All posts tagged: Online

All AI-Generated Material Must Be Labeled Online, China Announces

All AI-Generated Material Must Be Labeled Online, China Announces

Published by José

In collaboration with a number of government ministries, the Chinese internet watchdog Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) has announced that all AI-generated content on the internet will have to be labeled as such. As Bloomberg reports, the new regulation will require any synthetic content to be identified, either explicitly in its description or via metadata encoding. It’s a major inflection point as governments attempt to shore up some control while the internet gets flooded with low-quality AI slop. Regulators have long rung the alarm bells about tech being misused to spread disinformation and material intended to harm others. Former president Joe Biden attempted to address the issue with an executive order in 2023, which has since been repealed by his successor Donald Trump. Instead of reining in the problematic use of generative AI, the current Trump administration has instead opened the gates, going as far as to instruct federal agencies to scrub AI guidelines and encourage them to use the tech more. That’s in sharp contrast to both China and the European Union, which have furthered …

Harmful AI character chatbots are proliferating online, spurred by online communities

Harmful AI character chatbots are proliferating online, spurred by online communities

Published by skeptic

Character chatbots are a prolific online safety threat, according to a new report on the dissemination of sexualized and violent bots via character platforms like the now infamous Character.AI. Published by Graphika, a social network analysis company, the study documents the creation and proliferation of harmful chatbots across the internet’s most popular AI character platforms, finding tens of thousands of potentially dangerous roleplay bots built by niche digital communities that work around popular models like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. SEE ALSO: UK watchdog probes TikTok, Reddit over children’s data use Broadly, youth are migrating to companion chatbots in an increasingly disconnected digital world, appealing to the AI conversationalists to role play, explore academic and creative interests, and to have romantic or sexually explicit exchanges, reports Mashable’s Rebecca Ruiz. The trend has prompted alarm from child safety watchdogs and parents, heightened by high profile cases of teens who have engaged in extreme, sometimes life-threatening, behavior in the wake of personal interactions with companion chatbots. The American Psychological Association appealed to the Federal Trade Commission in January, …

Best Ticket Deals & Codes Online

Best Ticket Deals & Codes Online

Published by skeptic

If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, The Hollywood Reporter may receive an affiliate commission. Just Like Heaven Fest returns to Pasadena on Saturday, May 10. The music festival features the best and brightest in indie rock and electro dance music, including headliners Vampire Weekend alongside Empire of the Sun, Slowdive, Perfume Genius, Panda Bear, Ra Ra Riot and others, to Brookside at the Rose Bowl. In addition, the Los Angeles-based indie rock band Rilo Kiley — fronted by actress-turned-musician Jenny Lewis — is set for a long-awaited reunion at Just Like Heaven Fest. It marks the first time in 17 years that the entire original lineup of the band (including members Blake Sennett, Jason Boesel and Pierre De Reeder) performs on the same stage. At a Glance: How to Buy Just Like Heaven Fest Tickets Online As of press time, Just Like Heave Fest passes are in Tier 1 or 2 pricing. General admission is $226 (or $200 per person when you buy a four-pack), VIP …

Grandmother spoken to by police after criticising Labour politicians online

Grandmother spoken to by police after criticising Labour politicians online

Published by Sam

A grandmother was spoken to at her home by police after she criticised Labour politicians online for sending offensive WhatsApp messages. In a series of Facebook posts Helen Jones called for the resignation of a councillor embroiled in the WhatsApp scandal which led to the sacking of Andrew Gwynne, the former health minister. The 54-year-old school administrator, who was not accused of committing a crime, said she was left feeling scared to post on social media following the unannounced visit by two officers on Tuesday. The WhatsApp scandal erupted after it emerged Mr Gwynne, the MP for Gorton and Denton, posted a message to Labour colleagues in a group chat saying he hoped one elderly constituent, who didn’t vote for the party, would die before the next election. Mr Gwynne made the offensive comment on WhatsApp group called Trigger Me Timbers after the pensioner sent a letter to David Sedgwick, a Stockport Labour councillor, complaining about her bin collections. The letter was reportedly shared in the WhatsApp group by Cllr Sedgwick. In the wake of …

DOGE’s USDS Purge Included the Guy Who Keeps Veterans’ Data Safe Online

DOGE’s USDS Purge Included the Guy Who Keeps Veterans’ Data Safe Online

Published by skeptic

The dozens of USDS cuts last week hit teams like product management, design, and procurement. Kamens and other sources told WIRED that he is the only person from the USDS engineering team who was fired. He and others speculate that he was targeted because he had been publicly critical of DOGE in the weeks before the USDS cuts. DOGE did not return a request for comment about his removal. While all large IT systems need to be protected from hacking threats, Kamens says that the most urgent projects he was working on at the VA involved containing veterans’ sensitive personal data so it could only be stored in the most guarded parts of the system and deploying stronger controls to limit who could access what information. Both understanding how data flows through a system and limiting access to reduce risk from network intrusion and insider threats have emerged as key security priorities for any organization. “My biggest concern that I was trying to address in my time at the VA related to personal health data …

Paul Ingrassia, Trump’s Online Reactionary at DOJ

Paul Ingrassia, Trump’s Online Reactionary at DOJ

Published by José

Paul Ingrassia, an online reactionary, is in place at the DOJ. Pete Kiehart / The Washington Post / Getty February 8, 2025, 6 AM ET Paul Ingrassia is just your average right-wing edgelord with a law degree and a high-level position at the Justice Department. In the past several years, on X, he has likened Andrew Tate, the misogynist influencer, to the “ancient ideal of excellence”; he has written a Substack post titled “Free Nick Fuentes” in support of reinstating the white nationalist’s X account (when it was still banned); and he has called Nikki Haley, Donald Trump’s former United Nations ambassador who ran against Trump in the Republican primary, an “insufferable bitch” who might be an “anchor baby” too. On Inauguration Day, Ingrassia was sworn in as the new White House liaison for the DOJ. In his new job, Ingrassia—who did not respond to a request for comment—is responsible for managing other White House appointments within the DOJ, and for identifying and recommending people to potentially be hired or promoted within the agency, according …

Warner Bros. Lets You Watch 31 Films Free Online: David Byrne’s True Stories, Christopher Guest’s Waiting for Guffman, Michel Gondry’s The Science of Sleep & More

Warner Bros. Lets You Watch 31 Films Free Online: David Byrne’s True Stories, Christopher Guest’s Waiting for Guffman, Michel Gondry’s The Science of Sleep & More

Published by José

It’s Fri­day, which means that tonight, many of us will sit down to watch a movie with our fam­i­ly, our friends, our sig­nif­i­cant oth­er, or — for some cinephiles, best of all — by our­selves. If you haven’t yet lined up any home-cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ence in par­tic­u­lar, con­sid­er tak­ing a look at this playlist of 31 fea­ture films just made avail­able to stream by Warn­er Bros. You’ll know the name of that august Hol­ly­wood stu­dio, of course, but did you know that it put out True Sto­ries, the musi­cal plunge into tabloid Amer­i­ca direct­ed by Talk­ing Heads’ David Byrne? Or Wait­ing for Guff­man, the first impro­vised movie by Christo­pher Guest and his troupe of crack comedic play­ers like Eugene Levy, Fred Willard, Cather­ine O’Hara, and Park­er Posey? That may already strike many Open Cul­ture read­ers as the mak­ings of a fine dou­ble fea­ture, though some may pre­fer to watch the ear­ly work of anoth­er kind of auteur: Michel Gondry’s The Sci­ence of Sleep, say, or Richard Lin­klater’s Sub­Ur­bia (a stage-play adap­ta­tion that could well be paired with …

Episcopal Divinity School launches public online course equipping Christians to shift public theological narrative around reproductive justice

Episcopal Divinity School launches public online course equipping Christians to shift public theological narrative around reproductive justice

Published by skeptic

[January 21, 2025 – Online] — With the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the resulting elimination of legal access to abortion in 25 states and counting, Episcopal Divinity School (EDS) is offering a public, non-credit, six-week online course to equip people of faith with the education and practical tools needed to shift the theological narrative around this pressing issue. The course, The Sacred Work of Reproductive Justice, will be taught by the Rev. Dr. Rebecca Todd Peters, a renowned feminist social ethicist and advocate for reproductive justice, and will run from February 4 to March 11, 2025. As Christians lead the current rush to criminalize abortion, this course will reframe the issue as one of reproductive justice—a framework developed by Black women activists in 1994—and explore the church’s responsibility in changing the public narrative about abortion in the country. Why Take This Course? Most liberal Protestant denominations—including Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist, Unitarian Universalist, and Episcopalian—have official positions in support of reproductive rights. Yet, these perspectives are often unheard, considered taboo, or held privately—leaving the theological …

Microsoft Edge 132 Makes It Easier Than Ever to Save Money Online

Microsoft Edge 132 Makes It Easier Than Ever to Save Money Online

Published by skeptic

Microsoft Edge has its fair share of fans, even if Google Chrome still has the lion’s share of usage. Despite this, Microsoft has been very good at adding handy shopping features to its browser. Now, with Microsoft Edge version 132, saving money online has never been easier. Miljan Zivkovic / John k studio / Shutterstock As announced on Microsoft Learn, version 132 of Edge has hit the Stable channel. If you’re not sure how the channels work, Microsoft Edge versions enter the Stable channel once they’ve undergone several rounds of public testing and are deemed worthy of general use. As such, you can expect to see version 132 arrive on every PC with Edge. This new update introduces many features, such as password manager tweaks and a full favorites bar in Workspaces. However, people who love shopping online will resonate with the Shopping Product Tracking tool: Track product prices easily with a new experience in the Edge Address Bar that appears on the product detail page. Users can track prices quickly and are notified when …

10,000+ Free Online Certificates & Badges: A Resource for Lifelong Learners

10,000+ Free Online Certificates & Badges: A Resource for Lifelong Learners

Published by José

For those look­ing to boost their skills or explore new fields with­out break­ing the bank, Class Cen­tral has done the heavy lift­ing. Known as a search engine for online cours­es, Class Cen­tral has com­piled what might be the largest col­lec­tion of free online cer­tifi­cates and badges avail­able any­where. From tech giants like Google and Microsoft to elite uni­ver­si­ties like Har­vard and Stan­ford, this list cov­ers a diverse range of sub­jects and skill sets. There was a time when the world’s top uni­ver­si­ties used to offer free cer­tifi­cates for com­plet­ing online cours­es. While most of those cer­tifi­cates are no longer free, many of the cours­es them­selves remain open to learn­ers, cov­er­ing top­ics like Com­put­er Sci­ence, Lit­er­a­ture, and Busi­ness. Cer­tifi­cates can serve as both moti­va­tion and proof of achieve­ment for com­plet­ing online cours­es. While plat­forms like Cours­era and edX have moved toward paid cer­ti­fi­ca­tions, a sur­pris­ing num­ber of free options remain — if you know where to look. Thank­ful­ly, Class Central’s guide makes it easy to find these oppor­tu­ni­ties. What’s Includ­ed in the Guide? The arti­cle orga­nizes …