Philip Di Salvo
@philipdisalvo.bsky.social
Senior researcher and lecturer @ Uni St. Gallen | hacking/journalism, leaks, surveillance, black boxes | journalist | DIG Festival board | previously Media LSE, IMeG USI | views my own | Zürich
One year on, has Swiss AI model Apertus lived up to the hype? www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss-ai...
One year on, has Swiss AI model Apertus lived up to the hype?
One year after launch, Apertus has passed four million downloads and found real-world uses, but weaknesses on key tasks still limit its competitiveness.
swissinfo.ch
exactly 💯 on LLMs: they simulate the output we call language, not the cognitive capacity we call language!
Dr Katie Twomey@k2mey.eurosky.social · last mo.Arguing that LLMs are anything more than a load of numbers going into a complicated mathematical function and spitting some more numbers out. Yes they simulate. But they simulate *language*. They do not simulate the cognitive processes underlying communication.
Why does Apple keep banning Telegram, but never X? www.theverge.com/tech/976405/...
Why does Apple keep banning Telegram, but never X?
Telegram doesn’t have the same political backing as X.
theverge.com
A record-breaking eight Pulitzer awardees disclosed AI use this year: www.niemanlab.org/2026/08/a-re...
A record-breaking eight Pulitzer awardees disclosed AI use this year
Five winners and three finalists detailed their AI adoption to the judging committee.
niemanlab.org
🛰️ NEW PAPER OUT ! 🛰️ In this piece, I dig into the relationships between journalism and hacking, focusing on the practices emerging from the experiences of journalists reporting on hacked data from cybercrime to corruption, from war reporting to leaks. OA: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Hacked, Leaked, Reported: Journalistic Practices and the Logics of Disclosure in a Turbulent Cyber Landscape
Journalists increasingly report on data that surface through direct hacks, hack-and-leak operations, cybercrime leaks, and large-scale data dumps. In this environment, the motives and ethical bound...
tandfonline.com
David Harvey: Marx and Capitalism | Doomscroll: www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWDs...
David Harvey: Marx and Capitalism | Doomscroll
YouTube video by Joshua Citarella
youtube.com
🛰️ NEW PAPER OUT ! 🛰️ In this piece, I dig into the relationships between journalism and hacking, focusing on the practices emerging from the experiences of journalists reporting on hacked data from cybercrime to corruption, from war reporting to leaks. OA: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Hacked, Leaked, Reported: Journalistic Practices and the Logics of Disclosure in a Turbulent Cyber Landscape
Journalists increasingly report on data that surface through direct hacks, hack-and-leak operations, cybercrime leaks, and large-scale data dumps. In this environment, the motives and ethical bound...
tandfonline.com
The story of the hacktivist bug bounty, and the hacks it has rewarded and then funded, is one that has never been told, and probably never will be told.
Philip Di Salvo@philipdisalvo.bsky.social · 2mo agoThe hacker who humiliated spyware makers and was never caught: techcrunch.com/2026/07/25/t...
The hacker who humiliated spyware makers and was never caught: techcrunch.com/2026/07/25/t...
The hacker who humiliated spyware makers and was never caught | TechCrunch
An awe-inspiring hacktivist who hacked two controversial government spyware makers may be the most prolific hacker to have never gotten caught. What do we know about Phineas Fisher?
techcrunch.com
How a Gang of Thieves Pulled Off a Multimillion-Dollar Data Center Heist: www.nytimes.com/2026/07/12/m...
How a Gang of Thieves Pulled Off a Multimillion-Dollar Data Center Heist (Gift Article)
The world’s most valuable assets are stored on rows of servers in giant, anonymous buildings. And they can be stolen.
nytimes.com
We are an input, now. Generative AI and the death of the journalist as human memory-maker: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
We are an input, now. Generative AI and the death of the journalist as human memory-maker | Memory, Mind & Media | Cambridge Core
We are an input, now. Generative AI and the death of the journalist as human memory-maker - Volume 5
cambridge.org
Scoop: Its AI agent spent days breaking into the systems of Hugging Face, but sources tell @deepa.bsky.social, @kenrick.bsky.social & me OpenAI did not even realize it was responsible for the hack for more than a week. www.reuters.com/business/its...
EXCLUSIVE: Its AI agent spent days hacking a company, but sources say OpenAI did not notice for a week
The OpenAI agent that broke into tech firm Hugging Face went on a dayslong hacking spree that OpenAI didn't notice until well after the threat was contained and the FBI was alerted, according to peop...
reuters.com
How brain rot fuels the trillion-dollar AI economy: blogs.lse.ac.uk/medialse/202...
How brain rot fuels the trillion-dollar AI economy - Media@LSE
Hera Hyeonseo Lee discusses what her research highlights about the link between brain rot and the growth of and public reliance on AI tools and platforms.
blogs.lse.ac.uk
Nessun altro motore è in grado di competere con la finezza degli algoritmi di Google. E più risultati corretti dà, più persone lo usano. E più ricerche fa, più prestante diventa. Ma l'Europa vuole scalzare il predominio. Vi racconto come su Question Time > questiontime.substack.com/p/google-dev...
A Teen Reporter Searched for His Community in the Epstein Files. Adults Freaked Out: www.wired.com/story/epstei...
A Teen Reporter Searched for His Community in the Epstein Files. Adults Freaked Out
An Instagram post turned one California student newspaper into a free-speech flash point. The students say they were just doing their homework.
wired.com
OpenAI says it accidentally hacked Hugging Face with a new AI system: www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...
OpenAI says it accidentally hacked Hugging Face with a new AI system
OpenAI says the breach occurred during an internal evaluation.
theverge.com
Google Is Building an A.I. Fence Around the Internet It Once Championed: www.nytimes.com/2026/07/20/t...
How Google’s A.I. Search Is Imperiling the Open Web
As Google incorporates more artificial intelligence into search, people are spending more time on Google. Some website operators are crying foul.
nytimes.com
One name at a time: How Die Zeit built a searchable database of Nazi Party members: www.niemanlab.org/2026/07/one-...
One name at a time: How Die Zeit built a searchable database of Nazi Party members
"The story that a German newspaper used AI to create a 'Nazi search engine' is just too good to ignore."
niemanlab.org
Moroccan intelligence insider reveals widespread use of Pegasus hacking software: www.theguardian.com/news/2026/ju...
Moroccan intelligence insider reveals widespread use of Pegasus hacking software
Whistleblower suggests internal security services deployed spyware from 2017 against key domestic and foreign targets
theguardian.com
A Leak of San Francisco Police Drone Footage Exposes the New Reality of Urban Surveillance: www.wired.com/story/sfpd-d...
A Leak of San Francisco Police Drone Footage Exposes the New Reality of Urban Surveillance
The SFPD’s exposure of hours of videos from drone platform Skydio reveals how broadly it’s watching the city from above—and how the results can spill online.
wired.com
EU Politicians Investigated Pegasus Spyware. Then It Ended Up on One of Their Phones: www.wired.com/story/eu-pol...
EU Politicians Investigated Pegasus Spyware. Then It Ended Up on One of Their Phones
“It is a direct attack on the rule of law,” says one European Parliament member of the new findings from Citizen Lab.
wired.com
‘You can’t make billions without hurting people’: Cory Doctorow on Elon Musk, the AI bubble and bosses’ cruel fantasies: www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
‘You can’t make billions without hurting people’: Cory Doctorow on Elon Musk, the AI bubble and bosses’ cruel fantasies
The writer who coined the word ‘enshittification’ tells us why AI will never deliver what it promises – and why it still appeals so much to those in power
theguardian.com
