>A Tesla Optimus robot had a shocking interaction with a man on the street as it revealed the hardest part about being a machine.

>Elon Musk showcased his army of the $30,000 robots that are designed to help with household chores at his 'We, Robot' event on Thursday.

!chuds which one of you did this?

The robots appear to be turning on us, although not in the post-apocalyptic way we've long imagined.

Robot vacuum owners in multiple U.S. cities have reported their cleaning machines have been hacked, with one man reporting that his vacuum starting yelling racial slurs at him. A report from the Australian Broadcast Corporation pins a security flaw in the Chinese-made Ecovacs Deebot X2 on the hacks of the widely distributed machines.

Minnesota lawyer Daniel Swenson told the outlet he was watching TV with his family when he noticed something strange happening with his vacuum.

"It sounded like a broken-up radio signal or something," he told the ABC. "You could hear snippets of maybe a voice."

When he went to check his Ecovacs app, he could see a stranger messing around with its remote control feature and live camera.

He said he quickly reset his password and rebooted the vacuum before returning to the couch with his wife and teen son. That's when the real trouble started, with a voice coming through the robot loud and clear.

"F— n——s!" the voice began shouting repeatedly.

TechCrunch reports that Ecovacs are apparently quite easy to hack and it's been a known issue for quite some time.

An August report from the tech news website said cybersecurity researchers had been analyzing the brand's security flaws and "found a number of issues that can be abused to hack the robots via Bluetooth and surreptitiously switch on microphones and cameras remotely."

"Their security was really, really, really, really bad," researcher Dennis Giese told TechCrunch at the time.

When the outlet reached out to the company for information, an Ecovacs spokesperson said that the company would not fix the flaws found by the researchers, saying that "users can rest assured that they do not need to worry excessively about this."

According to the ABC report, this recent hacking spree, which took place in May, spanned a few days in multiple U.S. cities, although it is not known how many of the vacuums (which retail for close to C$2,000) have been affected.

The outlet reports that an Ecovacs chased a dog around a Los Angeles home and, five days later, another robot began hurling racial slurs at its owner in El Paso, Texas.

In a statement, Ecovacs said it found no evidence that any owner accounts were hacked and no signs of any breach of Ecovacs' systems. However, researchers previously demonstrated how the four-digit PIN protecting the device could be bypassed, as it was only checked by the app rather than by the server or the robot.

Ecovacs issued a patch for this flaw, while ABC sources have said it was insufficient.

Nevertheless, the manufacturer has said that it will issue a security upgrade for the owners of the X2 series of robot vacuum cleaners in November.

This instructor is cool and Awesome.

https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2024/10/cannabis-dispensary-employee-arrested-accused-of-fatally-shooting-2-suspected-of-attempted-robbery-at-store.html

An employee at a cannabis dispensary in North Portland is accused of fatally shooting two people who attempted to rob the business last week.

Jason Steiner, 34, turned himself in to Portland police Wednesday and was booked into Multnomah County's downtown jail on allegations of two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of unlawful use of a weapon. Steiner worked at the St. Johns branch of the La Mota dispensary, police said.

Officials identified the people who died as 18-year-old King Lawrence and 20-year-old Tahir Burley. Both are from Milwaukie, police said.

Police are seeking a third person in connection with the robbery, but they did not give a name or a description.

Last week's shooting happened just after 9:30 p.m. on Thursday,

The North Portland store had been targeted by at least four previous armed robberies since 2022, state records show. Two took place close to 10 p.m. A sign outside the business last week said it stopped letting customers in after 9 p.m. as a result. Instead they directed customers to a drive-through window until closing time at 10 p.m., unless they could provide an ID.

In June of this year, one employee was working when five people allegedly entered the store with guns and stole about $11,000 worth of marijuana products and cash, according to the reports. All of the individuals wore masks and filled up trash bags of money and products in the store before taking off, according to records from the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission.

Marijuana dispensaries have been frequent robbery targets in Portland, which industry individuals attribute to the fact they primarily conduct business with cash. In 2020, an employee at Cured Green, 44-year-old Michael Arthur, was shot and killed during a robbery.

Data from the Police Bureau showed 33 robberies were reported at cannabis businesses in the first half of 2023, a number higher than annual totals each year from 2016 to 2022.

At a Wednesday meeting of the Portland City Council, employees with the city of Portland's cannabis program recommended instituting proactive video monitoring security systems at cannabis businesses, so police may be able to respond while crimes are unfolding.

Lawrence and Burley are the city's 57th and 58th homicide victims this year.

Burley graduated from Reynolds Learning Academy in 2022. An obituary said his first name, Tahir, means pure in Arabic. He played football and basketball growing up and enjoyed playing video games and making music, his family wrote.

In 2022, KATU-TV posted a video of Burley sharing encouraging words to graduating seniors. "We are all a flower just waiting to be watered and blossom into the sunlight to be something amazing," Burley said in the video.

Police are asking anyone with information to contact Detective Brent Christensen at brent.christensen@police.portlandoregon.gov or Detective J.D. McGuire at jeff.mcguire@police.portlandoregon.gov and reference case No. 24-253852.

Imagine getting killed over weed. Imagine killing someone over weed.

Got a notification about this literally halfway thru a burrito containing chicken from this company.

!goyslopenjoyers it appears that red's frozen burritos are made with this stuff so the chicken varieties are gonna be un-buyable for the foreseeable future

https://thepostmillennial.com/porn-industry-backs-kamala-with-new-100000-ad-campaign

The porn industry has come out in support of Kamala Harris, launching a $100,000 ad campaign claiming that a Donald Trump victory would lead to a crackdown.

Ads will run on porn sites in seven swing states (Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada) and claim that conservatives will ban pornography and imprison those who are involved in the production of adult content.

The "hands off my porn campaign" is hoping that its efforts will sway the voting intentions of young men voters.

Data from the Survey Centre on American Life found that 44 percent of men aged 18-29 and 57 percent of men aged 30-49 had watched pornography in the last month.

The website for the campaign states boldly that conservatives are working to "criminalize porn."

"We must fight back against this ultra-conservative agenda that is rooted in religious conservatism, fearmongering, and the suppression of women's rights. Don't let these zealots destroy my career and your right to enjoy adult entertainment," one statement from director Casey Calvert reads.

Another statement, this one from pornographic actor Holly Randall, says, "I have been in this industry for over 25 years and have witnessed many attacks on our industry, but Project 2025's ban on pornography is the most extreme proposal I have ever seen, and voters have to take that threat seriously."

"We cannot simply rely on precedent that consuming pornography is legal and has been legal for a long time."

Republican nominee President Donald Trump has said on several occasions that he knows nothing about Project 2025.

Considering that most hardcore porn addicts in the US are conservative Christians (Utah consumes more porn than any other state by far), I'm not really sure how effective this ad campaign will be.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/swedish-police-probing-report-of-shooting-outside-israeli-embassy-in-stockholm/

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/swedish-police-investigating-shooting-near-israeli-target-in-gothenburg/

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/new-blast-near-israeli-embassy-in-denmark/

https://www.timesofisrael.com/blasts-near-israeli-embassy-rock-copenhagen-nobody-hurt-police-probing-incident/

I think the Israelis still have some learning to do regarding multiculturalism in Europe

https://www.reuters.com/technology/turkey-blocks-instant-messaging-platform-groomercord-2024-10-09/

Turkey has blocked access to instant messaging platform Groomercord in line with a court decision after the platform refused to share information demanded by Ankara, Turkish authorities said on Wednesday.

"We are aware of reports of Groomercord being unreachable in Russia and Turkey. Our team is investigating these reports at this time," the San Francisco-based company said in a status update.

Turkey's Information Technologies and Communication Authority published the access ban decision on its website.

Justice minister Yilmaz Tunc said an Ankara court decided to block access to Groomercord from Turkey due to sufficient suspicion that crimes of "child sexual abuse and obscenity" had been committed by some using the platform.

The block comes after public outrage in Turkey caused by the murder of two women by a 19-year-old man in Istanbul this month. Content on social media showed Groomercord users subsequently praising the killing.

Transport and infrastructure minister Abdulkadir Uraloglu said the nature of the Groomercord platform made it difficult for authorities to monitor and intervene when illegal or criminal content is shared.

"Security personnel cannot go through the content. We can only intervene when users complain to us about content shared there," he told reporters in parliament.

"Since Groomercord refuses to share its own information, including IP addresses and content, with our security units, we were forced to block access."

On Tuesday, Russia's communications regulator blocked Groomercord for violating Russian law, after previously fining the company for failing to remove banned content, the TASS news agency reported.

Thank God the government is telling people what software they're allowed to use. For their own good, of course.