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A ‘massive failure’ in Kansas: Two years since the Marion County Record raid


The police raid of the Marion County Record’s newsroom on Aug. 11, 2023, shocked the country but proved to be just one of a series of alarming attacks on local journalism that year. It was also a preview of how lawless and incompetent governments can use strained constructions of the law as pretext to retaliate against journalists they dislike, as we now see not only in small-town America but at the federal level. As the death of Record co-owner Joan Meyer the next day tragically proved, by the time justice takes its course — if it ever does — the damage has often already been done.

We asked investigative journalist Jessica McMaster to reflect on her award-winning coverage of the raid for KSHB-TV in Kansas City, Missouri. The interview is below. You can also read about or watch our discussion with Record publisher Eric Meyer earlier this year.

On a Friday afternoon in 2023, news broke of a police raid of the Marion County Record newsroom and its publisher Eric Meyer’s home. Did you realize right away that this needed to be not just a statewide story but a national one?

I realized right away this was a big story. Once the news broke that Joan Meyer died, I knew we had to go to Marion — the backlash was immediate and the responses were coming in from across the country.

Over the course of many months, it became clear that the raid wasn’t a random instance of police overresponding to a citizen complaint. Details began to emerge about local officials, including the police chief, Gideon Cody, and their conduct before, during, and after the raid — even before coming to Marion. Plenty of great local journalists did amazing work covering the story, but you seemed to get a large share of the big scoops. Without divulging any confidences, how were you able to pull it off, especially being based in Kansas City, not particularly close to Marion?

I worked a lot of hours. In the beginning, we stayed overnight in Marion. After that, it was a lot of driving back and forth, while taking calls from sources at all hours of the night. I’d been a journalist long enough to know that a story this big doesn’t die down for a few weeks. We made the commitment to drive the five-hour round trip daily. I didn’t always know what our angle would be, but I knew I’d find it.

“If journalists are not willing to report on the ongoing attacks against the free press, who will?”


Jessica McMaster

Talk about the level of transparency — or lack thereof — that you encountered from government officials, both in Marion and statewide, during your reporting on the raid. What were some of the challenges you needed to overcome, in terms of secrecy and accessing information that was of public interest?

Gideon Cody wasn’t talking. The county attorney wasn’t talking. The Kansas Bureau of Investigation was saying very little. Almost immediately, it had the appearance that everyone involved in this was covering their own tail — and of course they were. This was a huge mess. We leaned on the gift of open records laws to get most of our information. Getting emails and text messages helped piece the parts of the story together that those in power wanted to remain a secret. We knew they’d try and block us — we were prepared to fight back. There were times when we had to get our attorneys involved when information was being withheld. On a story like this, the details don’t reveal the truth all at once. It trickles out over time. It’s always fun to look back and see how it all comes together — one information request, or leak, at a time.

At Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), we were glued to your X feed for real-time updates. We probably weren’t the only ones. Can you talk about the challenge of breaking news on social media while also investigating the bigger stories?

This is one of my favorite parts about covering a big story — connecting with people in real time. I had people from other countries sending me emails and tweeting to me that they were following me for updates. I was not asked to use social media in real time by my employer — it’s just something I’d become accustomed to doing since early on in my career. With Marion, we were getting updates constantly — social media made it easy to get that information out quickly. I don’t see using social media as a challenge — I think it’s a tool to connect with our followers more authentically and bring them along on the journey with us. Of course, if I have to get my broadcast script in urgently, or I have to be on camera within the next few minutes, I’ll take a break from providing live updates and come back to it once I’m done.

Were there any stories you were able to break while covering the raid that you felt were particularly important to the public’s understanding of what went on?

We broke so many stories over the first couple of months. I remember driving to Marion during that first week of coverage. I didn’t know what the story would be on this particular day. It was our plan to find the story once we got there. About an hour into our trip, while driving past a cornfield, my cellphone rings and it’s the attorney for Marion County Record. He tips me off that the county attorney has revoked the search warrants. He gave me a two-minute head start before he planned to tell all the other reporters. This was arguably the biggest break in the case — it’s the first time officials publicly admitted the raids shouldn’t have happened. This squashed any doubts of wrongdoing on behalf of the newspaper — and people, especially in Marion — did have their doubts. So, of course, I’m scrambling to get this information out there. Minutes after I broke the news on X, the county attorney sent a press release to all newsrooms with his statement on revoking the warrants.

“It’s hard for a lot of us to grasp that so many people, in positions of power, failed in such spectacular fashion to do their jobs.”


Jessica McMaster

What insights did you come away with about the state of press freedom in Kansas and in the United States?

This was a massive failure by several people within the justice system. I think that’s what’s so shocking about this entire thing — most of us assume a police chief would understand press freedom laws. If a police chief doesn’t, we’d assume a county attorney would. If a county attorney doesn’t, we’d assume a district judge would. If no one understands these laws — surely someone will look it up. The amount of layers Gideon Cody’s attack on the newspaper survived is astonishing. What did all these people, who are supposed to understand the law, think the response would be? I think it’s hard for a lot of us to grasp that so many people, in positions of power, failed in such spectacular fashion to do their jobs.

Do you think the raid had an ongoing chilling effect on journalism?

I think the chilling effect comes from a culmination of attacks that have been launched against the free press over the past several years. We’ve seen this play out in other instances, during protests for example, where police assault or arrest journalists for doing their jobs. I think Marion was another example of that.

Despite your award-winning work on the raid and all the other great work you’ve done, less than two years after the raid, your position at KSHB-TV, Kansas City’s NBC affiliate, was eliminated. What does that say about the state of the news industry and whether local investigative reporting is valued these days?

The company I worked for always valued investigative journalism — it’s why I stayed in my position for a decade. I think what we’re seeing is that many local newsrooms are becoming more and more risk averse. I personally felt this shift over the past few years. When newsrooms operate from a place of fear, it’s very difficult for reporters to do their job, especially investigative reporters who, by nature, do more high-risk, accountability-focused stories.

What’s next for you? I saw that your X post about the layoff said your time as an investigative journalist was coming to an end. Are you done with journalism or are you going to look for a way back in? And why?

I love journalism. I believe in its purpose. I believe in its power. We need solid journalists who aren’t afraid to hold the powerful accountable. That said, I don’t see myself stepping back into a newsroom. At least not anytime soon. I took the summer off to focus on my kids and reflect on what I want to do next, which has been such a gift. I plan to keep writing and creating content for something I believe in.

Journalists often feel like covering press freedom stories is difficult, because they’re making themselves the story or because their objectivity will be questioned, for example. What do you say to that, and what’s your advice to journalists and editors wondering whether it’s a good idea to report on press freedom violations?

Stick to the facts. That’s my advice. While I didn’t initially know why police raided the newspaper, I knew this was fundamentally wrong. I knew police should’ve served a subpoena, as opposed to busting down the doors. I knew the free press has protections, both locally and federally. All of that gave me grounds to cover this story. It can be uncomfortable reporting on something so closely tied to our personal lives — but if journalists are not willing to report on the ongoing attacks against the free press, who will?


freedom.press/issues/a-massive…

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Arrestato in Colombia il narcotrafficante Federico Starnone, anche grazie alla rete anti-'Ndrangheta I-CAN di Interpol


Si tratta di un latitante 44enne, ricercato dalle autorità italiane per i reati di associazione a delinquere finalizzata al traffico internazionale di sostanze stupefacenti con le aggravanti connesse a due distinti tentativi di importazione di ingenti quantitativi di cocaina dal Sudamerica.

E' ritenuto legato alla 'Ndrangheta. E' stato catturato in un appartamento nel quartiere residenziale di Cali.

A carico di Starnone è stata già emessa una sentenza di condanna a 5 anni e mezzo per reati di droga. L'uomo è stato catturato dalla polizia colombiana mentre si trovava in un appartamento nel quartiere residenziale nel capoluogo del dipartimento Valle del Cauca.

Essenziale l'apporto del progetto INTERPOL Cooperation Against ‘Ndrangheta (I-CAN).

Si tratta di un'iniziativa lanciata dall'Italia e dall'INTERPOL nel gennaio 2020 per contrastare la minaccia globale rappresentata dalla ‘Ndrangheta, come noto un'organizzazione criminale transnazionale altamente organizzata e potente.

Finanziato dal Dipartimento della Pubblica Sicurezza italiano, il progetto mira a rafforzare la cooperazione internazionale tra forze di polizia sfruttando le capacità dell'INTERPOL di condividere intelligence, competenze e best practice, trasformando così le informazioni in arresti e smantellando le reti criminali.

Avviato a Reggio Calabria l'obiettivo principale del progetto è stato - da subito - quello di istituire un sistema globale di allerta precoce contro questo "nemico invisibile". I-CAN opera attraverso una rete di paesi pilota, che inizialmente includevano Australia, Argentina, Brasile, Canada, Colombia, Francia, Germania, Italia, Svizzera, Stati Uniti e Uruguay, che si è espanso a 13, tra cui Austria, Belgio e Spagna.

Il progetto facilita operazioni coordinate transfrontaliere, come dimostrato dall'operazione globale del 2020 che ha portato all'arresto di sei latitanti legati alla 'Ndrangheta in Albania, Argentina e Costa Rica, con conseguente sequestro di 400 kg di cocaina e smantellamento del clan Bellocco. Le operazioni successive hanno continuato a dare risultati, tra cui l'arresto nel 2023 di un latitante di 16 anni, Edgardo Greco, in Francia, con il supporto di I-CAN.

Il progetto si è evoluto oltre la sua fase iniziale, con iniziative in corso tra cui la Conferenza I-CAN del 2022 a Roma, che ha riunito le forze dell'ordine di 14 paesi per definire una strategia unitaria contro la 'Ndrangheta, oggi considerata un'entità criminale "silenziosa e pervasiva" che si infiltra nelle economie legittime attraverso la corruzione e il riciclaggio di denaro.

Il successo del progetto si basa su una combinazione di condivisione di intelligence, coordinamento internazionale e utilizzo di strumenti analitici avanzati per esplorare dati provenienti da diverse fonti, consentendo indagini transnazionali. Il suo quadro continua a sostenere gli sforzi in corso, tra cui il progetto I-FORCE, incentrato sulla cooperazione regionale nell'Europa orientale e sudorientale.


#ndrangheta #ican #interpol #iforce

@Attualità e Geopolitica - Gruppo di discussione

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Compliant Contacts: Hacking Door Locks with Pen Springs


door spring

As you may have guessed given our name, we do love hacks around here, and this one is a great example of making some common, everyday things work in uncommon ways. [Nathan] sent in his hack to detect the door lock position in his basement.

Having a house that dates back to the 1890s, much of it was not very conducive to using off-the-shelf home automation devices. [Nathan] wanted a way to check the status of the basement deadbolt. He went about putting together a custom sensor using some spare parts, including a spare BeagleBone Black, and some springs from a ballpoint pen. Going full MacGyver, [Nathan] used springs from a ballpoint pen to craft a compliant contact for his sensor.

The pair of springs sat in the door frame and came in contact with the deadbolt; given they are springs, the exact position of the sensor was not very sensitive, as if too close it would just compress the springs slightly more. The springs were wired to the BeagleBone Black’s GPIO, acting as a switch to sense when there was conductivity between the springs through the deadbolt.

This wasn’t just a plug-it-in-and-it-works type of project, mind you; the BeagleBone Black was over 15 ft away from the sensors, lending plenty of opportunity for noise to be introduced into the lines. To combat this, [Nathan] created an RC filter to filter out all the high-frequency noise picked up by his sensor. Following the RC filter, he added in some code to handle the debounce of the sensor, as the springs have some inherent noise in them. Thanks [Nathan] for sending in your resourceful hack; we love seeing the resourcefulness of reusing things already on hand for other purposes. Be sure to check out some of the other repurposed components we’ve featured.


hackaday.com/2025/08/11/compli…



Building A Trash Can Reverb


These days, if you want a reverb effect, you just dial up whatever software plugin most appeals to you and turn the dials to taste. However, [Something Physical] specialises in… physical things… and thus built a reverb the old fashioned way. Using a trashcan, of course.

The concept is simple enough—the method of operation is exactly the same as any old plate reverb. Audio is played through a speaker connected to the plate (or trashcan), causing it to vibrate. The sound is then picked up at another point on the plate (or trashcan) with some kind of microphonic pickups, amplified, and there you have your reverb signal.

Given it’s built around a piece of street furniture, [Something Physical] has dubbed this the Street-Verb. It uses a class D amp to drive a speaker with a bolt stuck to it. The bolt is then put in contact with the trashcan itself to transfer the vibration. A pair of piezo elements are used as the pickups, run through a preamps built with a humble BC109C transistor. Since there are two pickups, the Street-Verb is effectively a stereo reverb unit, though the input is only mono. [Something Physical] set up the speaker driver and pickups to be easily movable, and was able to test the device with all kinds of street furniture, like gates and street signs, but the trashcan ‘verb setup is by far the most compelling.

We’ve featured other plate reverb builds before, too, albeit less garbage-themed. Video after the break.

youtube.com/embed/J2e8JIxW1g4?…


hackaday.com/2025/08/11/buildi…



Neon Bulbs? They’re a Gas!


When you think of neon, you might think of neon signs or the tenth element, a noble gas. But there was a time when neon bulbs like the venerable NE-2 were the 555 of their day, with a seemingly endless number of clever circuits. What made this little device so versatile? And why do we see so few of them today?

Neon’s brilliant glow was noted when William Ramsay and Morris Travers discovered it in 1898. It would be 1910 before a practical lighting device using neon appeared. It was 1915 when the developer, Georges Claude, of Air Liquide fame, received a patent on the unique electrodes suitable for lighting and, thus, had a monopoly on the technology he sold through his company Claude Neon Lights.

However, Daniel Moore in 1917 developed a different kind of neon bulb while working for General Electric. These bulbs used coronal discharge to produce a red glow or, with argon, a blue glow. This was different enough to earn another patent, and neon bulbs found use primarily as indicator lamps before the advent of the LED. However, it would also find many other uses.

How It Worked


An NE-2 with AC power applied (public domain by [junkyardsparkle]).Despite the name, a neon bulb typically has only 99.5% neon, and the rest is usually argon, which tunes the voltage where the gas breaks down. This breakdown voltage is the key to the bulb’s properties. The gas is at a very low pressure. Other gases and impurities can also change the color of the bulb, but the most common ones were neon and argon.

There are two electrodes within, an anode and a cathode. When a DC voltage excites the bulb sufficiently, a glow forms around one electrode. AC makes both electrodes glow alternately. The striking voltage changes based on ambient light or radioactive exposure, as well as the bulb’s gas mix and pressure.

Until the strike voltage occurs, the bulb is effectively an open circuit. When it does strike, however, the resistance goes down and will sustain even at a lower voltage. Like an LED, current limiting is essential, or the bulb will burn out. The NE-2, arguably the most common neon bulb, triggers at 90 V, nominally, and will conduct until the voltage drops to about 60 V.

So It Lights Up?


The lighting up is good, but you do need a lot of voltage to get it going. The bulb will easily light up from 120 V line voltage, for example. But the really interesting property is that the bulbs, when glowing, exhibit negative resistance. That is, as current increases, voltage decreases.

You can also make the bulbs operate in a bistable mode, where they can work in logic circuits. They weren’t common, but some bulbs had special features for logic use. These bulbs were not made to glow necessarily, and sometimes had a third wire used as a control electrode.

Since the gas inside the tube can ionize, neon bulbs can also detect things like light, microwaves, or heavy electrostatic fields. They can even pick up audio.

What Could You Do?


Of course, the normal application was to use the devices as a lamp, like you’d use an LED today. Power pilot lights were common. Special neon lights looking like digits form the basis of nixie tubes.

Another neat display trick was the “blown fuse” indicator. Fuse holders often had neon bulbs in them that connected across the fuse terminals. In normal operation, the voltage across the fuse was practically zero, so the bulb stayed dark. But if the fuse blew, you’d have 120 V across the bulb, which would then light up. A high-value resistor prevented any significant current from flowing.

By far the most common non-lighting use was as a part of a relaxation oscillator. Consider a circuit with a resistor and a capacitor, but the capacitor has a neon bulb across it. The capacitor will charge until it hits the neon bulb’s trigger voltage. The bulb will light and discharge the capacitor until it drops below the holding voltage for the bulb. Then the process starts over. You could use neons to make a clock.

Long History

The NE-2 could create high-voltage regulator circuits (from Elementary Electronics, 1965)
[E. Norbert Smith] wrote about the “1001” uses for the NE-2 — probably not an exaggeration, but [Smith] didn’t get that many in the article — in a 1965 Elementary Electronics magazine article.

The circuits he shows include a 50 V regulated power supply. (Regulators weren’t held to the same standard in those days as we would expect now.) Need 150 V? Use three of them. Or put them in parallel to improve regulation performance.

Some of the circuits are probably not useful if you aren’t building with tubes. And, of course, if you aren’t building with tubes, you are less likely to have the high voltages you need, so there is that.

He also covers the classic self-indicating fuse and the relaxation oscillator. Of course, if you can make one neon bulb blink, you can also make two blink alternately. Blink it fast enough and you can make a code practice oscillator with just a few parts and a 90 V battery.
A 100 kHz oscillator gets the divide by 10 treatment with a simple neon bulb circuit (from Elementary Electronics, 1965)
If you wondered how neon bulbs could handle logic, that same article will answer that question, too. Just be aware that a logic 1 is 10 V — not a problem — but a logic 0 is -10 V. The nice thing about demonstrating logic circuits with neon bulbs is that you don’t need a logic probe or scope to see the state of the machine.

There were many other ways to use these bulbs. Since the trigger voltage was stable, you could use it as a voltage indicator if you coupled it with a voltage divider. In fact, many cheap AC socket testers still work this way. A typical circuit for a capacitor checker could be found in “36 Time Tested Circuits,” a book from Popular Electronics.
This capacitor tester required a keen eye and sense of timing. From a collection of circuits from Popular Electronics, 1992.
The capacitor is hooked up to the AC line via some 470 kΩ resistors. If you connect a capacitor to it, the neon bulb should light up. If not, it is open. When you push the button, you switch to DC, and you should be able to see one side of the neon bulb dim. If it doesn’t dim or doesn’t go all the way off, the capacitor is shorted or leaky. Supposedly, you could get a feel for the value of the capacitor by how long it took half of the bulb to go out. Makes you appreciate your digital capacitance meter, right?

Why Gone?


Why do you so rarely see neon bulbs today? They are still around, but the number of circuits you have where you have the requisite 100 V or so to drive them is not what it used to be. On top of that, as an indicator, an LED is usually a far better choice.

If you want negative resistance, your choices are less obvious. Some special diodes present a negative resistance in certain operating regimes, and you can coax the behavior from some transistors. However, as a matter of practicality, today, you’d probably just use an active switch and be done with it, especially for an oscillator circuit. Then again, if you really want an oscillator, as we are always reminded, you can do it with a 555, among other methods.

We have no doubt that [Smith] was right. There are probably at least 1,001 different uses, but you get the idea. Did you use an NE-2 for something interesting? Let us know about it in the comments. Still want more neon bulb circuits? We’ve seen plenty.


hackaday.com/2025/08/11/neon-b…



End Of The Eternal September, As AOL Discontinues Dial-Up


If you used the internet at home a couple of decades or more ago, you’ll know the characteristic sound of a modem connecting to its dial-up server. That noise is a thing of the past, as we long ago moved to fibre, DSL, or wireless providers that are always on. It’s a surprise then to read that AOL are discontinuing their dial-up service at the end of September this year, in part for the reminder that AOL are still a thing, and for the surprise that in 2025 they still operate a dial-up service.

There was a brief period in which instead of going online via the internet itself, the masses were offered online services through walled gardens of corporate content. Companies such as AOL and Compuserve bombarded consumers with floppies and CD-ROMs containing their software, and even Microsoft dipped a toe in the market with the original MSN service before famously pivoting the whole organisation in favour of the internet in mid 1995. Compuserve was absorbed by AOL, which morphed into the most popular consumer dial-up ISP over the rest of that decade. The dotcom boom saw them snapped up for an exorbitant price by Time Warner, only for the expected bonanza to never arrive, and by 2023 the AOL name was dropped from the parent company’s letterhead. Over the next decade it dwindled into something of an irrelevance, and is now owned by Yahoo! as a content and email portal. This dial-up service seems to have been the last gasp of its role as an ISP.

So the eternal September, so-called because the arrival of AOL users on Usenet felt like an everlasting version of the moment a fresh cadre of undergrads arrived in September, may at least in an AOL sense, finally be over. If you’re one of the estimated 0.2% of Americans still using a dial-up connection don’t despair, because there are a few other ISPs still (just) serving your needs.


hackaday.com/2025/08/11/end-of…



Siri invia i dati ad Apple senza preavviso: AppleStorm rivela la verità


Gli esperti di Lumia hanno pubblicato un’indagine tecnica chiamata AppleStorm, in cui si sostiene che l’assistente vocale Siri trasmetta ai server Apple più dati utente di quanti ne siano necessari per completare le attività. In particolare, l’attenzione si è concentrata sui messaggi dettati tramite Siri nelle app di messaggistica WhatsApp e iMessage: a quanto pare, vengono inviati ai server dell’azienda anche se l’attività può essere elaborata localmente, senza accedere ai sistemi cloud.

Apple dichiara elevati standard di privacy e utilizza un modello di intelligenza artificiale ibrido che combina l’elaborazione locale con il servizio cloud Private Cloud Compute (PCC). Tuttavia, è emerso che Siri accede anche ad altri server che non fanno parte dell’architettura PCC. Tra questi, i server di dettatura, l’infrastruttura di ricerca (sottodominio smoot.apple.com) e server di estensione Apple Intelligence separati, attraverso i quali, ad esempio, avviene l’interazione con ChatGPT.

Durante gli esperimenti, i ricercatori hanno utilizzato gli strumenti mitmproxy e Frida su macOS Sequoia con Apple Intelligence abilitata. Semplici query come “Ciao” o “Che ore sono?” venivano elaborate localmente. Tuttavia, quando si chiedeva informazioni sul meteo, venivano registrate due connessioni esterne: una al server di riconoscimento vocale, la seconda al servizio di ricerca. L’analisi dei dati trasmessi ha mostrato che Siri raccoglie automaticamente informazioni sulle applicazioni installate sul dispositivo, anche se sono in esecuzione in un ambiente virtuale. Pertanto, quando si chiedeva informazioni sul meteo, le chiamate venivano registrate sia all’applicazione Apple Weather integrata che all’applicazione Windows nell’ambiente Parallels.

Inoltre, i dati inviati contenevano le coordinate esatte della posizione dell’utente. Anche con la trasmissione della geolocalizzazione formalmente abilitata, tali dettagli sarebbero stati ridondanti per una richiesta di informazioni meteo. L’analisi dei pacchetti ha anche rivelato la trasmissione di metadati relativi ad altre applicazioni, fino ai nomi dei file e dei processi aperti al momento della richiesta a Siri.

La trasmissione del contenuto dei messaggi solleva interrogativi particolarmente acuti. Utilizzando Siri per inviare una frase tramite WhatsApp, si è scoperto che il testo, il numero del destinatario e altri attributi del messaggio venivano inviati ai server Apple e non all’infrastruttura PCC. Tuttavia, la funzionalità non dipende dal lato server: anche quando le connessioni sono bloccate, il messaggio viene inviato correttamente. Ciò indica che l’invio al cloud avviene senza necessità tecnica.

Nel tentativo di chiarire se questo sia correlato alle specifiche dell’integrazione di WhatsApp tramite SiriKit, il ricercatore ha creato una propria applicazione basata sulla documentazione Apple, riscontrando un comportamento identico: anche i messaggi inviati tramite Siri dall’applicazione di prova venivano indirizzati ai server Apple. Un quadro simile si osserva con iMessage.

La complessità delle policy sulla privacy contribuisce ad aumentare la confusione. Siri e Apple Intelligence sono regolati da documenti diversi. Di conseguenza, due comandi quasi identici – ad esempio “Che tempo fa oggi?” e “Chiedi a ChatGPT che tempo fa?” – vengono elaborati da sistemi diversi con diversi livelli di protezione e diverse condizioni di raccolta dati. L’utente non ha modo di sapere quale sottosistema verrà utilizzato.

Apple ha riconosciuto il trasferimento di dati, ma non lo ha considerato un problema di Apple Intelligence . Ha invece attribuito parte della colpa agli sviluppatori terzi che utilizzano SiriKit. Tuttavia, Siri stessa sta chiaramente inviando più dati del necessario, e lo fa all’insaputa dell’utente. La trasparenza è uno degli slogan principali di Apple in materia di intelligenza artificiale, ma nella pratica viene implementata in modo selettivo.

L'articolo Siri invia i dati ad Apple senza preavviso: AppleStorm rivela la verità proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.



Gematik: Für die elektronische Patientenakte kann man sich jetzt doch per Video identifizieren


netzpolitik.org/2025/gematik-f…



#Trump e #Putin al caminetto


altrenotizie.org/primo-piano/1…




Anduril accelera nell’Indo-Pacifico. Nuovi accordi con Taiwan e Corea del Sud

@Notizie dall'Italia e dal mondo

Dopo America ed Europa, Anduril ha messo gli occhi anche sull’Indo-Pacifico. L’emerging tech Usa, leader nel comparto dell’IA applicata alla difesa, ha recentemente concluso due accordi che pongono le basi della sua futura espansione in estremo oriente. Da un lato



The human voiceover artists behind AI voices are grappling with the choice to embrace the gigs and earn a living, or pass on potentially life-changing opportunities from Big Tech.#AI #voiceovers


Voiceover Artists Weigh the 'Faustian Bargain' of Lending Their Talents to AI


Acting is an industry of feast and famine, where performers’ income can swing widely by role, by month, and by year. It’s a field where people often face the choice between passion, creativity, and taking a commercial gig for a check. As with so much else, this delicate personal calculation is now being disrupted by AI.

Last month, online actors’ jobs boards were flooded with a very specific, very well-paid role. Nestled between student short film gigs and callouts for background dancers, was the ambiguously-named opportunity “Technology Company AI Project.” According to the job listing on cast and crew job board Mandy, it would pay up to $80,000, for only 19 total hours of work. This is unusually high for an industry where a national-level ad campaign for a big brand might pay $6,000.

The post was from voice acting talent agency Voice123, casting on behalf of a project by Microsoft. According to the listing, the company was looking for voice actors across 19 languages, with specific regional dialects and accents including “French from France native” and “Arabic as spoken by Palestinian/Israeli Arab communities.”

“I get instant notifications, and I was getting so many of them,” said Katie Clark Gray, a podcaster and voice actor. The rate stood out to her. “The jobs that I tend to see are, like, £250 [about $339 USD]... it was, like, a lot of posts. The money seemed like a lot.” She said that it’s rare to get that many notifications for a recognizable brand.

The role would include recording “conversations, character voices, and natural speech to help train AI systems,” Crispin Alfario, a recruiter for the role on the Voice123 platform, told 404 Media. Alfario could not comment further due to privacy terms, but said there was “a positive response during the castings for these projects.” Clark Gray said that advertised AI roles like this are increasing in scope and in scale, and that she now sees far fewer roles available for employee training video work or industrial roles like phone menu voices — the area she got her start in over a decade ago.

She sees accepting AI training voiceover roles as something of a Faustian bargain: They might seem like a lot of money, but they reduce the amount of work available in the future. “You're still taking away tomorrow's meal because they're offering you a little bit more,” she said. “Those 19 hours… will scale to hundreds and thousands of hours of AI output. They would otherwise have to pay for it.”


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Katie Clark Gray practicing takes for a voiceover script.

I called Microsoft’s PR to ask if I could chat to someone involved in casting for the roles that Clark Gray had spotted, on the same day that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella published a note about the “recent job eliminations” of four percent of staff and pledged to “reimagine every layer of the tech stack for AI.” The next day, less than two weeks after Clark Gray spotted the Microsoft ads, the company announced a new virtual character for Copilot, the trial version of which is currently only available in English. After that announcement, a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed to me that the voiceover roles I asked about were for Copilot Voice, and that they will “continue to look for more talent as [they] expand these capabilities.” I hadn’t been sure that the audition posts were linked to Copilot, but the confirmation from Microsoft confirmed that the posts that Clark Gray had spotted had been in advance of the product announcement.

“More and more I'm seeing AI disclaimers that, by auditioning for this, you agree to have your voice and likeness used and replicated. I hate that.”


Hunter Saling, an actor and comic based in LA, said he’s seeing more and more roles which have an AI component or require signing an AI waiver. He auditioned for a “Siri-type AI assistant,” in May. The role would have paid an amount of money where he “wouldn’t need a job” for a long time.

“You'd be providing a whole bunch of stuff up front,” he said, “and then be paid as a performer, as a voiceover artist, to come back on a yearly basis to do more stuff.”


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Hunter Saling practicing takes for a voiceover script.

I wondered if this was another situation where an audition was the first public hint of a product launch in the space, but Saling couldn’t tell me the company he’d auditioned for, due to confidentiality. I kept an eye out for new Siri-type AI agents that might be able to pay life-changing money and, while I was writing this story, on July 17, OpenAI launched their ChatGPT agent—a Siri-type AI assistant. OpenAI is also known to use Mercor, an AI-enabled recruitment platform, which was recently posting about voice casting for a “top AI Lab.”

The AI-assistant voice audition process was very different from usual, Saling said. He described the voice he did as “the performance of no performance;” a voice that was “not personality free, but, like, neutral, but friendly and helpful.” He describes the work he did on the audition as “not children's host, but also not robotic either… I read a story, some recipe directions, and some just general sentences.”

On August 7, OpenAI announced ChatGPT 5 which would have several new personalities, but the company said that those personalities would not apply to voice mode.

Being selected for this kind of windfall could alter the course of an actor’s life.

One part of the audition script stood out to Saling: He was asked to “affirm” someone. “That did start to send me on a bit of a mental spiral of, oh, my God, someone needs affirmation from their home assistant.”

Auditioning for this role also posed an ethical question. “I will say I was surprised in myself that I was OK doing this,” he said. “More and more I'm seeing AI disclaimers that, by auditioning for this, you agree to have your voice and likeness used and replicated. I hate that.”

The last couple of years have seen the entertainment industry in turmoil over the use of AI in screen and voiceover work. Both the four month SAG-AFTRA actor’s strike in 2023, as well as their almost year-long video games strike, which ended last month, focused on the use of AI. The agreements which ended the strikes describe different industry categories of AI use, differentiating between the kind of AI which digitally alters or replicates the work of a particular actor, and generative AI which is trained using actor’s work or creates a “synthetic performer.”
playlist.megaphone.fm?p=TBIEA2…
Saling does agree with this technical difference, between delivering an artistic or creative performance that can be altered, perfected, or smoothed out later, and providing a voice to be re-created for industrial use, like in an AI assistant. Creating the neutral voice of an AI assistant, to be generatively replicated, is industrial, rather than artistic; “this is something that... it's not a performance, it's not a character. It's a tool,” he said.

Clark Gray is not financially dependent on her voice acting career, and her calculus in auditioning is different. She didn’t submit for the Microsoft role, but “wouldn't fault anybody for going out for that job,” she said. “That’s a year’s salary for a lot of people.” But she also feels a difference in applying for creative voiceover roles vs industrial ones; “​I think the cartoon voices are much more fun. I don't know anybody who doesn't,” she said. “You do bring a sort of artistic, like, extra sauce to it. Creating a character really does take something different than reading something in a neutral voice.”

Saling said that he thinks the adoption of AI taps into the entertainment industry’s commercially-driven but counterproductive desire to create mass appeal via synthetic perfection. “Sometimes I feel like Lear yelling at a storm on the fucking cliff,” he added — with a theatricality ChatGPT could only dream of.




The OverDrive is made to let ground vehicles navigate tough terrain with minimal input from humans.#military #AIbots


The U.S. Army Is Testing AI Controlled Ground Drones Near a Border with Russia


The U.S. Army tested a fully AI controlled ground vehicle in Vaziani, Georgia—about 100 miles from the Russian border—last month as part of a training exercise. In military-published footage, an all wheel, off-road vehicle about the size of a car called ULTRA navigated the European terrain with ease. The training exercise had the ULTRA resupplying soldiers, but both the military and the machine’s creator think it could do much more.
playlist.megaphone.fm?p=TBIEA2…
The Pentagon has invested in drones and AI for decades, long claiming that both are the future of war. The appearance of the ULTRA signals a time when AI controlled robots will populate the battlefields of the near future.

“ULTRA was built to be modular and mission-adaptable from the start,” Chris Merz, an employee of Overland AI, the company behind ULTRA said according to an Army press release. “We are actively developing variants that support casualty evacuation, counter-unmanned aircraft systems, and terrain shaping operations.”
youtube.com/embed/OwxPodELAQA?…
ULTRA runs on Overland AI’s proprietary OverDrive software, a system that’s designed to give AI full control over ground vehicles on the battlefield. Overland AI did not return 404 Media’s request for comment, but its website claims it can retrofit OverDrive onto traditional vehicles and its YouTube page has a video claiming to show the AI piloting a Ripsaw M5 tank.
youtube.com/embed/H8D7AtW1Lqo?…
Overland AI is a Seattle based company that started in 2022. It’s gained a lot of buzz in the last few years as a pioneer of AI software meant to control unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs). Jon Fink, Overland AI’s CTO, explained how its software worked during a presentation at a defense tech showcase earlier this year.

During the demo, Fink showed footage of a field test where an ATV navigated hazardous terrain with minimal input from a human. Fink said the company’s OverDrive software is “purpose built for the warfighter. It’s built in order to enable the operator so it can remotely task a system so it can autonomously move through an environment without reliance on detailed maps or communication back with that operator.”

The big challenge of AI systems like this is that they need to be able to navigate the terrain on their own without looking at a map. GPS is often jammed or unavailable on the battlefield. So a robot will need to use cameras and other sensors to make decisions about how to move through a warzone in real time. In the video, the operator drops a few waypoints on a map of the area and clicks a button to launch the ATV. “Note while we’re specifying all these tasks, I’m not like zooming in, looking very close at detailed information that I might have from a satellite, because I can’t necessarily trust that,” Fink said. Satellite imagery can become outdated quickly on a chaotic battlefield.“I’m really giving the system just a coarse idea of what I need it to do to accomplish my mission.”
youtube.com/embed/8TFoDcG1Z0U?…
The U.S. Army’s test last month has been a long time coming. “This isn’t new,” Samuel Bendett, a drone expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told 404 Media. “This has been in development for many, many years […] this is at least a decade’s worth of research, development, testing, and evaluation of different levels of autonomy with different technologies.”

Russia, China, and the United States are all working on AI controlled ground vehicles. Drones require an operator which means a human being needs to maintain contact with a device over vast distances. That’s easier to do when the machine is a robot flying through the sky, but ground vehicles have to contend with signal-blocking debris and are easier targets for ground troops.

“Communication between the UGV operator and the operator can be jammed if it’s radio, the communication can be severed if it’s done via cable, communication may be endangered if it’s an aerial drone that’s trying to provide signal strength and overwatch capabilities,” Bendett said. “Operators have to be in relative proximity to their UGVs, and that, of course, somewhat negates the point of using UGVs instead of people. If people are close to their UGV, they can be discovered and killed.”

AI answers a lot of these problems. If an operator can give a set of simple instructions to a machine and let it operate independently, then it need not be in constant contact. In his presentation earlier this year, Fink noted that the AI controlled ATV adjusted its speed as it navigated terrain, all on its own. “We haven’t set any sort of speed limits or specifications to the system when we tasked it, we basically just told it: ‘Go to these general locations’ and it’s taking care of all of the decisions as it needs to,” he said.

There are major concerns about warfighter machines making decisions by themselves. UN Secretary-General António Guterres has called for a ban on autonomous weapon systems, calling them “morally repugnant.” In Gaza, Israel is using AI models from OpenAI and Microsoft to make targeting decisions and Israeli intelligence officers have told reporters that information provided by the AIs were treated “as if it were a human decision.”

Right now, Overland AI’s OverDrive AI stack is just for helping a ground vehicle navigate, and Bendett said it’s ahead of the pack. “The Holy Grail of autonomy is translating that intuitive human experience into a UGV that will be able to navigate, on its own, through rough terrain, mixed terrain, uncertain terrain, which is what we’re seeing with Overland UGVs,” he said.

What could this thing be used for? “The number one goal for these kinds of UGVs is logistics and supplies,” Bendett said. “Medical evacuation is becoming a growing concern and UGVs are also used for that.”

It, of course, won’t stop there. “UGVs used in combat can be mounted with all manners of weapons,” Bendett said.

The U.S. Army did not respond to 404 Media’s request for comment.




QUANDO L’INTELLIGENZA ARTIFICIALE INIZIA A GIOCARE CON LA CYBERSICUREZZA…

@Informatica (Italy e non Italy 😁)

Mai sentito parlare di RunSybil? Si tratta di una startup fondata da chi era il primo ricercatore sulla sicurezza di OpenAI...
L'articolo QUANDO L’INTELLIGENZA ARTIFICIALE INIZIA A GIOCARE CON LA CYBERSICUREZZA… proviene da GIANO NEWS.
#TECNOLOGIA





#NoiSiamoLeScuole, con i fondi del #PNRR finalizzati alla costruzione di nuove scuole sono stati demoliti e sono in corso di ricostruzione due istituti in Sicilia e uno in Lombardia.


se lo dice israele ci sarà proprio da crederci che fosse un terrorista... specchiata onestà. poveretto e poveretti.


a volte chi vede invadere una nazione libera, può stranamente pensare che si tratti dell'invasione di una nazione libera... non credo che in nazismo c'entri molto. ma poi, da nazione libera, non ho neppure capito cosa dovrebbe fregare alla russia anche se l'ucraina fosse nazista. la russia ha invaso l'iran per quello che fa alle donne? o l'afganistan? il mondo è pieno di stati merda con il sostegno della russia.


quando tra gli strumenti della diplomazia internazionale diventa ricorrente l'uso dell'offesa e della parolaccia, diretta o indiretta, diventa arduo definire la parola come lo strumento non violento da usare per dirimere le controversie internazionali.


M.O, Ruotolo: altri giornalisti uccisi. E’ tempo di agire


@Giornalismo e disordine informativo
articolo21.org/2025/08/m-o-ruo…
“Vogliamo dare un nome e un cognome alle ultime vittime dell’esercito israeliano nella Striscia di Gaza. Si tratta di una troupe di Al Jazeera che secondo le autorita’ israeliane facevano parte di Hamas. Si



Terre rare, gli Usa puntano a estrarle e raffinarle in casa. Ecco come

@Notizie dall'Italia e dal mondo

Il rafforzamento dell’ecosistema della Difesa Usa non passa solamente per l’assegnazione di nuove commesse, ma anche dal consolidamento di una filiera interamente radicata sul territorio nazionale. Il Dipartimento della Difesa statunitense ha infatti concesso il primo prestito



Heatmiser – Mic City Songs
freezonemagazine.com/articoli/…
La ripubblicazione di un album, a mio avviso fondamentale nella definizione delle coordinate di quello che è l’Indie Rock oggi, partendo proprio da quello che è stato, è un evento che non andrebbe sottovalutato da chi ama “perdersi” nei meandri di un genere, sì conosciuto, ma che, per dimensioni, scelte di pubblicazioni, spesso difficilissime da […]
L'articolo Heatmiser – Mic City Songs proviene
La



GLOBAL SUMUD FLOTILLA. A fine agosto e inizio settembre decine di imbarcazioni salperanno per Gaza


@Notizie dall'Italia e dal mondo
Prima dalla Spagna e poi dal Nordafrica gli attivisti di 44 paesi proveranno a rompere il blocco navale israeliano di Gaza e a portare aiuti umanitari ai civili palestinesi. A bordo ci sarà ancora Greta



Gaza, uccisi cinque giornalisti di Al Jazeera


@Giornalismo e disordine informativo
articolo21.org/2025/08/gaza-uc…
Si accentua il massacro dei giornalisti palestinesi. Ora che il gabinetto di guerra israeliano ha deciso autocraticamente, ed in spregio alla comunità internazionale che ora si risveglia da un lungo sonno, di invadere ed occupare Gaza City



Pace tra Armenia e Azerbaigian. Il passo falso di Mosca e i timori dell’Iran


@Notizie dall'Italia e dal mondo
L'intesa firmata a Washington favorisce l'Azerbaigian, la Turchia e gli Stati Uniti, che rimettono piede nel cortile di casa russo. Teheran teme e denuncia la manovra a tenaglia
L'articolo Pace tra Armenia e Azerbaigian. Il passo falso di Mosca e i timori dell’Iran proviene da Pagine



Gaza: fine e rinascita del giornalismo


@Giornalismo e disordine informativo
articolo21.org/2025/08/gaza-fi…
Anas Jamal Mahmoud al-Sharif: questo il suo nome. Aveva ventott’anni, era nato nel campo profughi di Jabalia e si era specializzato nella comunicazione per mass media, lavorava per Al Jazeera Arabic ed era la voce principale da Gaza. È stato assassinato



Israele ha ucciso l'intera troupe di Al Jazeera a Gaza City, inclusi giornalisti e cameraman:

Reporter: Anas Al-Sharif
Reporter: Muhammad Qariqa
Cameraman: Ibrahim Zahir
Cameraman: Moamen Aliwa
Autista: Muhammad Nofal

Gazzetta del Cadavere reshared this.



Vendo due Pilette lavabo 1"1/4 in ABS – nuove, compatibili universali - Questo è un post automatico da FediMercatino.it

Prezzo: 7 Euro

Vendo due Pilette lavabo 1"1/4 in ABS – nuove, compatibili universali

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@Il Mercatino del Fediverso 💵♻️







La nostalgia del corpo sonoro: isolamento sociale e comunicazioni di massa


Pubblicato in origine su Transform Italia il 30 Luglio 2025 di P. Nicolosi In un libro uscito nel 1977 e intitolato Per una storia dei bisogni l’eclettico, imprevedibile e geniale teologo austriaco Ivan Illich scriveva: «Cinquant’anni fa, quasi tutte le … Continua a leggere→


Mio racconto brevissimo scritto per Minuti Contati, link originale.

Pecunia non olet

Adam entrò in ufficio, appese il soprabito e si accostò al mobile bar per un drink.
«Non dovresti bere nelle tue condizioni» disse una voce calda alle sue spalle.
Si voltò di scatto: c’era una ragazza bionda in un elegante tubino bianco sul divano. Sorrideva.
«Come sei entrata? Chi sei?»
«È inutile agitarsi, vado dove voglio e di nomi ne ho tanti. Sono qui per un affare.»
Lui tirò fuori il cellulare e chiamò la sicurezza, il telefono rimase muto.
«Dovresti ascoltarmi» commentò la donna.
Adam fece per andare verso la porta ma si bloccò, non c’era nessuna porta. Lei si alzò, aveva un corpo da mozzare il fiato.
«Chi diavolo sei?» chiese confuso.
Lei rise divertita: «L’hai detto. Mettiti comodo e ascolta la mia proposta.» Lo spinse sulla vicina poltrona.
«Tu sei ricco Adam, uno dei più ricchi del mondo, eppure non ti servirà, tra poco morrai e perderai ogni cosa.»
«Lo so questo, è il nostro destino.»
«Non proprio. Dovrai morire, lo ammetto, ma in quanto al denaro, ti offro la possibilità di portarne parte con te nell’aldilà.»
Adam rise forte: «Vorrai dire all’inferno!»
«Ah, l’inferno, sei così sicuro di meritarlo?»
«Ci puoi giurare» rispose ridendo «quello mi tocca di sicuro.»
La donna sorrise: «Inferno, paradiso, sono solo parole, il luogo dove finirai non è troppo diverso da questo: meglio essere ricchi che altrimenti.» Sollevò la gonna e si sedette sulla scrivania. «La mia offerta è questa: lascerai la somma che vorrai a una fondazione che io ti indicherò, in questo mondo, e noi te ne faremo avere un decimo nell’aldilà.»
«E tu credi che io abbocchi a un’imbroglio del genere? Proprio io?»
Lei gli mise in mano un biglietto. «I dati per la donazione, pensaci, non tutti hanno questa possibilità.» Lui abbassò lo sguardo per leggerlo, quando lo rialzò la donna non c’era più.
«Cavolo…» mormorò, ma andò a riporlo nel soprabito. Quando si voltò in mezzo alla stanza c’era un’altra donna, bruna, sui quaranta, con un tailleur scuro molto elegante e sobrio.
«Non ti fidare di quella, ti frega» disse la nuova arrivata.
Adam si guardò intorno, forse era il cancro a causargli quelle allucinazioni. Gli restava poco.
«Certo che non mi fido, non si portano soldi all’inferno.»
«Bravo!» esclamò lei soddisfatta. «Devi farle con la gente giusta queste cose. Se ti affidi a noi, non solo garantiamo un trasferimento di denaro doppio, ma assicuriamo anche il passaggio in paradiso.»
«Cosa?»
«Ma certo! Perché con la donazione giusta, con un gesto di generosità vera, noi possiamo assicurarti il perdono.»
«Il perdono?»
«Assicurato!»
Adam sentiva la testa pulsare, non stava affatto bene.
«Questo non è corretto» il grido veniva dalle sue spalle, si girò, era di nuovo la bionda. Furiosa.
«Gli affari sono affari» ribatté la bruna.
Le due si presero per i capelli.
Adam quasi sorrise vedendole avvinghiate, non era più sicuro di quale delle due fosse il demone e quale l’angelo.
Non ha importanza, in ogni caso è troppo tardi – pensò, con un filo di rimpianto, mentre spirava.

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Qualcuno ha visto il PD?


Quel partito ha la caratteristica di riuscire a sparire completamente dalla scena per mesi, per anni, tra un'elezione (persa) e l'altra.

O governa, e sappiamo come, o sparisce completamente dalla circolazione.

Unknown parent

friendica (DFRN) - Collegamento all'originale
Max 🇪🇺🇮🇹

@Otttoz

Beh immagino che chi non ha votato PD si stia godendo i nipotini del duce esattamente come chi ha votato il PD si sarà goduto il suo supporto agli stupratori della guardia costiera libica, il suo jobs act, la sua delegittimazione delle ONG che salvano vite in mare, ecc.

Però quelli del PD in effetti alla manifestazione del 25 aprile partecipano convintamente, cantano "bella ciao" quindi posso capire che qualcuno li consideri migliori di quegli altri.

Comunque la mia domanda era: ma questi "migliori" dove sono finiti? Che fanno? Stanno aspettando le prossime elezioni per tornare a riproporsi come quelli che vanno votati perché gli altri sono peggiori?




"Soltanto il 35,5% delle persone intervistate ha detto di essere «preoccupata» dalla situazione umanitaria a Gaza, mentre il 61,5% ha detto di non esserlo per niente, o solo in minima parte. L’80% ha detto di ritenere che l’IDF sia un esercito «morale»".


La manifestazione a Tel Aviv contro il piano per occupare la città di Gaza - Il Post
https://www.ilpost.it/2025/08/10/tel-aviv-protesta-occupazione-gaza-netanyahu/?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub

Pubblicato su News @news-ilPost


reshared this

in reply to RFanciola

@RFanciola @il Post

Solitamente i genocidi vengono perpetrati dalle dittature, che hanno sotto controllo l'informazione, e i cittadini di quei stati possono dire "non sapevamo".

Gli israeliani sanno per filo e per segno cosa sta facendo il loro governo, non avranno neanche quella scusa.



Ecco come la Cina spende e spande sull’hi-tech

L'articolo proviene da #StartMag e viene ricondiviso sulla comunità Lemmy @Informatica (Italy e non Italy 😁)
Il boom di investimenti (senza profitti) della Cina. Estratto dalla rassegna stampa sul canale Telegram di Giuseppe Liturri.

startmag.it/innovazione/ecco-c…



ATTENTI! WHOFI VI IDENTIFICA… SEMPRE

@Informatica (Italy e non Italy 😁)

La identificazione e re-identificazione di una persona (Re-ID), ovvero la capacità di riconoscere la stessa persona attraverso diverse telecamere, inquadrature, angolazioni, o sequenze video è un'attività complessa che può rivelarsi utile sia nella videosorveglianza che nelle applicazioni forensi e di sicurezza. Tuttavia, i

masmg reshared this.



Da virostar a viromasterchef è un attimo. Adesso se la prende anche per le grigliate...🤦🏼‍♂️🤦🏼‍♂️🤦🏼‍♂️🤦🏼‍♂️😫😫😫