A man has been accused of starting California’s Palisades fire, in part because of pictures he generated with ChatGPT. CC-licensed photo by Frank Kovalchek on Flickr.
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A selection of 9 links for you. Unprompted. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. On Bluesky: @charlesarthur.bsky.social. Observations and links welcome.
Apple banned an app that simply archived videos of ICE abuses • 404 Media
Joseph Cox:
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Apple removed an app for preserving TikToks, Instagram reels, news reports, and videos documenting abuses by ICE, 404 Media has learned. The app, called Eyes Up, differs from other banned apps such as ICEBlock which were designed to report sightings of ICE officials in real-time to warn local communities. Eyes Up, meanwhile, was more of an aggregation service pooling together information to preserve evidence in case the material is needed in the future in court.
The news shows that Apple and Google’s crackdown on ICE-spotting apps, which started after pressure from the Department of Justice against Apple, is broader in scope than apps that report sightings of ICE officials. It has also impacted at least one app that was more about creating a historical record of ICE’s activity during its mass deportation effort.
“Our goal is government accountability, we aren’t even doing real-time tracking,” the administrator of Eyes Up, who said their name was Mark, told 404 Media. Mark asked 404 Media to only use his first name to protect him from retaliation. “I think the [Trump] admin is just embarrassed by how many incriminating videos we have.”
…The website for Eyes Up which functions essentially the same way is still available. The site includes a map with dots that visitors can click on, which then plays a video from that location. Users are able to submit their own videos for inclusion. Mark said he manually reviews every video before it is uploaded to the service, to check its content and its location.
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Google said ICE is a “vulnerable group”, which is an odd use of the word. The way these companies are kowtowing to the Trump administration is astonishing: have they lost their trust in the courts so quickly?
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Bank of England warns of growing risk that AI bubble could burst • The Guardian
Kalyeena Makortoff:
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The Bank of England has warned there is a growing risk of a “sudden correction” in global markets as it raised concerns about soaring valuations of leading AI tech companies.
Policymakers said there were also threats of a “sharp repricing of US dollar assets” if the Federal Reserve lost credibility in the eyes of global investors. It comes as Donald Trump’s continues to attack the US central bank and threaten its independence.
Continued hype and optimism about the potential for AI technology has led to a rise in valuations in recent months, with companies such as OpenAI now worth $500bn (£372bn), compared with $157bn last October. Another firm, Anthropic, has almost trebled its valuation, going from $60bn in March to $170bn last month.
However, the Bank of England’s financial policy committee (FPC) warned on Wednesday: “The risk of a sharp market correction has increased.
“On a number of measures, equity market valuations appear stretched, particularly for technology companies focused on artificial intelligence. This … leaves equity markets particularly exposed should expectations around the impact of AI become less optimistic.”
It said investors had not fully accounted for these potential risks, warning that “a sudden correction could occur” should any of them crystallise, resulting in finance drying up for households and businesses. The FPC added: “As an open economy with a global financial centre, the risk of spillovers to the UK financial system from such global shocks is material.”
Faith in the AI boom has recently been rattled by research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which showed that 95% of organisations are getting zero return from their investments in generative AI.
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AI investment currently accounts for a quarter of US GDP growth (not, please note, GDP). And it’s largely faith-based. It’s not hard to imagine something like the dot-com boom, where valuations collapse and it’s only years later that the investments start to be useful.
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Salesforce says it won’t pay extortion demand in 1 billion records breach • Ars Technica
Dan Goodin:
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The threat group making the demands began their campaign in May, when they made voice calls to organizations storing data on the Salesforce platform, Google-owned Mandiant said in June. The English-speaking callers would provide a pretense that necessitated the target connect an attacker-controlled app to their Salesforce portal. Amazingly—but not surprisingly—many of the people who received the calls complied.
The threat group behind the campaign is calling itself Scattered LAPSUS$ Hunters, a mashup of three prolific data-extortion actors: Scattered Spider, LAPSuS$, and ShinyHunters. Mandiant, meanwhile, tracks the group as UNC6040, because the researchers so far have been unable to positively identify the connections.
Earlier this month, the group created a website that named Toyota, FedEx, and 37 other Salesforce customers whose data was stolen in the campaign. In all, the number of records recovered, Scattered LAPSUS$ Hunters claimed, was “989.45m/~1B+.” The site called on Salesforce to begin negotiations for a ransom amount “or all your customers [sic] data will be leaked.” The site went on to say: “Nobody else will have to pay us, if you pay, Salesforce, Inc.” The site said the deadline for payment was Friday.
In an email Wednesday, a Salesforce representative said the company is spurning the demand. “I can confirm Salesforce will not engage, negotiate with, or pay any extortion demand,” the representative wrote. The confirmation came a day after Bloomberg reported that Salesforce told customers in an email that it won’t pay the ransom. The email went on to say that Salesforce had received “credible threat intelligence” indicating a group known as ShinyHunters planned to publish data stolen in the series of attacks on customers’ Salesforce portals.
The refusal comes amid a continuing explosion in the number of ransomware attacks on organizations around the world. The reason these breaches keep occurring is the hefty sums the attackers receive in return for decrypting encrypted data and/or promising not to publish stolen data online. Global Ransom Payments totaled $813m, last year, down from $1.1bn in 2023, security firm Deepstrike estimated. The group that breached drug distributor Cencora alone received a whopping $75m in ransomware payments, Bloomberg reported, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter.
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I think that these hackers still haven’t learnt the difference between “vomit up a database” and “find truly valuable files that the company would be severely embarrassed to see made public, such as corporate plans”. Encrypting systems, of course, remains a serious threat.
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Logitech’s POP smart buttons are shutting down • How To Geek
Jorge Aguilar:
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The era of Logitech’s popular smart home control solution, the POP button system, is abruptly coming to an end. Logitech has announced the complete discontinuation of the service, in some emails to customers, stating that it is effective October 15, 2025.
The formal announcement was delivered to users via email, which was revealed on Reddit. It read, “Dear Logitech POP button user, Thank you for being a loyal Logitech customer and for making the POP button a part of your home. We are writing to inform you that we will be discontinuing the service for the Logitech POP button. For close to a decade, we have maintained the POP ecosystem, but as technology evolves, we have made the decision to end support for this device. As of October 15, 2025, your POP button(s) and the connected hub will no longer be supported and will lose all functionality. As a gesture of our appreciation for your loyalty, we would like to offer you a 15% discount on products purchased on http://www.logitech.com.”
While the email attempts to frame the decision as a natural progression, the consequences are anything but smooth for any remaining owners. This is not a partial service reduction, but a total crippling of the product ecosystem.
The POP buttons were designed to be a simple, versatile way to control a wide range of smart home devices and services.They were integrated with major platforms like Apple HomeKit, Sonos, IFTTT, and Philips Hue. The impending shutdown means that all these established, programmed interactions (the very purpose of the product) will instantly cease to exist.
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Ah but! The coupon is only for US-based customers, and doesn’t apply to a wide range of Logitech products. Wonder how many smart home products have gone dead because the companies either give up on them, or introduce subscriptions that people choose not to take up. But as a category, it’s not in great shape.
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iOS 26: keep AirPods connected to your phone when you get in your car • MacRumors
Tim Hardwick:
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If you wear AirPods during your commute but don’t want your podcast or music suddenly blasting through the car speakers when you start the engine, there’s a new setting in iOS 26 that can ensure it doesn’t happen.
Apple has thoughtfully added a new “Keep Audio with Headphones” setting that prevents your iPhone from automatically switching audio to CarPlay or other Bluetooth speakers when you’re already listening through AirPods. Here’s how to toggle it on.
How to keep Audio in your AirPods:
• Open the Settings app on your iPhone
• Tap General
• Select AirPlay & Continuity
• Toggle on Keep Audio with Headphones.«
Pretty simple, perhaps useful. Provided as a service to the reader.
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One-man spam campaign ravages EU “chat control” bill • POLITICO
Sam Clark:
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A website set up by an unknown Dane over the course of one weekend in August is giving a massive headache to those trying to pass a European bill aimed at stopping child sexual abuse material from spreading online.
The website, called Fight Chat Control, was set up by Joachim, a 30-year-old software engineer living in Aalborg, Denmark. He made it after learning of a new attempt to approve a European Union proposal to fight child sexual abuse material (CSAM) — a bill seen by privacy activists as breaking encryption and leading to mass surveillance.
The site lets visitors compile a mass email warning about the bill and send it to national government officials, members of the European Parliament and others with ease. Since launching, it has broken the inboxes of MEPs and caused a stir in Brussels’ corridors of power.
“We are getting hundreds per day about it,” said Evin Incir, a Swedish Socialists and Democrats MEP, of the email deluge.
Three diplomats at national permanent representation offices said they too have received a large number of emails.
Joachim’s website has stoked up an already red-hot debate around the CSAM proposal, which would give police the power to force companies like WhatsApp and Signal to scan their services for the illegal content. Critics fear the bill would enable online state surveillance.
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The EU effectively abandoned the measure after the German government said on Wednesday that it won’t support the move. (Thanks Gregory B for the pointer.)
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Pacific Palisades fire suspect snared by ChatGPT image, say investigators • BBC News
Ana Faguy:
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A 29-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of starting the Pacific Palisades fire in Los Angeles that killed 12 people and destroyed more than 6,000 homes in January.
Evidence collected from Jonathan Rinderknecht’s digital devices included an image he generated on ChatGPT depicting a burning city, justice department officials said.
The most destructive blaze in Los Angeles’ history, it was sparked on 7 January near a hiking trail overlooking the wealthy coastal neighbourhood. The Eaton Fire, ignited the same day in the LA area, killed another 19 people and razed 9,400 structures. The cause of that fire remains unclear. Mr Rinderknecht is due in court in Orlando, Florida, on Wednesday.
The fire scorched more than 23,000 acres (9,308 hectares) and caused about $150bn (£112bn) in damage. Wiping out whole neighbourhoods, the conflagration raged for more than three weeks, also ravaging parts of Topanga and Malibu.
…He lit the fire with an open flame after he completed a ride as an Uber driver on New Year’s Eve, according to the indictment.
…Officials said they had used his phone data to pinpoint his location when the fire initially started on 1 January, but when they pressed him on details he allegedly lied to investigators, claiming he was near the bottom of the trail. On his phone they found videos that Mr Rinderknecht had taken of firefighters trying to put out the flames.
They also found just after midnight on New Year’s Day that he repeatedly called 911, but could not get through because of patchy mobile reception on the trailhead. On his phone was a screen recording of him trying to call emergency services and at one point being connected with a dispatcher.
Mr Rinderknecht also asked ChatGPT: “Are you at fault if a fire is lift [sic] because of your cigarettes?” Investigators said the suspect wanted to “preserve evidence of himself trying to assist in the suppression of the fire”.
“He wanted to create evidence regarding a more innocent explanation for the cause of the fire,” the indictment said.
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This is surely the first time that someone’s ChatGPT history has been used to indict them. I think we’ve already had at least one divorce and a few suicides. What’s next on the bingo card – poisonings from recipes involving bleach?
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Brussels moves to tackle satellite junk in space • POLITICO
Mathieu Pollet:
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The European Commission on Wednesday proposed a new Space Act that seeks to dial up regulatory oversight of satellite operators — including requiring them to tackle their impact on space debris and pollution, or face significant fines.
There are more than 10,000 satellites now in orbit and growing space junk to match. In recent years, more companies — most notably Elon Musk’s Starlink — have ventured into low-Earth orbit, from where stronger telecommunication connections can be established but which requires more satellites to ensure full coverage.
“Space is congested and contested,” a Commission official said ahead of Wednesday’s proposal in a briefing with reporters. The official was granted anonymity to disclose details ahead of the formal presentation.The EU executive wants to set up a database to track objects circulating in space; make authorization processes clearer to help companies launch satellites and provide services in Europe; and force national governments to give regulators oversight powers.
The Space Act proposal would also require space companies to have launch safety and end-of-life disposal plans, take extra steps to limit space debris, light and radio pollution, and calculate the environmental footprint of their operations.
Mega and giga constellations, which are networks of at least 100 and 1,000 spacecraft, respectively, face extra rules to coordinate orbit traffic and avoid collisions.
“It’s starting to look like a jungle up there. We need to intervene,” said French liberal lawmaker Christophe Grudler. “Setting traffic rules for satellites might not sound as sexy as sending people to Mars. But that’s real, that’s now and that has an impact on our daily lives.”
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Isn’t going to do anything about the 50-odd satellites posing the biggest space junk threat, though there is an EU project called REMOVEDEBRIS (smart name!) set up in 2018 which did a couple of successful test flights in 2020.
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China confirms solar panel projects are irreversibly changing desert ecosystems • Glass Almanac
Brian Foster:
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A team studying one of the largest photovoltaic parks in China, the Gonghe project in the Talatan Desert, found a striking difference between what was happening under the panels and what lay just beyond. They used a detailed framework measuring dozens of indicators—everything from soil chemistry to microbial life—and discovered that the micro-environment beneath the panels was noticeably healthier. The reasons track with physics: shade cools the surface and slows evaporation, letting scarce soil moisture linger longer; field experiments in western China report measurable soil-moisture gains beneath shaded arrays.²
Simple shade from panel rows can create a gentler microclimate at ground level, cutting wind stress and helping fragile seedlings establish.
In other desert locations like Gansu and the Gobi, year-round field data tell a similar story. Soil temperatures beneath arrays tend to be cooler during the day and a bit warmer at night than surrounding ground, with humidity patterns shifting in tandem—conditions that can make harsh surfaces more habitable when paired with basic land care.³
Even small shifts like these can help re-establish vegetation—if combined with erosion control and water management. These aren’t wildflowers blooming overnight, but they are signs that utility-scale solar can double as a modest micro-restorer.
It’s a tempting idea—energy infrastructure moonlighting as land-restoration tools. But not every desert is the same, and not every solar farm will have the same impact. Site layout, panel spacing, grazing pressure, and dust management all shape whether these micro-benefits take root or fade.
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In the UK, there’s opposition because solar panels “take away valuable farmland”. (Except nobody wants to grow crops on them.) In China, they might be greening the desert.
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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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