And Now… Ebola Vaccine Trial
July 28th, 2026Via: University of Oxford:
The University of Oxford’s Oxford Vaccine Group has today successfully vaccinated the first volunteer in the world’s first clinical trial of a vaccine designed to protect against Bundibugyo ebolavirus (BDBV).
The milestone comes just weeks after the launch of the BD-Ebov study and marks the first time the ChAdOx1 BDBV vaccine has been administered to humans.
The ChAdOx1 BDBV vaccine was developed by scientists at the University of Oxford’s Oxford Vaccine Group and Pandemic Sciences Institute using the same vaccine technology as the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, which is estimated to have saved around six million lives during its first year of use. (sic)
GrapheneOS Wipe at Airport Leads to Federal Charge in Atlanta
July 28th, 2026Via: Reclaim the Net:
The Justice Department is asking a federal court in Atlanta to treat a man’s erasure of his own phone as destruction of property, in the first known US prosecution built on a phone’s duress password.
Samuel Tunick faces one count under Title 18, Section 2232(a), a statute covering the destruction of property to stop the government from taking it. Prosecutors say he handed Customs and Border Protection officers a passcode that deleted the contents of his Google Pixel instead of unlocking it. His lawyers appeared before the court for the first time on Monday, arguing that officers ran a custodial interrogation without Miranda warnings, denied him a lawyer, and searched him unlawfully. They want everything obtained from the encounter suppressed.
AI Companies Are Setting Money on Fire
July 28th, 2026MABA: Make Americans Bagholders Again
Via: Gamers Nexus:
They Don’t Want You To Read
July 28th, 2026Via: Corbett Report:
Related:
AI Companies Buying, Ingesting and Destroying Physical Books by the Millions
Former CIA Employee Working for Ebay Ran Bizarre Harassment Operation Against Couple, Company Will Pay $56 Million to Settle Lawsuit
July 28th, 2026Via: Boston Globe:
Almost seven years after a group of eBay employees harassed and stalked Ina and David Steiner, the Natick couple on Monday agreed to a final $55.7 million settlement of their lawsuit against the company and some of its former top executives.
…
The deal could bring some solace to the Steiners, whose quiet suburban life was ripped apart in 2019 when people working for eBay bombarded them with online threats and bizarre deliveries including a bloody pig mask, live spiders, and a funeral wreath. The scheme, which also included following the couple around town and trying to attach a tracker to their car, started after eBay’s former CEO, Devin Wenig, complained about coverage of the company on the Steiners’ web site, EcommerceBytes.
…
Wymer in turn relayed the complaints to Jim Baugh, a former CIA employee who eBay had tapped to head its global security unit. Baugh hatched the harassment campaign from his unit, including sending the Steiners threatening messages from fake Twitter accounts, live spiders and roaches, a bloody pig mask like the one in the horror movie “Saw,” and a funeral wreath.
On Aug. 15, 2019, Baugh and several of his employees traveled to Boston. They tried to install a GPS tracking device on the Steiners’ car and followed David Steiner around Natick.
After the Steiners reported to local police the license plate number of the rental car the eBay team was using to stalk them, the scheme unraveled.
Prosecutors charged Baugh and six of his subordinates with charges related to the stalking and harassment and all pleaded guilty. Baugh was sentenced to 57 months in prison.
Brandon Fugal, Owner of Skinwalker Ranch
July 26th, 2026Via: Jesse Michels:
Tanker Hits Mine in the Strait of Hormuz
July 26th, 2026Via: New York Post:
An oil tanker blew up in the Strait of Hormuz after hitting a mine on Sunday, according to Iran’s military-linked state media, which also claimed that the Islamic Republic had intercepted at least six ships in the past 24 hours.
The tanker, which was not immediately identified, allegedly strayed from Iran’s designated route in the strait before hitting a sea mine, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-linked Tasnim news agency reported.
Iran has repeatedly warned ships from using non-approved routes to sail through the Strait of Hormuz or risk coming under attack as tensions continue to flare with the US.
Despite repeated threats from the Trump administration, the regime continues to claim control over the critical oil chokepoint, with the IRGC claiming it halted six ships from crossing the strait overnight.
AI Companies Buying, Ingesting and Destroying Physical Books by the Millions
July 26th, 2026Via: Futurism:
To those building large language models, books are nothing more than fodder to be devoured en masse before being spit out like fishbone. Often, they’re happy to use digital books — or even better, pirated digital books, as Meta has been accused of doing, and as Anthropic was forced to pay a $1.5 billion settlement to authors for also doing.
But many companies, including Anthropic, have turned to ingesting physical books instead, which they can buy countless used copies of on the cheap. According to the settled lawsuit, Anthropic used a hydraulic powered cutting machine to neatly remove the pages from the books it procured from book resellers and then scanned them using industrial-grade imaging equipment. In other words, it was literally ripping off authors’ books to train its AI.
This process took advantage of a legal concept known as first-sale doctrine, which allows a buyer to do what they want with a purchase without the original copyright holder’s say-so. And since Anthropic was turning the original physical texts into digital ones — rather than redistributing them as new copies — a judge found this to be “transformative,” and therefore protected by fair use.
Now, as 404 Media reports, this practice has become prevalent enough that even well-established book sellers are looking to cash in on the AI boom. One called ISBNdb, which boasts the “world’s largest book database,” extolls that the “world’s best AI training data is setting on a shelf,” upholding these physical texts as uncorrupted by shoddy AI writing that’s already polluted so much of the internet (and indeed, newer books).
“Print books from the pre-LLM era are structurally guaranteed to be free of this contamination. That alone is a significant advantage,” it explains in an article on its website, as quoted by 404. “Physical books published before this date [pre-2022] are structurally clean of modern poisoning tools.”
Investors Laying Groundwork to Profit Massively When Economy Collapses
July 26th, 2026Yes, but don’t be surprised if there’s a huge rally first to wipe out these traders who are short.
Via: Futurism:
Another glowing red indicator just lit up on the control panel steering the US economy: short sellers have placed a nearly unprecedented magnitude of bets against the domestic stock market.
A new analysis by the firm S3 Partners has found that short interest in the S&P 500 is now the highest it’s been since the company began compiling that data in 2010, Business Insider reports. In all, S3 found that roughly 3.7 percent of the S&P’s free float — meaning the total market value of shares available to the public for trading — is now tied up in short interest.
That’s a significant number, almost double the short interest in the S&P at the same time last year. For context, BI notes that roughly 3.8 percent of the S&P was hedged against itself right before the 2008 financial crisis, adding to a growing number of data points suggesting the economy is due for a major reckoning.
NY High School to Use Humanoid Robot Teacher
July 26th, 2026Update: School District Has Paused Plan to Place Humanoid Robot in High School Classroom
—
Via: New York Post:
A rural upstate New York school district will be one of the first in the nation to bring a humanoid robot into the classroom.
The Salamanca City Central School District, located on Seneca Nation territory, will be introducing $57,000 AI-powered “Sally” in high school classes in September as a teaching assistant, it announced last week.
