Goto

Collaborating Authors

 phone call


'Data is control': what we learned from a year investigating the Israeli military's ties to big tech

The Guardian

'In the Gaza Strip, we know that this massive trove of intercepted phone calls was used in airstrikes that killed civilians.' 'Data is control': what we learned from a year investigating the Israeli military's ties to big tech'In the Gaza Strip, we know that this massive trove of intercepted phone calls was used in airstrikes that killed civilians.' I n January this year, Harry Davies and Yuval Abraham first reported that Microsoft had deepened its ties to Israel alongside other major tech firms. Since then, the Guardian has published an award-winning series of investigations - in partnership with the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call - that has revealed a symbiotic relationship between Silicon Valley and the Israeli military. One investigation exposed an Israeli mass surveillance program scooping up virtually all Palestinian phone calls and storing them on Microsoft's cloud services - setting off an inquiry that ultimately prompted the company to cut off Israel's access to some of its technology.


InnAIO AI Translator T10 Review: Feature-Loaded but Needs Work

WIRED

The InnAIO T10 clips magnetically to the back of your phone, but it needs further development to be worth the money. Magnetic attachment is a killer idea. App feature-loaded but requires some effort to learn. App UI is confusing, with some features less useful than others. Subscription required after just six months.


The Download: spotting crimes in prisoners' phone calls, and nominate an Innovator Under 35

MIT Technology Review

The Download: spotting crimes in prisoners' phone calls, and nominate an Innovator Under 35 A US telecom company trained an AI model on years of inmates' phone and video calls and is now piloting that model to scan their calls, texts, and emails in the hope of predicting and preventing crimes. Securus Technologies president Kevin Elder told that the company began building its AI tools in 2023, using its massive database of recorded calls to train AI models to detect criminal activity. It created one model, for example, using seven years of calls made by inmates in the Texas prison system, but it has been working on models for other states and counties. However, prisoner rights advocates say that the new AI system enables a system of invasive surveillance, and courts have specified few limits to this power. We have some exciting news: Nominations are now open for MIT Technology Review's 2026 Innovators Under 35 competition. This annual list recognizes 35 of the world's best young scientists and inventors, and our newsroom has produced it for more than two decades.


On Deepfake Voice Detection -- It's All in the Presentation

Delgado, Héctor, Ramondetti, Giorgio, Dalmasso, Emanuele, Karvitsky, Gennady, Colibro, Daniele, Talib, Haydar

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

While the technologies empowering malicious audio deepfakes have dramatically evolved in recent years due to generative AI advances, the same cannot be said of global research into spoofing (deepfake) countermeasures. This paper highlights how current deepfake datasets and research methodologies led to systems that failed to generalize to real world application. The main reason is due to the difference between raw deepfake audio, and deepfake audio that has been presented through a communication channel, e.g. by phone. We propose a new framework for data creation and research methodology, allowing for the development of spoofing countermeasures that would be more effective in real-world scenarios. By following the guidelines outlined here we improved deepfake detection accuracy by 39% in more robust and realistic lab setups, and by 57% on a real-world benchmark. We also demonstrate how improvement in datasets would have a bigger impact on deepfake detection accuracy than the choice of larger SOTA models would over smaller models; that is, it would be more important for the scientific community to make greater investment on comprehensive data collection programs than to simply train larger models with higher computational demands.


Can You Really Live One Day at a Time?

The New Yorker

Productivity culture encourages us to live inside our tasks and projects. But nature offers its own organizational system. This summer, I reread the novel " Aurora," by Kim Stanley Robinson, a science-fiction writer whom I profiled a few years ago. Robinson has an ecological orientation, and "Aurora" is basically a book about how we fit into nature. It ends on a beach, with an extended description of swimming in big waves. It's early morning, and the waves, as they rise, "turn a deep translucent green."


Thai court rules ex-PM Thaksin must serve one year in jail

BBC News

Thailand's top court has ruled that former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra must serve a year in jail, in yet another blow to the influential political dynasty. The decision relates to a previous case where he was sentenced to years in prison for corruption, but ended up spending less than a day in a jail cell as he was moved to a hospital. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court ruled that this transfer was unlawful - and that the 76-year-old would have to serve his sentence in jail. Thaksin and his family have dominated Thai politics since he was first elected PM in 2001. His daughter Paetongtarn previously served as leader but was removed from office last month over a leaked phone call.


Key Pixel Settings to Change on Your Google Phone

WIRED

Google's Pixel phones are chock-full of helpful, smart features, and they capture some of the best-looking photographs on a mobile device. But like several of its peers, Google doesn't have many of its best features turned on by default. For example, Call Screening blocks unwanted phone calls on your behalf, and you need to turn it on yourself. I test smartphones for a living, and I'm constantly switching to a new device every week or two. I'm an expert at running through the settings of every phone I test and toggling on the features I want.


'Baywatch' star Donna D'Errico gives fans new way to get up close and personal

FOX News

Fox News Flash top entertainment and celebrity headlines are here. Donna D'Errico is calling; are you going to answer the phone? The "Baywatch" actress listened to the demand of hundreds of thousands of fans, and launched Hollywood's first interactive voice experience Thursday, aptly coined "Call Donna D." D'Errico exclusively told Fox News Digital that her new digital platform will enable followers to communicate with her on an entirely new level, be it for flirty chats or R-rated conversations. Donna D'Errico launched Hollywood's first AI phone chat experience. "I've created an AI version of me that you can call anytime you want to, and it feels like I'm actually me on the other line talking with you. "People can call, and they're talking about all kinds of things.


Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,226

Al Jazeera

Here are the key events on day 1,226 of Russia's war on Ukraine.Smoke is seen following what local authorities called a Ukrainian drone attack, in the course of Russia-Ukraine conflict, in Sergiyev Posad, outside Moscow, Russia July 4, 2025 [Head of the Sergiyev Posad municipal district Oksana Yerokhanova via Telegram/Handout via Reuters]Published On 4 Jul 20254 Jul 2025


No progress at all, Trump says after phone call with Putin

The Japan Times

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday that a phone call earlier in the day with Vladimir Putin resulted in no progress at all on efforts to end the war in Ukraine, while a Kremlin aide said the Russian president reiterated that Moscow would keep pushing to solve the conflict's "root causes." The two leaders did not discuss a recent pause in some U.S. weapons shipments to Kyiv during the nearly hourlong conversation, according to a readout provided by Putin aide Yuri Ushakov. U.S. attempts to end Russia's war in Ukraine through diplomacy have largely stalled, and Trump has faced growing calls -- including from some Republicans -- to increase pressure on Putin to negotiate in earnest. Within hours of the call's conclusion, an apparent Russian drone attack sparked a fire in an apartment building in a northern suburb of Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said, indicating little change in the trajectory of the conflict.