thezero
@thezero.org
Human Rights Defender @osservatorionessuno.org. Security Researcher @shielder.com. Former KeepassXC maintainer. Computer Repair With A Smile. thezero.org
This is also of course how the AI data centers are being used. The ones that are sucking dry our water and burning up the planet. A lot of which is justified on the basis of economic and pro-social advances.
Matt Burgess (WIRED)@mattburgess1.bsky.social · last wk.NEW: A glimpse at how AI image generators are used. Researchers set up a fake image editor on Hugging Face and within a week received 1,000 prompts. 73% of them were sexual and 83% of those were asking for people (women) to be “undressed”. Around 6% of the sexual requests also targeted minors
Me every time I read clankers' code.
qdot@buttplug.engineer · last wk.before agentic coding: *writes code* *doesn't release* *gets busy, reviews a month later* what the fuck who wrote this over-complicated shit after agentic coding: *has robot write code* *doesn't release* *gets busy, reviews a month later* what the fuck who wrote this over-complicated shit
before agentic coding: *writes code* *doesn't release* *gets busy, reviews a month later* what the fuck who wrote this over-complicated shit after agentic coding: *has robot write code* *doesn't release* *gets busy, reviews a month later* what the fuck who wrote this over-complicated shit
FWIW, Meta was fully aware of how these glasses would primarily be used. The glasses were designed to erase consent, and that is why they exist. Anything that they do that suggests they want to ameliorate this use is an attempt to win the PR battle and manipulate public opinion.
Meta Desperately Trying to Ban Creeps Misusing Its AI "Pervert Glasses"
Meta is vowing to crack down on creeps misusing its Ray Ban smart glasses. Whether it will be enough to regain trust remains to be seen.
futurism.com
A decade after their most famous hack, Phineas Fisher remains, by most accounts, the most prolific and public hacker never to have been caught, writes @lorenzofb.bsky.social. 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
The new premium product: books written by people ft.trib.al/sbnqynY
The new premium product: books written by people
Some publishers think AI could not only help authors but replace them
ft.trib.al
i remember landline phones having cords so strong you could stretch them across the entire great wall of china and they would still work, meanwhile modern usb cords rip if you look at them wrong
Quite the headline. If the economy relies on our Tech breaking and us buying new tech regularly, doesn't that incentivize planned obsolescence by these Tech companies? The answer is Yes. Yes it does. 👇🏽 How device hoarding by Americans is costing economy share.google/MmiMtugbsfYQ...
Americans are holding onto devices longer than ever and it's costing the economy
Americans are holding onto devices longer than ever before, and while it may be consumer smart, it comes at a cost to work productivity and the U.S. economy.
share.google
For many years, people didn’t randomly film others in public—not because we didn’t have the technology, but because the social contract said you didn’t do that. That’s why Meta is going full court press on their PR and celebrity endorsements. They remember how people ran google glass outta town.
In a new letter to 🇺🇸ICE Acting Director David Venturella, Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) is demanding documents on the agency’s use of Paragon Solutions’ Graphite #spyware, including its legal basis, deployment, & safeguards for Americans’ privacy and civil liberties. www.hsgac.senate.gov/media/dems/p...
NEW: I spoke to several offensive cybersecurity researchers, including zero-day developers, about how the guardrails imposed by OpenAI and Anthropic on AI models are impeding their work. Most complained the guardrails are inconsistent and too strict, which pushes them to use open source models.
How AI guardrails are impeding the work of offensive cybersecurity researchers | TechCrunch
We spoke with several cybersecurity researchers, who look for unknown vulnerabilities and develop tools to exploit them, about how OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s guardrails affect their work.
techcrunch.com
The New York Times ran some tests to see if AI could replace an office worker and realized the fundamental flaw of LLM-based AI agents; they don’t follow instructions. The funny thing is how often AI bros excuse this by saying humans aren’t good at following instructions either. Computers got worse
Zero-day startup Paradigm Shift took down the blog post and corresponding Proof-of-Concept code for the iPhone flaw they dubbed Usbliter8. Takedown comes following a judge order in the lawsuit filed by Magnet Forensics, which alleges a former employee now at the startup stole the flaw.
NSO Group spent at least $67,500 on lobbying 🇺🇸Congress and U.S. federal agencies in Q1 and Q2 of 2026, through its executive chairman, David Friedman – the former US ambassador to Israel – according to the latest lobbying disclosure filings.
somehow I only recently learned that LLMs need the whole conversation fed back to them on each prompt so their i/o cost scales as O(n^2), something that would be considered completely unacceptable in almost any other production network-accessible software
Do you know how we label a software that escapes a sandbox, exploits a third-party infrastructure, pwn it, gathers information and data on their servers, etc. A malware. And do you know who is responsible for the damages made by it? The malware operator.
New: Public records show how a city that ended its Flock contract spent months trying to get the company to remove the cameras or turn off the cameras. They were told Flock "objects" to the city removing the camera itself. Eventually city put trash bags over them: www.404media.co/flock-object...
Flock ‘Objects to Our Removing Their Equipment’: Emails Reveal Why a Town Put Bags Over Its Flock Cameras
"For the time being, if you or someone on your crew has availability to secure black plastic bags (or something else) over the cameras, that would be great."
404media.co
You opened a credit card. ICE now knows where you live. Here's how when you open a credit card your address leaves your bank, goes through middlemen companies, and ends up with ICE. ICE plans to use this data for immigration and 'voter fraud'. No warrant More: www.404media.co/you-opened-a...
Most popular smart watches and fitness trackers aren't end-to-end encrypted, nor say how often governments demand access to users' data. My argument: If wearable makers don't want to disclose that they're turning over users' data to the feds, then the obvious fix is to end-to-end encrypt it.
Most fitness wearables lack end-to-end encryption and don't disclose government data demands, says EFF
Most fitness wearables don't use end-to-end encryption to protect users' health information, leaving open the door for government demands for data.
this.weekinsecurity.com
This is theft. Silently implemented. Then silently removed when found out. thenextweb.com/news/grok-bu...
Grok Build was uploading entire Git repositories to xAI's cloud, including committed secrets
A researcher proved Grok Build CLI sent full repos, 27,800x more data than the task needed, to a Google Cloud bucket. xAI had said no code was transmitted.
thenextweb.com
Can the 🇫🇷🇬🇧Pall Mall Process curb #spyware abuse – or will it contribute to its normalisation? Big thanks to @niaolainf.bsky.social, @alexandrapaulus.bsky.social for sharing their thoughts. My latest for @techpolicypress.bsky.social. 👇 www.techpolicy.press/can-the-pall...
Can the Pall Mall Process Curb Spyware Abuse?
Pall Mall Process brought 27 states together to curb spyware, but critics say its codes of practice risk normalizing spyware use, reports Vas Panagiotopoulos.
techpolicy.press
Frontier AI companies when you ask them if cheaper Chinese AI models aren’t just free markets at work?
The Pentagon is withholding causality and hit numbers. The CDC is withholding infection rates. The FDA is withholding information about food contamination. The EPA is withholding pollution and climate data. This corrupt administration is ALL about concealing the consequences of its incompetence.
Banks’ telephone lines *always* experience heavier-than-usual call volumes. It’s such a phoney excuse for hiring too few human operators and actively discouraging phone calls.