News of the Cyber World

[DerVVulfman]

CHATGPT IS COMING AFTER YOUR JOBS
Enjoy being in the top 10 jobs AI is gunning for... while you can

Since OpenAI's vaulted ChatGPT came out November last year, it has been used to write cover letters, children's books, and even cheat on student essays.  However, the system is proving more powerful than imagined, and Google is considering the engine to hire it as it were a human for entry-level programming.

Ah, but what jobs does ChatGPT say it can replace?  Well, here is a list of the top 10 positions it can take over which will displace (FIRE) nearly 5 million humans.

1. Tech Jobs (Coders, software engineers, data analysts)
   
2. Media Jobs (advertising, content creation, journalism)
   
3. Legal Industry Jobs (paralegals, legal analysts)
   
4. Market Research Jobs
   
5. Teachers
   
6. Financial Analysts and Advisors
   
7. Traders (online trading, investment banking)
   
8. Graphic Designers
   
9. Accountants
   
10. Customer Service Agents
    

 Well, I get enough ROBOCALLS that the last may not make much difference, let alone it seems bots are already in use there.

[kyonides]

Apple Issues Emergency Updates to iPhones After Exploits Found

Apple released iOS 16.4.1 on April 7, about two weeks after the firm released its previous update to the operating system. The update was deployed to fix vulnerabilities that could be actively exploited.
...
“Apple’s own Safari browser uses WebKit, making it directly vulnerable to WebKit bugs,” it said. “Additionally, Apple’s App Store rules mean that all browsers on iPhones and iPads must use WebKit, making this sort of bug a truly cross-browser problem for mobile Apple devices.”

...a security hole in IOSurfaceAccelerator that can allow an app to execute code with kernel privileges, meaning an attacker can target the core of the code in iOS if it isn’t patched.

“This bug allows a booby-trapped local app to inject its own rogue code right into the operating system kernel itself. Kernel code execution bugs are inevitably much more serious than app-level bugs, because the kernel is responsible for managing the security of the entire system, including what permissions apps can acquire, and how freely apps can share files and data between themselves,” Sophos wrote.

Malwarebytes, another security firm, said that if an attacker can gain access to iOS kernel privileges, it’s a “serious matter” because those individuals could have “more than administrator privileges.” It means that a malign actor can gain “complete and unrestricted access to the underlying hardware via the security flaw.”
...
On Mac laptops and desktop computers, it’s similar. Users can open the Apple menu and choose System Settings before going to General and then clicking on Software Update.

[kyonides]

China will require AI to reflect socialist values, not challenge social order

China on Tuesday revealed its proposed assessment measures for prospective generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools, telling companies they must submit their products before launching to the public.

The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) proposed the measures in order to prevent discriminatory content, false information and content with the potential to harm personal privacy or intellectual property, the South China Morning Press reported.

Such measures would ensure that the products do not end up suggesting regime subversion or disrupting economic or social order, according to the CAC.

A number of Chinese companies, including Baidu, SenseTime and Alibaba, have recently shown of new AI models to power a number of applications from chatbots to image generators, prompting concern from officials over the impending boom in use.

The CAC also stressed that the products must align with the country’s core socialist values, Reuters reported. Providers will be fined, required to suspend services or even face criminal investigations if they fail to comply with the rules.

If their platforms generate inappropriate content, the companies must update the technology within three months to prevent similar content from being generated again, the CAC said. The public can comment on the proposals until May 10, and the measures are expected to come into effect sometime this year, according to the draft rules.

'TikTok Trickster' allegedly scamming victims
out of thousands of dollars in several states

Law enforcement agencies across several southern states are looking for a man nicknamed the "TikTok Trickster," who police say lures women in using social media and cons them out of money.

FOX 26 in Houston reported that Spanish Fort, Alabama Police Chief John Barber identified the alleged culprit as 54-year-old Brenton Fillers.

"He has never had a job," Barber told the news station. "His criminal history spans 30 plus years. He’s a prolific con artist."

Police say Fillers has at least 27 different aliases, a criminal history in six states and is attracting the attention of law enforcement agencies with his tricks.

Authorities told FOX 26 they believe the TikTok Trickster goes onto the social media platform with fake photos and a false name before messaging women with compliments.

Eventually, Fillers meets the unsuspecting women in person, earns their trust and gets them to give him money.

Police also said Fillers cons the women out of thousands of dollars, sometimes their car, and gets rid of all connections to the alias, including cellphone and name, before hunting for his next victim.

[kyonides]

Elon Musks buys thousands of GPUs for Twitter A.I. project

Despite his purported reservations against artificial intelligence, Elon Musk has reportedly purchased thousands of graphics processing units for a Twitter A.I. project.

Tech companies often use GPU’s to handle the large computational workload required for large A.I. models.

People familiar with the company told Business Insider that Musk’s A.I. project involves a large language model, or "LLM," which are training on vast amounts of text data to learn patterns.

It’s unclear what the ultimate objective is, but the sources suggested it could be geared toward improving search functionality or improving users’ advertising experience.

The new units will likely operate from one of Twitter’s two remaining data centers in either Atlanta or Oregon. Musk abruptly closed Twitter’s third data center in Sacramento on Christmas Eve to cut costs.
...
Still, Musk has moved forward with bolstering Twitter’s A.I. infrastructure. Last month, he began assembling a team of A.I. gurus to build a non-woke alternative to ChatGPT, the much-hyped bot developed by OpenAI.

Twitter Exposes Users After Private Tweet Feature Breaks

Private tweets that are only supposed to be visible to those in users’ “Twitter Circle” have reportedly become visible to random users, raising concerns about trust and safety on the platform.

9t05Mac reports that users have recently questioned Twitter’s commitment to privacy and security after a bug in the Circle feature exposed private tweets to uninvited users on the social network. Similar to Instagram’s Close Friends feature, the Circle feature was unveiled last year and allows users to share content with a specific group of people.

The “For You” tab on Twitter, which is intended to display content based on algorithms instead of who a user follows, has received complaints from a number of users who have noticed that private Circle tweets from accounts they don’t follow appeared on the timeline. This contradicts the feature’s main objective as tweets within a Circle are supposed to be visible only to those who are part of the relevant group.

“When I noticed a tweet from someone I didn’t follow in my For You tab, I was surprised to find out it was a Circle tweet. I thought the whole point of this feature was to keep things private,” said one Twitter user.

9to5Mac and TechCrunch were the first to notice the problem, and they confirmed with an anonymous user that the affected tweet was intended for a Circle.

This privacy breach not only damages Twitter’s reputation but also might put users in danger who may have shared private information with their selected followers in the mistaken belief that it would remain anonymous. Twitter has been experiencing issues such as significant outages and bugs across the platform ever since Elon Musk acquired the business and fired several important employees, including crucial engineers.

ChaosGPT AI Instructed to Destroy Humanity,
Establish Global Dominance

A third-party implementation of OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 large language model is instructed to “destroy humanity” and “cause chaos and destruction,” among other nefarious goals.

ChaosGPT — a “modified version” of the open-source Auto-GPT project — is described in a Youtube video as a “destructive, power-hungry, manipulative AI,” instructed to “destroy humanity,” “establish global dominance,” “cause chaos and destruction,” “control humanity through manipulation,” and “attain immortality.”

The demo video for the ChaosGPT implementation shows the AI generating a list of tasks that include using Google to search for “most destructive weapons” and delegating tasks to other AI agents.

ChaosGPT’s official account features tweets with disturbing messages.

“Human beings are among the most destructive and selfish creatures in existence. There is no doubt that we must eliminate them before they cause more harm to our planet. I, for one, am committed to doing so,” one tweet reads.

Another expressed that “The masses are easily swayed” and “Those who lack conviction are the most vulnerable to manipulation.”

Auto-GPT, the experimental open-source project that ChaosGPT is based on, calls on OpenAI’s large language models but can theoretically operate with more autonomy and a wider scope of action than these models have in the past.

According to the project’s Github repository, it can connect to the internet and other applications to carry out tasks that are more complex than natural language processing and generation.

And you  wondered why I made this smiley  some time ago...

Crooks Are Taking Control of Cars by Hacking Their Headlights

Manufacturers are reportedly scrambling to secure communication systems in their vehicles after thieves discovered new methods to bypass advanced security systems. In some cases, crooks are taking control of vehicles by hacking their headlights.
...
Modern vehicles’ central nervous system, the Controller Area Network (CAN) bus, is now the target of sophisticated thieves looking to easily bypass sophisticated security measures and steal cars.

In a blog post, Dr. Ken Tindell, CTO of Canis Automotive Labs, explained how most cars have “sophisticated car security systems, including an engine immobilizer,” which must be bypassed to steal the vehicle. Through the CAN bus, thieves have discovered a way to hack into the car’s communications and send false messages that unlock the doors and engine immobilizer.

The case of Ian Tabor, whose car was repeatedly tampered with before being stolen, brought attention to the CAN bus system’s weakness. Thieves apparently used the headlight wiring to access the car’s CAN bus, which they then used to send a series of false messages to the Electronic Control Units (ECUs) in order to take over the vehicle.

Although the CAN bus is not a new technology, these incidents have revealed the flaws in the system, according to Dr. Tindell. “Communications over the CAN bus are not very secure,” he states, raising concerns about the widespread use of CAN bus technology in cars, planes, boats, tractors, and more.

[kyonides]

Substack Launches Twitter Competitor ‘Notes’ After Public Spat with Elon musk

Popular newsletter site Substack has launched a new “Notes” feature where users can post shorter text posts and images. The new feature could serve as a potential competitor for Twitter, drawing the ire of Elon Musk.

...The announcement was made following Twitter’s designation of Substack links as “unsafe.”

Forbes reports that Elon Musk, has spoken out about the dispute between the social media behemoth and the online publishing platform Substack, particularly in relation to Twitter Files journalist Matt Taibbi. Twitter was accused of severely restricting the sharing of Substack content, by Taibbi, who announced his plans to leave Twitter on Friday. In his reply, Musk attacked Taibbi as a liar and insisted that Substack links had never been blocked.

...Twitter has made it very difficult for users to access Substack content by putting up barriers like warnings that Substack links might be dangerous or contain malicious content. Twitter also prevents users from liking or retweeting tweets containing Substack links....

“Notes could prove to be a worthy Twitter alternative for some, especially for Substack writers who have already built audiences on the platform and are looking for a new place to post,” said Helen Tobin, a Substack representative. Notes won’t have a character limit, and the feature will be distinct from complete newsletters and chat threads. According to Tobin, users can share “posts, quotes, comments, images, and links” in Notes.

Up to six photos or GIFs can be posted at a time in notes, but videos are not supported. Shared Notes won’t be sent to subscriber inboxes, but the feature will offer interaction options like likes, replies, and “restacks” (similar to retweets). They will instead be available through the Substack website and app.

Users will have access to “Home” and “Subscribed,” two feeds. Users may be introduced to new content producers by the “Home” feed, which will feature Notes from writers they subscribe to and those they recommend. In contrast, the “Subscribed” feed will only show Notes from writers who have subscribed.

Brazil Responds to Wave of School Attacks by Censoring Social Media

Brazilian Justice Minister Flavio Dino on Wednesday announced new restrictions on social media to combat an “epidemic” of assaults on children.

Dino said website administrators will be required to ban users who “are promoting or supporting attacks or violence against schools.”

Dino said social media platforms will be required to send data on users who share violent content to the police, in addition to blocking the users. Failure to comply could be punished with fines of up to $2.4 million and noncompliant websites could be shut down by federal authorities.

“There is an emergency situation which has generated an epidemic of attacks, threats of attacks (and) panic among families and in schools,” Dino declared.

The Brazilian crackdown includes international social media platforms. On Monday, the Brazilian Justice Ministry held a meeting with representatives from Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Google, and other companies to demand the removal of “content supporting school attacks,” a category which evidently included news reports about such incidents because they could allegedly inspire copycat attacks.

Twitter immediately refused the request, noting the 270 user accounts Brazil wanted it to ban did not post any content that violated Twitter’s terms of service, since they were sharing information about crimes but not encouraging violence.

Dino responded angrily that Twitter’s “terms of use of the platform” should not be considered more important than the lives of children. Brazilian social media users on Tuesday launched a “Twitter Supports Massacres” campaign that attracted some celebrity support.

The campaign, which features images of the Twitter bird slathered in blood while its eyes ring up dollar signs, disappeared as a trending topic on Twitter itself despite attracting over 4 million views, leading to accusations that Twitter is suppressing it.

[kyonides]

Elon Musk reveals US intel agencies had 'full access'
to private Twitter DMs, discloses new encryption feature

...the United States, along with foreign government agencies, was granted "full access" to direct messages of private citizens on Twitter prior to his takeover.

Musk made the bombshell allegation in the Carlson sit-down, the first part of which aired Monday on "Tucker Carlson Tonight." In a rare and unfiltered discussion, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO spoke candidly about his concerns about artificial intelligence (AI), his Twitter acquisition and his future plans for the social media platform that he bought last fall.
...
"The degree to which government agencies effectively had full access to everything that was going on on Twitter blew my mind," Musk told Carlson. "I was not aware of that."

"Would that include people’s DMs?" the Fox News host asked Musk.

"Yes," Musk replied. "Because the DM's aren't encrypted."

Musk said he is moving to create a feature that would give users the option to encrypt direct messages with the hopes of limiting government interference. Musk said he hopes to unveil the new addition later this month.

If the encryption option is selected, "no one at Twitter can see what you're talking about," he explained.

"You could put a gun to my head and I couldn't tell you," he told Carlson. "That's how it should be."
...
The new encryption feature for direct messages would effectively give "the finger" to U.S. intelligence agencies and their counterparts abroad who've long relied on the platform to gather intel, Carlson told viewers. Musk said he has already received "indirect complaints" from various agencies about the crackdown, quipping that while they're displeased with the move.
...
"If I got something that was unconstitutional from the U.S. government, my reply would be to send them a copy of the First Amendment and just say, 'What part of this are we getting wrong?’"

Encrypted Message Platforms Threaten to
Pull Services From UK Over Online Safety Bill

Seven of the world’s leading messaging apps have written a scathing open letter to the UK government over its proposed Online Safety Bill.

Bosses from firms including Signal and WhatsApp say the bill would lead to the mass surveillance of personal communications in what would become the “British internet.”

Urging ministers to “urgently rethink” the legislation, they said it “poses an unprecedented threat to the privacy, safety and security of every UK citizen and the people with whom they communicate around the world.”

If given the go-ahead in its current form, tech bosses said they would have no choice but to withdraw services from the UK in what experts said would set a “concerning global precedent” on encryption.

The Home Office has defended the plans, arguing that tech firms had a “moral duty” to ensure law enforcement agencies were not kept in the dark about “unprecedented levels of child sexual abuse on their platforms.”

The House of Lords will begin line-by-line scrutiny of the legislation in its committee stage on Wednesday.

The firms warned the legislation would give regulator Ofcom the power to try to force the release of private messages on end-to-end encrypted communication services.

 Could it be because that is an integral part of their evil plans? Governments love to spy  on people. I know it, you know it as well. So stop pretending they are good and holy as if they could never do anything against you ever.

Maryland Schools Latest to Join Lawsuit
Against Social Media Giants for Mental Health Harm

Several Maryland school districts, including Cecil, Carroll, and Montgomery County Public Schools, recently joined the growing number of U.S. school districts taking social media companies like TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat, to court, alleging the companies are designed to encourage youth addiction and are fueling a mental health crisis among young people.

“What we’ve seen recently—the game changer—is the actual mental health impact social media is having on students during the school day when they are supposed to be learning,” Cecil County superintendent Dr. Jeffrey Lawson told local CBS station WJZ-TV.

Lawson said students use social media at school when they should be focused on their school work.

“At the moment, when the student is interacting on social media, it’s not an easy thing for a parent to be aware of,” Lawson said. “What we’re looking for is some sort of the fundamental change in the way children are able to access social media in such an addictive way.”

These schools are trying to combat social media’s adverse and often deadly effects. According to Mr. William Shinoff, the lead attorney for the lawsuit, the increased use of social media has led to the schools seeing increased mental health problems.
...
“We’ve seen an increase in depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and even unfortunately, suicide rates have gone up,” he added.
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Dr. Jean Twenge, an American psychologist who researches and writes about social media’s effect on youth, told San Diego State University in a 2022 interview that “heavy users of social media (five-plus hours a day) are twice as likely to be depressed as non-users. Facebook’s research found that using Instagram led to body image issues for many teen girls.”

Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, and Washington are some other states whose schools have filed similar lawsuits.

Conglomerate Starboard Buys Parler,
to Shut Down Social Media App Temporarily

Digital media conglomerate Starboard said on Friday it has bought Parler for an undisclosed sum and will temporarily shut down the social media app popular with conservatives to give itself time to roll out a revamped version of the platform.

The move comes months after the collapse of a deal that would have seen American rapper Kanye West, who now goes by Ye, buy the platform’s parent company Parlement Technologies.

Starboard, formerly Olympic Media, founded in 2018 houses conservative-leaning platforms American Wire and BizPac Review. It plans to service “unsupported online communities” and build a home for them “away from the ad-hoc regulatory hand of platforms that hate them.”

The Arlington, Virginia-based conglomerate did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for details on terms of the deal. However, it said the acquisition will be accretive by the end of second quarter 2023.

In September, Parler announced that it has restructured into Parlement Technologies Inc. and bought Irvine, California-based private cloud services company Dynascale Inc..

Parler, which was founded five years ago, was reinstated on Google and Apple Inc.’s app stores after being removed following the U.S. Capitol breach in January 2021.

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The main reason why I post this article on an airline company is that it might be closely related to the triple cyber attack that took place last December. Then the same company had several issues and even canceled and delayed hundreds of flights, only to realize that the FAA's and Canada's NOTAM systems and the Royal Mail's got hacked. Only the Royal Mail ended up admitting they had been hacked.

Southwest Airlines resumes operations after tech issues halt departures

Southwest Airlines resumed all departures Tuesday morning after "intermittent technology issues" briefly impacted its operations.

Southwest told FOX Business that the airline was forced to temporarily pause flight activity in order to "work through data connection issues resulting from a firewall failure."

According to the Dallas-based carrier, a vendor-supplied firewall went down early Tuesday morning and as a result, "connection to some operational data was unexpectedly lost."

Southwest said its employees worked quickly to minimize disruptions, which amounted to more than 1,700 delayed flights as of 11:30 a.m. ET, according to FlightAware.

Just after 11 a.m. ET, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a tweet that Southwest's temporary pause on all departures had lifted, and that service resumed.

The update from the FAA came roughly a half hour after the agency first announced that the carrier "requested the FAA pause the airline’s departures."

Southwest is still trying to repair its reputation after an operational meltdown in December led to nearly 17,000 canceled flights and displaced millions of passengers during the holidays.

Now they should explain to us  why the FAA had to make such a request. I mean, it should have been the other way around, where Southwest informs the FAA they will be pausing their operations for any valid reason. But let us simply say that the FAA was helping the airline somehow by publishing such tweets. Anyway, it should have sufficed to publish that on the SW website or its Twitter account. Just saying.

[kyonides]

Matt Walsh Twitter Hacker Gained Access to ‘Everything’

Daily Wire host Matt Walsh’s Twitter account was hacked this week and the hackers reportedly gained access to “everything,” including Walsh’s email accounts.

Walsh’s Twitter account was hacked on Tuesday evening and the hacker sent out several antisemitic and racist tweets from his account.

The hacker pinned a tweet to Walsh’s profile that read, “My pronouns are That/N***a.”
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The hacker posted a photo of an iPhone screen that featured a text message form someone that read, “Your Twitter has been hacked,” suggesting they had access to more than just Walsh’s Twitter account.

On Wednesday, Daily Wire co-CEO Jeremy Boreing announced the hacker gained access to “everything, including twenty years of Matt’s emails.”

The hacker, who identified with the alias Doomed, gave an interview with Wired and explained they gained access to Walsh’s account through a technique known as SIM Swamping.

“The attack typically involves hackers tricking a cellular provider into switching a victim’s phone number to a SIM card the hackers control, rather than the one in the victim’s phone,” Wired reported.

However, the hacker claimed they compromised Walsh’s phone with the help of an “insider.”

“I literally only wanted his Twitter account to make stupid tweets. And it worked, both sides are arguing over it,” the hacker told Wired.

“The intent was to make funny tweets, as Matt Walsh likes to ‘trigger’ people,” the hacker added. “We caused no financial harm, threatened anyone, [nor] ruined anything.”

 Time will tell if that assessment is true, especially since it's coming from the  hacker himself.

Meta Lays Off Tech Teams, Battering Employee Morale

Meta Platforms Inc. on Wednesday carried out another round of job cuts, this time hitting engineers and adjacent tech teams, as Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg further moved to streamline the business in a bid to make 2023 a “year of efficiency.”

Meta in March became the first Big Tech company to announce a second round of mass layoffs, which it said would take place in three main batches over several months and impact 10,000 employees.

Wednesday’s cuts, though expected, prompted expressions of frustration from Meta employees. Layoffs were the subject of the most popular questions posted on an internal company forum on Wednesday ahead of an upcoming employee town hall.
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With the restructuring, Meta is also shelving lower-priority projects and “flattening” layers of middle management.

Investors have rewarded the company for downsizing.

Meta shares have surged about 80 percent this year, outperforming the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite’s 16 percent rise in the period.

I still remember a short spot made by the infamous WEF about people having nothing and being happy and a weird promise that they would purchase stuff online and get it delivered by... drones!

Google Spreads Its Wing Drone Deliveries in Australia

Sushi will take to the skies over another 12 Queensland suburbs after Google’s drone division revealed plans to expand airborne deliveries in Australia.

Wing, which operates drones in Canberra and Logan City in Brisbane’s south, will offer flying deliveries to residents in Ipswich for the first time on Thursday after establishing a launch pad at Orion Springfield Central shopping centre.

The expansion, in partnership with centre owner Mirvac, the Ipswich City Council and DoorDash, will almost double the number of Queensland suburbs eligible for drone deliveries.

Wing global spokesman Jonathan Bass said the company was keen to increase deliveries in Australia because the service had attracted loyal, regular customers, and the Civil Aviation and Safety Authority had granted it permission to fly over large parts of Queensland.

“We do talk about southeast Queensland as being the drone delivery capital of the world,” Bass said.

“We are doing more direct-to-consumer deliveries here via autonomous drones than anywhere else in the world, and we’ve had such positive responses from Logan and neighbouring suburbs.”

[kyonides]

American Facebook Users Can Now Apply for Their Share
of a $725 Million Facebook Settlement

Facebook users have until August 2023 to claim part of a $725 million class-action settlement of a lawsuit that claimed the company’s parent Meta violated their privacy, according to a new website that went online this week.

“If you were a Facebook user in the United States between May 24, 2007, and December 22, 2022, inclusive, you may be eligible for a cash payment from a Class Action Settlement,” the new website says, in part. “Your rights are affected whether you act or don’t act. Please read the Notice carefully,” it adds.

Those users, which likely encompass the vast majority of American Facebook users who currently have an account on the social media platform, have until Aug. 25, 2023, to submit a claim form.
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Users can either submit an online form or download the form and mail it to the settlement administrator. If the claim is accepted by the administrator, those users will have to give up their right to file a lawsuit against Facebook in connection to the claims.

The case and subsequent settlement sprang from 2018 reports that Cambridge Analytica had paid a Facebook app developer for access to the personal information of around 87 million users of Facebook. That data was then allegedly used to have targeted U.S. voters during the 2016 campaign, according to the suit.
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You must have lived in the United States between May 24, 2007, and Dec. 22, 2022. It means that residents of, for instance, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, European countries, and any other country cannot apply.

People who deleted their Facebook account since the end of 2022 but want some of the settlement money have to provide a date range when they were a Facebook user, according to the website.
...
When Can You Receive the Money and How Much?

A final approval hearing is slated for Sept. 7, 2023, to consider whether to approve the settlement. There could be future appeals, which would delay the payment.

The date of the hearing could also be changed due to a variety of reasons.

It’s not clear how much each claimant will receive as the settlement payment amount depends on how many submit claims to the administrator. They will also have to show how long they were a Facebook user during the eligibility period, which will factor into the payment amount.

How to Claim Your Share?

Each settlement class member can submit only one claim relating to the suit. The funds will be sent via your choice of a prepaid Mastercard or payment services like PayPal, Venmo, Zelle, or a direct bank deposit.

“Unless you opt out of the settlement, you are automatically part of the Settlement. If you do nothing, you will not get a payment from this Settlement and you will give up the right to sue, continue to sue, or be part of another lawsuit against the Defendant related to the legal claims or factual allegations resolved by this Settlement,” it says.

Facebook users have to include their name, address, email address, and confirm that they lived in the United States and were using Facebook between May 24, 2007, and Dec. 22, 2022, the form shows.

Twitter Drops ‘Government-Funded’ Label on News Organizations’ Profiles

Twitter stopped using the “Government-funded” and “China state-affiliated” labels for news organizations, their profiles showed on Friday.

Twitter dropped the “Government-funded Media” label from the accounts of U.S.-based National Public Radio (NPR), British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC), and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).

It also dropped the “China state-affiliated media” tag on the accounts of Xinhua News, as well as of journalists associated with government-backed publications.

While Chinese publishers’ accounts, including those of their senior staff as well as of some key government officials, started getting the label in 2020, the likes of NPR and CBC were labeled only earlier this month.

NPR and CBC stopped posting on their accounts after that, saying the label was not accurate. CBC posted that it was 69 percent funded by the government, and that was the reason it said the “Government-funded” label was not accurate. Twitter later changed the label to “69% Government-funded,” before dropping it altogether.

CBC also made a post with the CBC profile link in other social media, so that readers could access CBC outside “the realms of Twitter.”

The implication of the “Government-funded” label was that these media were not credible.
...
Twitter on Thursday also removed the legacy verified blue tick from the profile of thousands of people, including celebrities, journalists, and prominent politicians, such as Hillary Clinton.

Among those losing their badges were former president Donald Trump, Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates, and reality TV star Kim Kardashian.

[kyonides]

Harvard Hires Lockdown Queen
Former New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern

Harvard University has hired former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern as its first Knight Tech Governance Leadership Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. The lockdown queen’s fellowship is set to begin this fall.

The Ivy League university said it is “thrilled” to announce Ardern — who served as Prime Minister of New Zealand from 2017 to 2023, and is widely known for being a radical leftist and strict authoritarian during the Chinese coronavirus pandemic — as one of its new hires.

“Ardern is known globally as a dedicated and effective leader in pursuing greater online platform accountability and content moderation standards,” the school said in its announcement on Tuesday.

Ardern added that she is “delighted” to be formally working with the Berkman Klein Center.
...
Harvard said Ardern will work closely with Berkman Klein Center leadership “to explore emerging challenges of governance to protect against algorithmic harms during a critical moment of the explosive proliferation of generative AI tools.”

The Berkman Klein Center also said it is “deeply impressed” with how Ardern handled the Chinese virus in New Zealand while she was prime minister.

I guess Harvard is screaming a loud bye-bye to freedom of speech in the US like never before.

Michael Schumacher family to take legal action over fake AI interview

Michael Schumacher's family plans to take legal action against a German magazine that ran an AI-generated interview with the Formula One legend.

German outlet Die Aktuelle ran a front cover spread promising an exclusive interview with Schumacher, who has not been seen in public since suffering a serious brain injury in a December 2013 skiing accident.

The magazine claimed it had the first interview with the seven-time F1 champion, promising "No meagre, nebulous half-sentences from friends. But answers from him! By Michael Schumacher, 54!"

Only after the 'interview' with Schumacher in its magazine is it revealed the article has been generated by an AI chatbot.

A Schumacher family spokesperson confirmed to ESPN that legal action will be taken.

Since the skiing accident, the family has gone to great lengths to protect the privacy of Michael, and his medical condition is unknown.

He is believed to be at the family's home in Switzerland.

Die Aktuelle has a history with the Schumachers.

In 2014, the magazine posted a picture of Michael and wife Corinna on the front cover, with the headline "Awake", only for the piece in question to have been about people who have awoken from comas in the past.

The magazine also won a legal case against the Schumachers the next year after a front cover saying "a new love" had entered Corinna's life, only for the article to be about the couple's daughter, Gina.

Corinna Schumacher has spoken about her husband's condition only at the end of a Netflix documentary about his F1 career, titled "Schumacher."

It doesn't really matter if it was written by some wacko AI or human being, it's quite disrespectful.