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Aleksandra Urman @aurman21.bsky.social · 15h

"novel forms of life"?! Hahaha

Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 15h

These are all flagrant lies, unsourced yet printed in a newspaper that allegedly fact checks things. The rest of it is meandering panic-bait that treats jail breaking LLMs. They don’t even describe the virus! They just said someone made one. Bullshit!

One answer is to look at the data. After the launch of GPT-5 in August, some thought that A.I. had hit a plateau. Expert analysis suggests this isn’t true. GPT-5 can do things no other A.I. can do. It can hack into a web server. It can design novel forms of life. It can even build its own A.I. (albeit a much simpler one) from scratch.

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Kevin Rothrock @kevinrothrock.me · 15h

Oof. Polish border guards caught a 16-year-old Russian kid who walked into Poland from Kaliningrad seeking political asylum. Poland then returned the kid to Russia, where he now faces up to two years in prison for illegal border crossing. (If he's written any anti-war stuff, it might get worse.)

Калининградский областной суд

ул. Сергеева, д. 8, г. Калининград, 236040 e-mail: [email protected] тел. (4012) 59-27-27

t.me

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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 15h

These are all flagrant lies, unsourced yet printed in a newspaper that allegedly fact checks things. The rest of it is meandering panic-bait that treats jail breaking LLMs. They don’t even describe the virus! They just said someone made one. Bullshit!

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Aleksandra Urman @aurman21.bsky.social · 15h

Meanwhile, seemingly "low-key" news from yesterday - Roskomsvoboda, an NGO that was working to document the death of internet freedom in Russia and do the little they could to counteract it, shut down. Mr Durov could have spent some of his time&money on supporting such orgs instead of whining on TG.

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Aleksandra Urman @aurman21.bsky.social · 15h

Yeah, Pavel at some point clearly adopted all the worst ideas of the Silicon Valley's tech billionaires club despite being a tech billionaire with a very different background. I don't know, maybe he hopes this will make him "truly" one of them (I don't think it will, no).

Kevin Rothrock @kevinrothrock.me · 15h

lol, Pavel Durov pushed a notification to Telegram users around the world, directing them to a blog post he wrote in honor of his own birthday, warning that the "Free Internet" is ending. He moans about Germany, Australia, France, & Britain, and says nothing about authoritarian states t.me/durov/452

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Louis Berger @ajournomento.bsky.social · 15h

Die heutige Friedensnobelpreisträgerin María Corina Machado widmet ihre Auszeichnung Donald Trump und ist Unterzeichnerin der rechtsradikalen „Carta de Madrid“ (unter anderem zusammen Eduardo Bolsonaro, Marion Maréchal, Giorgia Meloni, Javier Milei und Eduardo Verástegui)…na danke.

„This recognition of the struggle of all Venezuelans is a boost to conclude our task: to conquer Freedom.

We are on the threshold of victory and today, more than ever, we count on President Trump, the people of the United States, the peoples of Latin America, and the democratic nations of the world as our principal allies to achieve Freedom and democracy.

I dedicate this prize to the suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump for his decisive support of our cause!“

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Kevin Rothrock @kevinrothrock.me · 15h

lol, Pavel Durov pushed a notification to Telegram users around the world, directing them to a blog post he wrote in honor of his own birthday, warning that the "Free Internet" is ending. He moans about Germany, Australia, France, & Britain, and says nothing about authoritarian states t.me/durov/452

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Michael Derby @michaelsderby.bsky.social · 21h

Conservative tech lord Thiel said tighter financial regulations “were a sign that a singular world government has begun to emerge that could be taken over by an Antichrist figure who could then use it to exert control over people.” Via WashPost

Inside billionaire Peter Thiel’s private lectures: Warnings of ‘the Antichrist’ and U.S. destruction

In leaked recordings of private lectures by tech billionaire Peter Thiel he argued that “the Antichrist” is likely to take the form of a critic of technology.

www.washingtonpost.com

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Aleksandra Urman @aurman21.bsky.social · 21h

Yeah Slack I totally wanted to have the threads between me and colleagues discussing research ideas summarised by some crappy AI. Because I can't read 5 messages myself or something.(No, absolutely not, I didn't click anything, how do I turn this off forever?!)

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Stadt Wien-Büchereien @buechereienwien.bsky.social · 2d

Die Uni Wien sucht für eine Studie Personen, die gern Hörbücher (Belletristik) hören.
Termine: Oktober - November 2025
Alter: über 18 Jahre
Dauer: max. 135 Minuten
Ort Kolingasse 14-16, 1090 Wien
Aufwandsentschädigung: 35€
Bei Interesse an [email protected] schreiben

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Aleksandra Urman @aurman21.bsky.social · 2d

Nah I just think there are too few likes on that! What's wrong with people haha

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Aleksandra Urman @aurman21.bsky.social · 2d

I think this is genuinely very funny, pls give @cbarrie.bsky.social more likes!

Christopher Barrie @cbarrie.bsky.social · 2d

This got two, *two*, likes and I think it's the funniest thing I've ever posted

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Christopher Barrie @cbarrie.bsky.social · 2d

This got two, *two*, likes and I think it's the funniest thing I've ever posted

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Adrienne Fichter @adfichter.bsky.social · 2d

🔥Das Genfer IT-Unternehmen Infomaniak hat Beschwerde eingelegt gegen die Verlängerung der Public Cloud-Rahmenverträge zwischen der Bundeskanzlei und Microsoft und Amazon (2025-2030). www.letemps.ch/cyber/souver...

Infomaniak fait recours contre la prolongation des contrats pour les services cloud de la Confédération - Le Temps

Les autorités fédérales ont reconduit mi-septembre pour cinq ans leur engagement avec des prestataires américains et chinois pour la gestion des données publiques de l’administration. La société genev...

www.letemps.ch

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Claes de Vreese @claesdevreese.bsky.social · 4d

A new page in the disinformation challenge?

With sora (openai) and vibes (meta) we are looking at even lower thresholds for misleading content

So far we have learned that neither AI companies nor platforms will step up to meet the challenges when it comes to democracy.

www.npr.org/2025/10/03/n...

Kiss reality goodbye: AI-generated social media has arrived

With the launch of Sora 2, OpenAI has opened a new chapter in addictive, and some worry dangerous, AI video content.

www.npr.org

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Aleksandra Urman @aurman21.bsky.social · 5d

Your every reply is more depressing than the other :) not necessarily decentralised, but open. hardware I agree, search perhaps too though I am thinking of public indices/not sure what's feasible there. Re OS - well we have Linux, so there could be hope for something similar

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Aleksandra Urman @aurman21.bsky.social · 5d

Ok, fair enough. Then the answer was open and decentralised tech development all along, I guess :)

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Aleksandra Urman @aurman21.bsky.social · 5d

Also political values is the broadest thing ever. I feel like all my values these days are political one way or another, whether I like and want that or not :)

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Claes de Vreese @claesdevreese.bsky.social · 5d

Meta’s decision to ban ads about politics, elections, and social issues on their platforms like Facebook and Instagram in the EU is now implemented.

This is the new policy. Any ad about fx elections, civil rights, economy, health, climate, immigration, or foreign policy is now (presumably) banned.

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Dare Obasanjo @carnage4life.bsky.social · 5d

The Sora team has shared how their feed works.

It prioritizes content from your network, not strangers like TikTok. It personalizes using your activity, engagement, ChatGPT history, and creator signals like follower count, with some knobs to tune it to your taste if you want to tweak the algorithm

The Sora feed philosophy

Discover the Sora feed philosophy—built to spark creativity, foster connections, and keep experiences safe with personalized recommendations, parental controls, and strong guardrails.

openai.com

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Aleksandra Urman @aurman21.bsky.social · 7d

Yeah, I get this conflict and I don't think there is an easy solution here. I don't know, maybe start with a bit of transparency on how/when/etc these decisions are made, what's at stake. Communicate with the users a bit. But that's not how they operate either :)

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Aleksandra Urman @aurman21.bsky.social · 7d

If I remember correctly these were people from some legal division, so I asked how they decide which government requests to fulfill, especially in the cases listed above. And yeah either too many NDAs prevented them from talking or they genuinely didn't know, I never figured it out. Bad anyway.

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Aleksandra Urman @aurman21.bsky.social · 7d

And since I am in a bit of a rage posting mode, I must say I thoroughly "enjoyed" talking to Google representatives at Trust and Safety conference in Stanford last year who were either under too many NDAs or oblivious their company has been blocking apps in Russia, HK or Belarus. Because who cares.

Aleksandra Urman @aurman21.bsky.social · 7d

Yep, just a quick reminder this is nothing new, it's just now this practice has come to the US.

Apple and Google have been removing similar and other apps used e.g. by protesters in authoritarian contexts this whole time, a 🧵 of selected cases:

Exhibit 1, Hong Kong www.nytimes.com/2019/10/09/t...

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Aleksandra Urman @aurman21.bsky.social · 7d

Oh and exhibit 2 was the wrong link, should have been this www.bbc.com/news/busines...

Google pulls Hong Kong protestor game from store

Another company faces a boycott for banning an esports player who supported the protestors.

www.bbc.com

Aleksandra Urman @aurman21.bsky.social · 7d

TLDR: if a big tech company needs to bow to an autocrat (or a wanna-be one), it will.

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Aleksandra Urman @aurman21.bsky.social · 7d

The above cases are the first that came to mind, there were more just in HK/Belarus/Russia alone. Surely there is way more in China, Iran, and really everywhere. See the great data collection effort and work done by people at applecensorship.com and googlecensorship.org

Apple Censorship

Tracking App status globally

applecensorship.com

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Aleksandra Urman @aurman21.bsky.social · 7d

Exhibit 5, Apple (Google does this too) removing VPN apps on the request of Russian authorities. Note, this is post 2022. english.elpais.com/internationa...