Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Recently unsealed court documents in the New York Times’ case against OpenAI and Microsoft are pretty damning. The companies’ own documentation warned that it was starting a “doom loop” that would damage the web, characterized its scraping of data to train its models as the “largest theft of labor in human history,” and that it made a “complete mockery of the idea of fair use.”Many of the most eye-catching quotes from the document come from Microsoft’s Director of Applied Science, Brent Hecht. Though, the company has tried to distance itself from Hecht’s assertions. Microsoft spokesperson Alex Haurek told The Verge…

Japanese software company Helpfeel is notifying users of its Gyazo image-sharing service that hackers have accessed their information. Gyazo is a widely used cross-platform tool that lets users capture screenshots, GIFs, or short screen recordings and instantly generate shareable links. Helpfeel revealed this week that it recently detected unauthorized access to Gyazo servers. A hacker exploited a vulnerability in its image upload server on September 11, enabling them to execute malicious commands.  The attacker was kicked out the next day, but not before accessing a database storing roughly 23.6 million user records. The compromised Gyazo user information includes names, email…

In brief XRP jumped 6.93% on the day, opening at $1.2964 and topping out at $1.4028 before settling near $1.3863—one of its sharpest single-day moves in weeks. The gap between XRP’s 50-day and 200-day EMAs on the daily chart has narrowed to its tightest point since August 2024, and a golden cross could form as soon as mid-October if the current pace holds. That same crossover already happened on the noisier 4-hour chart back on August 21—but the gap has been closing instead of widening since then, a warning sign the daily golden cross isn’t a lock. Crypto traders are…

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope may be able to operate for far longer than originally expected. An exceptionally precise first mid-course correction, combined with other fuel savings, could more than double the observatory’s potential lifetime in space. “As a result of exquisite planning by our orbital dynamics team, brilliant execution by the operations team, and a precise launch from SpaceX, Roman has fuel for at least 22 years of potential science operations,” said Jamie Dunn, center director at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Several factors are behind that dramatic extension. Roman used far less fuel than…

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries published a list of 34 priorities in early September that outline its intention to loosen restrictions on domestic fishing.The list includes walking back restrictions on fishing near protected species, removing fishing restrictions at marine national monuments and weakening NOAA Fisheries’ national standards, the regulatory guidelines that have shaped the agency since its inception.What NOAA Fisheries is proposing to strip back are “the absolute basics of conserving a healthy ocean ecosystem,” Andrea Treece, deputy managing attorney for the Oceans Program at the San Francisco-based NGO Earthjustice, told Mongabay.The agency’s priorities list…

In the spring of 1942, Mao Zedong—already a dominant figure in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), though not yet its formally elected chairman—addressed a hall packed with some of China’s leading intellectuals, military brass, and artists. Mao, himself a diligent writer of classical-style poems, shared a vision of creative work that was centered on workers’ experiences and made in service to the masses rather than elites. “There is in fact no such thing as art for art’s sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics,” he reportedly said. After the CCP took power…

Headlining a conference for Children’s Health Defense, the nonprofit he previously led that regularly spreads vaccine misinformation, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made a litany of familiar false and misleading claims, particularly about vaccines. For a few months earlier this year, Kennedy had largely stopped talking about vaccines, reportedly at the request of the White House. Facing a surge of measles cases not seen in a generation, Kennedy had also at times offered a lukewarm recommendation to vaccinate, frustrating his hardline anti-vaccine supporters. But in August, Kennedy appeared with President Donald Trump during the signing of…

President Donald Trump said Friday he has a deal with Denmark to bolster the US military presence in Greenland after months of threatening to take island by force from the NATO ally. Trump in a social media post announcing the deal said the agreement “gives the United States permanent control over security, and all other needs, in Greenland, completely addressing ALL of our many US concerns.” He added that with the agreement his administration would “immediately” begin the process of developing a larger military presence on the mineral-rich Danish territory. The office of Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said the…

Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary has said he is “truly sorry” for describing rival airlines as “high-fare rapists”.He had previously refused to apologise to a rape crisis centre which criticised him for the comments.O’Leary had made the remark earlier this month while talking to journalists ahead of Ryanair’s yearly meeting with shareholders.Following the comments, the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre (DRCC) wrote to him asking for an apology, in a letter seen by the BBC.O’Leary had originally said that some people were “desperate to get to Ryanair’s low fares because they can’t afford to fly with the high-fare rapists around Europe”.He…

Four years ago, a startup lab launched that wasn’t quite an incubator, accelerator program, or venture firm. UP.Labs, as it was called then, built startups designed to solve problems for corporate customers such as Alaska Airlines and Porsche, as well as for the outside world. The firm still has the same mission — albeit with a critical addition to its approach, a new name, and a $100 million investment from Silversmith Capital Partners. Vantora, as the firm is now called, continues to work with its corporate customers, including some new ones in industrial manufacturing that it declined to name, and…