In perhaps the most adorable hacker story of the year, a trio of technologists in India found an innovative way to circumvent Apple’s location restrictions on AirPod Pro 2s so they could enable the earbuds’ hearing aid feature for their grandmas. The hack involved a homemade Faraday cage, a microwave, and a lot of trial…
People have never been better, here in the Year of Our Simulation 2024, at hating the very forces underlying that simulation—at hating, in other words, digital technology itself. And good for them. These everywhere-active tech critics don’t just rely, for their on-trend position-taking, on vague, nostalgist, technophobic feelings anymore. Now they have research papers to…
Substack does not have an official policy governing the use of AI. One of Substack’s cofounders, Hamish McKenzie, has described the generative AI boom as a sea change that writers will need to confront, regardless of their personal views on the tech: “Whether you’re for or against this development ultimately doesn’t matter. It’s happening,” he…
At sentencing, the judge was also permitted to take under consideration the murder-for-hire allegations, despite them never having been charged at trial. “Until the Supreme Court rules otherwise, relevant but uncharged crimes of this sort can be and are regularly considered by judges,” says Richman. Ulbricht has never fully acknowledged the harm inflicted by the…
I can tell this question comes from an honest place of wanting to reduce the harm you cause through your individual interactions with AI software, which we know is quite resource-intensive. But first, take a step back with me for a moment and free yourself from the guilt of existence. I would bet serious cash…
After more than 1,200 days of silence, Li Ziqi, arguably the most successful internet influencer from China on YouTube, is suddenly posting videos again. Earlier this week, the 34-year-old content creator, who is best-known for sharing soothing, meticulously edited clips of herself cooking traditional Chinese dishes, farming, and working on elaborate art projects, posted three…
Minecraft remains remarkably popular a decade or so after it was first released, thanks to a unique mix of quirky gameplay and open world building possibilities. A knock-off called Oasis, released last month, captures much of the original game’s flavor with a remarkable and weird twist. The entire game is generated not by a game…
The companies are open to both raising outside funding for EUSP and licensing its index to other companies, including those that might want to use the data to train AI systems. “We’re bringing together the most experienced search engineers to build sovereign tech in Europe—especially for the French and German language, and we’re supremely confident…
Amid a rising tide of low-cost weaponized adversary drones menacing American troops abroad, the US military is pulling out all the stops to protect its forces from the ever-present threat of death from above. But between expensive munitions, futuristic but complicated directed energy weapons, and its own growing drone arsenal, the Pentagon is increasingly eyeing…
Topic, who also represents The Intercept in a similar DMCA case against OpenAI, as well as the nonprofit newsroom the Center for Investigative Reporting in a copyright infringement case against both OpenAI and Microsoft, says he is “confident that these kinds of DMCA claims are permitted under the Constitution.” Not all experts agree. “These claims…