Month: August 2024

Enlarge / A still video capture of X user João Fiadeiro replacing his face with J.D. Vance in a test of Deep-Live-Cam.

Over the past few days, a software package called Deep-Live-Cam has been going viral on social media because it can take the face of a person extracted from a single photo and apply it to a live webcam video source while following pose, lighting, and expressions performed by the person on the webcam. While the results aren't perfect, the software shows how quickly the tech is developing—and how the capability to deceive others remotely is getting dramatically easier over time.

The Deep-Live-Cam software project has been in the works since late last year, but example videos that show a person imitating Elon Musk and Republican Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance (among others) in real time have been making the rounds online. The avalanche of attention briefly made the open source project leap to No. 1 on GitHub's trending repositories list (it's currently at No. 4 as of this writing), where it is available for download for free.

"Weird how all the major innovations coming out of tech lately are under the Fraud skill tree," wrote illustrator Corey Brickley in an X thread reacting to an example video of Deep-Live-Cam in action. In another post, he wrote, "Nice remember to establish code words with your parents everyone," referring to the potential for similar tools to be used for remote deception—and the concept of using a safe word, shared among friends and family, to establish your true identity.

Enlarge / The Takata airbag recall has affected more than 100 million cars across the world. (credit: Getty Images)

The "largest and most complex" automotive safety recall in US history is still not over, nine years after the first owners were contacted about a fix. Today, Ford issued a "do not drive" advisory for owners who still have not had their Takata airbags replaced, for a mix of vehicles that range from Ranger pickup trucks to the mid-engined GT supercar.

The Takata airbag scandal stretches back to the year 2000, when the company first learned from testing that some of its airbags might not deploy properly. A lack of a chemical drying agent, or desiccant, can allow the explosive ammonium nitrate propellant to take on moisture when exposed to hot or humid environments. As a result, the airbag may not inflate properly during a crash, and there were even cases of metal shrapnel being thrown around the vehicle interior.

The first US case of a faulty Takata airbag inflator occurred in 2005. In 2009, a faulty airbag inflator killed the driver of a Honda Accord in Oklahoma, sparking a recall by Honda later that year. A formal safety investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began in 2014 and concluded a year later when Takata agreed that its inflators were defective.

Enlarge / He's gesturing towards a PC port that's just out of frame. Trust me. (credit: Rockstar Games)

Rockstar Games fans who don't traffic in game consoles have been waiting over 5,200 days to play the original Red Dead Redemption on PC (even as the PC port of its sequel approaches its fifth anniversary). PC gamers' long wait for a port may soon be over, though, as some promotional copy for the PC version of the game has been briefly leaked online.

The suggestive verbiage comes from the PlayStation Store of all places, which as of Tuesday morning described Red Dead Redemption as "now on PC for the first time ever" on the page for the game's 2023 PS4 rerelease. While the language has now been reverted to a more generic description, archived copies of the site from just hours ago include some details of what we can expect of the jump from console to PC:

Featuring the complete single-player experience of both games [RDR and Undead Nightmare, from previous context], including bonus content from the Game of the Year edition, Red Dead Redemption features all of the 2023 console version upgrades plus PC specific enhancements including support for increased resolutions, multiple displays, and other accessories, plus spatial surround sound.

Red Dead Redemption does not feature multiplayer content.

The PC port promo copy that appeared on the PlayStation Store page for Red Dead Redemption Tuesday morning. (credit: Sony / Archive.is)

It's hard to know exactly why a description of a PC port would show up on a Sony store page, but it's easy to picture someone in the PR chain pasting in the wrong platform's promotional copy when updating something on the back end.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Dan Kitwood )

Elon Musk clashed with the EU ahead of a planned interview with Donald Trump on X as a war of words broke out between Brussels and the technology billionaire’s social media platform over content related to the US election.

The dispute erupted as Trump, the Republican US presidential nominee, returned to X on Monday with a number of posts on a social media platform that had once banned him, just hours before the interview with Musk.

The billionaire’s planned event with Trump triggered a strident warning to X from Thierry Breton, the EU commissioner for the internal market, about the dissemination of “content that promotes hatred, disorder, incitement to violence, or certain instances of disinformation.”