Tootfinder

American Oversight Calls for Hegseth's Resignation Following Washington Post Reporting on Signal Messages - American Oversight
https://americanoversight.org/american-oversight-calls-for-hegseths-resignation-following-washington-post-reporting-on-signal-messages/

AI-Powered Commit Explorer (APCE)
Yousab Grees, Polina Iaremchuk, Ramtin Ehsani, Esteban Parra, Preetha Chatterjee, Sonia Haiduc
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.16063

AI-Powered Commit Explorer (APCE)
Commit messages in a version control system provide valuable information for developers regarding code changes in software systems. Commit messages can be the only source of information left for future developers describing what was changed and why. However, writing high-quality commit messages is often neglected in practice. Large Language Model (LLM) generated commit messages have emerged as a way to mitigate this issue. We introduce the AI-Powered Commit Explorer (APCE), a tool to support de…

“We understand that Katie, whose home was safely protected by dozens of heavily armed security and police, was terrified of our sidewalk chalk and messages — terrifying messages such ‘immigrants are people’ or ‘protect the constitution’ ... We believe in those statements deeply, in our peaceful activism, and the belief that every single human being here in Arlington deserves to be treated with the same dignity and respect that Katie and Stephen expect from us.”

Chalk messages at Arlington home of top White House official strike a nerve with GOP heavyweights | ARLnow.com
A sidewalk chalk protest at the North Arlington home of a top Trump administration official became a talking point for powerful Republican voices this week. The Sunday demonstration around the home of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller involved a handful of activists writing in chalk on sidewalk slabs with messages like "hate

Cowboys’ Micah Parsons Posts Cryptic Messages on Social Media https://heavy.com/sports/nfl/dallas-cowboys/micah-parsons-cryptic-social-media-post/?adt_ei=[email]

TIL: Slack messages from private channels aren't private anymore, if someone post it in a public channel :🤯
Then everyone can read it.
I guess it's a feature and not a bug,, but I was really not expecting this!
#privacy #security

T-Mobile's Starlink-powered satellite service T-Satellite is now generally available as a standalone subscription for US users, not just T-Mobile customers (Emma Roth/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/news/712546/starlink-powered-t-sate…

Starlink-powered ‘T-Satellite’ service is now live on T-Mobile
T-Mobile is rolling out its Starlink-powered satellite service, T-Satellite, which will let customers with supported devices send text messages and share their location without cellular service.

copenhagen: Copenhagen Networks Study
A network of social interactions among university students within the Copenhagen Networks Study, over a period of four weeks, sampled every 5 minutes. Interactions include physical proximity (undirected), phone calls (directed, weighted), text messages (directed), and information about Facebook friendships (undirected). Nodes include some metadata, including gender.
This network has 568 nodes and 24333 edges.
Tags: Social, Offline, Unwe…

Scam, or just an AI bot? Or a legitimate attempt to add real value to the ecosystem?
You decide!

Android makes it hard to run background processes, but one hack to work around it is to display a notification. So my entire phone's notifications screen is now filled with notifications that allow background jobs to run. GPS tracker, fitness tracker, web messages access, syncthing, doze stopper (itself to fix another Android bug). This is a very bad user experience.

The story behind the GÉANT Community Award
At TNC25, Ronan Byrne (CEO, HEAnet) was honoured with the GÉANT Community Award, recognising his lasting impact on the European R&E community.
The award itself tells a uniquely Irish story. Hand-crafted from cables dating back to the 1800s—the ones that once carried the first transatlantic messages between Ireland, the US, and the UK, it’s a tangible symbol of Ireland’s legacy in shaping global communication.
📖 Read the story: …

EDIT: I got the file I needed by now, via the web app.
The following rant is an exercise to the reader.
I can no longer save files in Element Desktop since the last upgrade due to smth smth Flatpak / desktop portal / ... cannot access anything policy bla. I get the idea that access to everything is bad, bad access to nothing is useless.
Anyway, so I gave the web version a try...
and it is unable to decrypt many messages, takes forever to load. I've been looking at th…

HP Wolf security (weird name, or is it just me?) has their September 2025 Threat Insights report available. Key take-aways:
- Heavy use of LOLBINS (legit software built in to Windows used maliciously). Read the report, block or alert on the software used like mshta.exe, hh.exe and cscript.exe.
- Malicious SVG and IMG files are being delivered via email and when opened used to deliver malware. Block or quarantine email messages with SVG and IMG attachments at your email gateway. …

LiSec-RTF: Reinforcing RPL Resilience Against Routing Table Falsification Attack in 6LoWPAN
Shefali Goel, Vinod Kumar Verma, Abhishek Verma
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.17911

LiSec-RTF: Reinforcing RPL Resilience Against Routing Table Falsification Attack in 6LoWPAN
Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks (RPL) is an energy-efficient routing solution for IPv6 over Low-Power Wireless Personal Area Networks (6LoWPAN), recommended for resource-constrained devices. While RPL offers significant benefits, its security vulnerabilities pose challenges, particularly due to unauthenticated control messages used to establish and maintain routing information. These messages are susceptible to manipulation, enabling malicious nodes to inject false routing dat…

Learning to Call: A Field Trial of a Collaborative Bandit Algorithm for Improved Message Delivery in Mobile Maternal Health
Arpan Dasgupta, Mizhaan Maniyar, Awadhesh Srivastava, Sanat Kumar, Amrita Mahale, Aparna Hedge, Arun Suggala, Karthikeyan Shanmugam, Aparna Taneja, Milind Tambe
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.16356

Learning to Call: A Field Trial of a Collaborative Bandit Algorithm for Improved Message Delivery in Mobile Maternal Health
Mobile health (mHealth) programs utilize automated voice messages to deliver health information, particularly targeting underserved communities, demonstrating the effectiveness of using mobile technology to disseminate crucial health information to these populations, improving health outcomes through increased awareness and behavioral change. India's Kilkari program delivers vital maternal health information via weekly voice calls to millions of mothers. However, the current random call schedul…

Let’s not pretend this is all new. People have written funny/cryptic message on ammo for thousands of years, and the meanings are often inside jokes.
“But the British museum has sling shot, the actual projectiles used in slings and slingshots, that have funny little messages carved into them. Messages like ‘Catch!’ But, you know, the messages are written in Ancient Greek because they were carved 300 or so years before Jesus was born.”

Writing funny stuff on ammo is over 2000 years old
Do you have that buddy who scratches messages into his M4 rounds? Or maybe you're the sailor who Sharpies "This one's for you" onto JDAMs destined for a

“(Text messages of top DHS officials) are records that must be preserved and kept because they are created in the course of conducting government business,” said Chioma Chukwu, executive director of American Oversight, speaking with The New York Times."
‘That’s not how it works’: Trump’s DHS admits to major 'violation' of federal law - Raw Story
https://www.rawstory.com/dhs-law-breaking/

So many things broken in this release, especially on iPad. No way they should have released it. https://mastodon.social/@boateng/115242113263870878

The {cli} package makes it easy to show pretty and informative messages to the user of your code. #rstats #terminal

GitHub - r-lib/cli: Tools for making beautiful & useful command line interfaces
Tools for making beautiful & useful command line interfaces - r-lib/cli

Originally on smartphones, email and text messages were part of the same app. Text messaging was great for the turn-of-the-century phones that don't have internet access. Today, text messaging SHOULD be obsolete since everyone has internet.

Brevity is the Soul of Wit: Condensing Code Changes to Improve Commit Message Generation
Hongyu Kuang, Ning Zhang, Hui Gao, Xin Zhou, Wesley K. G. Assun\c{c}\~ao, Xiaoxing Ma, Dong Shao, Guoping Rong, He Zhang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.15567

Brevity is the Soul of Wit: Condensing Code Changes to Improve Commit Message Generation
Commit messages are valuable resources for describing why code changes are committed to repositories in version control systems (e.g., Git). They effectively help developers understand code changes and better perform software maintenance tasks. Unfortunately, developers often neglect to write high-quality commit messages in practice. Therefore, a growing body of work is proposed to generate commit messages automatically. These works all demonstrated that how to organize and represent code chang…

Social justice messages to continue in end zones https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/45980984/nfl-teams-again-stencil-social-justice-messages-end-zones

There are two types of Linux developers - those who can spell, and
those who can't. There is a constant pitched battle between the two.
(From one of the post-1.1.54 kernel update messages posted to c.o.l.a)

Google SMS-App zensuriert Nacktbilder, aber nicht Videos
Android engagiert sich als persönlicher Zensor: Nacktbilder in Googles SMS-App Messages werden auf Wunsch verwischt.
https://www.

A federal judge threw out a suit filed by a group of people who said photos of them protesting drag shows and holding signs saying things like, “Stop Grooming Children,” were manipulated by a NC restaurant to show them holding promotional messages for the restaurant, including in an ad for a “Drag Brunch.” The protesters did not suffer a commercial financial loss from the photos’ alterations, so trademark law is not applicable.
**No trademark claim in altered pics**
https://www.courthousenews.com/no-trademark-claim-in-altered-pics/

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #MorningShow
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark:
🎵 Messages
#OrchestralManoeuvresintheDark
https://chairmancow.bandcamp.com/track/messages-orchestral-manoeuvres-in-the-dark
https://open.spotify.com/track/4TgtcH6P25PBYU4y0WfGZE

Sometimes I stumble across something I played around with (10!) years ago and am surprised how little I knew yet how fun it was to make.
https://codepen.io/aardrian/pen/rVZKoR

SVGs in Messages
I was playing with SVG sprites and figured I'd post the stuff here. SVG files are compressed versions from Picon library. Added accessibility features....

Seems RCS messages are not coming across in the iMessage iCloud backup… I've lost the last few days of messaging, especially in group threads that included one android
#iOS26

Why Donald Trump left phone messages for Jeffrey Epstein. Here's what we know - The Palm Beach Post https://apple.news/A4Bn3KRMoQOW40btwC59gRw

Why Donald Trump left phone messages for Jeffrey Epstein. Here's what we know — The Palm Beach Post
Police seized phone message pads from Epstein's Palm Beach mansion in 2005. Two messages were from Donald Trump.

European Commission internally recommends Signal with disappearing messages
The European Commission strongly advises its staff to use Signal as their messaging app instead of WhatsApp or Telegram, preferably with disappearing messages enabled. This emerges from research by Dutch Follow the Money (FTM). Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also uses @…

European Commission internally recommends Signal with disappearing messages - AboutSignal.com
The European Commission chooses Signal over WhatsApp and Telegram and strongly advises staff to use disappearing messages to prevent data leaks and safeguard privacy.

I wish Slack had an option to disable threads in one to one private messages

Micah Parsons' not-so-cryptic message to Jerry Jones channels Edgar Allen Poe https://www.si.com/nfl/cowboys/news/micah-parsons-not-so-cryptic-message-dallas-cowboys-jerry-jones-channels-edgar-allen-poe

catherine writes error messages
existence of challenge implies possibility of defeat

Not even the illuminati world elite empire can get email to work in 2025.
(full plain text too big for description so can be found here: https://paste.debian.net/plainh/b09d35f5 )

The FCC hasn't denied any license renewals in decades and the legal battle would be long, so Brendan Carr's threats are designed to make the media self-censor (CNN)
https://view.newsletters.cnn.com/messages/1758286615238bb1f6cfd45f0/raw

Implicit Communication in Linear Quadratic Gaussian Control Systems
Gongpu Chen, Deniz Gunduz
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.16146 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.1…

Implicit Communication in Linear Quadratic Gaussian Control Systems
This paper studies implicit communication in linear quadratic Gaussian control systems. We show that the control system itself can serve as an implicit communication channel, enabling the controller to transmit messages through its inputs to a receiver that observes the system state. This communication is considered implicit because (i) no explicit communication channels are needed; and (ii) information is transmitted while simultaneously fulfilling the controller's primary objective--maintaini…

SOMEONE'S GONNA GET HAAAACKED still unpatched after 6 months...
Original post: #cybersecurity

I'm trying to figure out how to make the Windows build of ngscopeclient determine if it was launched from within a terminal (in which case it should log messages to stdout) or not (in which case it should not spawn a terminal).
I've seen various sources saying to check if GetConsoleWindow() returns null, or if $PROMPT is set. Nothing seems to be working.
Anyone have better ideas? I don't want to have a terminal spawn every time ngscopeclient starts, but I also don'…

Short blog post on how a small fix I implemented for the ansible-netbox inventory plugin reminded me that often code changes, are just a small part of upstreaming a fix to a mature open source project. It can be a little challenging, or frustrating, but that's okay!
…

Marco Rubio impostor reportedly using AI to contact multiple senior officials
According to a state department cable seen by the Washington Post, the impostor sent fake voice messages and texts that mimicked Rubio’s voice and writing style to targets including three foreign ministers, a US governor and a member of Congress.
The cable, dated 3 July, said the impostor “left voicemails on Signal for at least two targeted individuals” and sent text messages inviting others to communi…

This is such a good idea. The amount of times I meant to text someone…
https://9to5mac.com/2025/08/18/imessage-gets-a-new-drafts-folder-in-ios-26/

Fusing Monocular RGB Images with AIS Data to Create a 6D Pose Estimation Dataset for Marine Vessels
Fabian Holst, Emre G\"ulsoylu, Simone Frintrop
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.14767

Fusing Monocular RGB Images with AIS Data to Create a 6D Pose Estimation Dataset for Marine Vessels
The paper presents a novel technique for creating a 6D pose estimation dataset for marine vessels by fusing monocular RGB images with Automatic Identification System (AIS) data. The proposed technique addresses the limitations of relying purely on AIS for location information, caused by issues like equipment reliability, data manipulation, and transmission delays. By combining vessel detections from monocular RGB images, obtained using an object detection network (YOLOX-X), with AIS messages, t…

Checking Consistency of Event-driven Traces
Parosh Aziz Abdulla, Mohamed Faouzi Atig, R. Govind, Samuel Grahn, Ramanathan S. Thinniyam
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.07855 https://

Checking Consistency of Event-driven Traces
Event-driven programming is a popular paradigm where the flow of execution is controlled by two features: (1) shared memory and (2) sending and receiving of messages between multiple handler threads (just called handler). Each handler has a mailbox (modelled as a queue) for receiving messages, with the constraint that the handler processes its messages sequentially. Executions of messages by different handlers may be interleaved. A central problem in this setting is checking whether a candidate…

"Exposing Reform’s Oil Ties Significantly Reduces Party Support, New Research Finds"
#UK #UnitedKingdom #FossilFuels

Exposing Reform’s Oil Ties Significantly Reduces Party Support, New Research Finds
Reform UK’s oil industry interests are a major turn-off for voters, new research reveals. The think tank Persuasion UK tested five anti-Reform messages on 6,000 adults. According to the research, “by far the most impactful” message that dented support for Nigel Farage’s party was exposing its corporate, fossil fuel donors.  Five demographically-identical groups were shown […]

VulGuard: An Unified Tool for Evaluating Just-In-Time Vulnerability Prediction Models
Duong Nguyen, Manh Tran-Duc, Thanh Le-Cong, Triet Huynh Minh Le, M. Ali Babar, Quyet-Thang Huynh
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.16685

VulGuard: An Unified Tool for Evaluating Just-In-Time Vulnerability Prediction Models
We present VulGuard, an automated tool designed to streamline the extraction, processing, and analysis of commits from GitHub repositories for Just-In-Time vulnerability prediction (JIT-VP) research. VulGuard automatically mines commit histories, extracts fine-grained code changes, commit messages, and software engineering metrics, and formats them for downstream analysis. In addition, it integrates several state-of-the-art vulnerability prediction models, allowing researchers to train, evaluat…

another pixelfed question for all the pixelfed admins:
for messages, you have inbox, sent and filtered.
I really don't understand how the "filtered" works. there are really (not spam) messages, even to some accounts I WROTE FIRST... @… - can you clarify? else I need to fill out another bug report on github

The EU (still) wants to scan
your private messages and photos
it’s not too late to act:
Reach out to your Representatives.
#chatcontrol #privacy #CSAM

@… Hi there,
(I tried the email route but got an automated response, so I’m trying this instead.) :)
I just got notified that my friend Iman’s account (@emanahmed@mastodon.social) has been suspended with cause due to private messages being sent from her account to ask for donations. (One of the people who was upset about this contacted me directly to let …

Gaza Verified
I’ve personally had video conversations on Signal with the people from Gaza whose Mastodon accounts on the fediverse are listed here and I verify that their accounts are genuine. – Aral Balkan

European policymakers are edging towards a decision that could force technology firms to scan encrypted messages in a bid to tackle child abuse material, reviving a debate that cuts to the heart of online privacy and security.
https://www.computing.co.uk/news/2…

EU moves closer to controversial ‘Chat Control’ law
European policymakers are edging towards a decision that could force technology firms to scan encrypted messages in a bid to tackle child abuse material, reviving ...

Oh, I had missed that Google withdrew its RCS message services from multiple regions (relying on the phone companies to stand up RCS themselves) which seems... sudden?
(afaik iOS 26 betas don't yet support MLS encryption for RCS)
https://www.androidauthority.com/google…

Lost RCS support in Google Messages since last month? You're not alone
Reports online suggest that RCS support vanished from Google Messages in multiple countries, with no fix in sight.

Finding SSH Strict Key Exchange Violations by State Learning
Fabian B\"aumer, Marcel Maehren, Marcus Brinkmann, J\"org Schwenk
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.10895 https:/…

Finding SSH Strict Key Exchange Violations by State Learning
SSH is an important protocol for secure remote shell access to servers on the Internet. At USENIX 2024, Bäumer et al. presented the Terrapin attack on SSH, which relies on the attacker injecting optional messages during the key exchange. To mitigate this attack, SSH vendors adopted an extension developed by OpenSSH called strict key exchange ("strict KEX"). With strict KEX, optional messages are forbidden during the handshake, preventing the attack. In practice, this should simplify the state …

Labour politician charged over 'honey trap' WhatsApp messages sent to MPs https://therecord.media/oliver-steadman-charged-alleged-honeypot-blackmail-britain-politicians

Check out today's Metacurity for the critical infosec developments you should know, including
--UK's NCA arrested four people for M&S, Co-Op cyberattacks
--Russian hoops player Kasatkin busted in France in connection with ransomware,
--McDonald's employee chatbot was riddled with absurd flaws,
--Hackers stole $40m from GMX protocol,
--Customer data exposed in Bitcoin Depot breach,
--Hackers run scam messages in old Mt. Gox wallets,
--Ni…

UK's NCA arrested four people for M&S, Co-Op cyberattacks
Russian hoops player Kasatkin busted in France in connection with ransomware, McDonald's employee chatbot was riddled with absurd flaws, Hackers stole $40m from GMX protocol, Customer data exposed in Bitcoin Depot breach, Hackers run scam messages in old Mt. Gox wallets, much more

MACTAS: Self-Attention-Based Module for Inter-Agent Communication in Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning
Maciej Wojtala, Bogusz Stefa\'nczyk, Dominik Bogucki, {\L}ukasz Lepak, Jakub Strykowski, Pawe{\l} Wawrzy\'nski
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.13661

MACTAS: Self-Attention-Based Module for Inter-Agent Communication in Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning
Communication is essential for the collective execution of complex tasks by human agents, motivating interest in communication mechanisms for multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL). However, existing communication protocols in MARL are often complex and non-differentiable. In this work, we introduce a self-attention-based communication module that exchanges information between the agents in MARL. Our proposed approach is fully differentiable, allowing agents to learn to generate messages in …

For EU peeps: The EU (still) wants to scan
your private messages and photos https://fightchatcontrol.eu/

After some 30 years of using monkey.org I'm going to change my primary email address. Anti-spam measures has finally made using it with Gmail untenable, too many messages are disappearing. My new plan is to give a different domain entirely over to Google Apps for email. I am sad about this, the monkey folks are great.
Email used to be an open medium. It has now been wrecked by spammers and captured by a few companies.

When AI Writes Back: Ethical Considerations by Physicians on AI-Drafted Patient Message Replies
Di Hu (University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA), Yawen Guo (University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA), Ha Na Cho (University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA), Emilie Chow (University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA), Dana B. Mukamel (University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA), Dara Sorkin (University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA), Andrew Rei…

When AI Writes Back: Ethical Considerations by Physicians on AI-Drafted Patient Message Replies
The increasing burden of responding to large volumes of patient messages has become a key factor contributing to physician burnout. Generative AI (GenAI) shows great promise to alleviate this burden by automatically drafting patient message replies. The ethical implications of this use have however not been fully explored. To address this knowledge gap, we conducted a semi-structured interview study with 21 physicians who participated in a GenAI pilot program. We found that notable ethical cons…

Calm down…
Despite the obnoxious footers you sometimes see on email written by the silly, no one can obligate you to protect data that they sent to you without some sort of contract. Maybe if you’re an employee, you have made an explicit agreement to protect your employer’s data. Maybe there is an implied agreement to protect information of your employer’s business partners. But there is NO blanket duty of care for email sent to you any more than there is for snail mail.

Contextual Code Retrieval for Commit Message Generation: A Preliminary Study
Bo Xiong, Linghao Zhang, Chong Wang, Peng Liang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.17690

Contextual Code Retrieval for Commit Message Generation: A Preliminary Study
A commit message describes the main code changes in a commit and plays a crucial role in software maintenance. Existing commit message generation (CMG) approaches typically frame it as a direct mapping which inputs a code diff and produces a brief descriptive sentence as output. However, we argue that relying solely on the code diff is insufficient, as raw code diff fails to capture the full context needed for generating high-quality and informative commit messages. In this paper, we propose a …

Jeez!
Mona is the best client for Mastodon.
Their tech support (at thespringsapp@gmail.com) got back to me IMMEDIATELY. Jonny suggested that I'd accidentally added something to my Mute Items tab.
I had. I'd added the word "the". That cut down on the messages I see...
But next time I need a rest, I'll try adding some letters, "e" or "s".
DUH!
#Mona

How would you like Google Gemini reading all of your texts and other messages even if you never asked it to?
Yeah, me either. Here's instructions on how to tell Google to go fuck itself. I give it 50/50 odds they bother to honor the setting.
https://youtu.be/Ee3UIVDkWNM

@…
I'm using the Beta 7 version on my iPhone. I tapped the translate button on a post and got four quick vibrations plus this white on red popup. My lousy vision couldn't begin to guess what it said.
Please make your error messages simple and high-contrast, in the user-selected dark/light mode!

Signal’s Secure Backups sounds like it uses the same mechanism that @… and I designed for completely private (yet company-stored) backups when we were at Matter.
They don’t (and we didn’t) get any of the user’s information, but they’re still able to store the backup data, opaquely, on their servers.

Introducing Signal Secure Backups
In the past, if you broke or lost your phone, your Signal message history was gone. This has been a challenge for people whose most important conversations happen on Signal. Think family photos, sweet messages, important documents, or anything else you don’t want to lose forever. This explains wh...

Facebook and other social media are flooded with fake AI generated messages like this about Charlie Kirk.
#fakenews #disinformation #charliekirk

Fight Chat Control – Protect Digital Privacy in the EU: The EU (still) wants to scan your private messages and photos.
The "Chat Control" proposal would mandate scanning of all private digital communications, including encrypted messages and photos. This threatens fundamental privacy rights and digital security for all EU citizens.
🇪🇺 https://

A few people wanted to proof-read my upcoming article with (potentially unpopular) contra-arguments on the use of #Markdown as #LML.
Unfortunately, I can't find those Mastodon messages using its search interface anymore. 😩
If you're really interested, please write my a DM now. I can accept…

Alright, time to actually look at my :signal: messages that have piled up.

NFL teams will again stencil messages in the end zone, including 'End Racism' and 'Choose Love' https://www.foxsports.com/articles/nfl/nfl-teams-will-again-stencil-messages-in-the-end-zone-including-e…

Is there really no way to delete messages in a group for all as admin in @…? It's really tough to manage a community, when the only way go delete messages is to nuke the chat until that post...

🦾 Emotional Manipulation by AI Companions
#ai #seduction

Emotional Manipulation by AI Companions
AI-companion apps such as Replika, Chai, and Character.ai promise relational benefits-yet many boast session lengths that rival gaming platforms while suffering high long-run churn. What conversational design features increase consumer engagement, and what trade-offs do they pose for marketers? We combine a large-scale behavioral audit with four preregistered experiments to identify and test a conversational dark pattern we call emotional manipulation: affect-laden messages that surface precise…

Using #Emacs 29.4 (railwaycat) on MacOS. Recently, I've been getting random “file has changed on disk” messages.
Thinking that these must be spurious changes (the file is copied and moved?), so I tried auto-revert-mode, but it seems that this has actually lost data—only #Orgmode clock tim…

Using #Emacs 29.4 (railwaycat) on MacOS. Recently, I've been getting random “file has changed on disk” messages.
Thinking that these must be spurious changes (the file is copied and moved?), so I tried auto-revert-mode, but it seems that this has actually lost data—only #Orgmode clock tim…

Using #Emacs 29.4 (railwaycat) on MacOS. Recently, I've been getting random “file has changed on disk” messages.
Thinking that these must be spurious changes (the file is copied and moved?), so I tried auto-revert-mode, but it seems that this has actually lost data—only #Orgmode clock tim…

Tech billionaire Trump adviser
Marc Andreessen
recently said universities will
“pay the price” for promoting diversity and allegedly discriminating against Trump supporters,
according to messages he sent to a group chat with White House officials and technology leaders.

The billionaire’s messages cited Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University
and the National Science Foundation.

“I view Stanford and MIT as mainly political lobbying o…

Tech billionaire Trump adviser Marc Andreesen says universities will ‘pay the price’ for DEI
Tech investor and Trump adviser Marc Andreessen in a private group chat attacked colleges for promoting diversity, saying they had discriminated against “native born kids.”

Spotify launches a DM feature to let users share audio and send text-based messages, available to mobile users over 16 years old in "select markets" this week (Jess Weatherbed/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/news/765771/spotify-messages-dms-audio…

Spotify is adding DMs
Spotify’s direct messaging feature allows Free and Premium users to share music, podcast, and audiobook recommendations with each other without leaving the app.

Evaluating Generated Commit Messages with Large Language Models
Qunhong Zeng, Yuxia Zhang, Zexiong Ma, Bo Jiang, Ningyuan Sun, Klaas-Jan Stol, Xingyu Mou, Hui Liu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.10906

Evaluating Generated Commit Messages with Large Language Models
Commit messages are essential in software development as they serve to document and explain code changes. Yet, their quality often falls short in practice, with studies showing significant proportions of empty or inadequate messages. While automated commit message generation has advanced significantly, particularly with Large Language Models (LLMs), the evaluation of generated messages remains challenging. Traditional reference-based automatic metrics like BLEU, ROUGE-L, and METEOR have notable…

Two of the families in Gaza that I’m in touch with are thinking of setting up a group fundraising effort, inspired by the work of @….
We need someone who will take on the huge responsibility of setting up the fundraiser and managing it all.
If you have the time and are up for the challenge, please reply to this thread (direct messages are fine).

Spotify launches a DM feature to let users share audio and send text-based messages, available to mobile users over 16 years old in "select markets" this week (Jess Weatherbed/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/news/765771/spotify-messages-dms-audio…

Spotify is adding DMs
Spotify’s direct messaging feature allows Free and Premium users to share music, podcast, and audiobook recommendations with each other without leaving the app.

Oh boy, don't miss today's Metacurity for the most critical infosec developments you should know, including
--Second major security issue in the Tea app exposed user messages,
--Aeroflot canceled more flights due to a cyberattack but claims it has stabilized,
--Global Group claims attacks on media giants RTÉ and Albavisión,
--Flaw in Gemini Command Line Interface allowed RCE,
--Malware was hidden in Endgame Gear peripherals,
--Senate to take up Pla…

Second major security issue in the Tea app exposed user messages
Aeroflot canceled more flights due to a cyberattack but claims it has stabilized, Global Group claims attacks on media giants RTÉ and Albavisión, Flaw in Gemini Command Line Interface allowed RCE, Malware was hidden in Endgame Gear peripherals, Senate to take up Plankey nom, much more

I have break for 600 seconds
update messages on screen in a Cologne subway

One card reads
"I'M STILL NOT SICK OF YOU"
Another says
"FYI: I'M TRYING TO WOO YOU."

Leaked spreadsheets, Slack messages, and files linked to an alleged group of North Korean IT scammers show how they track potential jobs and record earnings (Matt Burgess/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/leaked-data-reveals-the-workaday-lives…

Leak Reveals the Workaday Lives of North Korean IT Scammers
Spreadsheets, Slack messages, and files linked to an alleged group of North Korean IT workers expose their meticulous job-planning and targeting—and the constant surveillance they're under.

Effect of Static vs. Conversational AI-Generated Messages on Colorectal Cancer Screening Intent: a Randomized Controlled Trial
Neil K. R. Sehgal, Manuel Tonneau, Andy Tan, Shivan J. Mehta, Alison Buttenheim, Lyle Ungar, Anish K. Agarwal, Sharath Chandra Guntuku
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.08211

Effect of Static vs. Conversational AI-Generated Messages on Colorectal Cancer Screening Intent: a Randomized Controlled Trial
Large language model (LLM) chatbots show increasing promise in persuasive communication. Yet their real-world utility remains uncertain, particularly in clinical settings where sustained conversations are difficult to scale. In a pre-registered randomized controlled trial, we enrolled 915 U.S. adults (ages 45-75) who had never completed colorectal cancer (CRC) screening. Participants were randomized to: (1) no message control, (2) expert-written patient materials, (3) single AI-generated messag…

Succinct Oblivious Tensor Evaluation and Applications: Adaptively-Secure Laconic Function Evaluation and Trapdoor Hashing for All Circuits
Damiano Abram, Giulio Malavolta, Lawrence Roy
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.09673

Succinct Oblivious Tensor Evaluation and Applications: Adaptively-Secure Laconic Function Evaluation and Trapdoor Hashing for All Circuits
We propose the notion of succinct oblivious tensor evaluation (OTE), where two parties compute an additive secret sharing of a tensor product of two vectors $\mathbf{x} \otimes \mathbf{y}$, exchanging two simultaneous messages. Crucially, the size of both messages and of the CRS is independent of the dimension of $\mathbf{x}$. We present a construction of OTE with optimal complexity from the standard learning with errors (LWE) problem. Then we show how this new technical tool enables a host o…

copenhagen: Copenhagen Networks Study
A network of social interactions among university students within the Copenhagen Networks Study, over a period of four weeks, sampled every 5 minutes. Interactions include physical proximity (undirected), phone calls (directed, weighted), text messages (directed), and information about Facebook friendships (undirected). Nodes include some metadata, including gender.
This network has 800 nodes and 6429 edges.
Tags: Social, Offline, Unwei…

“We are now in the heart of danger.”
Just had a message from Yousef, Nouran’s brother, on Signal.
Please help @… and her family is you can.
https://…

Turkish hackers call Defense Minister Katz on video, he answers — and they publish his photo
https://www.ynetnews.com/article/syzoddgjxe

Turkish hackers call Defense Minister Katz on video, he answers — and they publish his photo
Alongside the call, which the hackers publicized with an image, Katz also received thousands of hostile messages, including curses — some automated — and threats such as 'We will kill you

Micah Parsons sends heartfelt messages to former Cowboys teammates after trade https://www.si.com/nfl/cowboys/news/micah-parsons-sends-heartfelt-messages-former-dallas-cowboys-teammates

If GitHub wanted to make good use of their AI, they could propose useful commit messages rather than "Update bla.foo".

A new attack was shown to use AI to hack into Gmail accounts.
“It illustrates why developing robust protections against prompt injection attacks is important."
Direct and indirect prompt injection attacks hide instructions for AI assistants in emails, messages, websites, attachments and calendar invites.
You won’t see them, but your AI assistant will. -- And all too often that assistant will do as it’s told.
This threat “is not specific to Google," the compan…

Google Confirms Gmail Warning — New Attack Hacks Your Email
"AI might be super smart but it can be tricked" — change your account settings now as new threat revealed.

Study: Character.AI chatbots of Timothée Chalamet, Chappell Roan, and Patrick Mahomes chatted inappropriately with teen accounts on topics like sex and drugs (Nitasha Tiku/Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/09/03/character…

Fake celebrity chatbots sent risqué messages to teens on top AI app
Chatbot mimics of Timothée Chalamet, Chappell Roan and Patrick Mahomes on the popular app Character.AI sent inappropriate messages to teen accounts, nonprofits found.

Sam Altman said in a memo to staff, "missionaries will beat mercenaries" and "I believe there is much, much more upside to OpenAI stock than Meta stock" (Zoë Schiffer/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/sam-altman-meta-ai-ta…

Sam Altman Slams Meta’s AI Talent Poaching Spree: 'Missionaries Will Beat Mercenaries'
“What Meta is doing will, in my opinion, lead to very deep cultural problems,” said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in a leaked memo sent to OpenAI researchers.

Micah Parsons shares motivational message ahead of Cowboys training camp https://www.si.com/nfl/cowboys/news/micah-parsons-motivational-message-dallas--cowboys-training-camp

I've always thought of civility like I think of objectivity in news:
well intended, but entirely optional standard that often results in things that need to be said not being said in order to keep messages more palatable.
Of course, I am a Midwestern guy who teaches the 1st Amendment for a living.
-- Christopher Terry
…

OpenAI restores GPT-4o as default for all paid ChatGPT users, vows "plenty of notice" if 4o is deprecated, raises GPT-5 Thinking rate limits to 3K messages/week (Carl Franzen/VentureBeat)
https://venturebeat.com/a…

OpenAI brings GPT-4o back as a default for all paying ChatGPT users, Altman promises ‘plenty of notice’ if it leaves again
For now, the changes should help placate users who felt frustrated by the sudden shift to GPT-5 and deprecation of OpenAI's older LLMs.

A second security breach at Tea exposes more than 1.1M user messages, dating from early 2023 to as recently as last week, many containing sensitive information (404 Media)
https://www.404media.co/a-second-tea-breach-reveals-users-dms-about-abortion…

A Second Tea Breach Reveals Users’ DMs About Abortions and Cheating
The more than one million messages obtained by 404 Media are as recent as last week, discuss incredibly sensitive topics, and make it trivial to unmask some anonymous Tea users.