AI image generators like Stable Diffusion and DALL-E amplify bias in gender and race, despite efforts to detoxify the data fueling these results.
In the beginning of 2023, [...] we noticed suspicious network activity that turned out to be an ongoing attack targeting the iPhones and iPads of our colleagues. The moment we understood that there was a clear pattern in the connections, and that the devices could have been infected, we initiated a standard digital forensics and incident response (DFIR) protocol for such cases – moving around the office, collecting the devices, and inspecting their contents. The ultimate goal was to locate and extract the malware, to find the point of entry (hopefully, a 0-day) and to develop a protocol for scanning the iDevices for active infection. That process turned into a months-long journey, and in this article we would like to summarize it.
Unidentified governments are surveilling smartphone users via their apps' push notifications, [U.S. senator Ron Wyden] warned on Wednesday.
Vietnamese government agents tried to plant spyware on the phones of members of Congress, American policy experts and U.S. journalists this year in a brazen campaign that underscores the rapid proliferation of state-of-the-art hacking tools, according to forensic examination of links posted to Twitter and documents uncovered by a consortium of news outlets that includes The Washington Post.
Just as the reduction of art to political propaganda leads to bad art, the aestheticization of politics leads to bad, irresponsible politics. That’s because aesthetics and politics are not the same thing. They are not totally unrelated, obviously, but they are also and even primarily different. A political message can be part of an aesthetic effect, just as a political movement can benefit from an aesthetic appeal. But we get nowhere if we confuse or collapse these categories.
How a group of teen friends plunged into an underworld of cybercrime and broke the internet—then went to work for the FBI.
A great piece on the creators of the Mirai botnet and the law enforcement agents who hunted them.
A little-known surveillance program tracks more than a trillion domestic phone records within the United States each year, according to a letter WIRED obtained that was sent by US senator Ron Wyden to the Department of Justice (DOJ) on Sunday, challenging the program’s legality.See additional reporting from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
[T]here has been a growing perception that moonshots are the primary model for radical innovation at Google, and chiefly responsible for our greatest product and technical achievements. What I have seen during my 15 years at Google does not match that perception. I contend that the bulk of our successes have been the result of the methodical, relentless, and persistent pursuit of 1.3-2X opportunities -- what I have come to call "roofshots."
I love that the Internet is a very deeply physical thing that influences the design and implementation choices we make in digital systems and infrastructure. Props to Dropbox for a clever use of their client to improve the customer experience.
One of the most effective things you can do to be successful at your job is to understand how your organization works.Organizations have informal organizations and hidden leverage points. Knowing this and knowing the ones in your organization will make you a more effective engineer, even if you dislike "politics".