Joseph Cox
28 article(s) here · 0 carrying a prediction
🔮 On Friday, Andy Yen, the CEO of Proton, cancelled a series of nearly company-wide ‘re-interviews’ that would have forced employees to explain how they are using AI, with the clear intention that they may be fired if not using it enough in the eyes of Proton leadership, according to six current Proton employees and audio of an around two hour all-hands meeting obtained by 404 Media.
🔮 After the break, Sam tells us why former Yahoo CEO Marrisa Mayer can’t keep pretending ‘gender doesn’t matter.’
🔮 In the last few months, Yen set up an email address for employees to contact if they come across anything blocking adoption of AI at Proton, so leadership can “ruthlessly smash everything that stands in the way of AI velocity;” Proton installed software on workers’ computers that track how much AI code the company is generating; and Yen said this is the last year that Proton will hire engineers at all, and instead only hire people to build things with AI.
🔮 A letter written by Telegram, and providing a specific user’s phone number, user ID, and IP address, reads:
Dear Sir or Madam,
For this particular case, the following information was available:
User #7149269705 : +201155664529 [Mahmoud Almohtadi]
IP 184.186.72.239, 8 Oct 2025 2:08:12
We hope this information will be helpful in your investigation.
Kind regards,
The Telegram Team
The letter says Telegram provided the data “voluntarily” and that by providing it, Telegram is “not conceding that we are subject to U.S. jurisdiction for this or any other request or any purpose.”
🔮 This is pretty normal in the advertising world, but I seriously doubt that when most of ChatGPT’s many, many users see an ad, they realize that might be because someone, somewhere, uploaded their phone number into OpenAI’s systems.
🔮 Multiple Democrat, Republican, and Independent lawmakers have introduced new pieces of legislation that, if passed, would dramatically curb federal agencies’ access to Flock cameras, with the lawmakers referencing reporting by 404 Media in their explanations for why the legislation is needed.
🔮 Although any potential damage will be less if ShinyHunters doesn’t publish the data publicly, the theft happening at all still presents much of those same national security risks, with the data providing granular insight into how the FBI operates.
“Since the very beginning we had made our decision that we would never publish this data.
🔮 What is different in this latest Copilot episode, and 404 Media’s reporting on contractors at other AI companies like OpenAI, is that the content humans are reviewing are prompts and uploads that chatbot users may assume are private, and that the contractors are not looking at this material to train the models to filter out offensive images or for some other safety concern.
🔮 And the ALPR Hostlist Management Audit report details changes made to alerts the agency may receive.
🔮 Georgia State University has rescinded a job offer given to a high profile activist who is currently fighting a case in which he allegedly wiped a security-focused Android phone before Customs and Border Protection (CBP) could search it.
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