At a time when so-called “artificial intelligence” seems inescapable, we were encouraged to see news that Amazon will be cracking down on third-party sellers that use AI-generated images for their product listings. They won’t be prevented from using the images, but they will need to clearly indicate that they don’t represent reality and were produced via artificial means. This comes in response to a recently enacted New York law that requires the disclosure of AI in advertisements.

But it’s not quite a clear cut as it might seem on the surface, as the New York law is actually about AI-generated people rather than products. Specifically, it’s designed to make it clear when a “synthetic performer” has been used in place of a human actor. As such, it would appear that the easiest way for Amazon sellers to dodge the new rule is to simply not include any humans in their AI slop images and videos. In other words, they can continue to post fake pictures of products without having to inform the consumer so long as they don’t show a fake person holding it.
Under normal circumstances we’d leave something like this next one for our weekly security column, but the utter lack of security in the Pope’s official “Click To Pray” mobile application revealed by researcher BobDaHacker on Friday is just too good a story to pass up. For one thing, who knew that there was an “official” prayer app? We don’t dabble in theology around these parts, but we’re fairly sure the good book didn’t mention anything about requiring a smartphone to give praise.


After previously using the fermenting of sugar to obtain ethanol fuel, [Hyperspace Pirate] figured that it’d be a waste to just blast the other half of the yeast production in the form of carbon dioxide into the air. This poses the slight problem that gaseous CO2 is fairly bulky, while compressing it into a liquid isn’t exactly for the faint of heart. This of course 

After confirming that the DSLR’s condition was basically as described by the seller, with nothing on the LCD or HDMI output and the auto-focus not working while partially pressing the trigger button, but still taking a picture when fully pressed. Sometimes it would also show a standard maintenance message on the LCD, so clearly it ought to be working. Maybe the camera’s processor was just being chronically unhappy about something, in which case an easy fix might be possible.
