A new study has made a 3D reconstruction of a quadrillion connections in the human brain – equivalent to a cubic mm of tissue. CC-licensed photo by Rev314159 on Flickr.

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A selection of 9 links for you. Makes you think. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. On Bluesky: @charlesarthur.bsky.social. Observations and links welcome.

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Myanmar military detains 2,000 people in raid at cybercrime center • AP News

Grant Peck:

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Myanmar’s military has shut down a major online scam operation near the border with Thailand, detaining more than 2,000 people and seizing dozens of Starlink satellite internet terminals, state media reported Monday.

Myanmar is notorious for hosting cyberscam operations responsible for bilking people all over the world. These usually involve gaining victims’ confidence online with romantic ploys and bogus investment pitches. The centres are infamous for recruiting workers from other countries under false pretences, promising them legitimate jobs and then holding them captive and forcing them to carry out criminal activities.

Scam operations were in the international spotlight last week when the United States and Britain enacted sanctions against organizers of a major Cambodian cyberscam gang, and its alleged ringleader was indicted by a federal court in New York.

According to a report in Monday’s Myanma Alinn newspaper, the army raided KK Park, a well-documented cybercrime centre, as part of operations starting in early September to suppress online fraud, illegal gambling, and cross-border cybercrime. It published photos displaying seized Starlink equipment and soldiers said to be carrying out the raid, though it was unclear when exactly they were taken.

KK Park is located on the outskirts of Myawaddy, a major trading town on the border with Thailand in Myanmar’s Kayin state. The area is only loosely under the control of Myanmar’s military government, and also falls under the influence of ethnic minority militias.

Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, the spokesperson for the military government, charged in a statement Monday night that the top leaders of the Karen National Union, an armed ethnic organization opposed to army rule, were involved in the scam projects at KK Park.

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It’s quite possible that the military shut down an operation that wasn’t paying enough money to the junta. Or the good version: the military actually does care about Myanmar’s reputation and the wellbeing of the people in the centres. Regrettably, it’s easier to believe the former.
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Sora allows people to make ‘fetish’ content using other people’s faces • Business Insider

Katie Notopoulos:

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We need to talk about something uncomfortable when it comes to Sora 2 — OpenAI’s new video-making app that I’ve truly enjoyed using.

Looking at some of the videos people have made — starring me — a little red light went off in my mind: this looks like fetish content.

Here’s what happened. A few days into playing around with Sora, I noticed an unsettling video someone had made of me. I’ve allowed anyone to make “cameos” using my face. (You don’t have to do this: You can choose settings that make your likeness private, or open to just your friends — but I figured, why not? And left my likeness open to everyone, just like Sam Altman.)

I found a stranger had made a video where I appeared pregnant. A quick look at the user’s profile, and I saw that this person’s entire Sora profile was made up of this genre — video after video of women with big, pregnant bellies. I recognized immediately what this was: fetish content.

Like I said, I’d been having a lot of fun on Sora, letting friends and even strangers make silly videos with my face. But the idea that someone was making a video that had some potential sexual gratification element made me feel fairly icked out.

Over the next week or so, I noticed a few more videos that I immediately recognized from years of poking around the underbelly of the internet as niche fetishes: belly inflation videos where my stomach inflated massively, Violet Beaugregard-style, or giantess videos where I and two other women towered over a cityscape (and another where we were miniature). Some of these accounts make these kinds of videos with purely AI-generated women, not cameos of real people — I found a bunch of accounts like this dedicated to making vore, foot worship, crushing, and other niche, non-nude fetishes.

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People (well, men) are weird. Some are deeply weird. So it’s really lazy – and negligent – of Sora not to have imagined this would happen (are there not enough other examples, in other generation formats?) and at least offered warnings?
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a16z-backed startup sells thousands of ‘synthetic influencers’ to manipulate social media as a service • 404 Media

Emanuel Maiberg:

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A new startup backed by one of the biggest venture capital firms in Silicon Valley, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), is building a service that allows clients to “orchestrate actions on thousands of social accounts through both bulk content creation and deployment.” Essentially, the startup, called Doublespeed, is pitching an astroturfing AI-powered bot service, which is in clear violation of policies for all major social media platforms. 

“Our deployment layer mimics natural user interaction on physical devices to get our content to appear human to the algorithims [sic],” the company’s site says. Doublespeed did not respond to a request for comment, so we don’t know exactly how its service works, but the company appears to be pitching a service designed to circumvent many of the methods social media platforms use to detect inauthentic behavior. It uses AI to generate social media accounts and posts, with a human doing 5% of “touch up” work at the end of the process. 

On a podcast earlier this month, Doublespeed cofounder Zuhair Lakhani said that the company uses a “phone farm” to run AI-generated accounts on TikTok. So-called “click farms” often use hundreds of mobile phones to fake online engagement of reviews for the same reason. Lakhani said one Doublespeed client generated 4.7 million views in less than four weeks with just 15 of its AI-generated accounts. 

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But a16z always backs good things like.. er, crypto? Of course it’s up to the social media companies to shut it down.
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Neato’s cloud is shutting down, leaving its robovacs stuck in manual mode • The Verge

Stevie Bonifield:

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Two years after US-based Neato Robotics closed up shop in 2023, its robot vacuum cleaners have reached the end of the road (or rather, hallway). Users are receiving emails notifying them that their Neato robovacs will no longer have access to cloud services, meaning they can’t be controlled through the robots’ MyNeato app anymore.

In an email obtained by The Verge, Neato Robotics explained the decision to users, stating, “Since Neato ceased operations in 2023, Vorwerk [which acquired Neato in 2017 – Overspill Ed] has continued maintaining the Neato cloud platform to honor the original five-year service promise. However, cybersecurity standards, compliance obligations, and regulations have advanced in ways that make it no longer possible to safely and sustainably operate these legacy systems.”

The end of cloud support means Neato’s robovacs will now only work in manual mode, meaning no more customizing your routines or controlling your robot from the MyNeato app.

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Strange that a cloud service is needed for an app to connect to a vacuum cleaner that is literally metres away. Local Wi-Fi not good enough? What magic does the server do? Anyway, another smart home service bites the..
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Lithium price crash hits mining towns in Argentina, Chile, Bolivia • Rest of World

David Feliba:

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Tolar Grande, a windswept settlement perched at 11,500 feet above sea level in northern Argentina, once received little more than a trickle of visitors. Then, in the late 2010s, hostels in the lithium-rich town began filling up with workers at mining companies, while the handful of small eateries shifted from serving the occasional tourist to feeding miners.

“Mining absorbed almost everyone,” Marta Ríos, who runs the civil registry in Tolar Grande, home to around 300 people, told Rest of World. “At first it was strange to see trucks all the time, buses full of workers — suddenly, there was no unemployment.”

As demand for electric vehicles soared, the so-called lithium triangle — spanning northern Argentina, Chile, and southern Bolivia — became the beating heart of the energy transition. Home to nearly half the world’s known lithium resources, the region drew a flood of foreign investors eager to secure “white gold,” as well as workers from across the country keen to cash in on the boom. The output of some of these mines ultimately ends up in batteries for Toyota, Hyundai, and Ford. 

But after peaking in late 2022, lithium prices have fallen sharply as supply outpaced demand with a weakening Chinese economy and slower EV sales growth. Large operators scaled back investment and cut staff, leaving locals who had redirected their businesses to serve the industry scrambling to find new clients or new work altogether. 

“In many of these remote towns, there’s no alternative economy,” Martín Fellner, a lawmaker in Jujuy, one of Argentina’s largest lithium-exporting provinces, told Rest of World. “Communities themselves [are] asking for more mining projects because without them, there are no formal jobs, no decent salaries.”

…The price of lithium has plummeted roughly 80% from its 2022 peak, with prices currently hovering at around $10,000 per ton. The impact on mining operations worldwide has been swift: In Australia, the world’s top producer, companies have cut jobs and shelved projects. In the U.S., large lithium ventures have been delayed or cancelled as investors weigh the risks.

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3D reconstruction of human brain fragment offers tiny glimpse of neuronal intricacy • Psychiatric News

Richard Karel:

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The one cubic millimeter sample—approximately the size of a single sesame seed—was extracted during a surgical procedure to treat refractory epilepsy.

…The current effort mapped out more than one quadrillion voxels of cortical tissue. (A voxel is a three-dimensional cubic analog of a pixel).

The sample extended through all layers of the cortex. The scientists were able to reconstruct images of thousands of neurons and more than 100 million synaptic connections. Among the novel findings were the discovery of a previously unrecognized class of directionally oriented neurons in deep layers, and what they described as “very powerful and rare multisynaptic connections between neurons throughout the sample.”

In their discussion, the authors acknowledged the challenges facing the use of such data to create connectomes that can be clearly correlated with human behavior. Some of the anomalies observed in this brain fragment—such as some neuronal fibers called axons curling into extensive spirals—may be unique to the individual or may be associated with the neuropathology or pharmacotherapy of epilepsy, the authors said. Further, human experience, as well as genetics, alter neural circuits, which presents the challenge of meaningfully comparing neural circuits between human brains that have been shaped by different experiences.

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The photos are utterly amazing. When people say the human brain is the most complex structure in the universe, you can believe them. We now have genomics, proteomics and connectomics.
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US student handcuffed after AI system apparently mistook bag of chips for gun • The Guardian

Guardian staff:

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Taki Allen was sitting with friends on Monday night outside Kenwood high school in Baltimore and eating a snack when police officers with guns approached him.

“At first, I didn’t know where they were going until they started walking toward me with guns, talking about, ‘Get on the ground,’ and I was like, ‘What?’” Allen told the WBAL-TV 11 News television station.

Allen said they made him get on his knees, handcuffed and searched him – finding nothing. They then showed him a copy of the picture that had triggered the alert.

“I was just holding a Doritos bag – it was two hands and one finger out, and they said it looked like a gun,” Allen said.

Baltimore county high schools last year began using a gun detection system using school cameras and AI to detect potential weapons. If it spots something it believes to be suspicious, it sends an alert to the school and law enforcement officials.

In a letter to school families obtained by WBAL TV 11 News, the school wrote: “We understand how upsetting this was for the individual that was searched as well as the other students who witnessed the incident. Our counselors will provide direct support to the students who were involved in this incident and are also available to speak with any student who may need support.”

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I wonder what sort of support the counsellors will provide? “Here’s how to avoid being targeted by an AI system next time: sit stock still without doing anything”?
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Record-breaking CO₂ rise shows the Amazon is faltering — yet the satellite that spotted this may soon be shut down • The Conversation

Paul Palmer and Liang Feng:

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Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) rose faster in 2024 than in any year since records began – far faster than scientists expected.

Our new satellite analysis shows that the Amazon rainforest, which has long been a huge absorber of carbon, is struggling to keep up. And worryingly, the satellite that made this discovery could soon be switched off.

Systematic measurements of CO₂ in the atmosphere began in the late 1950s, when the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii (chosen for its remoteness and untainted air) registered about 315 parts per million (ppm). Today, it’s more than 420ppm.

But just as important is the rate of change. The annual rise in global CO₂ has gone from below 1ppm in the 1960s to more than 2ppm a year in the 2010s. Every extra ppm represents about 2 billion tonnes of carbon – roughly four times the combined mass of every human alive today.

…Until recently, we could only monitor CO₂ through stations on the ground like the one in Hawaii. That changed with satellites such as Nasa’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO-2), launched in 2014.

The OCO-2 satellite analyses sunlight reflected from Earth. Carbon dioxide acts like a filter, absorbing specific wavelengths of light. By observing how much of that specific light is missing or dimmed when it reaches the satellite, scientists can accurately calculate how much CO₂ is in the atmosphere.

…Yet, despite being fit and healthy and having enough fuel to keep it going until 2040, OCO-2 is at risk of being shut down due to proposed Nasa budget cuts.

We wouldn’t be blind without it – but we’d be seeing far less clearly. Losing OCO-2 would mean losing our best tool for monitoring changes in the carbon cycle, and we will all be scientifically poorer for it.

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UK court loss could cost Apple £1.5bn • BBC News

Chris Vallance:

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Apple could be forced to pay up to £1.5bn in damages after losing a collective legal action court case brought on behalf of 36 million UK iPhone and iPad users, both consumers and businesses.

The Competition Appeals Tribunal (CAT) found that Apple had abused its dominant position by charging “excessive and unfair” prices in the form of the 30% commission, which it usually levies both on app sales and in-app payments.

The claimants argued that this meant that consumers had been overcharged for apps, subscriptions to apps, and when buying digital content in apps. Apple said it strongly disagreed with the ruling and would appeal.

The case was pursued by academic Dr Rachael Kent. Her lawyers argue it is the first such claim brought under the UK’s collective action regime to have succeeded. Dr Kent called the decision a “landmark victory, not only for App Store users, but for anyone who has ever felt powerless against a global tech giant”.

“Today’s ruling sends a clear message: no company, however wealthy or powerful, is above the law.”

The tribunal’s decision comes a day after the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) designated both Apple and Google as having “strategic market status” – effectively saying they have a lot of power over mobile platforms.

It means the competition watchdog could force Apple to allow rivals to operate their own app stores on iPhones in the UK. This would be a significant change to Apple’s “closed system”, where apps can only be downloaded from its own App Store.

Apple maintains that because commission is only charged on the sale of paid apps and on in-app purchases, 85% of apps on the App Store do not pay any commission at all. And it points to its introduction of a programme for small businesses where the usual 30% rate of commission is halved. In a statement sent to the BBC, Apple wrote that it strongly disagreed with the ruling, which took a flawed view of the “thriving and competitive app economy”.

…According to lawyers Hausfeld & Co. LLP, who represented Dr Kent, “any UK user of an iPhone or iPad who purchased paid-for apps, subscriptions or made in-app purchases of digital content within the UK storefront of the App Store at any point since 1 October 2015 is potentially entitled to compensation from Apple”.

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(For reference: I’m a member of a class representative partnership that’s bringing a case against Google before the CAT. The partnership is represented by Hausfeld.)
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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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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified