Michael Whelan

The AI-generated deepfake of a deceased road rage victim gave his own impact statement in court at the sentencing hearing of the defendent, as reported by NBC News. This is likely the first time the technology has been used in this way.

The idea of using an AI version of the victim, Christopher Pelkey, came from his family, according to a Maricopa County Attorney's Office spokesperson. Pelkey’s sister said she had been writing the impact statement for two years but found that what she had to say "did not seem like it would do justice" to his memory. Pelkey was shot and killed in 2021 during a road rage incident. 

So the idea of bringing in a deepfake avatar was born. Pelkey's sister wrote the script, telling CNN that she was sure "it's what he would think." Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Todd Lang approved the idea and the family played a video of the AI-generated Pelkey in court. In the video, the avatar actually seemed to ask for leniency when sentencing his killer. The defendant was convicted of manslaughter and endangerment earlier this year.

"To Gabriel Horcasitas, the man who shot me: It is a shame we encountered each other that day in those circumstances," the artificial version of Pelkey said. "In another life, we probably could have been friends. I believe in forgiveness."

However, the judge issued the maximum sentence of over 10 years in prison. "I heard the forgiveness," he said about the AI-generated avatar. "I feel like that was genuine, that his obvious forgiveness of Mr. Horcasitas reflects the character I heard about [Pelkey] today."

The defense has stated that the AI presentation creates a strong issue for appeal. "While judges certainly have latitude as to what to hear, particularly from victims, an appellate court will have to decide if this was error," defense lawyer Jason Lamm said. The case has already been retried for procedural issues. 

Arizona State University law professor Gary Marchant, who specializes in ethics and emerging technologies, is worried about the legal precedent set here.

"You see that person in the courtroom actually speaking, and in reality, they're dead and they're not speaking," he told NBC News. "So this is an extra jump that I feel is going to get us into dangerous grounds."

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/deepfake-of-deceased-man-gives-his-own-impact-statement-in-court-161138506.html?src=rss

While the folks at the Macrodata Refinement facility in Lumon’s ‘severed’ division really had no idea what it is they were actually doing, they definitely had some incredible gear to work with. The computers seen on the sets of Apple’s hit TV series Severed were heavily inspired by the Data General “Dasher” Terminals from 1977. With a similar white and blue aesthetic, they embodied the cathode-ray clicky keyboard bakelite generation of tech from the 70s and 80s, which I believe adds to Severance’s mystique and appeal. You marvel at the designs on the show, without really being able to place them in a defined year. Is Severance a period sci-fi show? Is it futuristic? Current day? You can’t really tell.

However, if you’re looking for a taste of the severed lifestyle, Atomic Keyboards is now selling a replica of the MDR keyboard from the series. It’s built to be absolutely usable, with a 73-key, 70% layout… but with no Escape, no Control, and no Options keys. Sound familiar? Also, please try to enjoy each keystroke equally.

Designer: Atomic Keyboard

Severance has really managed to cultivate a hardcore audience over the past few months, with Season 2 vastly outpacing its first season in crowd appeal and anticipation. Severance’s crew made multiple pit-stops across the world, with crowds thronging to attend themed events. In fact, Apple’s website even has a listing for the ‘Lumon Terminal Pro’, playing perfectly into the hype.

However, if you’re looking for some Severance memorabilia or merch, there’s nothing much Apple offers. You could sign up for a Neuralink chip but I would highly recommend against it. The closest second step is buying the MDR Dasher Keyboard, which Atomic Keyboard’s built to perfectly replicate the peripheral from the series. It comes with the exact same shape and color scheme, the same keys, and the same trackball on the right. There is, however, a palpable lack of a few keys, like an escape, control, or alt key. Because on the severed floor, there’s no escape, no sense of control, or no alternative. Praise Kier.

The MDR Dasher Keyboard is up for preorder if you’re interested in a unique peripheral that’s *somewhat* useful. Typing should be fairly comfortable, given the cherry-esque keycaps and (presumable) mechanical switches. Use it to send mails, sort ‘scary’ numbers, or tell your annoying colleagues to devour feculence. Don’t blame us if you get reported to Ms. Huang… or worse, get sent to the Break Room. You can, however, blame your Outie instead. I hear that works.

The keyboard’s original price was listed as $399, but it’s safe to assume that tariffs have thrown the tech world in a bit of a tailspin. I’m assuming there may be revisions (maybe even discounts), but the only way to get your hands on this, for now, is to go to the Atomic Keyboard website (make sure you notice the website logo on the top left!), claim fealty to Kier Eagan, and sign up for more news and a preorder date.

The post You Can Now Preorder the Severance Keyboard – But it Ships Without an Escape Key first appeared on Yanko Design.

If you, like me, still have your DVD collection hanging around, now is a good time to dust off your DVD player and make sure they haven’t succumbed to disc rot. That’s because many of the discs produced by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment (WBHE) between 2006 and 2008 are failing prematurely, the company acknowledged in a statement to JoBlo in an article update this week.

The company gave JoBlo this statement on the matter:

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment is aware of potential issues affecting select DVD titles manufactured between 2006 – 2008, and the company has been actively working with consumers to replace defective discs.

Where possible, the defective discs have been replaced with the same title. However, as some of the affected titles are no longer in print or the rights have expired, consumers have been offered an exchange for a title of like-value.

Consumers with affected product can contact the customer support team at whv@wbd.com.

Disc rot is not a new phenomenon, but as ArsTechnica notes, properly-cared-for DVDs should be playable for up to 100 years, according to Sony. However, failing WBHE discs have stood out in particular amongst the physical media faithful, who have been posting about the problem for years in forums like DVD Talk and Home Theater Forum.

The above 2021 video from YouTuber Damn Fool Idealistic Crusader that Ars points to suggests disc rot is affecting a broader range of discs, from 2006 to 2009, than WB has acknowledged. As for figuring out which of your discs may have the issue, he says the most reliable way to look for playback problems — DVDs that won’t load at all, freeze while you’re watching the film, or have unplayable special features.

Crusader’s video description links to some Google Docs, one of which is a list he compiled showing what he believes are “known rotted DVD titles” he found reported online, as well as those from his own collection that seem to be affected. The list features discs for popular series like Batman: The Animated Series as well as movies, such as a Stanley Kubrick Director’s Series edition of 2001: A Space Odyssey and all of the Superman films up to Superman Returns.

Another of Crusader’s Google Docs largely pins the faulty DVDs made “roughly from 2006 through 2009” on a Cinram manufacturing plant in Olyphant, Pennsylvania. WB hasn’t substantiated the claim, as Ars notes. Crusader says you can identify discs produced there using codes printed on the inner ring of a disc’s underside.

There are plenty of us who have held onto our physical media as a bulwark against losing access to the films, TV shows, and games we love — something that can happen without notice as platforms are deprecated or distribution licenses dry up. But even maintaining a physical collection isn’t perfect if some manufacturing issue that occurred years earlier can break your discs.

It’s nice to know that even if I hadn’t backed up my DVDs to my home server in the last couple of years, Warner Bros. appears to be doing the right thing and I wouldn’t necessarily lose them. But there’s no guarantee that other companies will do that if their discs start failing in large numbers. It makes a great argument for taking up the digital packrat lifestyle 404 Media wrote about last month, and backing up your physical media early and often.

Google is disabling the original uBlock Origin ad blocker for more Chrome browser users, alongside other extensions that are no longer supported as the browser migrates to its new extension specification, Manifest V3. According to Google, the new standard aims to improve privacy and security, but also removes a feature that some ad blocking extensions relied on to work — a compromise that Mozilla is unwilling to make for its own Firefox browser. 

Users online are reporting on Reddit and X that Chrome is removing outdated extensions. In Chrome, a notification window will appear underneath the extensions tab on the browser taskbar with a message encouraging users to remove the impacted add-on, saying it has been turned off and is “no longer supported.” Two buttons are available that allow users to either quickly delete or manage their extensions.

Google’s uBlock Origin phaseout on Chromium-based browsers began in October, but started to have a wider impact in recent weeks. Bleeping Computer has also reported that extensions on staffers devices are being turned off, and Verge staffers have seen similar updates on our own machines.

These changes come as Google migrates Chrome away from the now defunct Manifest V2 specification. Support is being killed not just for uBlock Origin, but for any extension that hasn’t (or is unable to) update to Manifest V3. uBlock Origin users can switch to uBlock Origin Lite, which has more limited filtering capabilities than its predecessor due to Manifest V3’s ad blocking restrictions.

Chrome won’t be the only service affected by the Manifest V3 rollout — other Chromium-based web browsers like Microsoft Edge are also losing V2 support and Brave says it can only offer “limited” support once all Manifest V2 items are removed from the Chrome Web Store. Mozilla says that Firefox will continue offering both extension specifications, however, potentially giving uBlock Origin users a new browser to relocate to.

Not all apps are safe. It's why I always recommend downloading apps from official app stores, like the iOS App Store and Google Play Store, rather than a random website: Apple and Google both have policies to scan for malware and stop them before reaching app stores. But neither company is perfect, and apps infected with malware end up on official app marketplaces more often that we'd like to think. These apps usually pop up on the Play Store more than the App Store given that Apple is extremely strict, but that doesn't mean the App Store is impervious to malware—it definitely happens, and we've covered it before. In fact, researchers just found a batch of apps containing malicious programs on both Apple's and Google's platforms. And it's the first time this specific type of the malware was found on the iOS App Store.

What is SparkCat?

Researchers at Kaspersky discovered apps on both Google's Play Store and Apple's App Store that contained malicious frameworks, specifically designed to steal crypto wallet recovery phrases—a series of words used to access cryptocurrency in digital wallets. Researchers call this malware "SparkCat," and they believe it has been circulating since March 2024.

If you downloaded one of these apps on either iOS or Android, the app would likely ask permission to access your photo library, then the malicious framework would launch an optical character recognition (OCR) plug-in to scan and identify text in your images. If the program found text that matched certain keywords, it would then send those images to a remote server. The idea here is to scan your library looking for screenshots that reveal the recovery phrases in your crypto wallet and send them back to the thieves who could then use those phrases to break in and steal from accounts.

One of the first apps to arouse suspicious of Kaspersky researchers was a Chinese food delivery app called ComeCome. It's still available on both iOS and Android, and is the first known app infected with OCR malware to appear on Apple's App Store, according to Kaspersky. A negative review all the way from 2023 suggests the app has been using malware to steal information, but it's not clear the app has been using this specific OCR tactic the whole time.

Kaspersky discovered other apps with a similar malicious framework as well. It's important to note researchers can't say whether the malware was placed in these apps by a malicious actor or the app developers embedded it themselves. That said, it appears some apps were designed to attract users without offering legitimate services in return—such as multiple AI messaging services from the same developer. Specifically, that's WeTink and AnyGPT, which are both still live at the time of writing.

Where to go from here

First of all, if you have any of these affected apps installed on your iPhone or Android, delete them now. Even if the developers didn't add the malicious framework intentionally (which can happen if a third-party hijacks the app), they aren't safe to keep on your device. After that, take a moment to clean out your iPhone or Android's images folder. If you have images containing recovery phrases for your crypto wallet, be sure to delete those, but also consider deleting images that contain any sensitive information in the first place. Other malware strains may take advantage of this OCR tactic to look for social security numbers or bank account information, for example, so it's best to eliminate that risk altogether.

Finally, exercise caution when downloading new apps, even when doing so through official app stores. Be sure to review all aspects of an app's page before installing it, including the reviews, description, and screenshots. If anything seems off, it's probably best to avoid downloading it. And avoid generic AI apps like the plague. Developers know there's a high demand for AI apps, which means malicious users can slyly add malware to apps in the hope that an AI fan downloads their latest scheme. Don't fall for it.