgo Milano (Open)
La chiave di Crimea, perché il Donetsk decide il futuro della guerra. L’analisi di Caruso
@Notizie dall'Italia e dal mondo
Il nucleo della resistenza ucraina nel Donetsk si concentra sulla “fortress belt” – una linea difensiva di 50 chilometri che unisce le città di Slovyansk, Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka e Kostiantynivka. Quest’area rappresenta una zona fortificata
Vorratsdatenspeicherung: Dobrindt kündigt Gesetzentwurf „in den nächsten Wochen“ an
netzpolitik.org/2025/vorratsda…
Armamenti Usa per l’Europa, l’Ue non perda di vista l’autonomia strategica. Parla Nones
@Notizie dall'Italia e dal mondo
L’Unione europea e gli Stati Uniti hanno rilasciato una dichiarazione congiunta che fornisce i primi dettagli sull’accordo raggiunto il 27 luglio da Ursula von der Leyen e Donald Trump. Dall’automotive ai chip, l’accordo-quadro definisce il futuro
Morto bimbo 6 anni investito sulle strisce pedonali - Ultima ora - Ansa.it
E' morto all'ospedale di Padova il bambino di 6 anni che mercoledì pomeriggio era stato investito da un'auto mentre con la mamma stava attraversando le strisce pedonali sulla via Noalese, a Santa Maria di Sala (Venezia). (ANSA)Agenzia ANSA
Che schifezza di democrazia.
Il 4 novembre in California ci sarà una votazione speciale per modificare i collegi elettorali a favore dei Democratici - Il Post
https://www.ilpost.it/2025/08/22/california-votazione-cambaire-collegi-elettorali/?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypubPubblicato su News @news-ilPost
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freezonemagazine.com/news/the-…
Il lato musicale di Anthology – originariamente rappresentato da tre album di materiale inedito, mai ascoltato prima e raro – presenta anche un nuovo elemento importante. Il Volume 4 include nuovi mix dei singoli di successo dei Beatles. I brani vincitori di Grammy Free As A Bird e Real Love hanno ricevuto nuova vita dal […]
freezonemagazine.com/articoli/…
Un lavoro piuttosto interessante questo di Bonny Jack, che scopro essere addirittura il terzo album. Matteo Senese, questo il vero nome dell’artista in questione, è riuscito a farsi apprezzare sia nel nostro paese che fuori dai confini in Italia come One Man Band richiamandosi ad una impostazione di chiaro stampo folk blues, con richiami intriganti […]
L'articolo Bonny Jack – Somewhere,
freezonemagazine.com/news/il-v…
Quando Peter Tosh collaborò con Mick Jagger per il singolo Don’t Look Back del 1978, il reggae incrociò il rock in un modo che avrebbe definito un’epoca. Il brano non solo divenne il successo internazionale più famoso di Tosh, ma segnò anche il raro momento in cui un membro dei Rolling Stones entrò nel sound […]
ACN e l'uccello padulo.
@Privacy Pride
Il post completo di Christian Bernieri è sul suo blog: garantepiracy.it/blog/uccellop…
🎵 Aria sulla Quarta Corda di J. S. Bach 🎶 I più recenti studi ornitologici si sono focalizzati su un subdolo volatile dal comportamento peculiare: l'uccello padulo. Le abitudini predatorie sono in apparenza semplici: vola molto basso e veloce, ama sorprendere le sue prede
L'Online Safety Act del Regno Unito riguarda la censura, non la sicurezza. L'articolo di Paige Collings mette in guardia gli USA dalla pericolosa cazzata che sta facendo Londra
L'attuazione dell' #OnlineSafetyAct del Regno Unito sta fornendo agli utenti di Internet di tutto il mondo, compresi quelli degli stati degli Stati Uniti che si stanno muovendo per promulgare le proprie leggi sulla verifica dell'età, la prova in tempo reale che tali leggi violano il diritto di tutti di parlare, leggere e guardare liberamente.
La corsa del Regno Unito per trovare un metodo efficace di verifica dell'età sottolinea che non ne esiste uno, ed è giunto il momento che i politici di tutto il mondo prendano sul serio la questione, soprattutto quelli che stanno valutando leggi simili negli Stati Uniti.
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Accessibilità eventi sportivi: San Siro apre le porte a tutti i tifosi
In seguito a diverse segnalazioni, tra cui la nostra come Associazione Luca Coscioni, si è avviata una collaborazione tra Inter, Milan, il Comune di Milano e diverse realtà tra cui la consigliera regionale della Lombardia Lisa Noja e il Comitato per gli eventi dal vivo accessibili “Live for All”, e finalmente il sistema di accesso allo stadio di San Siro è cambiato.
Un cambiamento che va al cuore della passione sportiva, rendendo più semplice per i tifosi con disabilità seguire la propria squadra del cuore.
Come da noi denunciato a suo tempo, il vecchio sistema era basato su un sorteggio che spesso lasciava fuori molti tifosi con disabilità per via di criteri poco inclusivi, ma ora è stato finalmente superato.
Da questa stagione sarà possibile acquistare un abbonamento o un biglietto a prezzo agevolato, una soluzione che permetterà continuità alla partecipazione sportiva di ognuno.
Questo è il risultato di un lavoro di squadra, un esempio di come unendo le forze si possano abbattere le barriere. Non è solo una questione di biglietti, ma un passo avanti nel riconoscere il diritto di vivere una passione, quella per il calcio, a tutte le persone nello stesso modo.
E l’ulteriore buona notizia è che questo nuovo modo di vivere lo stadio non solo faciliterà di fatto l’accesso, ma contribuirà anche a sostenere progetti di inclusione sportiva.
Un vero e proprio cambio di rotta, che fa di San Siro uno stadio più aperto, un luogo dove la passione per lo sport unisce, senza lasciare indietro nessuna persona.
Pamela De Rosa e Cristiana Zerosi
Cellula Coscioni Milano
L'articolo Accessibilità eventi sportivi: San Siro apre le porte a tutti i tifosi proviene da Associazione Luca Coscioni.
X di Elon Musk potrebbe finalmente risolvere la causa di buonuscita da 500 milioni di dollari
Dopo aver acquistato Twitter nel 2022, Musk ha licenziato oltre 6.000 dipendenti di Twitter, riducendo l'organico dell'azienda di circa l'80%. Sebbene Musk abbia offerto tre mesi di buonuscita, la causa sostiene che molti ex dipendenti non hanno ricevuto pagamenti completi, mentre alcuni non hanno ricevuto alcun pagamento.
techcrunch.com/2025/08/21/elon…
Dopo aver acquistato Twitter nel 2022, Musk ha licenziato oltre 6.000 dipendenti di Twitter, riducendo l'organico dell'azienda di circa l'80%. Sebbene Musk abbia offerto tre mesi di buonuscita, la causa sostiene che molti ex dipendenti non hanno ricevuto pagamenti completi, mentre alcuni non hanno ricevuto alcun pagamento.
techcrunch.com/2025/08/21/elon…
Elon Musk's X may finally settle $500M severance lawsuit | TechCrunch
Elon Musk's X is settling a severance lawsuit with former Twitter employees.Amanda Silberling (TechCrunch)
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Quel pasticciaccio brutto dello sgombero del Leoncavallo
@Giornalismo e disordine informativo
articolo21.org/2025/08/quel-pa…
Dietro a questa vicenda ingarbugliata dello sgombero del Centro sociale Leoncavallo di Milano si muovono interessi di mera propaganda politica ed elettorale, di natura economica, i cui contorni sono
STEFANO DE MARTINO E CAROLINE TRONELLI: TELECAMERE DOMESTICHE E I PERICOLI NASCOSTI
@Informatica (Italy e non Italy 😁)
L’attacco informatico che ha coinvolto Stefano De Martino e Caroline Tronelli, con il furto di contenuti privati dalle telecamere interne della loro abitazione...
L'articolo STEFANO DE MARTINO E CAROLINE TRONELLI: TELECAMERE DOMESTICHE E I
In addition to Planet Nine, the solar system may also contain a closer, smaller world that could be spotted soon, according to a new preprint study.#TheAbstract
A ‘Warp’ In Our Solar System Might Be an Undiscovered World: Planet Y
Scientists have discovered possible hints of an undiscovered world in the solar system—nicknamed “Planet Y”—orbiting about 100 to 200 times farther from the Sun than Earth, according to a new study.The newly proposed planet, assuming it exists, is predicted to be somewhere between Mercury and Earth in scale, which would likely make it detectable within the next few years. It is distinct from Planet Nine or Planet X, another hypothetical planet that is predicted to be much larger and more distant than Planet Y.
playlist.megaphone.fm?p=TBIEA2…
Scientists speculated about the potential existence of Planet Y after discovering a strange “warp” in the Kuiper belt, which is a ring of icy bodies beyond Neptune, reports the study, which was posted on the preprint server arXiv on Wednesday.“We still are skeptical because it's not a ‘grand slam’ signal by any means,” said Amir Siraj, a graduate student in astrophysics at Princeton University who led the study, in a call with 404 Media. “At the most, it's a hint—or it’s suggestive of—an unseen planet.” The paper has been accepted for publication in The Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Siraj said.
Siraj and his co-authors made the discovery while laying the groundwork for an upcoming search for Planet Nine. For more than a decade, scientists have debated whether this hypothetical world—roughly five to ten times as massive as Earth, making it a “super-Earth” or “mini-Neptune”—is orbiting at a distance of at least 400 astronomical units (AU), where one AU is the distance between Earth and the Sun.
Scientists came up with the Planet Nine hypothesis after observing small celestial bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune called trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs), which appear to be gravitationally influenced by some hidden phenomenon. Planet Nine could be the culprit.
It’s an exciting time for Planet Nine watchers, as the next-generation Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile achieved first light in June. Rubin is expected to begin running its signature project, the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), by the end of 2025, and will spend a decade scanning the southern sky to produce a time-lapsed map that could expose Planet Nine, if it exists.
For this reason, scientists are gearing up for a worldwide race to be the first to spot the planet in the incoming LSST data. To prepare for the observational onslaught, Siraj and his colleagues have been developing new techniques to learn all they can about the murky Kuiper belt.
“This is something I've been focusing on for the past couple of years, particularly because we are going to be flooded very soon—knock on wood—with thousands of new TNOs from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s LSST,” said Siraj. “So, my philosophy for the past couple of years has been, well, let me make sure I know everything that I can know from all the efforts so far.”
To that end, the team developed an improved technique for measuring the mean motions of objects in the distant Kuiper belt and comparing them to the plane of the solar system. Ideally, the mean plane of the objects’ orbits should fall in line with the solar system’s plane, but deviations could point to more evidence for Planet Nine.
Instead, the team’s novel approach found that the Kuiper belt’s mean plane was tilted by about 15 degrees relative to the solar system plane at ranges of 80 to 400 AU. This “warp” could be caused by many factors, such as orbital resonances with known solar system planets. But it could also hint at the presence of a small rocky world, lurking anywhere from three-to-five times as far as the orbit of Pluto.
“It was certainly a big surprise,” Siraj said. “If this warp holds up, the best explanation we can come up with is an undiscovered and relatively small inclined planet, roughly 100 to 200 AU from the Sun. The other thing that was exciting to us is that, whether the warp is real or not, it will be very quickly confirmed or refuted within the first few years of LSST’s operation.”
If there truly is an undiscovered Mercury-ish world beyond Pluto, it is probably a homegrown member of the solar system that was ejected by the turbulent environment in the early solar system. Planet Nine, in contrast, could have either formed in the solar system, or it could have been a wandering exoplanet that was gravitationally captured by the solar system.
“The solar system probably formed with a lot of planetary embryos,” Siraj said. “There were probably a lot of bodies that were roughly Mercury-mass and most of them likely were just scattered out of the solar system like balls in a pinball machine during the violent stages of solar system formation.”
“That would definitely be the most likely and possible formation scenario for such an object,” he added. “I think it would be very unlikely for an orbit like this to be produced from a capture event.”
Time will tell whether or not the warp represents a lost world that was kicked out of our local neighborhood more than four billion years ago. But the intense focus on the outer solar system and its many mysteries, spurred by LSST, is sure to bring a flood of new discoveries regardless. Indeed, the hypothetical existence of Planet Y does not rule out the existence of Planet Nine (and vice versa) so there may well be multiple mysterious worlds waiting to be added to our solar family.
“It is really remarkably hard to see objects in the outer solar system,” Siraj said. “These kinds of measurements were not even remotely possible 20 years ago, so this speaks to the technological progress that's been made. It is potentially putting us into an era in astronomy that's unfamiliar these days, but was much more familiar in, say, the 1700s or 1800s—the idea of adding another planet to our own solar system.”
Caltech Researchers Find Evidence of a Real Ninth Planet
Planet Nine's existence was discovered by Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown through mathematical modeling and computer simulations.California Institute of Technology
Real Footage Combined With a AI Slop About DC Is Creating a Disinformation Mess on TikTok#News #AISlop
Real Footage Combined With a AI Slop About DC Is Creating a Disinformation Mess on TikTok
TikTok is full of AI slop videos about the National Guard’s deployment in Washington, D.C., some of which use Google’s new VEO AI video generator. Unlike previous efforts to flood the zone with AI slop in the aftermath of a disaster or major news event, some of the videos blend real footage with AI footage, making it harder than ever to tell what’s real and what’s not, which has the effect of distorting people’s understanding of the military occupation of DC.At the start of last week, the Trump administration announced that all homeless people should immediately move out of Washington DC. This was followed by an order to Federal agents to occupy the city and remove tents where homeless people had been living. These events were reported on by many news outlets, for example, this footage from NBC shows the reality of at least one part of the exercise. On TikTok, though, this is just another popular trending topic, where slop creators and influencers can work together to create and propagate misinformation.
404 Media has previously covered how perceptions of real-life events can be quickly manipulated with AI images and footage; this is more of the same; with the release of new, better AI video creation tools like Google’s VEO, the footage is more convincing than ever.
playlist.megaphone.fm?p=TBIEA2…
Some of the slop is obvious fantasy-driven engagement farming and gives itself away aesthetically or through content. This video and this very similar one show tents being pulled from a vast field into the back of a moving garbage truck, with the Capitol building in the background, on the Washington Mall. They’re not tagged as AI, but at least a few people in the comments are able to identify them as such; both videos still have over 100,000 views. This somehow more harrowing one feat. Hunger Games song has 41,000.@biggiesmellscoach Washington DC cleanup organized by Trump. Homeless are now given secure shelters, rehab, therapy, and help. #washingtondc #fyp #satire #trending #viral ♬ origineel geluid - nina.editssWith something like this video, made with VEO, the slop begins to feel more like a traditional news report. It has 146,000 views and it’s made of several short clips with news-anchorish voiceover. I had to scroll down past a lot of “Thank you president Trump” and “good job officers” comments to find any that pointed out that it was fake, even though the watermark for Google’s VEO generator is in the corner.
The voiceover also “reports” semi-accurately on what happened in DC, but without any specifics: “Police moved in today, to clear out a homeless camp in the city. City crews tore down tents, packed up belongings, and swept the park clean. Some protested, some begged for more time. But the cleanup went on. What was once a community is now just an empty field.” I found the same video posted to X, with commenters on both platforms taking offence at the use of the term “community.”
Comments on the original and X postings of this video which is clearly made with VEO
I also found several examples of shorter slop clips like this one, which has almost 1 million views, and this one, with almost half a million, which both exaggerate the scale and disarray of the encampments. In one of the videos, the entirety of an area that looks like the National Mall (but isn’t) has been taken over by tents. Quickly scrolling these videos gives the viewer an incorrect understanding of what the DC “camps” and “cleanup” looked like.
These shorter clips have almost 1.5 million views between them
The account that posted these videos was called Hush Documentary when I first encountered it, but had changed its name to viralsayings by Monday evening. The profile also has a five-second AI-generated footage of ATF officers patrolling a neighborhood; marked as AI, with 89,000 views.
What’s happening also is that real footage and fake footage are being mixed together in a popular greenscreen TikTok format where a person gives commentary (basically, reporting or commenting on the news) while footage plays in the background. That is happening in this clip, which features that same AI footage of ATF officers.
The viralsayings version of the footage is marked as AI. The remixed version, combined with real footage, is not.
I ended up finding a ton of instances where accounts mixed slop clips of the camp clearings, with seemingly real footage—notably many of them included this viral original footage of police clearing a homeless encampment in Georgetown. But a lot of them are ripping each other off. For example, many accounts have ripped off the voiceover of this viral clip from @Alfredito_mx (which features real footage) and have put it over top of AI footage. This clone from omivzfrru2 has nearly 200,000 and features both real and AI clips; I found at least thirty other copies, all with between ~2000 and 5000 views.
The scraping-and-recreating robot went extra hard with this one - the editing is super glitchy, the videos overlay each other, the host flickers around the screen, and random legs walk by in the background.
@mgxrdtsi 75 homeless camps in DC cleared by US Park Police since Trump's 'Safe and Beautiful' executive order #alfredomx #washington #homeless #safeandbeautiful #trump ♬ original sound - mgxrdtsiSo, one viral video from a popular creator has spawned thousands of mirrors in the hope of chipping off a small amount of the engagement of the original; those copies need footage, go looking for content in the tags, encounter the slop, and can’t tell / don’t care if it’s real. Then more thousands of people see the slop copies and end up getting a totally incorrect view of an actual unfolding news situation.
In these videos, it’s only totally clear to me that the content is fake because I found the original sources. Lots of this footage is obviously fake if you’re familiar with the actual situation in DC or familiar with the geography and streets in DC. But most people are not. If you told me “some of these shots are AI,” I don’t think I could identify all of those shots confidently. Is the flicker or blurring onscreen from the footage, from a bad camera, from a time-lapse or being sped up, from endless replication online, or from the bad green screen of a “host”? Now, scrolling social media means encountering a mix of real and fake video, and the AI fakes are getting good enough that deciphering what’s actually happening requires a level of attention to detail that most people don’t have the knowledge or time for.
People Think AI Images of Hollywood Sign Burning Are Real
AI generated slop is tricking people into thinking an already devastating series of wildfires in Los Angeles are even worse than they are — and using it to score political points.Samantha Cole (404 Media)
16 countries burned Poland’s bridges on the CSA Regulation: What now?
Poland’s surprising compromise to ease the deadlock on the CSA Regulation – which has been stuck in the Council of EU Member States for the past three years – met with failure. This blog recaps the Polish compromise, the positions of the Member States on the proposal, and it could mean for the future of one of the most criticised EU laws of all time.
The post 16 countries burned Poland’s bridges on the CSA Regulation: What now? appeared first on European Digital Rights (EDRi).
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Cosa ci fanno tre navi da guerra americane in rotta per il Venezuela? Trump mette alla prova Maduro
@Notizie dall'Italia e dal mondo
Nelle ultime ore la Casa Bianca ha confermato che tre cacciatorpediniere di classe Arleigh-Burke della US Navy fanno attualmente rotta per le acque internazionali al largo del Venezuela. Nel frattempo, sarebbero in
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Usa-Ue, raggiunto un primo accordo per gli acquisti militari. Tutti i dettagli
@Notizie dall'Italia e dal mondo
Il futuro dei rapporti commerciali tra Europa e Stati Uniti inizia a prendere forma, anche sul piano del procurement militare. Washington e Bruxelles avrebbero raggiunto una prima intesa su un accordo-quadro che ridisegnerà gli equilibri degli scambi tra le due
Wikipedia's founder said he used ChatGPT in the review process for an article and thought it could be helpful. Editors replied to point out it was full of mistakes.
Wikipediax27;s founder said he used ChatGPT in the review process for an article and thought it could be helpful. Editors replied to point out it was full of mistakes.#Wikipedia
Jimmy Wales Says Wikipedia Could Use AI. Editors Call It the 'Antithesis of Wikipedia'
Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, thinks the internet’s default encyclopedia and one of the world’s biggest repositories of information could benefit from some applications of AI. The volunteer editors who keep Wikipedia functioning strongly disagree with him.The ongoing debate about incorporating AI into Wikipedia in various forms bubbled up again in July, when Wales posted an idea to his Wikipedia User Talk Page about how the platform could use a large language model as part of its article creation process.
Any Wikipedia user can create a draft of an article. That article is then reviewed by experienced Wikipedia editors who can accept the draft and move it to Wikipedia’s “mainspace,” which makes up the bulk of Wikipedia and the articles you’ll find when you’re searching for information. Reviewers can also reject articles for a variety of reasons, but because hundreds of draft articles are submitted to Wikipedia every day, volunteer reviewers often use a tool called articles for creation/helper script (ACFH), which creates templates for common reasons articles are declined.
This is where Wales thinks AI could help. He wrote that he was asked to look at a specific draft article and give notes that might help the article get published.
“I was eager to do so because I'm always interested in taking a fresh look at our policies and procedures to look for ways they might be improved,” he wrote. “The person asking me felt frustrated at the minimal level of guidance being given (this is my interpretation, not necessarily theirs) and having reviewed it, I can see why.”
Wales explains that the article was originally rejected several years ago, then someone tried to improve it, resubmitted it, and got the same exact template rejection again.
“It's a form letter response that might as well be ‘Computer says no’ (that article's worth a read if you don't know the expression),” Wales said. “It wasn't a computer who says no, but a human using AFCH, a helper script [...] In order to try to help, I personally felt at a loss. I am not sure what the rejection referred to specifically. So I fed the page to ChatGPT to ask for advice. And I got what seems to me to be pretty good. And so I'm wondering if we might start to think about how a tool like AFCH might be improved so that instead of a generic template, a new editor gets actual advice. It would be better, obviously, if we had lovingly crafted human responses to every situation like this, but we all know that the volunteers who are dealing with a high volume of various situations can't reasonably have time to do it. The templates are helpful - an AI-written note could be even more helpful.”
Wales then shared the output he got from ChatGPT. It included more details than a template rejection, but editors replying to Wales noted that it was also filled with errors.
For example, the response suggested the article cite a source that isn’t included in the draft article, and rely on Harvard Business School press releases for other citations, despite Wikipedia policies explicitly defining press releases as non-independent sources that cannot help prove notability, a basic requirement for Wikipedia articles.
Editors also found that the ChatGPT-generated response Wales shared “has no idea what the difference between” some of these basic Wikipedia policies, like notability (WP:N), verifiability (WP:V), and properly representing minority and more widely held views on subjects in an article (WP:WEIGHT).
“Something to take into consideration is how newcomers will interpret those answers. If they believe the LLM advice accurately reflects our policies, and it is wrong/inaccurate even 5% of the time, they will learn a skewed version of our policies and might reproduce the unhelpful advice on other pages,” one editor said.
Wales and editors proceeded to get into it in the replies to his article. The basic disagreement is that Wales thinks that LLMs can be useful to Wikipedia, even if they are sometimes wrong, while editors think an automated system that is sometimes wrong is fundamentally at odds with the human labor and cooperation that makes Wikipedia so valuable to begin with.
As one editor writes:
“The reputational risk to adding in AI-generated slop feedback can not be overstated. The idea that we will feed drafts into a large language model - with all the editorial and climate implications and without oversight or accountability - is insane. What are we gaining in return? Verbose, emoji-laden boilerplate slop, often wrong in substance or tone, and certainly lacking in the care and contextual sensitivity that actual human editors bring to review work. Worse it creates a dangerous illusion of helpfulness, where the appearance of tailored advice masks the lack of genuine editorial engagement. We would be feeding and legitimising a system that replaces mentoring, discourages human learning, and cheapens the standards we claim to uphold. That's the antithesis of Wikipedia, no?”
“It is definitely not the antithesis of Wikipedia to use technology in appropriate ways to make the encyclopedia better,” Wales responded. “We have a clearly identifiable problem, and you've elaborated on it well: the volume of submissions submits templated responses, and we shouldn't ask reviewers to do more. But we should look for ways to support and help them.”
Wikipedia Prepares for ‘Increase in Threats’ to US Editors From Musk and His Allies
The Wikimedia Foundation says it will likely roll out features previously used to protect editors in authoritarian countries more widely.404 MediaJason Koebler
This isn’t the first time the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit that manages Wikipedia, and Wikipedia editors have clashed about AI. In June, the Wikimedia Foundation paused an experiment to use AI-generated summaries at the top of Wikipedia articles after a backlash from editors.A group of Wikipedia editors have also started WikiProject AI Cleanup, an organized effort to protect the platform from what they say is growing number of AI-generated articles and images submitted to Wikipedia that are misleading or include errors. In early August, Wikipedia editors also adopted a new policy that will make it easier for them to delete articles that are clearly AI-generated.
playlist.megaphone.fm?p=TBIEA2…
“Wikipedia’s strength has been and always will be its human-centered, volunteer-driven model — one where knowledge is created and reviewed by people, volunteers from different countries, perspectives, and backgrounds. Research shows that this process of human debate, discussion, and consensus makes for higher-quality articles on Wikipedia,” a Wikimedia Foundation spokesperson told me in an email. “Nevertheless, machine-generated content is exploding across the internet, and it will inevitably make its way to Wikipedia. Wikipedia volunteers have showcased admirable resilience in maintaining the reliability of information on Wikipedia based on existing community-led policies and processes, sometimes leveraging AI/machine learning tools in this work.“The spokesperson said that Wikipedia already uses AI productively, like with bots that revert vandalism and machine translation tools, and that these tools always have a “human in the loop” to validate automated work.
“As the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy regularly engages with volunteers on his talk page to share ideas, test assumptions, and respond to questions,” the spokesperson said. ”His recent comments about how AI could improve the draft review process are an example of this and a prompt for further community conversation."
How AI-generated text is poisoning the internet
Plus: A Roomba recorded a woman on the toilet. How did screenshots end up on Facebook?Melissa Heikkilä (MIT Technology Review)
Ogni tanto condivido articoli di Haaretz, un quotidiano israeliano.
Penso sia doveroso riconoscere che quattro gatti di israeliani per bene ci sono rimasti ("quattro gatti" perché è letto da poche persone) e questa cosa personalmente mi rincuora molto.
Se anche in mezzo a tutto quell'odio e quella propaganda qualcuno riesce a mantenersi lucido vuol dire che ha senso continuare a sperare.
Netanyahu continues to preserve his eternal war, which maintains the unity of his government and will bring him to elections as late as possible. Every few days, he puts out another spin and blatant lie with the same goal in mind | Chaim Levinson
haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-0…Trump's support for Netanyahu is now the main obstacle to a Gaza cease-fire deal
The U.S. president does not plan to halt Israel's operation in the Strip, according to Washington sources, and will leave any decision on a hostage deal in the Israeli prime minister's hands.Chaim Levinson (Haaretz)
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Il titolo dell’edizione di quest’anno è “Nei luoghi deserti costruiremo con mattoni nuovi”.
Ministero dell'Istruzione
📌 Dal 22 al 27 agosto il #MIM parteciperà al Meeting di Rimini! Il titolo dell’edizione di quest’anno è “Nei luoghi deserti costruiremo con mattoni nuovi”.Telegram