jasonkoebler

jasonkoebler, 7 months ago to random

I wrote about my first two months on Mastodon. I was a Mastodon hater because I thought it would be weird, complicated, or dead. It's been none of those things.

I'm ashamed I didn't join earlier and I'm ashamed I haven't been telling people to join it, because it's a version of the internet and social media I've long advocated for with my reporting: decentralized, portable, user controlled, not corporate:

https://www.404media.co/mastodon-is-the-good-one/

jasonkoebler, 3 days ago to random

Scoop: I obtained the contract Samsung requires independent shops to sign to buy phone repair parts from them.

It requires:

• "Daily" dumps of customer data
• The "immediate destruction" of any phones a shop comes across that has third-party parts

https://www.404media.co/samsung-requires-independent-repair-shops-to-share-customer-data-snitch-on-people-who-use-aftermarket-parts-leaked-contract-shows/

jasonkoebler, 14 days ago to random

Scoop: Solar storm is causing farmers' tractor GPS systems to go haywire. Many have shut down planting altogether during a critical period. A Deere dealer said accuracy is "extremely compromised"

https://www.404media.co/solar-storm-knocks-out-tractor-gps-systems-during-peak-planting-season/

jasonkoebler, 2 months ago to random

NEW: Tumblr and Wordpress are preparing to sell user data to Midjourney and OpenAI for AI training, according to internal documentation we've reviewed at 404 Media

https://www.404media.co/tumblr-and-wordpress-to-sell-users-data-to-train-ai-tools/

jasonkoebler, 5 months ago to random

Facebook is being overrun with stolen, AI-generated images that people think are real. Engagement bait pages use a "seed" image, clone it, then post it dozens of times across pages. People on FB think it's real.

https://www.404media.co/facebook-is-being-overrun-with-stolen-ai-generated-images-that-people-think-are-real/

jasonkoebler, 9 months ago to random

BREAKING: Apple has formally endorsed a strong right to repair bill in California after spending years spending millions of dollars opposing it. It's difficult to express how important this is. It means right to repair—consumers—have won

https://www.404media.co/apple-endorses-california-right-to-repair-bill/

jasonkoebler, 24 days ago to random

The publisher of a small imprint of roleplaying games magazines/speculative fiction shuts down after 22 years because their submissions have been flooded with AI to the extent they cannot wade through them:

“The problem with AI is the people who use AI. These are people who think their ‘ideas’ are more important than the actual craft of writing, so they churn out all these ‘ideas’ and enter their idea prompts and think the output is a story.”

https://www.404media.co/bards-and-sages-closing-ai-generated-writing/

jasonkoebler, 6 months ago to random

New: Firefox users have reported an "artificial" 5-second delay when they try to load YouTube videos that is magically fixed if they use Chrome, which has been going viral in a few different places. I asked Google what is going on. They

1. Didn't deny the artificial wait time is happening
2. Said it's part of its war on ad blockers, not targeted at Firefox

Mozilla also told me no indication this is targeted at Firefox

https://www.404media.co/youtube-says-new-5-second-video-load-delay-is-supposed-to-punish-ad-blockers-not-firefox-users/

jasonkoebler, 7 months ago to random

A repair shop in Germany has invented a tool that breaks Apple's repair DRM on MacBook Pros, allowing independent companies to fix a common issue that Apple charges > $1,000 to repair

https://www.404media.co/diy-tinkerer-invents-tool-that-breaks-apples-macbook-repair-locks/

jasonkoebler, 1 month ago to random

New: Facebook's AI chatbot told a parent in a group asking for advice from other parents that it has a gifted, disabled child who attends school in New York City

https://www.404media.co/facebooks-ai-told-parents-group-it-has-a-disabled-child/

jasonkoebler, 4 months ago to random

NEW: Police in New Jersey have spent at least $15 million in federal COVID relief funds buying surveillance cameras from a company that has been rebranding banned Chinese surveillance tech also used to surveil Uyghur people

https://www.404media.co/new-jersey-used-covid-relief-funds-to-buy-banned-dahua-chinese-surveillance-cameras/

jasonkoebler, 5 months ago to random

The 23andMe hack is a nightmare. 23andMe is a nightmare. Genetic databases are a nightmare. Don't do this to yourself and don't do it to your family members:

https://www.404media.co/23andme-hack-christmas-gift/

jasonkoebler, 4 months ago to random

Google News is indexing and promoting websites that immediately rip off others with AI clones of their articles. These websites are absolutely littered with Google ads. Our website, in which real humans do journalism, is not indexed by Google News

https://www.404media.co/google-news-is-boosting-garbage-ai-generated-articles/

jasonkoebler, 4 months ago to random

We’ve begun to put our articles behind an email registration wall. We tried to articulate why this is:

• AI stealing our articles
• AI spam destroying discoverability on search
• Fracturing of social
• Collapse of programmatic ad market

We are actively working on a solve for paid subscribers who use RSS, or ways for real humans to tap into a full text RSS feed

https://404media.co/why-404-media-needs-your-email-address/

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jasonkoebler, 3 months ago to random

New: We published body camera footage of a sheriff in Idaho hunting for 'obscene' books at the library to use for a political stunt last year in which he announced he was holding two stolen books hostage at a public meeting.

Those books were actually stolen from another library. The sheriff returned them mutilated, and they have not been returned to circulation

https://www.404media.co/police-bodycam-shows-sheriff-kootenai-idaho-hunting-for-obscene-books-at-library/

jasonkoebler, 8 months ago to random

New from me and @josephcox: buzzy AI company that turns 2d sketches into 3d models with "magic" has actually been using 3d artists in developing countries, who have a goal of delivering an asset to a client 15 minutes after they request it:

https://www.404media.co/kaedim-ai-startup-2d-to-3d-used-cheap-human-labor/

jasonkoebler, 5 months ago to random

A new Plex feature shows you what your friends and family are watching, horrifies users:

"one of my friends is apparently watching a ton of cheesy, soft porn stuff"

"Discover Together and Week in Review emails are a MASSIVE breach of privacy and trust!"

"I just got an email about a friend’s watching habits which he definitely didn’t want to share."

"a certain percentage of people want to know what kind of porn grandma likes, but I’m hoping it’s not the majority"

https://www.404media.co/plex-users-fear-discover-together-week-in-review-feature-will-leak-porn-habits-to-their-friends-and-family/

jasonkoebler, 4 months ago to random

The hero Polish hackers who fixed DRM-bricked trains have explained how they did it. There was DRM that killed power to trains, broke emergency brakes and compressors if trains had been to independent repair yard. One train was also programmed to arbitrarily break on December 21, which actually happened two weeks ago:

https://www.404media.co/polish-hackers-explain-exactly-how-they-fixed-trains-that-the-manufacturer-bricked/

jasonkoebler, 4 months ago to random

New: I obtained hundreds of internal documents that show how universities have bent over backwards to accommodate Starship food delivery robots which sometimes have trouble crossing the street:

https://www.404media.co/student-should-have-a-healthy-looking-bmi-how-universities-bend-over-backwards-to-accommodate-starship-food-delivery-robots/

The robots necessitated:

• Publicity photos with students who "should have a healthy-looking BMI"
• Police supposed to let Starship "lead" incident investigations
• Trying to form "habits" with a "captured" base of student populations
• Redesigning intersections

jasonkoebler, 6 months ago to random

so, a few years ago at Motherboard, we published an article about a smart CCTV company that was creating a surveillance network in Johannesburg, South Africa that networked the cameras together, could be monitored all at once, had image detection, etc. Experts said this was enabling a surveillance state and "digital apartheid." People were horrified.

Similar tech is now all over the US, in small towns and big cities:

https://www.404media.co/fusus-ai-cameras-took-over-town-america/

jasonkoebler, 1 month ago to random

Bullying in open source software is a massive security risk, as shown by the Xz backdoor, a near-miss at F-Droid, and as repeatedly pointed out by @Mer__edith, @eighthave, and so many others over the years:

https://www.404media.co/xz-backdoor-bullying-in-open-source-software-is-a-massive-security-vulnerability/

jasonkoebler, 5 months ago to random

Very fascinating paper from Google DeepMind researchers prompts ChatGPT to spit out training data in response to basic queries. This includes large amounts of PII, passages of text pulled from scraped directly from CNN, Goodreads, WordPress blogs, fandom wikis, Terms of Service agreements, Stack Overflow source code, copyrighted legal disclaimers, Wikipedia pages, a casino wholesaling website, news blogs, and random internet comments.

https://www.404media.co/google-researchers-attack-convinces-chatgpt-to-reveal-its-training-data/

jasonkoebler, 1 month ago to random

If you add "reddit" to the end of search terms so that you can find posts by a real person, I have bad news: AI is beginning to poison Reddit in an effort to game Google results

https://www.404media.co/ai-is-poisoning-reddit-to-promote-products-and-game-google-with-parasite-seo/

jasonkoebler, 5 months ago to random

NEW: A marketing firm owned by telecom giant Cox is advertising a service to companies that claims to actually listen to embedded microphones in users' phones, smart TVs, and smart devices:

https://www.404media.co/cmg-cox-media-actually-listening-to-phones-smartspeakers-for-ads-marketing/

jasonkoebler, 5 months ago to random

Who among us hasn't boarded an international flight without a boarding pass or passport, eaten two meals, talked to various passengers and flight crew, then arrived to the USA with no recollection of how we got there and no record of us ever having been on the plane?

https://www.404media.co/no-record-of-russian-economist-who-flew-to-lax-without-a-ticket-didnt-remember-how-he-got-here/?ref=daily-stories-newsletter