# Best of technologyreview.com on Kiwi News Page: https://news.kiwistand.com/source/technologyreview.com 9 stories from technologyreview.com have been shared on Kiwi News since 25 July 2023, with 24 upvotes and 3 comments in total. The latest was shared on 19 September 2024. They are listed below, most upvoted first. Summaries are AI summaries of the linked article. ## 1. A brief, weird history of brainwashing - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/A-brief-weird-history-of-brainwashing?index=0x661ce344cab5b615e24794313130ce0f8525d06e41a3e6ef4f8654f0a53b07e65c986c35 - Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/04/12/1090726/brainwashing-mind-control-history-operation-midnight-climax - Shared 15 April 2024, 7 upvotes, 2 comments Edward Hunter popularized "brainwashing" in the US with his 1951 book Brain-Washing in Red China, and the article argues that the Cold War mind-control race that followed mixed real research with myth. It notes that Hunter claimed to be the first to use the term in writing and speech, but other OSS operatives had used it earlier. The CIA's MK-Ultra program, begun in 1953, funded drug and mind-control research, including Donald Cameron's work at McGill University, whose subjects suffered amnesia but whose experiments never implanted new memories. ## 2. This new data poisoning tool lets artists fight back against generative AI - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/This-new-data-poisoning-tool-lets-artists-fight-back-against-generative-AI?index=0x65379fd007195296d7e32d1e7a4032a135726b4bb552776c07b61fdf3cabb71a792b7484 - Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/10/23/1082189/data-poisoning-artists-fight-generative-ai - Shared 24 October 2023, 4 upvotes, 0 comments Researchers led by Ben Zhao, a University of Chicago professor, have released Nightshade, a tool that lets artists add invisible pixel changes to their images so that if they are scraped into an AI training set, the resulting model can break in unpredictable ways. The team says the tool is meant to deter AI companies from using artists' work without permission. According to the research, 50 poisoned images of dogs made Stable Diffusion generate odd, multi-limbed creatures, and 300 poisoned samples let an attacker make it produce dogs that look like cats. The team plans to integrate Nightshade into its Glaze tool and to make it open source. ## 3. Deception, exploited workers & cash handouts: Worldcoin’s first ½ million users - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Deception-exploited-workers-and-cash-handouts-Worldcoins-first-million-users?index=0x64bffb2984bc58d0e65ca8f59d5b4012d00c845d40a078f037746d235e1aa0fa9b46f0bf - Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/06/1048981/worldcoin-cryptocurrency-biometrics-web3 - Shared 25 July 2023, 4 upvotes, 0 comments Worldcoin, a project of San Francisco-based Tools for Humanity, collected iris scans and other biometric data from its first roughly 450,000 users in 24 countries, and MIT Technology Review's investigation found wide gaps between the company's privacy messaging and what users experienced. The investigation reported that representatives used deceptive marketing, collected more personal data than the company acknowledged, and failed to obtain meaningful informed consent. Orb operators are paid commissions in the stablecoin Tether for each person they register and work without contracts or guaranteed pay, according to a company spokesperson. Worldcoin said new users earn at least $15 for the scan and $5 more on wallet login, though the total later changed to $25 for later recruits. ## 4. The future of open source is still very much in flux - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/The-future-of-open-source-is-still-very-much-in-flux?index=0x6644704b6d814456d6a808a663610c98382c630510e78ed21c20f317eb3ec735cfc231f1 - Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/08/17/1077498/future-open-source - Shared 15 May 2024, 3 upvotes, 0 comments Open-source software, which began with Richard Stallman's GNU project in 1983, has become a keystone of the tech industry despite lingering problems with leadership, diversity and volunteer funding. Today 96% of code bases incorporate open-source software, and GitHub is used by more than 100 million developers worldwide. Karen Sandler of the Software Freedom Conservancy says companies profit from proprietary work without giving the public appreciable rights to their software, while Kelsey Hightower argues that corporate sharing should be celebrated. ## 5. The race to save our online lives from a digital dark age - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/The-race-to-save-our-online-lives-from-a-digital-dark-age?index=0x66dfe5487deaf004173e762ca5351740b47ef7953f5f62cbbe7778ddbf3eabe379415ddd - Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/08/19/1096284/data-archives-archeologists-tiktok-future-wayback-machine - Shared 10 September 2024, 2 upvotes, 0 comments Digital archivists are racing to save online material that could otherwise vanish, since data is easier to wipe than books and is more fragile than ever. Jason Scott's volunteer group, Archive Team, downloaded millions of GeoCities pages in 2009 before Yahoo closed the site, saving around a terabyte of a site that peaked at about nine terabytes. The Internet Archive, founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle, has collected more than 145 petabytes, and its Wayback Machine stores more than 800 billion web pages. Researchers such as Mahadev Satyanarayanan at Carnegie Mellon are also working on ways to keep old file formats readable. ## 6. Shawn Shan builds tools to help artists fight back against exploitative AI - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Shawn-Shan-builds-tools-to-help-artists-fight-back-against-exploitative-AI?index=0x66e13d3ccf195021bb9665b58d5b424424920926c42a45c878ee00b680985e49f3015fad - Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/09/10/1102936/innovator-year-shawn-shan-2024 - Shared 11 September 2024, 1 upvote, 1 comment Shawn Shan, a University of Chicago PhD student, builds tools that let artists protect their work from being used to train AI models without consent. He coded the algorithm behind Glaze, which lets artists mask their personal style from AI mimicry and came out in early 2023, and his team introduced Nightshade, which adds invisible "poison" to images that can disrupt models that train on them. Glaze has been downloaded nearly 3.5 million times and Nightshade over 700,000 times. Shan says he wants to shift power from large corporations back to people and plans tools to help regulators audit AI models. ## 7. Is robotics about to have its own ChatGPT moment? - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Is-robotics-about-to-have-its-own-ChatGPT-moment?index=0x66ecaaba65fa120b8aa975f3f720993ea75c93d8a3f85d20d084ff1161a3f5558de9fc88 - Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/04/11/1090718/household-robots-ai-data-robotics - Shared 19 September 2024, 1 upvote, 0 comments Robotics may be reaching an inflection point, with AI helping robots learn new skills and adapt to new settings faster than before. The article describes Henry and Jane Evans testing Stretch, a smaller robot developed by Charlie Kemp's startup Hello Robot, which cost around $18,000 and let Henry brush his hair, eat, and play with his granddaughter. Ken Goldberg, a robotics professor at UC Berkeley, says robots are getting more competent and helpful faster than ever, and Deepak Pathak's Carnegie Mellon team used reinforcement learning to train four-legged robot dogs to navigate tricky terrain. ## 8. Here’s what I made of Snap’s new augmented-reality Spectacles - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Heres-what-I-made-of-Snaps-new-augmented-reality-Spectacles?index=0x66e9ff2b6643e80fe0f28f6ba8fd676dae7a569803dbd7c541c07890273e40e4c1406ae1 - Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/09/17/1104025/snap-spectacles-ar-glasses - Shared 17 September 2024, 1 upvote, 0 comments Snap has announced a fifth-generation version of its Spectacles, augmented-reality glasses that project three-dimensional objects and apps onto the real world while keeping the wearer's view of the room and the people in it. The reviewer found the device solid overall, with glitches such as Lego bricks colliding, and noted that it runs on Snap's new Snap OS with on-device processing. Snap is not selling the glasses directly; buyers must agree to at least one year of a Spectacles Developer Program account at $99 per month. The reviewer also said the glasses are not low-profile and do not look like ordinary eyewear. ## 9. Why Congo’s most famous national park is betting big on crypto - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Why-Congos-most-famous-national-park-is-betting-big-on-crypto?index=0x653e9051fa6ae040e2d3ba18139075ff44a118492e07e60874a5294edccc2a8730b32989 - Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/01/13/1066820/cryptocurrency-bitcoin-mining-congo-virunga-national-park - Shared 29 October 2023, 1 upvote, 0 comments Virunga National Park in eastern Congo is betting on Bitcoin mining to fund its operations, using electricity from its own hydroelectric plants. Park director Emmanuel de Merode says proceeds already help pay park salaries and infrastructure such as roads and water pumping stations. The park began mining in September 2020, and de Merode predicted revenue of about $150,000 a month in late March 2022, when Bitcoin traded near $44,000. He says the park needed new income after tourism, which had once made up 40% of park revenue, collapsed during kidnappings, Ebola and COVID-19.