#technology

www.404media.co/man-charged-for-wiping-phone-befo…

A man in Atlanta has been arrested and charged for allegedly deleting data from a Google Pixel phone before a member of a secretive Customs and Border Protection (CBP) unit was able to search it, according to court records and social media posts reviewed by 404 Media. The man, Samuel Tunick, is described as a local Atlanta activist in Instagram and other posts discussing the case.
The exact circumstances around the search—such as why CBP wanted to search the phone in the first place—are not known. But it is uncommon to see someone charged specifically for wiping a phone, a feature that is easily accessible in some privacy and security-focused devices.
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Do you know anything else about this case? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at joseph@404media.co.
The indictment says on January 24, Tunick “did knowingly destroy, damage, waste, dispose of, and otherwise take any action to delete the digital contents of a Google Pixel cellular phone, for the purpose of preventing and impairing the Government’s lawful authority to take said property into its custody and control.” The indictment itself was filed in mid-November.
Tunick was arrested earlier this month, according to a post on a crowd-funding site and court records. “Samuel Tunick, an Atlanta-based activist, Oberlin graduate, and beloved musician, was arrested by the DHS and FBI yesterday around 6pm EST. Tunick’s friends describe him as an approachable, empathetic person who is always finding ways to improve the lives of the people around him,” the site says. Various activists have since shared news of Tunick’s arrest on social media.

The indictment says the phone search was supposed to be performed by a supervisory officer from a CBP Tactical Terrorism Response Team. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) wrote in 2023 these are “highly secretive units deployed at U.S. ports of entry, which target, detain, search, and interrogate innocent travelers.”
“These units, which may target travelers on the basis of officer ‘instincts.’ raise the risk that CBP is engaging in unlawful profiling or interfering with the First Amendment-protected activity of travelers,” the ACLU added. The Intercept previously covered the case of a sculptor and installation artist who was detained at San Francisco International Airport and had his phone searched. The report said Gach did not know why, even years later.
Court records show authorities have since released Tunick, and that he is restricted from leaving the Northern District of Georgia as the case continues.
The prosecutor listed on the docket did not respond to a request for comment. The docket did not list a lawyer representing Tunick.

The HDMI Forum, responsible for the HDMI specification, continues to stonewall open source. Valve’s Steam Machine theoretically supports HDMI 2.1, but the mini-PC is software-limited to HDMI 2.0. As a result, more than 60 frames per second at 4K resolution are only possible with limitations.

cross-posted from: feddit.uk/post/40850900

status.tailscale.com

Screenshot taken 09:35 UTC 10/12/25

ALIS cuts the noise: the game turns experience into skill and brings it back to real life., Connections. Our goal is to create connections between people and support their interaction in the real world., Resources. You learn to use resources effectively: water, food (real caloric value), sleep, injuries; energy drains by activity., Mechanics. Realistic mechanics with practical value - sense beyond the screen., Knowledge. A variety of useful information reinforced through gameplay as skills., Learn. Survive. Connect - we’re in your next decision.

We accept the challenge - to create a world harsh and real down to the last detail, without killing the soul of the game., We expose the abyss of war’s tragedy and, with clear-eyed honesty, the depth of human grief, loneliness, distance., Our mission is to make ALIS a tool for growth that helps you better understand yourself, those around you, and life itself., May the project bring meaningful experiences and real connection.

Bombshell new reporting from 404 Media found that Flock, which has its cameras in thousands of US communities, has been outsourcing its AI to gig workers located in the Philippines.

After accessing a cache of exposed data, 404 found documents related to annotating Flock footage, a process sometimes called “AI training.” Workers were tasked with jobs include categorizing vehicles by color, make, and model, transcribing license plates, and labeling various audio clips from car wrecks.

In US towns and cities, Flock cameras maintained by local businesses and municipal agencies form centralized surveillance networks for local police. They constantly scan for car license plates, as well as pedestrians, who are categorized based on their clothing, and possibly by factors like gender and race.

In a growing number of cases, local police are using Flock to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents surveil minority communities.

It isn’t clear where all the Flock annotation footage came from, but screenshots included in the documents for data annotators showed license plates from New York, Florida, New Jersey, Michigan, and California.

Flock joins the ranks of other fast-moving AI companies that have resorted to low-paid international labor to bring their product to market. Amazon’s cashier-free “just walk out” stores, for example, were really just gig workers watching American shoppers from India. The AI startup Engineer.ai, which purported to make developing code for apps “as easy as ordering a pizza,” was found out to be selling passing human-written code as AI generated.

The difference with those examples is that those services were voluntary — powered by the exploitation of workers in the global south, yes, but with a choice to opt out on the front-end. That isn’t the case with Flock, as you don’t have to consent to end up in the panopticon. In other words, for a growing number of Americans, a for-profit company is deciding who gets watched, and who does the watching — a system built on exploitation at either end.

cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/39947303

A gadget you throw away when the battery runs out is a very dumb idea if you ask me.

Prefacing with: Yes yes yes, we know, you hate AI. You are truly unique and that joke about removing all previous instructions is just as funny today as it was two years ago.

Moving on.

I… honestly thought this was a joke while watching the youtube video. That said, I think this is simultaneously an excellent use of the fuzzy search/human language capabilities of LLMs AND has absolutely no good use case? And I am very wary of the input training data.

For the first part? There is a lot of value in being able to communicate what is broken without actually being an expert. That is honestly a big personal use of chatgpt et al for me. List symptoms as I understand it and then get that translated into domain expert language so I can know what terms to search.

But… I question the audience for that. How many people who can only say “sound don’t work” are going to be comfortable jamming spudgers into seams and working on technically live electronics because the battery is ten layers deep? The youtube video uses an example of not being able to find the oil filter after taking the plate off and… I would very much suggest paying to get that replaced if you are in a situation like that since you can cause a LOT of long term issues with your car if you screw that up.

Which has always been the dirty secret of Right To Repair. The vast majority of what those activists are asking for… aren’t for the end user. It is for the repair shops. End users are not going to be swapping out their mac heat sinks or whatever because that requires special tools and a lot of expertise. But repair shops have done that for decades. And, in theory, that will be cheaper for the end user. In practice… there are a lot of reasons to know how to change your own oil filter, if you catch my drift.

And this is VERY much targeted at that end user.

And the last part is the training data. I’ve used a LOT of the ifixit guides over the years. Some are good. Some are… better than nothing. There are a lot of cases where I would have loved to get more detail on an intermediate step. But… where is that detail coming from?

So… yeah.

On a recent immigration raid, a Border Patrol agent wore a pair of Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses, with the privacy light clearly on signaling he was recording the encounter, which agents are not permitted to do, according to photos and videos of the incident shared with 404 Media.

Previously when 404 Media covered Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officials’ use of Meta’s Ray-Bans, it wasn’t clear if the officials were using them to record raids because the recording lights were not on in any of the photos seen by 404 Media. In the new material from Charlotte, North Carolina, during the recent wave of immigration enforcement, the recording light is visibly illuminated.

Archive: archive.today/3hDqM

Hey everyone 👋
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You can check it out here: bitewiser.carrd.co

I’d love your feedback! Here’s a quick 2-minute questionnaire if you want to help shape it:
👉 tally.so/r/dWqa6z

Not selling anything yet — just testing if this solves a real problem 🙏