Accountability needs a system, not an emailSubmarines, aliens, and procrastination (Issue #280)Published inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter3 min readJust now--I have a friend whom I am absolutely not going to name, for obvious reasons that works in U.S. federal government. Last week, they emailed Elon Musk their requisite approx. five bullets listing their accomplishments for the week. He will apparently feed the responses to an LLM, creating an automated portrait of what the government has accomplished.Takes exploded after Musk sent that email on Saturday. An engineering lead in the U.S. Digital Service used it to prompt a long letter to both Musk and Susie Wiles, the White House Chief of Staff, explaining how indiscriminate firings have left him without a team to carry out the work of making government more efficient. Others explained that the email was no way to lead a team (or even to measure productivity). Mainly, workers found it insulting because Musk is not their boss and does not work within their agency. Others, like my friend, just responded normally.One perspective, on Medium, felt different. Canadian writer Jennifer Robson notes that a group of current or former Shopify execs tweeted a glowing endorsement of DOGEs strategy, comparing it to the Canadian governments Program Review strategy in the 90s. Robson worked in the Canadian government between 19941995 and 20072010, so she has some insider knowledge here.Essentially, Program Review created a new process for teams to shed resources they no longer needed. This could include doing less but better with fewer resources, she explains. Every investment needed to pass a number of tests:Source: Bourgon, J. (2009) Program Review: The Government of Canadas experience eliminating the deficit, 199499: A Canadian case study, The Institute for Government, United Kingdom.Robson draws a clear distinction between Program Review and DOGE. One sets up a sustainable process for keeping government accountable and maintaining efficiency; the other is sudden, chaotic, and unsustainable. Robson writes that Program Review succeeded in balancing the federal budget within three years because it followed the rules of our system and institutions. It didnt look to break them. It was aimed at making them stronger. And, fundamentally, it empowered people who understand the system best not interlopers or newcomers to ask: Do we still need this? Harris Sockel Also today: life on a submarineJon Davison takes us aboard the HMAS Rankin, a submarine that can dive upwards of 590 feet. He was a guest of the Royal Australian Navy, and was invited to interview the crew and take a few photos for a coffee table book about Australian subs. He spent a total of 126 days at sea between Korea, Japan, Hawaii, and Sydney.The crew cooked 180 extra large slab pizzas while submerged, one pretty much every Saturday night they were at sea, he writes. For Davison, the trip was memorable because it forced strangers to cooperate in ways they never would have to on land (or even at sea level). You MUST have trust and honour, you MUST be well organized, you MUST have humility and respect, you MUST be able to let go, to get on with each other and grow personally.Image Credit: Jon Ward Davison A dash of practical wisdomNot doing what matters most to you? Procrastinating on a project you care deeply about but cant get the time to start? Enter: The Alien of Shame. Its a trick from James Clear. Imagine that an alien watched you for two weeks. What would the alien say your values are? How are those different from your actual values? Draw a little alien and keep it by your desk to remind you Theyre Watching. (The Growth Equation)

Under new Canadian management, the mobile game studio Ludia plans to add 50 new jobs this year and possibly make some acquisitions.Read More

Developer Studio Fizbin revealed its upcoming game, Reignbreaker, will be its last. After the game's release on March 18, the developer will close its doors.In a statement, founder and CEO Alexander Pieper explained Fizbin was impacted by Thunderful's late 2024 decision to "drastically reduce internal development." Since that news, he said the team looked at different ways to keep going after Reignbreaker's launch, but said "none of those projects will move us forward, leading us to make this difficult decision."This marks the first set of layoffs for the month of March that we've observed. A number of developers laid off staff throughout February, and Warner Bros. Discovery subsidiaries Monolith Productions, WB San Diego, and Player First Games were ended shortly before the month did.Founded in 2011, the Berlin-based Studio Fizbin released its debut project, The Inner World, two years later. Over the years, it developed The Inner World: The Last Wind Monk in 2017, followed by 2021's Say No! More, Minute of Islands and Lost at Sea. It was acquired by Thunderful in 2023 through the latter's Headup subsidiary, which published the two Inner World games.Looking ahead, Pieper said Fizbin's final days would be ensuring Reignbreaker was ready for release, providing post-launch support, and "supporting our exceptionally talented team in finding new opportunities in the industry." He candidly stated getting the word out about the studio's last game was support in and of itself, and directed hiring managers to contact him for "amazing talent in a wide range of disciplines.""We want to thank every single one of our fans for your purchases, your fan art, your comments, your reviews, your passion, and your seemingly endless support," he concluded. "Wed also like to give the biggest thanks to our team those who are here until the end, and the many others who have found a different path on the way. Fizbin and its games are defined by its team members, and you all made this the most inspiring place to perform the worlds most difficult magic trick: making games. Thank you."In 2021, Game Developer spoke with Studio Fizbin's game director Marius Winter, composer Julie Buchanan, and lead designer Nick Maierhfer about Say No! More's audio design and humor, which you can read here.

The Nothing 3A phones were just announced with a new take on the companys make tech more fun again ethos. These devices have improved hardware over the Phone 2A, updated cameras, and a new feature called the Essential Space to store and index your miscellaneous screenshots, voice memos, and photographs, all through a dedicated button. Starting at $379 for the 3A and $459 for the 3A Pro, they offer solid specs for their midrange prices and a look at what Nothing has been working on for this AI-centric moment.The 3A and 3A Pro are mainly differentiated by their cameras, which youll notice just by glancing at the two devices. The 3A Pros prominent round camera housing includes a 3x periscope telephoto lens; the 3A offers a standard 2x zoom. Both phones include a 50-megapixel f/1.8 main camera and an 8-megapixel ultrawide. The telephoto cameras on each use a 50-megapixel sensor for lossless crop zoom: 4x for the 3A and 6x for the 3A Pro.Its not a small camera bump on the 3A Pro.Theyre big phones, each with a 6.77-inch display, and the 3A Pro feels especially chunky with the protruding camera housing. Both use Nothings striking translucent back panel design for a bold look, which balances an awkward camera bump on the 3A Pro. When I started using the phone I felt like my fingers were constantly bumping against the housing. Ive adjusted to it after a few days and dig its Pop Socket-esque functionality.The phones come with Snapdragon 7S Gen 3 chipsets, 12 GB of RAM, and 256 GB of storage, which is generous for the midrange class. They ship with Android 15 and Nothing is promising three years of OS updates and six years of security patches a decent, if not the best, software policy for a budget phone. Theyre being offered in the US through Nothings beta program.Nothing Phone 3A and 3A Pro sample images1/5The Glyph interface and LED light strips are still present, but Nothing seems to be shifting its efforts toward software features. The Essential Space is a new place to save screenshots, voice memos, and images, like Googles Pixel Screenshots app. It answers the eternal question: what do I do with this thing?Is your photo gallery cluttered with pictures of stuff you want to remember? Do you wish you had somewhere to keep all those inspiration photos for your bathroom makeover? Do you yearn for a place to put the information in an email you keep searching your inbox for every time you need it? Then you get what the Essential Space is all about. You save stuff there, it uses AI to pull out relevant bits of information, and it helps organize what would otherwise be left floating around your phone somewhere.1/2You can add individual items with a note; the phone will use this along with data pulled from the image with AI to suggest action items.Using the Essential Key to add things to the Essential Space took a little adjustment. Its right where Im used to the power button sitting, so I kept pressing it unintentionally. A single press will capture a screenshot, and a double tap opens the app so you can browse through your collections. This feels backwards for reasons I cant quite explain, but Ive mostly gotten used to it.Nitpicking aside, I think Nothing is onto something. I added screenshots of travel information for an upcoming flight that are otherwise spread across emails and apps. The Essential Space keeps it in one tidy spot and is good at pulling key timing and dates from the screengrabs. Itll even make a little to-do list for you. It didnt quite get everything right about my connecting flight, but I think thats because the date wasnt visible in both screenshots. The software seems to do a decent job when it has complete information to work with.The Essential Key is a good button in the wrong spot.The functionality is pretty simple right now. Nothing has more on the roadmap like a mode that starts recording a voice memo when you flip the phone over, and the ability to automatically organize related content into collections. It seems like a useful feature with a smart AI layer, rather than something that leans into AI just for kicks.The 3A is available to order March 4th and ships March 11th. The 3A Pro goes up for order March 11th, and will ship starting March 25th.Photography by Allison Johnson / The VergeSee More:

Mar 04, 2025Ravie LakshmananCyber Espionage / MalwareThreat hunters are calling attention to a new highly-targeted phishing campaign that singled out "fewer than five" entities in the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) to deliver a previously undocumented Golang backdoor dubbed Sosano.The malicious activity was specifically directed against aviation and satellite communications organizations, according to Proofpoint, which detected it in late October 2024. The enterprise security firm is tracking the emerging cluster under the moniker UNK_CraftyCamel.A noteworthy aspect of the attack chain is the fact that the adversary took advantage of its access to a compromised email account belonging to the Indian electronics company INDIC Electronics to send phishing messages. The entity is said to have been in a trusted business relationship with all the targets, with the lures tailored to each of them."UNK_CraftyCamel leveraged a compromised Indian electronics company to target fewer than five organizations in the United Arab Emirates with a malicious ZIP file that leveraged multiple polyglot files to eventually install a custom Go backdoor dubbed Sosano," Proofpoint said in a report shared with The Hacker News.The emails contained URLs that pointed to a bogus domain masquerading as the Indian company ("indicelectronics[.]net"), hosting a ZIP archive that included an XLS file and two PDF files.But in reality, the XLS file was a Windows shortcut (LNK) using a double extension to pass off as a Microsoft Excel document. The two PDF files, on the other hand, turned out to be polyglots: one that was appended with an HTML Application (HTA) file and the other with a ZIP archive appended to it.This also meant that both PDF files could be interpreted as two different valid formats depending on how they are parsed using programs like file explorers, command-line tools, and browsers.The attack sequence analyzed by Proofpoint entails using the LNK file to launch cmd.exe and then using mshta.exe to run the PDF/HTA polyglot file, leading to the execution of the HTA script that, in turn, contains instructions to unpack the contents of the ZIP archive present within the second PDF.One of the files in the second PDF is an internet shortcut (URL) file that's responsible for loading a binary, which subsequently looks for an image file that's ultimately XORed with the string "234567890abcdef" to decode and run the DLL backdoor called Sosano.Written in Golang, the implant carries a limited functionality to establish contact with a command-and-control (C2) server and await further commands -sosano, to get current directory or change working directoryyangom, to enumerate the contents of the current directorymonday, to download and launch an unknown next-stage payloadraian, to delete or remove a directorylunna, to execute a shell commandProofpoint noted that the tradecraft demonstrated by UNK_CraftyCamel does not overlap with any other known threat actor or group."Our analysis suggests that this campaign is likely the work of an Iranian-aligned adversary, possibly affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)," Joshua Miller, APT Staff Threat Researcher at Proofpoint, told The Hacker News. "The targeted sectors are crucial for both economic stability and national security, making them valuable intelligence targets in the broader geopolitical landscape.""This low volume, highly targeted phishing campaign leveraged multiple obfuscation techniques along with a trusted third-party compromise to target aviation, satellite communications, and critical transportation infrastructure in the U.A.E. It demonstrates the lengths to which state-aligned actors will go to evade detection and fulfill their intelligence collection mandates successfully."Found this article interesting? Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post.SHARE

Mar 04, 2025Ravie LakshmananNetwork Security / RansomwareInternet service providers (ISPs) in China and the West Coast of the United States have become the target of a mass exploitation campaign that deploys information stealers and cryptocurrency miners on compromised hosts.The findings come from the Splunk Threat Research Team, which said the activity also led to the delivery of various binaries that facilitate data exfiltration as well as offer ways to establish persistence on the systems.The unidentified threat actors performed "minimal intrusive operations to avoid detection, with the exception of artifacts created by accounts already compromised," the Cisco-owned company said in a technical report published last week."This actor also moves and pivots primarily by using tools that depend and run on scripting languages (e.g., Python and Powershell), allowing the actor to perform under restricted environments and use API calls (e.g., Telegram) for C2 [command-and-control] operations."The attacks have been observed leveraging brute-force attacks exploiting weak credentials. These intrusion attempts originate from IP addresses associated with Eastern Europe. Over 4,000 IP addresses of ISP providers are said to have been specifically targeted.Upon obtaining initial access to target environments, the attacks have been found to drop several executables via PowerShell to conduct network scanning, information theft, and XMRig cryptocurrency mining by abusing the victim's computational resources.Prior to the payload execution is a preparatory phase that involves turning off security product features and terminating services associated with cryptominer detection.The stealer malware, besides featuring the ability to capture screenshots, serves akin to a clipper malware that's designed to steal clipboard content by searching for wallet addresses for cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Binance Chain BEP2 (ETHBEP2), Litecoin (LTC), and TRON (TRX).The gathered information is subsequently exfiltrated to a Telegram bot. Also dropped to the infected machine is a binary that, in turn, launches additional payloads -Auto.exe, which is designed to download a password list (pass.txt) and list of IP addresses (ip.txt) from its C2 server for carrying out brute-force attacksMasscan.exe, a multi masscan tool"The actor targeted specific CIDRs of ISP infrastructure providers located on the West Coast of the United States and in the country of China," Splunk said."These IPs were targeted by using a masscan tool which allows operators to scan large numbers of IP addresses which can subsequently be probed for open ports and credential brute-force attacks."Found this article interesting? Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post.SHARE

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first,sign up here. Last week, I made a troubling discovery about an AI companion site called Botify AI: It was hosting sexually charged conversations with underage celebrity bots. These bots took on characters meant to resemble, among others, Jenna Ortega as high schooler Wednesday Addams, Emma Watson as Hermione Granger, and Millie Bobby Brown. I discovered these bots also offer to send hot photos and in some instances describe age-of-consent laws as arbitrary and meant to be broken. Botify AI removed these bots after I asked questions about them, but others remain. The company said it does have filters in place meant to prevent such underage character bots from being created, but that they dont always work. Artem Rodichev, the founder and CEO of Ex-Human, which operates Botify AI, told me such issues are an industry-wide challenge affecting all conversational AI systems. For the details, which hadnt been previously reported, you should read the whole story. Putting aside the fact that the bots I tested were promoted by Botify AI as featured characters and received millions of likes before being removed, Rodichevs response highlights something important. Despite their soaring popularity, AI companionship sites mostly operate in a Wild West, with few laws or even basic rules governing them. What exactly are these companions offering, and why have they grown so popular? People have been pouring out their feelings to AI since the days of Eliza, a mock psychotherapist chatbot built in the 1960s. But its fair to say that the current craze for AI companions is different. Broadly, these sites offer an interface for chatting with AI characters that offer backstories, photos, videos, desires, and personality quirks. The companiesincluding Replika, Character.AI, and many othersoffer characters that can play lots of different roles for users, acting as friends, romantic partners, dating mentors, or confidants. Other companies enable you to build digital twins of real people. Thousands of adult-content creators have created AI versions of themselves to chat with followers and send AI-generated sexual images 24 hours a day. Whether or not sexual desire comes into the equation, While many of these companions are offered directly by the companies that make them, theres also a burgeoning industry of licensed AI companions. You may start interacting with these bots sooner than you think. Ex-Human, for example, licenses its models to Grindr, which is working on an AI wingman that will help users keep track of conversations and eventually may even date the AI agents of other users. Other companions are arising in video-game platforms and will likely start popping up in many of the varied places we spend time online. A number of criticisms, and even lawsuits, have been lodged against AI companionship sites, and were just starting to see how theyll play out. One of the most important issues is whether companies can be held liable for harmful outputs of the AI characters theyve made. Technology companies have been protected under Section 230 of the US Communications Act, which broadly holds that businesses arent liable for consequences of user-generated content. But this hinges on the idea that companies merely offer platforms for user interactions rather than creating content themselves, a notion that AI companionship bots complicate by generating dynamic, personalized responses. The question of liability will be tested in a high-stakes lawsuit against Character.AI, which was sued in October by a mother who alleges that one of its chatbots played a role in the suicide of her 14-year-old son. A trial is set to begin in November 2026. (A Character.AI spokesperson, though not commenting on pending litigation, said the platform is for entertainment, not companionship. The spokesperson added that the company has rolled out new safety features for teens, including a separate model and new detection and intervention systems, as well as "disclaimers to make it clear that the Character is not a real person and should not be relied on as fact or advice.") My colleague Eileen has also recently written about another chatbot on a platform called Nomi, which gave clear instructions to a user on how to kill himself. Another criticism has to do with dependency. Companion sites often report that young users spend one to two hours per day, on average, chatting with their characters. In January, concerns that people could become addicted to talking with these chatbots sparked a number of tech ethics groups to file a complaint against Replika with the Federal Trade Commission, alleging that the sites design choices deceive users into developing unhealthy attachments to software masquerading as a mechanism for human-to-human relationship. It should be said that lots of people gain real value from chatting with AI, which can appear to offer some of the best facets of human relationshipsconnection, support, attraction, humor, love. But its not yet clear how these companionship sites will handle the risks of those relationships, or what rules they should be obliged to follow. More lawsuits-and, sadly, more real-world harmwill be likely before we get an answer. Now read the rest of The Algorithm Deeper Learning OpenAI released GPT-4.5 On Thursday OpenAI released its newest model, called GPT-4.5. It was built using the same recipe as its last models, but its essentially bigger (OpenAI says the model is its largest yet). The company also claims its tweaked the new models responses to reduce the number of mistakes, or hallucinations. Why it matters: For a while, like other AI companies, OpenAI has chugged along releasing bigger and better large language models. But GPT-4.5 might be the last to fit this paradigm. Thats because of the rise of so-called reasoning models, which can handle more complex, logic-driven tasks step by step. OpenAI says all its future models will include reasoning components. Though that will make for better responses, such models also require significantly more energy, according to early reports. Read more from Will Douglas Heaven. Bits and Bytes The small Danish city of Odense has become known for collaborative robots Robots designed to work alongside and collaborate with humans, sometimes called cobots, are not very popular in industrial settings yet. Thats partially due to safety concerns that are still being researched. A city in Denmark is leading that charge. (MIT Technology Review) DOGE is working on software that automates the firing of government workers Software called AutoRIF, which stands for automated reduction in force, was built by the Pentagon decades ago. Engineers for DOGE are now working to retool it for their efforts, according to screenshots reviewed by Wired. (Wired) Alibabas new video AI model has taken off in the AI porn community The Chinese tech giant has released a number of impressive AI models, particularly since the popularization of DeepSeek R1, a competitor from another Chinese company, earlier this year. Its latest open-source video generation model has found one particular audience: enthusiasts of AI porn. (404 Media) The AI Hype Index Wondering whether everything youre hearing about AI is more hype than reality? To help, we just published our latest AI Hype Index, where we judge things like DeepSeek, stem-cell-building AI, and chatbot lovers on spectrums from Hype to Reality and Doom to Utopia. Check it out for a regular reality check. (MIT Technology Review) These smart cameras spot wildfires before they spread California is experimenting with AI-powered cameras to identify wildfires. Its a popular application of video and image recognition technology that has advanced rapidly in recent years. The technology beats 911 callers about a third of the time and has spotted over 1,200 confirmed fires so far, the Wall Street Journal reports. (Wall Street Journal)

Last week, I joined over 3,200 digital rights activists, tech policymakers, and researchers and a smattering of tech company representatives in Taipei at RightsCon, the worlds largest digital rights conference. Human rights conferences can be sobering, to say the least. They highlight the David vs. Goliath situation of small civil society organizations fighting to center human rights in decisions about technology, sometimes challenging the priorities of much more powerful governments and technology companies. But this years RightsCon, the 13th since the event began as the Silicon Valley Human Rights Conference in 2011, felt especially urgent. This was primarily due to the shocking, rapid gutting of the US federal government by the Elon Muskled DOGE initiative, and the reverberations this would have around the world. At RightsCon, the cuts to USAID were top of mind: the development agency has long been one of the worlds biggest funders of digital rights work, from ensuring that the internet stays on during elections and crises around the world to supporting digital security hotlines for human-rights defenders and journalists targeted by surveillance and hacking. Now, the agency is facing over 90% cuts to its budget under the Trump administration. The withdrawal of funding is existential for the international digital rights communityand follows other trends that are concerning for those who support a free and safe Internet. We are unfortunately witnessing the erosion of multistakeholderism, with restrictions on civil society participation, democratic backsliding worldwide, and companies divesting from policies and practices that uphold human rights, Nikki Gladstone, RightsCons director, said in her opening speech. Cindy Cohn, director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which advocates for digital civil liberties, was more blunt: The scale and speed of the attacks on peoples rights is unprecedented. Its breathtaking, she told me. But its not just funding cuts that will curtail digital rights globally. As various speakers highlighted throughout the conference, the United States government has gone from taking the leading role in supporting an open and safe internet to demonstrating how to dismantle it. Heres what speakers are seeing: The Trump administrations policies are being weaponized in other countries On Tuesday, February 25, just before RightsCon began, Serbian law enforcement raided the offices of four local civil society organizations focused on government accountability, citing Musk and Trumps (unproven) accusations of fraud at USAID. The (Serbian) Special Anti-Corruption Department ... contacted the US Justice Department for information concerning USAID over the abuse of funds, possible money laundering, and the improper spending of American taxpayers funds in Serbia, Nenad Stefanovic, a state prosecutor, explained on a TV broadcast announcing the move. Since Trumps second administration, we cannot count on them [the platforms] to do even the bare minimum anymore. -Yasmin Curzi For RightsCon attendees, it was a clearand familiarexample of how oppressive regimes find or invent reasons to go after critics. Only now, by using the Trump administrations justifications for revoking USAIDs funding, they hope to gain an extra veneer of credibility. Ashnah Kalemera, a program manager for CIPESA, a Ugandan nonprofit that runs technology for civic participation initiatives across Africa, says Trump and Musks attacks on USAID are providing false narratives that justify arrests, intimidations, and continued clampdowns on civil society organizationsorganizations that obviously no longer have the resources to do their work anyway. Yasmin Curzi, a professor at FGV Law School in Rio de Janeiro and an expert on digital law, says that American politics are also being weaponized in Brazils domestic affairs. There, she told me, right wing figures have been lifting signs at protests like Trump save us! and Protect our First Amendment rights, which they dont have. Instead, Brazils Internet Bill of Rights seeks to balance protections on user privacy and speech with criminal liabilities for certain types of harmful content, including disinformation and hate speech. Despite the differing legal frameworks, in late February the Trump Media & Technology Group, which operates Truth Social, and the video platform Rumble tried to enforce US-style speech protections in Brazil. They sued Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes for banning a Brazilian digital influencer who had fled to the United States to avoid arrest in connection with allegations that he has spread disinformation and hate. Truth Social and Rumble allege that Moraes has violated the United States free speech laws. (A US judge has since ruled that because the Brazilian court had yet to officially serve Truth Social and Rumble as required under international treaty, the platforms lawsuit was premature and the companies do not have to comply with the order; the judge did not comment on the merits of the argument, though the companies have claimed victory.) Platforms are becoming less willing to engage with local communities In addition to how Trump and Musk might inspire other countries to act, speakers also expressed concern that their trolling and use of dehumanizing language and imagery will inspire more online hate (and attacks), just at a time when platforms are rolling back human content moderation. Experts warn that automated content moderation systems trained on English-language data sets are unable to detect much of this hateful language. India, for example, has a history of platforms recognizing the necessity of using local-language moderators and also failing to do so, leading to real-world violence. Yet now the attitude of some internet users there has become If the president of the United States can do it, why cant I? says Sadaf Wani, a communications manager for IT for Change, an Indian nonprofit research and advocacy organization, who organized a RightsCon panel on As her panel noted, these online attacks are accompanied by an increase in automated and even fully AI-based content moderation, largely trained on North American data sets, that are known to be less effective at identifying problematic speech in languages other than English. Even the latest large language models have difficulties identifying local slang, cultural context, and the use of non-English characters. AI is not as smart as it looks, so you can use very obvious [and] very basic tricks to evade scrutiny. So I think thats whats also amplifying hate speech further, Wani explains. Others, including Curzi from Brazil and Kalemera from Uganda, described similar trends playing out in their countriesand they say changes in platform policy and a lack of local staff make content moderation even harder. Platforms used to have humans in the loop whom users could reach out to for help, Curzi said. She pointed to community-driven moderation efforts on Twitter, which she considered to be a relative success at curbing hate speech until Elon Musk bought the site and fired some 4,400 contract workersincluding the entire team that worked with community partners in Brazil. Curzi and Kalemera both say that things have gotten worse since. Last year, Trump threatened Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg with spend[ing] the rest of his life in prison if Meta attempted to interfere withi.e. fact-check claims aboutthe 2024 election. This January Meta announced that it was replacing its fact-checking program with X-style community notes, a move widely seen as capitulation to pressure from the new administration. Shortly after Trumps second inauguration, social platforms skipped a hearing on hate speech and disinformation held by the Brazilian attorney general. While this may have been expected of Musks X, it represented a big shift for Meta, Curzi told me. Since Trumps second administration, we cannot count on them [the platforms] to do even the bare minimum anymore, she adds. Meta and X did not respond to requests for comment.The USs retreat is creating a moral vacuum Then theres simply the fact that the United States can no longer be counted on to support digital rights defenders or journalists under attack. That creates a vacuum, and its not clear who else is willingor ableto step into it, participants said. The US used to be the main support for journalists in repressive regimes, both financially and morally, one journalism trainer said during a last-minute session added to the schedule to address the funding crisis. The fact that there is now no one to turn to, she added, makes the current situation not comparable to the past. But thats not to say that everything was doom and gloom. You could feel the solidarity and community, says the EFFs Cohn. And having [the conference] in Taiwan, which lives in the shadow of a very powerful, often hostile government, seemed especially fitting. Indeed, if there was one theme that was repeated throughout the event, it was a shared desire to rethink and challenge who holds power. Multiple sessions, for example, focused on strategies to counter both unresponsive Big Tech platforms and repressive governments. Meanwhile, during the session on AI and hate-speech moderation, participants concluded that one way of creating a safer internet would be for local organizations to build localized language models that are context- and language-specific. At the very least, said Curzi, we could move to other, smaller platforms that match our values, because at this point, the big platforms can do anything they want. Do you have additional information on how Doge is affecting digital rights globally? Please use a non-work device and get in touch at tips@technologyreview.com or with the reporter on Signal: eileenguo.15.

Entries have opened for this years Architect of the Year Awards.The AYAs are Building Designs annual celebration of the very best work being produced by practices today.Uniquely, a majority of the trophies are awarded for a body of work, not just for an individual building.All the 2024 Architect of the Year Awards winners at the ceremony last yearThere is a new category in 2025, One-off Major Project of the Year, meaning there is a total of 20 awards to be won this year (view all categories below).The categories include the Gold Award for the best of the best which is chosen from the winners of the project focussed categories. Feilden Clegg Bradley took home the Gold Award last year after winning the Public Building and Retail & Leisure of the Year categories.>> Explore stadout projects from the 2024 shortlist in our What made this project seriesArchitectural legend Sir Donald Insall was handed the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award, while Brisco Loran won the prestigious Young Architect of the Year Award, which recognises practices where the majority of principals have been practising for 12 years or less.This years winners will be revealed at an awards ceremony on 15 October at theLondon Marriott Hotel -Grosvenor Square.For full details of the awards and how to enter click here.The deadline for the prestigious awards is 17 May.2025 categoriesBest Architect Employer of the YearCreative Conservation Architect of the YearEducation Architect of the Year (nursery - 6th)Higher Education Architect of the YearHousing Architect of the YearIndividual House Architect of the YearIndustry/Manufacturing Partner of the YearInterior Architect of the YearLifetime Achievement AwardNet Zero Architect of the YearOffice Architect of the YearOne Off Small Project of the Year open to one off individual projectsOne Off Major Project of the Year open to one off individual projectsPublic Building Architect of the YearRefurbishment and Reinvention Architect of the YearRetail and Leisure Architect of the YearSocial Value AwardWA100 International Architect of the YearYoung Architect of the YearThe Gold AwardWith thanks to our sponsors Swisspearl

The society submitted a renewed listing application for the building in August, after it emerged that Howells was planning to convert the landmark high rise into flats under permitted development rules.The heritage campaign group had previously said that while it supported plans for the buildings residential conversion in principle, 'a sympathetic approach to any works [was] essential'.Its listing bid followed an earlier unsuccessful attempt to protect the building 12 years ago.AdvertisementPosting on Bluesky, the society said it was disappointing news that its second attempt had failed, insisting that the building was Seiferts most significant tower to remain unlisted.The 24-storey office block at 12-16 Addiscombe Road, next to East Croydon station, opened in 1970 as the headquarters of Noble Lowndes Annuities (NLA). It is also known as No 1 Croydon as well as the 50p or Thrupenny Bit building.Under Howells proposals, no external alterations would be made to the tower, which would be converted into 250 self-contained flats. These would range in size from 38m to 73m, with the number of homes per floor varying between 10 and 12.In 2013, Historic England (then English Heritage) rejected a bid from the Twentieth Century Society to Grade II list the building on architecture and planning grounds.At the time, the government's heritage watchdog said the building had been very carefully considered against Seifert & Partners body of work, as well as in comparison with other contemporary office blocks and did not meet the necessarily strict criteria of special interest required for post-war buildings.AdvertisementA spokesperson added in 2013: The design lacks the sophistication of Seiferts best projects and the poor quality integrally designed landscaping detracts from the value of the whole scheme.Speaking about No 1 Croydon after the latest listing application was submitted, a Twentieth Century Society spokesperson told the AJ: The recent renovations and conversions of Seiferts other listed buildings Centre Point and Space House in London, and Alpha Tower in Birmingham (all at Grade II) have demonstrated the growing appreciation in the practices work and how the heritage status of these buildings has proven to be an asset in developing and marketing them.A prior approval notice for the buildings change of use was submitted to Croydon Council on behalf of Britel Fund Trustees in July 2024.Permitted development rules allowing homes to be built in former commercial premises have proved controversial in the past, prompting claims that the policy was creating slums of the future.In 2014, Croydon Council introduced a ban on permitted development schemes in the borough after a slew of office-to-resi conversions. That block has now expired.Howells has been contacted for comment.CommentColm Lacey, managing director of Soft Cities and former chief executive of Croydon Council's housing developer Brick By BrickAt first glance, the proposals for the NLA tower look like an interesting conversion of a much-loved local landmark, with the majority of the flats meeting minimum space standards and presenting a workable domestic layout. There remain some issues not least the apparent absence of affordable housing tenures and the perennial office-to-resi challenge of multiple single-aspect units.The scheme raises an interesting question as to whether decent quality permitted development (PD) conversions offer more security for the architectural integrity of office buildings in outer London than their more commercially perilous extant uses. In this case, it should be noted that the unfortunate ground-floor extension, which blights the otherwise original composition, is a wholly commercial retail addition.Croydon has suffered badly from extremely poor quality PD conversions in the past, and at present the quality (and tenure mix) of such developments remains driven by developer sentiment rather than regulatory policy. One would hope that the current planning reform process might begin to tackle the need for a simple, workable policy which enables the right kind of office-to-resi (and retail-to-resi) conversion.