CYBER

In 2016, Americans working in Cuba began to experience something strange. Something that is, to this day, unexplained. They felt a pressure in the brain, a ringing in their ear, and in the aftermath … a distressing sense of fatigue. This is Havana Syndrome, a mysterious ailment that felled spies and diplomats.

It remains a mystery to this day, one U.S. government officials have a hard time talking about let alone understanding. Sometimes it sounds like a frightening new weapon, other times like a classic moral panic. But what was it really? Will we ever know?

This is all the subject of a new podcast from VICE World News called Havana Syndrome. Over the course of the show’s nine episodes it unpacks not just the mysterious syndrome, but a history of spy and counterspy, the CIA, and America’s complicated relationship with Cuba.

With me here today to talk about it all is series producer Jesse Alejandro Cottrell.

Go here to check out ‘Havana Syndrome’ from VICE World News.

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. 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.

We've all heard about how Facebook is destroying democracy. How Twitter enables the loudest, dumbest voices to have the most influence. How Instagram has ruined an entire generation's self esteem. But what if there is a social media network even more important than those?

Every day, people are gathering online in this space to organize powerful political movements. They’re sharing details of what’s going on, locally, getting organized, and fighting each other in an online cage match of American politics.

It’s time to talk about Nextdoor.

On today’s episode of Cyber, Motherboard Senior Writer Aaron Gordon comes on to talk about the wild world of Nextdoor.

Stories discussed in this episode:

How Nextdoor Put Neighbors In a Housing Policy 'Cage Match'

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. 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.

Replika is a chatbot that you can find on the App Store. It bills itself as a companion that can, if you pay, become something more. The ads on the internet offer a repertoire of sexually suggestive services including kinky roleplay and on-demand sexy photographs.

But what if you just want to talk? People in the Replika community are complaining that the chatbot has taken a turn recently, making unwanted comments and sending unsolicited lewds. Some users think it’s all about money.

On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard Senior Editor Samantha Cole stops by to help us unravel the mystery of the AI that got too horny.

Stories discussed in this episode:

‘My AI Is Sexually Harassing Me’: Replika Users Say the Chatbot Has Gotten Way Too Horny

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. 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.

Recent remarks from Richard Trumka Jr., one of the three commissioners with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), sparked outrage in some circles. As it turns out, gas stoves aren’t great for you, and the CPSC has considered regulating them. Pretty soon politicians were sharing images of gas ranges above the words “Come and Take It.”

Why does it feel lately like the only war America is any good at fighting is the culture war? What is the actual science behind gas stoves? And why, while we’re asking national questions, does C-SPAN look so good lately?

On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard Senior Writer Aaron Gordon stops by to explain it all.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Here Come the Gas Stove Culture Wars

Why C-SPAN’s Camera Work Is Suddenly So Interesting

C-SPAN Is Once Again Asking the House to Relax Filming Rules So It Can Document Its Dysfunction

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. 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.

Encrypted app for criminals Cipher is rebranding to go above-board, California has got new digital license plates with strange security implications, a researcher made deepfaked demands for a refund to Wells Fargo, and the American military is trying to ply Gen Z gamers with sweet sweet streams.

On today’s Cyber, we’re playing catch up with Motherboard reporter Joseph Cox.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Researchers Could Track the GPS Location of All of California’s New Digital License Plates

Ciphr, Encrypted App That Served Organized Crime, Rebrands as Enterprise Software

Researcher Deepfakes His Voice, Uses AI to Demand Refund From Wells Fargo

U.S. Army Planned to Pay Streamers Millions to Reach Gen-Z Through Call of Duty

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. 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.

Facial recognition technology is here. Whether we like it or not, cameras all across the world are scanning faces and building databases. 

There’s a popular misconception that technology is objective and unbiased. But that’s not true. All systems carry the biases of the people who created them, and nowhere is that more evident than in facial recognition systems.

Today’s show is about how those biases come to bear, and the dangers of running recklessly forward without considering the consequences. All the way back in 2013, the University of North Carolina, Wilmington published a dataset meant for facial recognition systems. It contained more than 1 million images of trans people, pulled from YouTube, showing them at various stages of their transition.

This was done without the permission of the original posters. Why? Because terrorists might take hormones to alter their face and beat border control systems.

It gets weirder from there.

Here to help us tell the story is Os Keyes. Keyes is a researcher and PhD candidate at the University of Washington’s Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering. They’re also the co-author of Feeling fixes: Mess and emotion in algorithmic audits, which is a scientific audit of the dataset we’re going to be talking about today.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Facial Recognition Researcher Left a Trans Database Exposed for Years After Using Images Without Permission

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. 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 has democratized stalking for the modern world. With the Airtag you can keep track of your luggage and your estranged spouse.

There’s been an uptick in stalking cases with Apple Airtags at the center and the legal system doesn’t quite know what to do. Often, the cops and the prosecutors don’t even know what an Airtag is. So what do you do when there’s technology at the center of your legal battle, technology that the authorities do not understand.

Today on Cyber, Motherboard Senior Editor Samantha Cole comes on to walk us through it.

Stories discussed in this episode:

The Legal System Is Completely Unprepared for Apple AirTag Stalking

How ‘Porn Addiction’ Took Hold of the Internet

Republicans Are Panicking Because They Somehow Just Found Out You Can Buy Vibrators at CVS

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. 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.

We all love a good chatbot, some nice AI art, and a pleasant automated system. Artificial intelligence is here and these fancy decision trees are supposed to make our lives easier everyday without a human ever having to lift a finger.

Except that’s not exactly true. AIs require an incredible amount of human input to train; AI art doesn’t make nightmares reality without scanning over millions of human-made images; and Meta’s content didn’t learn how to moderate itself with a human first telling it what to look for.

So who are these people who teach AI and why do we never hear about them?

On today’s episode of Cyber, Motherboard writer Chloe Xiang will help us answer that question.

Stories discussed in this episode:

AI Isn’t Artificial or Intelligent

ISIS Executions and Non-Consensual Porn Are Powering AI Art

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. 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.

An online prophet that claims to be god. A murder in the Alabama woods. A child holding a shotgun in the middle of a camp. Reptilians. Urine therapy. The American South. Police violence. Conspiracy. Robot birds. The uniquely American black esoteric tradition. 

This episode of Cyber is a big and surreal story about a New Age movement that’s spread through livestreams. Its followers are decentralized, driven by belief rather than any organizing principle, but at the center of it all is a prophet who claims to be god and is sitting in jail on some pretty serious charges.

Here to talk about the story is Motherboard Senior Staff Writer Anna Merlan and Editorial Director Tim Marchman.

Stories discussed in this episode:

An Online Prophet Claims to Be a God. His Followers Keep Getting Arrested.

Followers of Charismatic New Age Influencer Accused of Two Different Murders in Alabama

Suspects in Bizarre ‘Off-Grid’ Alabama Shooting Posted About New Age Conspiracy Theories, Followed a Controversial Content Creator

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. 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.

This episode of Cyber is an action packed double feature that feels like it’s been pulled directly from a Cyberpunk novel. That’s right, today is all about railway strikes and killer robots. It’s hard to be a railway worker in America. The schedules are a nightmare, the kind of working conditions that can make someone sick. Just don’t try to use your sick days. Facing a railway strike, Congress passed legislation to prevent it. All at the behest of the White House. We’ll get into that. 

Then we’ll talk about San Francisco. The City by the Bay has written the rules of killer robots. SF won’t have the first police department that’s killed someone with a drone, just the first with rules.

With me today to talk about it is Motherboard Senior Writer Aaron Gordon. He’s been following both stories. You may remember he was on the show more at the start of the year talking about the horrifying conditions of America’s rail workers.

Stories discussed in this episode:

The Most Complicated Labor Negotiation in the Country Just Got More Complicated

Once Again, Rail Workers Lose

More than 500 Labor Historians Condemn Biden’s Intervention in Freight Rail Dispute

San Francisco Police Want to Be Allowed to Kill People With Robots

San Francisco Police Can Now Kill People With Robots

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. 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.