Information Assured

LA Times’ AI Meters Opinion from Left to Right in 2025 Shake-Up On March 3, 2025, the LA Times debuted Insights, an AI tool that rates opinion pieces on a left-to-right political scale—pegging content from center-left to far-right—and lists opposing views, all without journalist review. Owner Patrick Soon-Shiong’s push, after months of staff friction, aims to broaden debate but ignites fears of bias and misreads in a polarized era. Unlike traditional editing, Insights autonomously analyzes opinion pieces, placing them on a spectrum and generating alternatives—say, shifting a center-left take to a right-leaning counter. This follows Soon-Shiong’s December 2024 bias meter tease and mirrors the Washington Post’s owner-driven editorial shifts. Critics ask: can AI nail the nuance of political shades? The LA Times’ gamble thrusts AI into journalism’s core, testing trust as it maps left-to-right leanings. Soon-Shiong touts transparency, but unchecked algorithms risk skewing discourse. With me...

 Malicious PyPI Packages Hit 20 Libraries, Stole Cloud Tokens in 2025 A sneaky attack on Python developers unfolded in early 2025, as cybersecurity researchers uncovered 20 malicious packages on the PyPI repository that stole cloud access tokens from services like AWS, Alibaba Cloud, and Tencent Cloud. These fake libraries, posing as harmless “time” utilities, were downloaded over 14,100 times before PyPI yanked them offline, according to ReversingLabs’ March 15 report. This mess shows how easily bad actors can slip dangerous code into tools coders trust daily. The trouble started with two packages: one group sent stolen data straight to the hackers’ servers, while the other quietly grabbed cloud credentials using built-in client functions. Names like “timep” and “timex” tricked developers into grabbing them, racking up thousands of downloads—some hit over 2,000 each, per pepy.tech stats. When they were caught, these 20 corrupted libraries had exposed countless systems, proving the...

Sparky: Robot Dog Packs Smart Controls in Under 2 Pounds Hengbot’s Sparky, unveiled March 5, 2025, at China’s NPC, is a robotic dog weighing just 850 grams—about 1.87 pounds—that walks, jumps, and dances with 14 joints. It was showcased for $500-$600 on Kickstarter in May. It offers an app, remote, and AR/VR controls, blending fun with AI tinkering. Unlike bulkier bots like Boston Dynamics, this palm-sized pup uses bionic limbs, a touch sensor, and a microphone for lifelike moves. It is programmable via a head pat or drag-and-drop app—no coding required. With a screen and speaker, it’s desk-ready. Hengbot aims for Amazon post-crowdfunding, outshining Xiaomi’s heavier CyberDog in agility. China’s robotics scene shines with Sparky’s debut, cutting size and cost while keeping smarts. Battery life and mass production are the next steps, but at under 2 pounds, this 850g marvel could redefine personal bots for hobbyists and developers eyeing a light, playful tech edge. Gizmochina. (2025, Mar...

The Coming Age of Deepfakes Warned of Rising Threats in 2022 In a December 2022 article in The Atlantic, Charlie Warzel revisited the escalating danger of deepfakes, synthetic media created by AI that can convincingly fake videos, audio, and images. The technology, which first gained attention in 2017 when a Reddit user posted AI-generated pornographic videos of celebrities like Gal Gadot, had evolved significantly by 2022. A 2018 BuzzFeed video, viewed over 2 million times, showed a fake Barack Obama calling President Trump a "total and complete dipshit," highlighting the potential for political disruption. By 2022, generative AI tools like OpenAI’s DALL-E and Stable Diffusion had lowered the barrier to entry, allowing anyone with a $500 computer to create hyperrealistic fakes in hours, raising fears of an "infocalypse" where reality itself could be corrupted. Deepfakes were not yet the mass chaos agent predicted in 2018, largely because simpler misinformation—like...

Elon Musk’s tumultuous foray into politics and crypto in 2025 has coincided with an unprecedented wave of attacks against his businesses and public image. Since Musk took on a role in President Trump’s administration (heading the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) ) and doubled down on promoting Dogecoin, his companies have been hit by cyber-attacks, physical vandalism, stock manipulation attempts, and media smears . Below, we investigate 30+ specific incidents from 2025 – detailing the nature, timing, and impact of each – and analyze how they align with Musk’s political and crypto involvement. The findings reveal a clear pattern of retaliation and risk for Musk’s ventures. Cyber Attack on X.com (Twitter) – A “Massive” DDoS Outage In March 2025, Musk’s social platform X (formerly Twitter) suffered a major disruption that Musk attributed to a coordinated cyber assault. On March 10, 2025 , X went down intermittently for many users; Musk announced a “massive cyberatt...