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Friday's here and so is the weekly roundup. Let's get into it. On the podcast this week: a hacking group that doxed DHS, ICE, FBI, and DOJ officials, and Wikipedia’s AI problem. In the section for subscribers at the Supporter level: OpenAI’s inevitable path to an AI sex bot. Did you catch our short film about a Los Angeles neon shop keeping the lost art alive? It’s on YouTube and the full story is here.
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Unknown Number Calling? It’s Not Random The BBC caught scam call center workers on hidden cameras as they laughed at the people they were tricking. One worker bragged about making $250k from victims. The disturbing truth? Scammers don’t pick phone numbers at random. They buy your data from brokers. Once your data is out there, it’s not just calls. It’s phishing, impersonation, and identity theft. That’s why we recommend Incogni: They delete your info from the web, monitor and follow up automatically, and continue to erase data as new risks appear. Try Incogni here and get 55% off your subscription with code INCOGNI404.
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 Image: 404 Media and Meta COOL HOBBY BROMeta’s Ray-Ban glasses are the tech giant’s main attempt at bringing augmented reality to the masses. Out of the box, they have a bright LED light that illuminates whenever the wearer hits record, to discourage stalkers, weirdos, or just anyone from filming people without their consent. Or at least warn people nearby that they are. Meta has designed the glasses to not work if someone covers up the LED with tape. That protection is what some hobbyists are modifying the glasses to circumvent.  Image: Tea's website TEA SPILLEDApple removed Tea, the women’s safety app which went viral earlier this year before facing multiple data breaches, from the App Store. “This app is currently not available in your country or region,” a message on the Apple App Store currently says when trying to visit a link to the app. Apple told 404 Media in an email it removed the app, as well as a copycat called TeaOnHer, for failing to meet the company’s terms of use around content moderation and user privacy. Apple also said it received an excessive number of complaints, including ones about the personal data of minors being posted in the apps.  Screenshot via X INFO DUMPIn an AI-generated video reposted by Donald Trump, the president, wearing a crown, takes off in a fighter jet to the song “Danger Zone” like he’s in Top Gun and bombs people with gallons of chunky brown liquid. It’s poop, ok? It’s shit. It’s diarrhea, and it’s clear that Trump is fantasizing about doing a carpet-bomb dookie on the people he put his hand on a bible and swore to serve nine months ago. But this was not clear, it seems, to many other journalists. Most national news outlets seem scared to call it how they see, and how everyone sees it: as Trump dropping turd bombs on America, instead opting for euphemisms.  Image: "National Security Agency" by CreativeTimeReports is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 MORE LAPSUS$ MORE PROBLEMSA hacking group that recently doxed hundreds of government officials, including from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), has now built dossiers on tens of thousands of U.S. government officials, including NSA employees, a member of the group told 404 Media. The member said the group did this by digging through its caches of stolen Salesforce customer data. The person provided 404 Media with samples of this information, which 404 Media was able to corroborate. READ MOREReplying to OpenAI Catches Up to AI Market Reality: People Are Horny, Inge Janse writes: “Thanks for this analysis. Well worded, well considered. The conclusion didn't come as a surprise, but it's always both scary and gratifying to hear that those you don't want and dare to trust, actually can't be trusted.”
And to The AWS Outage Bricked People’s $2,700 Smartbeds, Kevin Mirsky wrote: “As someone who looked into this product briefly before balking at the price and subscription requirement, it's blatantly clear these companies DO NOT want their products to have offline support. The solution is intentionally designed to not work without a subscription. Making a better product that works offline removes their rationale to charge a monthly fee for a several thousand-dollar product. It's ‘profit-first’ architecture at its very finest.”
BEHIND THE BLOGThis is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss Pavlovian Chartbeat response, when to say "cum," and the wave of making things for humans, by humans. JOSEPH: Right now I’m in the midst of upgrading a bunch of my podcasting and related gear. I’m using the same kinda cheap to midrange web cam I got when we first launched 404 Media. My mic is fine but now that a fair number of people listen to the pod, and we want to grow it, it’s time to invest in some new tech. Jason has already done this, I’m more following his lead. I used to be very into cameras, tech, gadgets, mics, but it’s been a few years. Read the rest of Joseph's Behind the Blog, as well as Jason, Sam, and Emanuel's, by becoming a paid subscriber.
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