Next to technicolor neon signs featuring Road Runner, an inspirational phrase that says “everything will be fucking amazing,” and a weed leaf, Geovany Alvarado points to a neon sign he’s particularly proud of: “The Lost and Found Art,” it says. “I had a customer who called me, it was an old guy. He wanted to…
Independent game developer Paolo Pedercini wanted to announce his new game Future? No Thanks! a few weeks ago, but said it was delayed because Steam found a screenshot it planned to share “had suggestive themes.” The screenshot? A low-polygon woman in a short dress with her legs closed together. Future? No Thanks! was meant to…
An app developer has jailbroken Echelon exercise bikes to restore functionality that the company put behind a paywall last month, but copyright laws prevent him from being allowed to legally release it. Last month, Peloton competitor Echelon pushed a firmware update to its exercise equipment that forces its machines to connect to the company’s servers…
Shortly after Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th president of the United States on Monday, many Facebook users started to report that the social network automatically made them follow Trump’s Facebook page. I’ve seen several threads on this issue on Reddit, social media, and people I know personally have also asked me why…
Earlier this month, an appeals court in California issued a blistering decision and record $10,000 fine against a lawyer who submitted a brief in which “nearly all of the legal quotations in plaintiff’s opening brief, and many of the quotations in plaintiff’s reply brief, are fabricated” through the use of ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Grok….
Congressman August Pfluger (TX-11), Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security’s Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, questioned private sector cybersecurity professionals during a full-committee hearing titled, “Unconstrained Actors: Assessing Global Cyber Threats to the Homeland.” The witnesses included Adam Meyers, Senior Vice President of Counter Adversary Operations at CrowdStrike; retired Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery,…
OpenAI’s video generator Sora 2 is still producing copyright infringing content featuring Nintendo characters and the likeness of real people, despite the company’s attempt to stop users from making such videos. OpenAI updated Sora 2 shortly after launch to detect videos featuring copyright infringing content, but 404 Media’s testing found that it’s easy to circumvent…
Welcome back to the Abstract! This week has been a lot. This year has been a lot. THIS MILLENIUM HAS BEEN A LOT. That’s why there’s only good news in the column this week. We deserve it. Normally, I’m not a big fan of putting artificial stuff in our brains (see: plastic spoons). But I’ll…
In the last of our five-part series, Sophos X-Ops explores the implications and opportunities arising from threat actors’ involvement in real-world industries and crimes
An AI app for creating nonconsensual nude images of anyone is getting the vast majority of its traffic directly from Meta platforms, where the app is buying thousands of explicit ads featuring nonconsensual nudity of celebrities and influencers. The blatant and repeated violation of Meta’s policies over the course of months is making a mockery…
