Internet Society SF Bay Area Chapter

Michigan Lawmakers Are Attempting to Ban Porn Entirely The "Anticorruption of Public Morals Act" proposes a total ban on porn in the state, and also targets the existence of trans people online, content like erotic ASMR, and selling VPNs in the state.

A bill introduced by Michigan lawmakers last week would ban pornography, ASMR, depictions of transgender people, and VPNs for anyone using the internet in the state.

🔗 www.404media.co/michigan-por...

Librarians Are Being Asked to Find AI-Hallucinated Books It’s a trippy time to have a library card.

Reference librarian Eddie Kristan said lenders at the library where he works have been asking him to find books that don’t exist without realizing they were hallucinated by AI.

🔗 www.404media.co/librarians-a...

Trump’s Ouster of Jimmy Kimmel Is Much Worse Than You Think It Is Anna Gomez, the FCC’s lone Democratic commissioner, tells TNR that chairman Brendan Carr’s move violates both the First Amendment and the Communications Act. Democrats must extract consequences.

Important piece here. Democrats should investigate this fully. Bring Carr for hearings. He is openly publicizing how he apparently broke the law and used the FCC on behalf of Trump to exort ABC.

newrepublic.com/article/2006...

Trump Administration Outlines Plan to Throw Out an Agency's FOIA Requests En Masse The Department of Energy said it will close FOIA requests from last year unless the requester emails the agency to say they are still interested. Experts say it's an "attempt to close out as many FOIA...

The Department of Energy said it will close FOIA requests from last year unless the requester emails the agency to say they are still interested. Experts say it's an "attempt to close out as many FOIA requests as possible."

🔗 www.404media.co/trump-admini...

How Tea’s Founder Convinced Millions of Women to Spill Their Secrets, Then Exposed Them to the World A 404 Media investigation reveals how the man who started Tea, the ‘women dating safety’ app, tried to hire a female ‘face’ for the company and then hijack her grassroots community.

this is how Tea got its start. it's an incredibly ugly tale top to bottom. a gripping investigation by @emanuelmaiberg.bsky.social
www.404media.co/how-teas-fou...

OpenAI Is Poised To Become The Most Valuable Startup Ever. Should It Be? The AI startup is chasing a $500 billion valuation, with backers betting it can become the next Apple or Google. There are reasons for skepticism.

The AI startup is chasing a $500 billion valuation, with backers betting it can become the next Apple or Google. There are reasons for skepticism.

Highly Sensitive Medical Cannabis Patient Data Exposed by Unsecured Database Nearly a million records, which appear to be linked to a medical cannabis card company in Ohio, included Social Security numbers, government IDs, health conditions, and more.

Nearly a million records, which appear to be linked to a medical cannabis card company in Ohio, included Social Security numbers, government IDs, health conditions, and more. www.wired.com/story/highly...

Raspberry Pi intros new 5-inch $40 touchscreen for your next weird project Officially supported dinky display works as a tiny all-in-one or smart home hub.

It's not exactly a groundbreaking project, but as an inexpensive and officially supported accessory, it may benefit from wider compatibility and ecosystem support than some third-party screens.

US spy chief says UK has dropped its Apple backdoor demand | TechCrunch Tulsi Gabbard said that President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance also participated in the negotiations with the U.K. government over its once-secret demand to Apple.

Tulsi Gabbard said that President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance also participated in the negotiations with the U.K. government over its once-secret demand to Apple.

Google pays $30M to settle lawsuit over children's YouTube data | TechCrunch Google has agreed to pay $30M to settle a lawsuit over children's data collection, though the company denies wrongdoing.

Google has agreed to pay $30M to settle a lawsuit over children's data collection, though the company denies wrongdoing.

Security flaws in a carmaker's web portal let one hacker remotely unlock cars from anywhere | TechCrunch Security researcher Eaton Zveare told TechCrunch that the flaws he discovered in the carmaker's centralized dealer portal exposed vast access to customer and vehicle data. With this access, Zveare said he could remotely take over a customer's account and unlock their cars, and more.

Security flaws in a carmaker’s web portal let one hacker remotely unlock cars from anywhere

A Single Poisoned Document Could Leak ‘Secret’ Data Via ChatGPT Security researchers found a weakness in OpenAI’s Connectors, which let you hook up ChatGPT to other services, that allowed them to extract data from a Google Drive without any user interaction.

Security researchers found a weakness in OpenAI’s Connectors, which let you hook up ChatGPT to other services, that allowed them to extract data from a Google Drive without any user interaction.

As electric bills rise, evidence mounts that data centers share blame. States feel pressure to act Amid rising electric bills, states are under pressure to insulate regular household and business ratepayers from the costs of feeding Big Tech’s energy-hungry data centers.

“But growing evidence suggests that the electricity bills of some Americans are rising to subsidize the massive energy needs of Big Tech…”

Trump Is Launching an AI Search Engine Powered by Perplexity America’s scandalous president is teaming up with its most disreputable AI company to make a search engine.

Trump Is Launching an AI Search Engine Powered by Perplexity

🔗 www.404media.co/trump-is-lau...

Archivists Let You Now Read Some of the First Ever Reviews of Mario and Zelda Preservationists at the Video Game History Foundation purchased the rights to Computer Entertainer, the first video game magazine ever written and uploaded it for free.

Archivists Let You Now Read Some of the First Ever Reviews of Mario and Zelda

🔗 www.404media.co/computer-ent...

GPT-5 is here. Now what? The much-hyped release makes several enhancements to the ChatGPT user experience. But it’s still far short of AGI.

Sam Altman called GPT-5 “a significant step along the path to AGI,” or artificial general intelligence, and maybe he’s right—but if so, it’s a very small step. trib.al/iA93Bln

More than 130,000 Claude, Grok, ChatGPT, and Other LLM Chats Readable on Archive.org The issue of publicly saving shared LLM chats is bigger than just Google.

More than 130,000 Claude, Grok, ChatGPT, and Other LLM Chats Readable on Archive.org

🔗 www.404media.co/more-than-13...

Meet the Gen Zers who have sworn off AI — and ask their friends to do the same Some Gen Zers are firmly rejecting AI tools in their daily lives. We talked to four people, ages 23-27, who explained why they won't touch the tech.

🫡

Shareholder letter: Reddit cites Profound's analysis showing it is the most cited domain across AI models, ahead of Wikipedia, YouTube, Forbes, and others (Alice Brooker/Press Gazette)

Main Link | Mediagazer Permalink

ChatGPT users shocked to learn their chats were in Google search results OpenAI scrambles to remove personal ChatGPT conversations from Google results.

While the indexing did not include identifying information about the ChatGPT users, some of their chats did share personal details—like highly specific descriptions of their interpersonal relationships with friends and family members.

St. Paul, MN, was hacked so badly that the National Guard has been deployed “A deliberate, coordinated digital attack.”…

The FBI and two national cybersecurity firms have been brought on to mitigate the attack, but it hasn't been enough.

Spotify Is Forcing Users to Undergo Face Scanning to Access Explicit Content

🔗 www.404media.co/spotify-uk-a...

Google tool misused to scrub tech CEO’s shady past from search Google has fixed the bug, which it says affected only “a tiny fraction of websites.”…

By utilizing a bug in one of Google's search tools, the CEO (or someone working with him) managed to scrub the search engine of coverage related to his 2021 domestic violence arrest.

Steam Doesn't Think This Image Is ‘Suitable for All Ages’ The decision highlights hurdles faced by developers as they navigate a world where credit card companies dictate what is and isn't appropriate.

Steam Doesn't Think This Image Is ‘Suitable for All Ages’

🔗 www.404media.co/steam-doesnt...

RFK Jr. warned about giving the government your data. Now he wants it. The Health and Human Services secretary's pivot on wearables is a case study in how conspiracy extremists rebrand themselves once in positions of power.

RFK Jr. used to warn about a government takeover of our data. He said wearables and their tech were part of a plot to surveil us, enabled tyranny, caused cancer, and turned users into “permanent consumers” to Big Tech.

Now, he'd like your data, please.
www.msnbc.com/opinion/anal...

Facial recognition and crowdsourced social media investigations are constantly being used not just on cringe CEOs, but on random people who are simply existing in public.

🔗 www.404media.co/the-astronom...