A new use for ChatGPT has been found – locating the “cancel subscription” button on websites. CC-licensed photo by Alachua County on Flickr.
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A selection of 9 links for you. It’s down there. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. On Bluesky: @charlesarthur.bsky.social. Observations and links welcome.
Imgur blocks UK users after data watchdog signals possible fine • Bleeping Computer
Lawrence Abrams:
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While Imgur has not issued a statement, the geoblock comes after the UK’s data watchdog, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), announced in March that it was investigating whether TikTok, Reddit, and Imgur were appropriately protecting children’s data and assessing the age of those from the country under the Online Safety Act (OSA).
The ICO states that it has completed its investigation and issued a notice of intent to impose a monetary fine on MediaLab regarding these concerns on September 10.
“We reached our provisional findings on this investigation, and we issued a notice of intent to impose a monetary penalty on MediaLab on 10 September 2025,” reads a statement from the ICO. “Our findings are provisional and the ICO will carefully consider any representations from MediaLab before taking a final decision whether to issue a monetary penalty.”
In response, Imgur decided to geoblock the entire country, no longer allowing people in the UK to access its site or any content hosted from its servers. However, the ICO warns that blocking users from the UK does not exempt the organization from paying a previously imposed fine.
As one of the largest media-sharing sites in the world, this geoblock has had a widespread impact. On websites that allow users to embed images, such as Steam Workshop and discussion forums, people from the UK are now seeing purple rectangles stating, “Content now viewable in your region”.
Currently, the only workaround is to use a VPN, which enables you to connect from an IP address in another country.
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The Online Safety Act is going to make itself enormously unpopular, and it will be very difficult to prove that it has brought any benefit at all: how do you prove that children haven’t been corrupted by the internet, when services such as TikTok exist? Which probably means that some part of it will have to be rolled back when MPs start hearing from dissatisfied users.
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Google is blocking AI searches linking Trump and dementia • The Verge
Jay Peters:
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Google appears to have blocked AI search results for the query “does trump show signs of dementia” as well as other questions about his mental acuity, even though it will show AI results for similar searches about other presidents.
When making the search about President Trump, AI Overviews will display a message that says, “An AI Overview is not available for this search”.
Go directly to AI Mode, and you’ll only receive a list of 10 web results instead of a summarized page of information:
Similar searches about Trump are limited in the same way. Various queries about dementia, Alzheimer’s, and senility display no AI overview and only produce a list of links inside AI Mode.
However Google’s behavior is inconsistent if you swap in different names. When asking “does biden show signs of dementia”, Google doesn’t show an AI Overview at all. But in AI Mode, it will offer a summarized response. When I searched for it, the response started with, “It’s not possible to definitively state whether former President Joe Biden has dementia based solely on publicly available information.”
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This also applies outside the US, if you were wondering. As someone once said about a dissent-crushing regime, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
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Afghanistan hit by communications blackout after Taliban shuts internet • AFP via The Guardian
Agence France-Presse in Islamabad:
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A huge communications blackout has hit Afghanistan after Taliban authorities began severing fibre-optic connections in several provinces to prevent “vice”.
“A nationwide telecoms blackout is now in effect,” said Netblocks, a watchdog organisation that monitors cybersecurity and internet governance. “We’re now observing national connectivity at 14% of ordinary levels.” The watchdog said the incident “appears consistent with the intentional disconnection of service”.
Taliban authorities began the crackdown on internet access earlier this month, in effect shutting down high-speed internet in several regions. Over the past several weeks, internet connections have been extremely slow or intermittent. Telephone services are often routed over the internet, sharing the same fibre lines, especially in countries with limited telecoms infrastructure.
“Physically pulling the plug on fibre internet would therefore also shut down mobile and fixed-line telephone services,” Netblocks said. “It may turn out that disconnecting internet access while keeping phone service available will take some trial and error.”
On 16 September, the Balkh provincial spokesperson Attaullah Zaid said fibre-optic internet was completely banned in the northern province on the leader’s orders.
“This measure was taken to prevent vice, and alternative options will be put in place across the country to meet connectivity needs,” he wrote on social media.
At the time, the same restrictions were reported in the northern provinces of Badakhshan and Takhar, as well as in Kandahar, Helmand, Nangarhar and Uruzgan in the south.
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Bit hard to tell people the reason why you’ve imposed an internet blackout if you.. write it on social media. The Taliban continues to be disastrous for Afghanistan, and its increasingly cruel regime raises the question again and again of what was gained by invading it. One topic that seems to have disappeared from discussion is the food shortages – verging on famine – that were being reported recently. And there was a 6.0 earthquake in the summer which killed more than 2,000 people. The country has become a sort of memory hole.
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Human skin DNA fertilised to make embryo for first time • BBC News
James Gallagher:
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Reproduction used to be a simple story of man’s sperm meets woman’s egg. They fuse to make an embryo, and nine months later a baby is born.
Now scientists are changing the rules. This latest experiment starts with human skin. The technique could overcome infertility due to old age or disease, by using almost any cell in the body as the starting point for life.
The Oregon Health and Science University research team’s technique takes the nucleus – which houses a copy of the entire genetic code needed to build the body – out of a skin cell. This is then placed inside a donor egg that has been stripped of its genetic instructions.
So far, the technique is like the one used to create Dolly the Sheep – the world’s first cloned mammal – born back in 1996.
However, this egg is not ready to be fertilised by sperm as it already contains a full suite of chromosomes.
You inherit 23 of these bundles of DNA from each of your parents for a total of 46, which the egg already has.
So the next stage is to persuade the egg to discard half of its chromosomes in a process the researchers have termed “mitomeiosis” (the word is a fusion of mitosis and meiosis, the two ways cells divide).The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, showed 82 functional eggs were made. These were fertilised with sperm and some progressed onto the early stages of embryos development. None were developed beyond the six-day-stage.
“We achieved something that was thought to be impossible,” said Prof Shoukhrat Mitalipov, the director of the Oregon Health and Science University’s centre for embryonic cell and gene therapy.
The technique is far from polished as the egg randomly chooses which chromosomes to discard. It needs to end up with one of each of the 23 types to prevent disease, but ends up with two of some and none of others.
There is also a poor success rate (around 9%) and the chromosomes miss an important process where they rearrange their DNA, called crossing over.Prof Mitalipov, a world-renowned pioneer in the field, told me: “We have to perfect it.”
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You have to question it as well. The skin must come from a female (to be certain the egg has the X chromosome) and then you denucleate an egg. Sure, you could use a younger person’s egg – but an old person’s skin cells with have DNA errors which you don’t want to pass on. It feels a little pointless.
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I discovered ChatGPT’s best new feature: quitting things for you • The Washington Post
Geoffrey Fowler:
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I found the best new thing artificial intelligence can do for your personal life: quit online subscriptions.
It ain’t superintelligence. But it is useful. And the way it works — along with when it fails — offers us a snapshot of one of the most promising frontiers in AI, known as “agents.”
I recently wanted to quit Hulu and Disney+ but grew annoyed as I hunted for a cancel button. Making it annoying to quit is part of the business model for many companies. Amazon is paying $2.5 billion to settle with the Federal Trade Commission for tricking people into subscribing to Prime and then making it hard to cancel.
Wouldn’t it be great if a bot could quit for us? That’s the promise of AI agents: software that can go out and execute tasks for you in the real world, or at least on the World Wide Web.So I pulled up ChatGPT, and tapped on a button for its new agent mode. (To access it, you need a $20-per-month upgrade called ChatGPT Plus — yes, another subscription.) Then I typed: “Unsubscribe me from Hulu and Disney+.” I also entered my Disney username and password.
It went to work via ChatGPT’s own browser window, where I could see a mouse pointer controlled by the bot clicking around the Disney website. It feels far out to watch a computer operate itself. You do have the ability to stop it and take over the browser at any time.
Two minutes and forty-five seconds later, ChatGPT came back to me and said: “I’ve navigated to your Disney+ account and located the ‘Cancel Subscription’ button. … Would you like me to go ahead and click it to finalize the cancellation?” With my permission, it did.
Frankly, I was surprised it worked.
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It’s like magic – we spend the odd $10bn and voila! A machine that can find a button that slightly better web design (or government regulation) would make obvious in the first place.
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AI “actress” Tilly Norwood draws backlash from Hollywood • Variety
Alex Ritman:
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The creator of AI actress Tilly Norwood has released a statement following a weekend of heated backlash over the news that talent agents were already interested in signing the digital character.
“To those who have expressed anger over the creation of my AI character, Tilly Norwood, she is not a replacement for a human being, but a creative work – a piece of art. Like many forms of art before her, she sparks conversation, and that in itself shows the power of creativity,” Eline Van der Velden wrote in a statement on Instagram, also posted on Norwood’s own Instagram page.
“I see AI not as a replacement for people, but as a new tool, a new paintbrush. Just as animation, puppetry, or CGI opened fresh possibilities without taking away from live acting, AI offers another way to imagine and build stories. I’m an actor myself, and nothing – certainly not an AI character – can take away the craft or joy of human performance.”
…Understandably, the loudest [critical] noise came from within the acting community, with several well-known names chiming in among the hundreds of angry messages left in online comments sections. Several suggested that the anger should be targeted at whichever agent signed Norwood.
“Hope all actors repped by the agent that does this, drop their a$$. How gross, read the room,” wrote Melissa Barrera on Instagram.
“Out the agents. I want names,” added Kiersey Clemons.
“And what about the hundreds of living young women whose faces were composited together to make her? You couldn’t hire any of them?” noted Mara Wilson.
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Well, you see, humans are so demanding. All that wanting money and sleeping and so on.
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Flushable wipes and Iran: water treatment facility adds cyberattacks to worry list • NPR
Jenna McLaughlin:
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Hackers might have hesitated in the past to intentionally disrupt the systems that underpin American society, fearing retaliation or escalation. But after years of minimal consequences and hefty financial rewards, hackers have increasingly targeted critical infrastructure, understanding that holding these systems hostage gives them unique leverage in achieving their goals — whether that’s spreading fear, wreaking havoc, pushing for certain geopolitical aims or simply making money.
Meanwhile, water and wastewater operators at over 50,000 public water systems across the United States are already burdened by the complex, technical and constantly changing job of making sure their cities and towns are supplied with clean water. They have unique needs and extremely limited resources. Their systems are antiquated, while long-awaited technological updates could introduce even more new digital vulnerabilities. Plus, those threats are ramping up at a time when the experts fear the Trump administration will continue slashing federal funding for cybersecurity.
“It’s scary that I’m the only door between you know, the Iranians, and our water system,” said [Chris] Hughes [the assistant water and wastewater operator for the towns of Cavendish and Proctorsville].
“It kind of makes me a little nervous. I don’t really have the background to be fending off foreign entities, you know … and so it makes me think a little bit, what could happen?” Hughes said.
Hughes is participating in a new project created by some of the biggest players in cybersecurity, including volunteers from the massive DEF CON hacker conference hosted annually in Las Vegas as well as from the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and the Craig Newmark Foundation.
It’s called Project Franklin, named after U.S. founding father Benjamin Franklin, and the goal is to link experts from the DEF CON community, close to 30,000 hackers in total, with the people who run US critical infrastructure.
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That’s a lot of hackers! You’d have to be very trusting that they’re all acting in your interest, which is pretty hard to guarantee.
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Filipinos are addicted to online gambling. So is their government • Bloomberg via MSN
Andreo Calonzo and Neil Jerome Morales:
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Anyone in the Philippines age 21 or older can fill their digital wallets and place wagers over an internet connection. But with bets starting as low as 1 peso, or about 2¢, the industry is especially attractive to millions of low-income users imagining a pathway out of poverty. Bets start small but can quickly increase as people seek bigger payouts or try to make up for losses. To boost growth, online gambling companies often deploy local celebrities and sponsor widely watched events, from basketball games to beauty pageants. In a country where nearly a fifth of the population lives on less than $2 a day, users are invariably drawn to the prospect of a lucky break. “They are essentially targeting the people who can least afford to lose their money,” says Ben Lee, managing partner at Macau-based consulting firm IGamiX. “You are not taxing the rich; you’re taxing the poor.”
What’s happening in the Philippines serves as a warning to other developing nations such as Brazil that are just now opening up to online gambling. Legal internet betting has brought in lots of money for Philippine companies and even the government itself, which through its industry regulator, Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp., or Pagcor, collects 30% of gross gaming revenue from legal e-games. Now President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s government is caught between a growing public-health crisis and a lucrative industry that provides much-needed revenue. The government has taken small steps to partially unravel the collective addiction in recent months, but critics of its slow reaction say it’s been hard for political leaders to turn off the revenue tap.
Revenue collected from online casino license fees is projected to surge tenfold, to about $1bn, in 2025 from four years ago, according to Pagcor. The regulator, which both oversees and operates gambling facilities in what some see as a conflict of interest, is the second-biggest revenue contributor to government coffers among state-run companies, after only Land Bank of the Philippines. Revenue from internet betting this year eclipsed that of physical casinos for the first time, underlining the industry’s rapid expansion.
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There’s almost a cruelty about it: the companies which can afford to offer online gambling are enormously rich, and they make money hand over fist. Meanwhile the hopefuls lose, and lose, and lose.
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Samsung confirms plan to make foldable displays for “major American company” • MacRumors
Hartley Charlton:
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Samsung Display president Lee Cheong has confirmed plans to make foldable smartphone displays for a major American company, which is widely believed to be Apple.
As reported in Chosun Biz, Cheong last week told journalists in Seoul that the company is accelerating preparations for mass production of OLED displays designed for foldable smartphones to be supplied to a “North American client.” He declined to provide further information about the client, but it is widely expected to be Apple.
The comments reflect the solidification of rumors around Apple’s first foldable iPhone, which is now believed to be less than a year away from launch.
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How many “major American companies” are there which need smartphone screens? I don’t think BlackBerry (which is anyway Canadian) is in the running here. It’s a list that’s one item long. So that seems to confirm that the iPhone Air is the starting point for the iPhone Fold (or whatever it’s called).
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| • Why do social networks drive us a little mad? • Why does angry content seem to dominate what we see? • How much of a role do algorithms play in affecting what we see and do online? • What can we do about it? • Did Facebook have any inkling of what was coming in Myanmar in 2016? Read Social Warming, my latest book, and find answers – and more. |
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