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Friday! Welcome back to the weekly roundup. On the podcast this week: How Grokipedia compares to the very much human-made Wikipedia, and what the Windows 11 update means for Windows users. In the section for subscribers at the Supporter level, what a16z is doing with a ‘speedrun’ to a wholly AI-generated world. Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube.
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 Collage by 404 Media FACES, PLEASE“You don’t got no ID?” a Border Patrol agent in a baseball cap, sunglasses, and neck gaiter asks a kid on a bike. The officer and three others had just stopped the two young men on their bikes during the day in what a video documenting the incident says is Chicago. One of the boys is filming the encounter on his phone. He says in the video he was born here, meaning he would be an American citizen. Videos reviewed by 404 Media show that ICE and CBP are actively using smartphone facial recognition technology in the field, including in stops that seem to have little justification beyond the color of someone’s skin, to then look up more information on that person, including their identity and potentially their immigration status.  Photo by Guillaume Didelet / Unsplash ‘SHAMELESS USE OF COVERT TECHNOLOGY’A number of Instagram accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers and millions of views have uploaded videos filmed with Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses show men entering massage parlors across the country and soliciting the workers there for sex work. It doesn’t appear that the women in the videos know they are being filmed and that the videos are being shared online, where they’re viewed by millions of people. This is extremely dangerous to the women in the videos who can be targeted by both law enforcement and racist, sexist extremists, and shows how Meta has built an entire supply chain for dangerous, privacy violating content on the internet.  Image: Daniel Oberhaus remixed by Jason Koebler YOU GROK NOTHINGOn Wednesday, as part of his ongoing war against Wikipedia because he does not like his own page, Elon Musk launched Grokipedia, a fully AI-generated “encyclopedia” that serves no one and nothing other than the ego of the world’s richest man. As others have already pointed out, Grokipedia seeks to be a right wing, anti-woke Wikipedia competitor. But to even call it a Wikipedia competitor is to give the half-assed project too much credit. It is not a Wikipedia “competitor” at all. It is a fully robotic, heartless regurgitation machine that cynically and indiscriminately sucks up the work of humanity to serve the interests, protect the ego, amplify the viewpoints, and further enrich the world’s wealthiest man.  Photo by Matthew Gault AT LEAST THEY LOOK... COOL? Zenni, an online glasses store, is offering a new coating for its lenses that the company says will protect people from facial recognition technology. Zenni calls it ID Guard and it works by adding a pink sheen to the surface of the glasses that reflects the infrared light used by some facial recognition cameras. Do they work? Yes, technically, according to testing conducted by 404 Media. Zenni’s ID Guard glasses block infrared light. It’s impossible to open an iPhone with FaceID while wearing them and they black out the eyes of the wearer in photos taken with infrared cameras. However, ID Guard glasses will not at all stop some of the most common forms of facial recognition that are easy to access and abuse. MORE GOOD POSTSReplying to Con Edison Refuses to Say How ICE Gets Its Customers’ Data, Mary Mangan wrote: “I worried about this kind of thing with our water system data too. We got these new water meters in our city. I tried repeatedly to get the city to tell me what their data policy was, and the data policy of the water meter provider. It sounded like they happily sell data when I read on their website. But nobody at the water meter place or the city would respond to me. I sounded like a conspiracy theorist and people laughed on a local forum when I raised the issue. I know it sounds bonkers. But the water data shows exactly when people are home, approximately how many people are there (you can see every flush), and it wouldn't be that hard to plan around that knowledge.”
And in response to Trump Admin’s Racist Halo Memes Are ‘A New Level of Dehumanization of Immigrants’, Locutus of Corg wrote: “‘Microsoft declined to comment on this story’. ... Or any other story in which their own silence continues to make them look worse and worse.”
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 MPREG School House Rock and why Ray-Bans are no longer cool. EMANUEL: I have light colored eyes and I spend the majority of my day inside looking at a screen, so I basically never go outside without wearing sunglasses. I’ve only ever owned one brand of sunglasses for the 20-ish years I’ve been wearing them on a daily basis, and that is Ray-Ban Wayfarers. I really hate thinking about and shopping for clothes, so when I find something I like I just stick to it basically until it's out of production or turns to shit (RIP American Apparel’s black t-shirts). When my son was born Sam bought him a pair of socks that look like Chuck Taylor All-Stars because that’s all I wear unless the snow or rain forces me to put on boots. I don’t know how I ended up with Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses, but it’s probably because it’s the first name that comes to mind when you think about sunglasses, the first search result when you Google “sunglasses,” and the most obvious, easy to get choice that requires the least thought. Aside from making it clear that I’m sartorially a very boring person, my choice of Ray-Ban Wayfarer also shows what a powerful brand it is. I struggle to think of a fashion item that is more consistently associated with one particular brand and design. It’s the kind of brand recognition other companies can only dream about. Thousands of marketing professionals can work their entire careers and not achieve anything as close to the ubiquity of Ray-Ban and the effortless cool of Muhammad Ali marketing your product for free forever. I also struggle to think of how badly you’d need to fuck up as a company to fumble a bag like that, but it seems like Ray-Ban might find a way by tying its reputation and the iconic Wayfarer look specifically to Meta and its AI camera glasses. Read the rest of Emanuel's Behind the Blog, as well as Jason, and Joseph's, by becoming a paid subscriber.
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