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"Truth Social allows users to post and share a "truth" the same way they would with a tweet. There are no ads, according to Willis and a second source familiar with TMTG. Users choose who they follow and the feed is a mix of individual posts and an RSS-like news feed. They will be alerted if someone mentions or begins following them."

""It's not so much the technical disruption, it's what it does to undermine confidence, like in the financial sector. It gets people quite nervous. It's more that kind of secondary impact," said Jamie Collier, a Mandiant consultant, who described a DDoS as akin to stuffing a thousand envelopes through a letterbox every second."

"The collapse of SVB was the second-largest bank failure in the history of the United States. The largest, Washington Mutual in 2008, took place over the course of eight months. SVB's collapse played out in barely two days. Anxious Twitter posts and WhatsApp exchanges, coupled with the ease of access that online banking provides, are seen by analysts as a serious catalyst for the current crisis. Experts suggest that in the social media age, the psychological behaviour behind a bank run - mass fear from depositors of losing their savings - may be amplified and go viral quicker than bank officers and regulators can successfully respond."

"A fake, AI-generated image of Pope Francis stepping out in a stylish white puffer jacket and bejewelled crucifix racked up millions of views over the weekend - with many mistaking it for a real image. Experts fear the rapidly developing technology behind the image could soon undermine our ability to distinguish fake photos, which can be generated in seconds, from reality."

"Kids aged 5 or younger who experience two or more hours of daily screen time are nearly eight times more likely to be diagnosed with focus-related conditions including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), says Michael Manos, director of the ADHD Center for Evaluation and Treatment at the Cleveland Clinic.   That's because these devices likely impact the brain, he explains. Electronics allow for repeated stimulation and immediate gratification every few seconds. And when we become accustomed to such rapid and frequent stimulation, it can be hard to focus when things in the real world aren't as mesmerizing. "Screen time makes the regular world seem rather dull, like watching a plant grow," says Manos. "

"Once, she spent an entire week completing one illustration of a woman dressed in traditional Chinese attire performing a lion dance - first making a sketch on Adobe Photoshop, then carefully refining the outlines and adding colors. But since February, these job opportunities have vanished, Yu told Rest of World. Gaming companies, equipped with AI image generators, can create a similar illustration in seconds. Yu said they now simply offer to commission her for small fixes, like tweaking the lighting and skewed body parts, for a tenth of her original rate."

"Google has put a temporary block on its new artificial intelligence model producing images of people after it portrayed German second world war soldiers and Vikings as people of colour. The tech company said it would stop its Gemini model generating images of people after social media users posted examples of images generated by the tool that depicted some historical figures - including popes and the founding fathers of the US - in a variety of ethnicities and genders."

"One of the key features introduced is a "Correction" capability in Azure AI Content Safety. This tool aims to address the problem of AI hallucinations - instances where AI models generate false or misleading information. "When we detect there's a mismatch between the grounding context and the response… we give that information back to the AI system," Bird explained. "With that additional information, it's usually able to do better the second try.""

"National police agency says it is investigating 513 cases of deepfake pornography as a new scandal grips the country Raphael Rashid in Seoul and Justin McCurry in Tokyo Fri 13 Sep 2024 21.00 BST Share The anger was palpable. For the second time in just a few years, South Korean women took to the streets of Seoul to demand an end to sexual abuse. When the country spearheaded Asia's #MeToo movement, the culprit was molka - spy cams used to record women without their knowledge. Now their fury was directed at an epidemic of deepfake pornography."

"It seems pointless to ask whether the spreadsheet is a good or a bad thing. But one prominent contrarian, the technology columnist John C Dvorak, had no doubts last week as he contemplated VisiCalc's 30th anniversary. 'The spreadsheet', he fumed, 'created the "what if" society. Instead of moving forward and progressing normally, the what-if society that questions each and every move we make. It second-guesses everything'. Worse still, he thinks, the spreadsheet has elevated the once-lowly bean-counter to the board and enabled accountants to run the world."

"TikTok quantified the precise amount of viewing it takes for someone to form a habit: 260 videos. Kentucky authorities note that while it might seem a lot, TikTok videos can be just a few seconds long. "Thus, in under 35 minutes, an average user is likely to become addicted to the platform," the state investigators concluded."

"Kafaar was inspired to turn the tables on telephone fraudsters after he played a "dad's joke" on a scam caller in front of his two kids while they enjoyed a picnic in the sun. With inane chatter, he kept the scammer on the line. "The kids had a very good laugh," he says. "And I was thinking the purpose was to deceive the scammer, to waste their time so they don't talk to others. "Scamming the scammers, if you like." The next day he called his team from the university's Cyber Security Hub in. There must be a better way than his "dad joke" method, he thought. And there had to be something smarter than a popular existing piece of technology - the Lennybot. Before Malcolm and Ibrahim, there was Lenny. Lenny is a doddery, old Australian man, keen for a rambling chat. He's achatbot, designed to troll telemarketers. With a thready voice, tinged with a slight whistle, Lenny repeats various phrases on loop. Each phrase kicks in after 1.5 seconds of silence, to mimic the rhythm of a conversation."

"Perplexity then sent this knockoff story to its subscribers via a mobile push notification. It created an AI-generated podcast using the same (Forbes) reporting - without any credit to Forbes, and that became a YouTube video that outranks all Forbes content on this topic within Google search. Perplexity had taken our work, without our permission, and republished it across multiple platforms - web, video, mobile - as though it were itself a media outlet. As we dug, we found a similar rip-off of a second story at Forbes. And other stolen scoops - all the information, negligible citation - from Bloomberg and CNBC."

"Meta is facing a second set of lawsuits in Africa over the psychological distress experienced by content moderators employed to take down disturbing social media content including depictions of murders, extreme violence and child sexual abuse. Lawyers are gearing up for court action against a company contracted by Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, after meeting moderators at a facility in Ghana that is understood to employ about 150 people. Moderators working for Majorel in Accra claim they have suffered from depression, anxiety, insomnia and substance abuse as a direct consequence of the work they do checking extreme content."

A system called EyeDrop uses a head-mounted eye tracker that simultaneously records your field of view so it knows where you are looking on the screen. Gazing at an object - a photo, say - and then pressing a key, selects that object. It can then be moved from the screen to a tablet or smartphone just by glancing at the second device, as long as the two are connected wirelessly.

Simply amazing - huh - sorry I could not resist...

BOB SAGET. While in class with you, I mentioned this article and for some reason (probably to annoy me) you stole it before I could get to it. I'm upset and disapointed in you BOB SAGET.

"In the meantime, I actually like how most of these islands represent an attempt by education institutions to embrace the weirdness of the web. The current crop of education startups seem bland and antiseptic in comparison to these virtual worlds. I can't take a Coursera class on a pirate ship, or attend office hours in front of an edX campfire. And honestly, that's probably a good thing. But it makes the web slightly less interesting."

"Artists say AI image generators are copying their style to make thousands of new images - and it's completely out of their control"