CYBER

An AI-generated Biden called voters in New Hampshire ahead of the primary and told them to stay home. X locked down the search term “Taylor Swift” after AI-generated nudes of the pop giant flooded the platform. In the wake of both scandals, Congress has struggled with how to fight back against the flood of fake bullshit. Keeping the world from drowning in fakes affects all of us, but some of the cures sound worse than the sickness.

This week on Cyber, Motherboard Senior Editor Janus Rose and Fight for the Future’s Lia Holland come on to talk about the limits of legislation around AI-generated scams and abuse.

Stories discussed in this episode.

Congress Is Trying to Stop AI Nudes and Deepfake Scams Because Celebrities Are Mad

Taylor Swift Is Living Every Woman’s AI Porn Nightmare

‘Palworld’ Is Tearing the Internet Apart

An AI-Generated Content Empire Is Spreading Fake Celebrity Images on Google

Cyber Live is coming to YouTube. Subscribe here to be notified.

Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ten years ago, Big Tech reached a peak. Facebook had wormed its way into the lives of billions of people. The mainstream news covered iPhones releases like they were Taylor Swift concerts. Elon Musk was promising to colonize Mars and fill the streets with self-driving cars. In 2024, the wheels have come off all these dreams. Musk has filled the sky with satellites, but no colonists, and constantly fights people on X. Self-driving cars are killing people. Apple has released a $3,500 VR headset that’s been met with middling reviews. And Facebook’s only recent innovation is eating its own tail to churn out massive profits.

How did it come to this? This week on Cyber, PR provocateur and tech critic Ed Zitron stops by to tell us about everything he saw at the Consumer Electronics Show, the problem with most tech journalism, and why we all turned against Big Tech. He’ll explore these topics more in depth on his new podcast, Better Offline, which launches later this month.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Better Offline

Rabbit AI Introduction Video

Where’s Your Ed At

How Tech Outstayed Its Welcome

Cyber Live is coming to YouTube. Subscribe here to be notified.

Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We’ve got a special presentation on the show for you today, an interview with Yuliana Shemetovets, the spokesperson for a group of ethical hackers going to war with Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko. They’re called the Cyber Partisans and they’re responsible for hacks against the Lukashenko regime.

Lukashenko is a die-hard Putin ally who has been in charge of Belarus since 1994. In that time, the country has become more unstable. Protestors have disappeared from the streets and Belarus has allowed Russian troops to move through the country to strike at Ukraine.

The Cyber Partisans have worked behind the scenes to disrupt Lukashenko’s regime. They’ve hacked the Belarusian railway system, which still runs on Windows XP, and obtained phone calls between government officials.

You’ll hear a little untranslated Belarussian in this episode. I only want to highlight one bit that I think is important. When Shemetovets is talking about acquiring phone calls, we’ll play the raw audio of Belarussian government officials talking. What you’re hearing is someone bragging about beating up a protestor.

“I open the...car door, and pull this [woman] by her hair. I kicked her, and told the riot police to..and that bitch started screaming.”

The translated audio has quite a few more explivites in it.

This is an on-camera interview that first aired on VICE News as an episode of SuperUsers. It was produced by Louise McLoughlin and Cal Bateman.

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live on Wednesdays at 4pm EST. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Apple recently announced a plan to sell customers manuals and parts that will let them fix their own iPhone 12s and 13s. It’s a huge win for the right to repair, but what are the specifics of the plan and what does it mean for the future of the repair movement in America?

This week on Cyber, Matthew Gault and Motherboard editor-in-chief Jason Koebler sat down with heavyweights of the right-to-repair movement to answer that question. This conversation between iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens, Repair.org’s Gay Gordon-Byrne, and U.S. PIRG’s Nathan Proctor covers everything from John Deere tractors to lies Apple tells when it’s lobbying against the right-to-repair.

A non-comprehensive list of the Motherboard reporting mentioned in this episode:

Half the Country Is Now Considering Right to Repair Laws

FTC Formally Adopts Right to Repair Platform

Apple Is Lobbying Against Your Right to Repair iPhones, New York State Records Confirm

Apple Is Telling Lawmakers People Will Hurt Themselves if They Try to Fix iPhones

Why American Farmers Are Hacking Their Tractors With Ukrainian Firmware

John Deere–Backed Lobbying Groups Host Anti-Right to Repair Conference

Department of Commerce Says We Need Fewer Repair Restrictions

Apple Said It Will Stop Breaking Face ID on Independently-Repaired iPhone 13s

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

An anonymous poster on 4Chan published 135 gigabytes of what appears to be internal data stolen from Twitch, including exactly how much money the platform’s biggest streamers make on Twitch.

On Wednesday, the poster published a link to a torrent of 135 GB, calling it "an extremely poggers leak" which allegedly includes source code for all Twitch clients for different operating systems, an unreleased Steam competitor, and internal tools that Twitch's security team uses.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.