News of the Cyber World

[kyonides]

‘Auks’: A Fourth Joe Biden Email Alias Surfaces

Then-Vice President Joe Biden used a fourth alias, “auks@att.blackberry.net,” as early as 2010 to communicate with his family, according to the nonprofit Marco Polo, based on information from Hunter Biden’s “Laptop from Hell.”

The House Oversight Committee previously noted only three aliases in its August 17 request to the National Archives for documents related to Joe Biden’s email pseudonyms: “Robert Peters,” “Robin Ware,” and “JRB Ware.”

“Auks” is the mascot of Archmere Academy, a private Roman Catholic college preparatory school in Delaware and the alma mater of Joe and Hunter Biden.

Joe Biden’s “auks” alias received an email on May 10, 2011, from his niece, Casey Owens, who served as a special assistant for the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue at the Treasury Department.

Just days before she left the Treasury, Owens emailed “Uncle Joe” at auks@blackberry.net concerning the vice president’s remarks a day prior, during the opening session of the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue:

Uncle Joe,

Just got home from work and couldn’t wait to send you an email. Today was truly a memorable day for me. I keep thinking about Mommom. Can you imagine her seeing us huddled up back stage together? She would have loved it. It chokes me up. I have so much to learn! Sitting back there with you was very, very humbling. I was just blown away. You ALWAYS make time to talk to me. Always. But today was really incredible. I still can’t believe you took the time to discuss the issues with me.

Joe Biden then forwarded the email to Hunter Biden, Beau Biden, and Valerie Biden Owens, Joe Biden’s sister.

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm’s Electric Car Road Trip Implodes

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm decided to show America how great electric cars are — and only proved the technology isn’t even close to ready.

“When Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm set out on a four-day electric-vehicle road trip this summer, she knew charging might be a challenge,” the welfare queens at NPR report. “But she probably didn’t expect anyone to call the cops.”

The cops were called because Granholm’s advance team used a gasoline-powered car to block access to an electric charging spot for her. On a “sweltering day,” the Granholm team’s gas guzzler just sat there, NPR reports, until a family with a baby got “so upset” they called the cops.

But even with advance teams trying to ease Granholm’s way in their gas guzzlers, the trip was still a debacle:

But between stops, Granholm’s entourage at times had to grapple with the limitations of the present. Like when her caravan of EVs — including a luxury Cadillac Lyriq, a hefty Ford F-150 and an affordable Bolt electric utility vehicle — was planning to fast-charge in Grovetown, a suburb of Augusta, Georgia.

Her advance team realized there weren’t going to be enough plugs to go around. One of the station’s four chargers was broken, and others were occupied. So an Energy Department staffer tried parking a nonelectric vehicle by one of those working chargers to reserve a spot for the approaching secretary of energy.

‘Sane’ Twitter/X Competitor Threads Blocks
Searches Related to Coronavirus, Vaccines

Threads, the app linked to Meta-owned Instagram and touted as a “sane” alternative to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, is blocking searches related to coronavirus and vaccines, per reports.

The two words are among a number of terms that are blocked in the app’s new search function, according to the Washington Post.

Meta acknowledged in a statement to The Washington Post that Threads is intentionally blocking the search terms and said that other terms are being blocked, but the company declined to provide a list of them. A search by The Post discovered that the words “sex,” “nude,” “gore,” “porn,” “coronavirus,” “vaccines” and “vaccination” are also among blocked words.

“The search functionality temporarily doesn’t provide results for keywords that may show potentially sensitive content,” the statement said, adding that the company will add search functionality for terms only “once we are confident in the quality of the results.”

Lucky Tran, director of science communication at Columbia University, discovered this himself when he attempted to use Threads to seek out research related to covid, something he says he does every day. “I was excited by search [on Threads],” he said. “When I typed in covid, I came up with no search results.”

Rather than deal with messy disputes over what’s allowed and not allowed with regards to coronavirus-related discussion (and perhaps avoid having to disclose more of its internal communications, many of which were the result of requests related to coronavirus censorship), it appears Meta has decided to block searches for any kind of discussion on the topic.

ChatGPT Developer OpenAI Confirms AI Detectors Don’t Work

OpenAI, the developers of the massively popular AI chatbot ChatGPT, has officially acknowledged that AI writing detectors are not as reliable as once thought, casting doubt on the efficacy of automated tools in distinguishing between human and machine-generated content.

Ars Technica reports that in a recent FAQ section accompanying a promotional blog post for educators, OpenAI admits what many in the tech industry have suspected: AI writing detectors are not not very good. “While some (including OpenAI) have released tools that purport to detect AI-generated content, none of these have proven to reliably distinguish between AI-generated and human-generated content,” the company stated.

This revelation comes after experts have criticized such detectors as “mostly snake oil,” often yielding false positives due to their reliance on unproven detection metrics. OpenAI itself had released an experimental tool called AI Classifier, designed to detect AI-written text, which was discontinued due to its abysmal 26 percent accuracy rate. This is quite a big deal in academia, given that some college professors have flunked entire classes, alleging that students wrote their essays with ChatGPT.

The FAQ also tackled another common misconception: that ChatGPT, OpenAI’s conversational AI model, can identify whether a text is AI-generated or not. “Additionally, ChatGPT has no ‘knowledge’ of what content could be AI-generated. It will sometimes make up responses to questions like ‘did you write this [essay]?’ or ‘could this have been written by AI?’ These responses are random and have no basis in fact,” OpenAI clarified.

The company also warned against relying solely on ChatGPT for research purposes. “Sometimes, ChatGPT sounds convincing, but it might give you incorrect or misleading information (often called a ‘hallucination’ in the literature),” they cautioned. This warning comes on the heels of an incident where a lawyer cited six non-existent cases that he had sourced from ChatGPT.

Elon Musk Brands Creepy Bill Gates
an ‘A**hole to the Core’
for Betting Against Tesla Stock

Tesla CEO Elon Musk raged against creepy Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates for shorting Tesla stock, questioning Gates’s commitment to environmental sustainability. The revelations come from a new book about Musk, in which he calls Gates an “a** to the core” that is “categorically insane.”

Fortune reports that when two of the world’s richest men, Elon Musk and Bill Gates, share a tumultuous relationship that has been further strained by financial bets and contrasting philosophies.

The feud between Musk, the CEO of Tesla, and Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, has been public knowledge for some time. But new details continue to emerge based on the publication of a Musk biography written by Walter Isaacson. These feud centers around an incident where Gates shorted Tesla stock, betting that the company’s value would go down based on Musk’s erratic leadership.

The two met in March 2022 at Tesla’s Gigafactory in Austin to discuss philanthropy, but the conversation took a bitter turn. “Once he heard I’d shorted the stock, he was super mean to me,” Gates told biographer Walter Isaacson. “But he’s super mean to so many people, so you can’t take it too personally.”

Musk’s take on the meeting was more blunt. He sent Isaacson a message reading, “At this point, I am convinced that he is categorically insane (and an asshole to the core). I did actually want to like him (sigh).”

Gates justified his bearish stance on Tesla by stating that he believed the supply of electric vehicles (EVs) would soon outweigh demand. For Musk, who views Tesla as a leading force in combating climate change, Gates’ actions were unforgivable. “How can someone say they are passionate about fighting climate change and then do something that reduced the overall investment in the company doing the most? It’s pure hypocrisy,” Musk expressed after the meeting.

 Perhaps he did that because it never was about the so called climate change from the very beginning...
Just implying here.