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Microsoft’s Recall Feature Is Even More Hackable Than You Thought (Maria)
The author writes, “Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella has hailed the company’s new Recall feature, which stores a history of your computer desktop and makes it available to AI for analysis, as ‘photographic memory’ for your PC. Within the cybersecurity community, meanwhile, the notion of a tool that silently takes a screenshot of your desktop every five seconds has been hailed as a hacker’s dream come true and the worst product idea in recent memory. Now, security researchers have pointed out that even the one remaining security safeguard meant to protect that feature from exploitation can be trivially defeated.”
Wisconsin Judge Hearing Act 10 Lawsuit Appears To Have Signed the Walker Recall Petition in 2011 (Al)
The author writes, “Dane County Circuit Court Judge Jacob Frost, who is presiding over a new lawsuit challenging the status of Act 10, appears to have signed a 2011 petition to recall then-Gov. Scott Walker.”
Why the Uncanny ‘All Eyes on Rafah’ Image Went So Viral (Laryn)
From Vox: “If you’ve scrolled through Instagram Stories [recently], you were likely met with a single image over and over: a desert camp in front of a dramatic mountain range, filled with endless rows of colorful tents and white ones in the middle spelling out the words ‘All eyes on Rafah.’ … It’s certainly not the only image to go viral that attempts to bring attention to the plight of Palestinians during Israel’s seven-month assault on Gaza following the October 7 Hamas attack. … But it’s unlike many of the other posts to circulate on social media during the war, in which Israeli forces have killed more than 35,000 people (more than half of whom the UN says are women and children) and displaced around 1.7 million more. That’s because it appears to be AI-generated.”
Everyone You Know Will Eventually Be Highly Vulnerable to Extreme Heat (Reader Jim)
From Bloomberg: “Intense heat waves in recent years offer a stark warning of what’s at stake for humanity. The planet just endured its 12 hottest consecutive months on record, and this summer threatens to be hotter than ever. But those stakes are not experienced equally across age groups. Older adults are more at risk of experiencing dangerous health impacts during periods of intense heat.”
Top Oil Firms’ Climate Pledges Failing on Almost Every Metric, Report Finds (Laura)
The author writes, “Major oil companies have in recent years made splashy climate pledges to cut their greenhouse gas emissions and take on the climate crisis, but a new report suggests those plans do not stand up to scrutiny. The research and advocacy group Oil Change International examined climate plans from the eight largest US- and European-based international oil and gas producers — BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Eni, Equinor, ExxonMobil, Shell and TotalEnergies — and found none were compatible with limiting global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels — a threshold scientists have long warned could have dire consequences if breached.”
FROM 1995: The Anointed One (Gerry)
From The Harvard Crimson: “In his own term as president of the Black Students Association last year, [Alvin] Bragg was known as a mediator and, according to his predecessor, a ‘conciliator.’ It is not the usual role for the president of the BSA, which through the years has found that only controversial activism forced significant change from the Harvard administration. Bragg is positioned to someday assume such a role on the larger stage of local or national politics.”
New York Magnet Fisher Catches Safe Full of Soggy $100 Bills, He Says (DonkeyHotey)
The authors write, “James Kane has used a powerful magnet to fish all manner of junk from New York City waterways, but he says the stacks of $100 bills he pulled from a safe were something else entirely. Kane’s girlfriend, Barbi Agostini, was recording … as he pulled a slimy safe out of a lake in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, famous as the location of the 1939 and 1964 World’s Fairs, and extracted bags of waterlogged, gunk-covered Benjamins from inside it. … The couple estimates that the safe contained as much as $100,000, though the bills were partly decomposed and stuck together.”
