You probably saw on social media that X put up a "giant, garishly lit X logo" on top of its office in San Francisco that the people living nearby rapidly complained about when it started illuminating their homes all night. It's gone now, but as is usual for Elon Musk, X did not get permission to install this structure and refused to let inspectors take a look so it could get permission, so it was probably improperly installed - a bad idea in a place like SF that is prone to earthquakes. A more cynical person than me could argue this stunt was a distraction from the fact X has re-instated the accounts of renown antisemite Kanye West and prolific child abuse distributor Dom Lucre, while threatening to sue the Center for Countering Digital Hate for exposing X's hypocrisy.
At a news conference in Taiwan, News Corp Australia's boss told the crowd that a team of four staff (called Data Local) pump out 3,000 articles a week using generative artificial intelligence to "cover daily topics such as local weather, fuel prices, and traffic conditions", primarily in its "hyperlocal" mastheads, "typically in regions with a population of 15,000 or more people". Apparently they've used "automation" for years to generate this kinda content, but have boosted it with LLMs (I assume, they just called it AI and don't say what platform they employ) lately to make it better. Probably a good use for AI as getting a person to write this stuff is expensive, boring and tedious, but its kinda shit that News Corp doesn't say that stuff is generated by a bot, instead labelling the author as "Peter Judd" - News Corp's data journalism editor.
Canon is now advising customers to wipe the settings on their wi-fi enabled printers before disposing of them, due to the security and privacy risks "if the printer memory is extracted by repair technicians, temporary users, or future buyers of the devices, allowing them to get the connection details for your Wi-Fi network". I honestly would never have thought to wipe the settings on a printer before dumping it on the nature strip (which I have seen very often!), but it makes sense, as if I grab the printer from outside your house, I know where the wi-fi network is located *and* the credentials to get in. I don't know how you extract the details from the printer but I can't imagine it being that hard.
Virtual Environment Reality workstation technology 1989 (BonnieReal / Internet Archive)
📻 Time Bomb - Dismemberment Plan
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