I am immune from deepfake except for an infinite number of ‘before’ ads… (Think these lawsuits will clog the courts?)

https://www.wsj.com/articles/deepfakes-of-celebrities-have-begun-appearing-in-ads-with-or-without-their-permission-11666692003

‘Deepfakes’ of Celebrities Have Begun Appearing in Ads, With or Without Their Permission

Celebrity deepfakes are coming to advertising.

Among the recent entries: Last year, Russian telecommunications company MegaFon released a commercial in which a simulacrum of Hollywood legend Bruce Willis helps defuse a bomb.

Just last week, Elon Musk seemed to star in a marketing video from real-estate investment startup reAlpha Tech Corp.

And last month a promotional video for machine-learning firm Paperspace Co. showed talking semblances of the actors Tom Cruise and Leonardo DiCaprio.

None of these celebrities ever spent a moment filming these campaigns. In the cases of Messrs. Musk, Cruise and DiCaprio, they never even agreed to endorse the companies in question.

Is this a fad like purple hair or do they actually have a use for the cameras?

https://www.wmar2news.com/matterformallory/thieves-are-targeting-video-doorbells-nearly-30-reports-in-the-last-month

Thieves are targeting video doorbells; nearly 30 reports in the last month

Thieves are targeting video doorbells in Southeast Baltimore. Patterson Park neighbors have reported a string of these thefts in the last month.

… “Guy just went and pulled it out,” said Tom Prats, who lives near Patterson Park.

Prats and others have shared recordings from their Ring cameras showing the moments right before their cameras were torn down and taken.

“I saw a group of kids and then I saw like a hand, and then I didn’t see anything.

… Ring has a replacement program. Customers must report the device theft within 15 days of the incident and provide a police report. However, Prats is skeptical it won’t happen again.

Bloomberg described it yesterday, now the IRS is telling you what it will cost you.

https://www.bespacific.com/a-new-definition-of-crypto-comes-from-the-irs/

A new definition of crypto comes from the IRS

Coin Telegraph: “…No matter how much attention the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) or Commodity Futures Trading Commission gets in the crypto industry, for individual traders and investors, it often comes down to the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) position — and how much tax one owes. Last week, the IRS last week released a draft bill featuring a well-defined digital assets section that outlines if and how taxpayers will account for the use of cryptocurrencies, stablecoins and nonfungible tokens (NFTs). Page 16 of the draft defines digital assets as any digital representations of the value recorded on a “cryptographically secured distributed ledger or any similar technology.” 2021’s tax form required taxpayers to indicate whether they had received, sold or exchanged in “virtual currency” — with this term changing in the yet-to-issued 1040 tax form for 2022. Taxpayers are required to answer the digital assets section of their income tax return whether or not they have engaged in digital asset transactions during the tax year. A number of situations will require American taxpayers to indicate yes to the question on digital assets of Form 1040 or 1040-SR. This includes receiving as a reward, award or payment for property or services or sold, exchanged, gifted or disposed of a digital asset in 2022…”

Tools & Techniques. (What we need is similar to a nation wide bird watching club, each member specializing on a single species.)

https://www.bespacific.com/building-an-open-source-intelligence-buyers-club/

Building An Open-Source Intelligence Buyer’s Club

War on the Rocks: “The Ukraine conflict has blown open the door on how open-source information — broadly defined as publicly and commercially available data — can be a game-changer in war and peace. The broad array of unclassified tools now allows anyone to pore over satellite imagery, monitor tank convoys, listen to troops chatting over unsecured communication devices, watch ship movements, and determine the location of Russian oligarch-owned superyachts. Governments are still trying to catch up with the amount of data flowing in all directions across hundreds of platforms, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Despite the current glossy appeal of open source, both democratic and authoritarian governments alike have struggled to collect, make sense of, and then provide relevant information to their end-users. Those in U.S. national security circles yearn for a technical solution — a database to sort and categorize this vast amount of data. The tech challenges are certainly complex, and the problems with data integrity and validation remain vexing and require real solutions to categorizing, verifying, and then sharing this information. But the United States’ decades-long romance with technological fixes to complex national security problems takes the wrong perspective. The government’s challenge with open source isn’t just a technical one; it’s a political science one. And once Washington asks the right questions, it can begin to solve the collective action problem that lies at the heart of the open-source intelligence question…”