We start this week with exciting news: we bought a Super Bowl ad! For… $2,550. We explain how. After the break, Jason tells us about Ring’s recently launched Search Party feature, and gives us a very timely reminder of what Ring really is and how we got here. In the subscribers-only section, Joseph breaks down Lockdown Mode and how it kept the FBI out of a Washington Post reporter’s phone.

Timestamps:

0:00 - Intro

SUBSCRIBER'S STORY - FBI Couldn’t Get into WaPo Reporter’s iPhone Because It Had Lockdown Mode Enabled

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Patrick Klepek on the reality of parenting in the age of Roblox and YouTube.

I listened to hours of podcasts about how screen time affects kids of all ages and how parents should manage screen time but I still felt completely unprepared for this challenge when I had a kid. 

I think the reason for that is that there’s a lot of reporting about how screens are impacting kids, and a lot of reporting about the research into this subject, but rarely did I encounter a conversation between parents that talks about how any of that information can be realistically applied in the real world.  

This week on the podcast we’re joined by Patrick Klepek in order to have the kind of conversation I wish I heard before I became a parent, but I think there’s something here for everyone. Patrick is the cofounder of Remap, a website and one of my favorite podcasts about video games, and the writer behind Crossplay, a newsletter about the intersection of parenting and games. Patrick is also my former colleague at Vice, back when I worked at Motherboard and he at Waypoint. Patrick has been reporting about video games for most of his life, is a wonderful writer, and a parent. I find his perspective on many of these issues—screen time, parental controls, YouTube, Roblox—extremely useful and interesting, and I hope you do as well. 

YouTube Version: https://youtu.be/LjK1Swsm1m4

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Become a paid subscriber for early access to these interview episodes and to power our journalism. If you become a paid subscriber, check your inbox for an email from our podcast host Transistor for a link to the subscribers-only version! You can also add that subscribers feed to your podcast app of choice and never miss an episode that way. The email should also contain the subscribers-only unlisted YouTube link for the extended video version too. It will also be in the show notes in your podcast player.

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We start this week with Sam and Emanuel’s article about the latest Epstein dump, and how it’s really a disaster in a lot of ways. After the break, Matthew runs us through Moltbot and its terrible security. After the break, Emanuel breaks down his two recent stories about a fundamental issue exposing a bunch of very sensitive data.

YouTube version: https://youtu.be/gDcOOP_Y9cU

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This week Joseph talks to Samuel Bagg, assistant professor of political science at the University of South Carolina. Bagg recently wrote a fascinating essay, linked below, about how the problem with lots of things might be knowledge-based (people believing stuff that’s wrong or dangerous) but the solution is not more knowledge. It’s all about social identity. This is an incredibly interesting discussion, and definitely check out more of Bagg’s writing.

The Problem is Epistemic. The Solution is Not

The Dispersion of Power: A Critical Realist Theory of Democracy

YouTube version:  https://youtu.be/lNKOqp-rZL8

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We start this week with Sam’s piece about ManyVids, and how some creators believe its CEO, and the person who controls their livelihood, may be experiencing ‘AI psychosis’. After the break, Jason gives us an update on some mysterious disappearing ICE footage. In the subscribers-only section, we talk about Flock and what police are being told to do: not describe what they’re using the AI cameras for.

Timestamps:

0:00 - Intro

YouTube version: https://youtu.be/EFv0rD9F9es

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This week, Sam is in conversation with Kolina Koltai. Kolina is an investigator, senior researcher and trainer at Bellingcat. Her investigations focus on the people and systems behind AI companies and platforms that peddle non-consensual deepfake explicit imagery. They discuss how she found herself in this field, her recent investigation uncovering the man behind two deepfake porn sites, and how it feels to watch these sites go down after exposing the people running them.

YouTube Version: https://youtu.be/CbmUwwVGaf4

Stories discussed:

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We start this week with Joseph’s article about ELITE, a tool Palantir is working on for ICE. After the break, Emanuel tells us how AI influencers are making fake sex tape-style photos with celebrities, who can’t be best pleased about it. In the subscribers-only section, Matthew breaks down Comic-Con’s ban of AI art.

0:00 - Intro

2:16 - ‘ELITE’: The Palantir App ICE Uses to Find Neighborhoods to Raid

22:45 - Instagram AI Influencers Are Defaming Celebrities With Sex Scandals

Subscriber's Story: Comic-Con Bans AI Art After Artist Pushback

YouTube version: https://youtu.be/b-QHWpqjD-E

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The Wikimedia Foundation’s chief technology and product officer explains how she helps manage one of the most visited sites in the world in the age of generative AI. 

Wikipedia is turning 25 this month, and it’s never been more important. 

The online, collectively created encyclopedia has been a cornerstone of the internet decades, but as generative AI started flooding every platform with AI-generated slop over the last couple of years, Wikipedia’s governance model, editing process, and dedication to citing reliable sources has emerged as one of the most reliable and resilient models we have. 

And yet, as successful as the model is, it’s almost never replicated. 

This week on the podcast we’re joined by Selena Deckelmann, the Chief Product and Technology Officer at the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization that operates Wikipedia. That means Selena oversees the technical infrastructure and product strategy for one of the most visited sites in the world, and one the most comprehensive repositories of human knowledge ever assembled. Wikipedia is turning 25 this month, so I wanted to talk to Selena about how Wikipedia works and how it plans to continue to work in the age of generative AI.  

YouTube Version: https://youtu.be/39LR9ouJR3c

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Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. 

Wikipedia’s value in the age of generative AI

The Editors Protecting Wikipedia from AI Hoaxes

Wikipedia Pauses AI-Generated Summaries After Editor Backlash

Wikipedia Says AI Is Causing a Dangerous Decline in Human Visitors

Jimmy Wales Says Wikipedia Could Use AI. Editors Call It the 'Antithesis of Wikipedia'

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We start this week with Joseph’s article about Webloc, a tool ICE bought that can monitor phones in entire neighborhoods. After the break, Emanuel and Sam talk about their recent coverage of Grok. In the subscribers-only section, Jason explains how police inadvertently unmasked millions of their surveillance targets through a Flock redaction error.

Timestamps:

YouTube version: https://youtu.be/rurJo6vPhUY

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This week, Jason is talking to YouTuber Benn Jordan, who has done some of our favorite reporting on Flock, the automated license plate reader surveillance company. A couple months ago, he found vulnerabilities in some of Flock’s license plate reader cameras. I have been following Benn’s work for a while, and soon after that video came out, he reached out to me to tell me he had learned that some of Flock’s Condor cameras were left live-streaming to the open internet. In this episode, we discuss how he discovered the issue and what happened next.

YouTube Version: https://youtu.be/tSd0nXolnIs

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