Saudis Aided Family of Engineer Accused of Bugging OpenAI, Prosecutors Say

© Aaron Wojack for The New York Times

© Aaron Wojack for The New York Times

© TOMÁS SILVA/OBSERVADOR
Russian strikes on Ukrainian data centers could backfire, experts have told the Kyiv Independent, as Kyiv's retaliatory attacks have exposed vulnerabilities in how Moscow has organized IT infrastructure.
On Sept. 23, a Russian attack damaged a Kyiv data center housing network equipment for internet provider UTELS, causing service


© INÊS LACERDA/OBSERVADOR

© Ivan Pierre Aguirre for The New York Times
Whether it was youngsters proving their skills or state sabotage, Europe’s most hacked country was left with a mountain of waste after food began cooking in freezers
Shortly before midnight last Sunday, the digital thermostats controlling hundreds of supermarket cold aisles across France began to flicker and rise.
In a “bizarre and unprecedented” cyber-attack, hackers had remotely overridden the temperature settings on thousands of freezers, fridges and chiller cabinets pushing them from as low as -27C (-16.6F) to well over 50C (122F).
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© Photograph: Lucien Libert/Reuters

© Photograph: Lucien Libert/Reuters

© Photograph: Lucien Libert/Reuters

© The New York Times
As a free speech absolutist, Elon Musk is making a mistake going after Nitter, says Dr R P. He should instead be praising the site that helps users speak freely, uninhibited by login screens that undermine their privacy.
The post Musk’s Perplexing Battle With Nitter and the Problem With Locking the Internet Behind Login Screens appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.


© The New York Times
“Wake up, Link!” High in his treehouse, a pointy-eared boy named Link is roused by the call of a fairy. He is the only resident of the Kokiri Forest without a winged companion, until Navi bursts into his dreams to tell him that his destiny lies far beyond that sheltered corner of the woods. Thus begins a journey that will lead him to a princess, pit him against a threat determined to plunge the kingdom of Hyrule into darkness and, seven years later, task him with saving a world that has fallen into the clutches of evil.

La inteligencia artificial parece muy lista, pero no aprende sola. Miles de humanos han guiado su aprendizaje, corrigiendo y ajustando sus respuestas. Un informe publicado este jueves por las plataformas de investigación DiPLab y Reversing.Works da nuevos detalles sobre cómo miles de trabajadores europeos trabajan a ratos sueltos para Outlier, una plataforma de Scale AI. En junio de 2025, Meta pagó 12.400 millones de euros por el 49% de Scale AI y su fundador, Alexandr Wang, pasó a ser director de IA de la compañía de Mark Zuckerberg. Antes de esa adquisición, Outlier ayudaba también a entrenar los modelos de empresas como OpenAI o Google.

© Carlos Barria (REUTERS)
No mês passado, Zanin autorizou que pessoas com franquia de dados esgotada tivessem acesso gratuito aos domínios oficiais da Justiça Eleitoral, incluindo os sites do Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (TSE) e dos tribunais regionais eleitorais, para que os eleitores pudessem acessar informações sobre local de votação, justificativa eleitoral, checagem de desinformação, entre outras.
Contudo, após o primeiro turno, o Partido Verde (PV), legenda que entrou com o pedido de liberação da franquia, citou que houve falhas no acesso aos aplicativos e-Título e Pardal, usado para registro de denúncias de propaganda eleitoral.
Na decisão desta quarta, Zanin deu prazo de 48 horas para a Anatel esclarecer as falhas apontadas.
“Determino à Anatel que, em 48 horas, esclareça a causa das falhas verificadas nos endereços sso.acesso.gov.br e form.omni.serpro.gov.br e nos aplicativos e-Título, Pardal e Boletim na Mão, identificando, por meio dos próprios testes, os endereços e domínios de terceiros de que esses serviços dependem e que não constam da lista”, decidiu o ministro.
Procurada pela Agência Brasil, a Anatel declarou que não vai comentar a decisão.
O caso chegou ao Supremo após a Confederação Nacional dos Trabalhadores em Educação (CNTE) e o PV protocolarem uma ação para garantir acesso à internet móvel para todos os brasileiros, independentemente do limite da franquia de dados, nas 72 horas que antecedem as eleições.
As entidades alegaram que a limitação de franquia de dados impede acesso à informação durante o pleito.

Jean-Noël Barrot criticises X owner in speech attacking foreign efforts to destabilise France before 2027 election
France’s foreign minister has accused Elon Musk of using his social media platform to orchestrate “massive online harassment campaigns” against European leaders as he took aim at foreign efforts to destabilise the country before next year’s presidential election.
Speaking at an Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development conference on Tuesday, Jean-Noël Barrot pointed to the role that social media had come to play in the global battle over democracy. “The forces seeking to undermine democracy now dominate the information landscape, where they employ tactics designed to polarise public debate,” he said.
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© Photograph: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP

© Photograph: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP

© Photograph: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP

The Social Reckoning, Aaron Sorkin's latest jab at Big Tech, is conceived as a political and social prosecution of Facebook.
The social network and its owner, Mark Zuckerberg, in the movie's view, are responsible for the spread of misinformation, the decline of journalism, the polarization of the electorate, and the radicalization of specific individuals who go on to commit heinous acts of anti-democratic violence. In its final moments, the film strongly implies that Facebook and its engagement-boosting algorithms are directly responsible for the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021. Donald Trump, the election-losing president whose incendiary speech and repeated falsehoods about the results of the 2020 election preceded the riot, is never named in the movie. In a movie that positions itself as bold and brave, it's an omission of stunning, and revealing, cowardice.
To bring Trump into the picture would have complicated Sorkin's just-so story, in which Facebook's refusal to fact-check political ads and decision to boost engagement through a change in its recommendation algorithm are the central, and, at least within the movie's narrow frame, even sole cause of all that ails American democracy. Sorkin's story has no room for nuance or ambiguity, no interest in the larger political-social dynamics at work in the late 2010s and early 2020s, no time for disconfirming data that violates his narrative. He has found a pure villain in Facebook's founder, and that's the only story he wants to tell.
Like so many of Sorkin's films, The Social Reckoning is structured around what amounts to a trial, in this case a mock congressional hearing set up for Zuckerberg, Facebook's CEO, in advance of an appearance on Capitol Hill. The action inside that room is informed by a larger story that revolves around Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz's (played by Jeremy Allen White) quest to understand and uncover documentation that led to his award-winning investigative series, The Facebook Files. Horwitz works with Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison), a Facebook engineer who has concerns about the company's practices and begins leaking information in hopes of causing internal change. She's an anxious, socially awkward recluse; he's a tech-ignorant reporter who ended up on the Big Tech beat. The pairing allows Sorkin to build scene after scene of exposition and explanation, in which Haugen details various Facebook technical decisions believed to have dire social consequences.
Most notable among these is an algorithmic switch to something called "MSI," or "meaningful social interactions." Essentially, the network prioritized depth of engagement over simple likes, leading to a boost in usage, as well as an increase in exposure to radical groups and content. The movie poses as a sophisticated journalistic explainer, but its core argument is quite simple: Facebook changed its algorithm in a way that benefited the company but harmed society by pushing content from hate groups and other disreputable types. That, in turn, led to January 6. Case closed.
But what if the case isn't so simple? In these pages, Elizabeth Nolan Brown has outlined the many ways in which social media algorithms, especially on Facebook, have been unjustly maligned: Instead of causing polarization by locking people into narrow political bubbles, they can offer greater exposure to opposing views and even promote democratic virtues. The supposed negative effects of tech on children are, at minimum, disputed and in most cases probably overstated; some studies suggest that tech can enhance youth mental health. It's notable that Sorkin's story uses the violent calamity of January 6—a truly dark day for America—as his climactic argument. He can't use the election of 2020, because that election was won by Joe Biden. So he falls back to the ugliness of the riot, while ignoring Donald Trump.
The movie is framed in personal terms via the story of one woman's radicalization. The woman—rich, white, entitled, casually racist during a drunken encounter with cops that she films and posts on social media—turns out to be a friend of Haugen's, which is what drives her to go public about her employer. Sorkin uses the woman as a symbol of all that Facebook has done wrong; she's a consequence of Zuckerberg's disregard for democracy and truth.
But in real life, Haugen's never-named radicalized friend was a man, not a woman, who became obsessed with conspiratorial notions about politics, not a racist social-media troll. Sorkin's film is fiction, a dramatic retelling of events rather than a just-the-facts journalistic account, so it doesn't quite need to be held to the same standard. But it's notable that he has to massage the details in order to make his point. Perhaps he's doing so in service of a deeper truth. But that deeper truth isn't strictly true.
Humans are messy and complicated, and so is democracy. But Sorkin can't handle those complications. Instead, he delivers a smug, simplistic narrative that traffics in borderline misinformation while pretending to crusade for the truth. Maybe what we really need is a reckoning with Aaron Sorkin.
The post Aaron Sorkin's New Anti-Facebook Movie Is a Stunning Act of Self-Satisfied Cowardice appeared first on Reason Magazine.
