Interesting things I read on the Internet this week
How vulture capitalists ate Toys ‘R’ Us — Devastating. The financial trickery that bankrupted Toys ‘R’ Us while enriching the buyers with $200 million in fees.
New AI Imaging Technique Reconstructs Photos with Realistic Results — Incredible, it’s unintuitive to me how these models can “invent” missing information, but of course they’ve seen a lot of similar images before.
We’re underestimating the mind-warping potential of fake video — Fake news will be supercharged by fake video. How are we going to cope with fake history?
AI Creates Fake Obama — Linked from the previous fake video article, examples of fake video of Obama generated from real speeches.
Wunderscan — Cute, salvaging a laser barcode scanner to create a home shopping list gadget.
Electric Buses Are Hurting the Oil Industry — Only 8 years ago electric buses are being laughed at, now you can see their effect in oil sales data.
The Revolutionary Giant Ocean Cleanup Machine Is About To Set Sail — “Revolutionary” (and necessary) would be to stop creating disposable plastics, but nice effort to clean up what’s already been dumped in the sea.
To censor the internet, 10 countries use Canadian filtering technology, researchers say — If you’re working on surveillance and censorship technology, think hard about its “dual use” against citizens of oppressive regimes.
Matrix and Riot confirmed as the basis for France’s Secure Instant Messenger app — Superb to see a Government adopting a (good) open source solution for their internal end-to-end encrypted messenger.
This ‘Demonically Clever’ Backdoor Hides In a Tiny Slice of a Computer Chip — Terrifying, a single tweak to a processor’s etching mask can insert a remotely exploitable backdoor.