An anonymous reader shares a report: DC Comics president and publisher Jim Lee said that the company "will not support AI-generated storytelling or artwork," assuring fans that its future will remain rooted in human creativity. "Not now, not ever, as long as [SVP, general manager] Anne DePies and I are in charge," Lee said during his panel at New York Comic Con on Wednesday, likening concerns around AI dominating future creative industries to the Millennium bug scare and NFT hype.

"People have an instinctive reaction to what feels authentic. We recoil from what feels fake. That's why human creativity matters," said Lee. "AI doesn't dream. It doesn't feel. It doesn't make art. It aggregates it."

A new article in Game Rant points out that the 2013 game Grand Theft Auto V was "the most successful piece of fictional media ever made, amassing almost 8 billion dollars." So with a sequel planned, it was a big deal when 50 minutes of authentic pre-release footage was leaked by a U.K. teenager.

Game Rant reports that the trial of that teenager has begun. But a group of psychiatrists has just declared that the teenager "is unable to stand trial, so instead, the jury will decide if he committed these alleged crimes instead of delivering a verdict based on his guilt." 18-year-old Arion Kurtaj, a member of the hacker group named Lapsus$, attempted to blackmail Rockstar Games by releasing the Grand Theft Auto 6 source code online. Kurtaj has a history of hacking into giant companies, like when he caused nearly three million dollars of damage to Uber by releasing private information...

This story almost feels like a side mission in Grand Theft Auto 6, but it's all true. Kurtaj also had an unnamed partner in crime who demanded a four million dollar ransom from EE, a British mobile company. The two hackers were known as "key players" in Lapsus$. Lapsus$ has members all over the world and is suspected to be highly organized. The group has attacked companies as big as Samsung, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Ubisoft.

Kurtaj has been charged with three counts of blackmail, as well as nine other offenses, including fraud.

Elizabeth Holmes hasn't spoken to the media since 2016. Now convicted on criminal fraud charges — and counting down the days until she reports for prison — Holmes finally breaks the silence in a profile published today in the New York Times.

"I made so many mistakes," Holmes says, "and there was so much I didn't know and understand, and I feel like when you do it wrong, it's like you really internalize it in a deep way," Billy Evans, Ms. Holmes's partner and the father of their two young children, pushes a stroller with the couple's 20-month-old son, William... At one point, I tell her that I heard Jennifer Lawrence had pulled out of portraying her in a movie. She replied, almost reflectively, "They're not playing me. They're playing a character I created." So, why did she create that public persona? "I believed it would be how I would be good at business and taken seriously and not taken as a little girl or a girl who didn't have good technical ideas," said Ms. Holmes, who founded Theranos at 19. "Maybe people picked up on that not being authentic, since it wasn't..."

Her top lieutenant at Theranos, and much older boyfriend at the time, Ramesh Balwani, was found guilty of 10 counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud at Theranos. He began a 13-year prison sentence last month. On Thursday, his legal team filed an appeal with the Ninth Circuit... She said Mr. Balwani did not control her every interaction or statement at Theranos, but she "deferred to him in the areas he oversaw because I believed he knew better than I did," and those areas included the problematic clinical lab... Ms. Holmes's story of how she got here — to the bright, cozy house and the supportive partner and the two babies — feels a lot like the story of someone who had finally broken out of a cult and been deprogrammed. After her relationship with Mr. Balwani ended and Theranos dissolved, Ms. Holmes said, "I began my life again."

But then I remember that Ms. Holmes was running the cult...

What does she think would have happened if she hadn't garnered so much early attention as the second coming of Silicon Valley? Ms. Holmes does not blink: "We would've seen through our vision." In other words, she thinks if she'd spent more time quietly working on her inventions and less time on a stage promoting the company, she would have revolutionized health care by now. This kind of misguided talk is the one consistent thread in my reporting on who Ms. Holmes really is. She repeatedly says that Theranos wasn't a get-rich-quick scheme for her; she never sold her shares and didn't come out of it wealthy. Ms. Holmes's parents said they borrowed $500,000 against their Washington, D.C.-area home to post Ms. Holmes's bond...

She maintains the idealistic delusion of a 19-year-old, never mind that she's 39 with a fraud conviction, telling me she is still working on health care-related inventions and would continue to do so behind bars. "I still dream about being able to contribute in that space," Ms. Holmes said. "I still feel the same calling to it as I always did and I still think the need is there." If your head is exploding at how divorced from reality this sounds, that's kind of the point. When Ms. Holmes uses the messianic vernacular of tech, I get the sense that she truly believes that she could have — and, in fact, she still could — change the world, and she doesn't much care if we believe her or not...

It's this steadfast (or unhinged?) belief that has kept Ms. Holmes fighting, even though a guilty plea would have likely helped her chances of remaining free.

Amazon's new $465 million series — a prequel to the Lord of the Rings — drew more than 25 million viewers on just its first day, according to Reuters, "a record debut for a Prime Video series."

The Independent shared reactions from J. R. R. Tolkein fans, including one who said "it looks like they put absolutely all that Amazon money to use for scenes." First up, the praise. Many are agreeing that the show's costly budget, which positions it as one of the most expensive shows of all time, has paid off, with the series boasting impressive visuals.... @marklee3d added: Rings of Power has done a great job of capturing the feel of Tolkien's world. The challenge is creating a compelling story where one didn't exist before. The show's success lies in pulling that off."

Agreeing that the "spirit" of Tokkien has been captured, @suzannahtweets wrote: "I'm far less concerned about little lore details than I am about the spirit. And while I thought that Peter Jackson fundamentally misunderstood the spirit of Tolkien in ALL his movies, so far the spirit of THE RINGS OF POWER feels remarkably authentic to Tolkien...." However, others argued the show felt "goofy" and featured "terrible" dialogue, with some suggesting that "Tolkien himself" would be "ashamed" of the series.
But "by releasing the first two episodes instead of just the more predictable first, Amazon gave The Rings of Power a strong start," argues Cinemablend. Collider's senior TV editor praises the show's "stunning visuals, compelling characters, and magnetic lead," while one podcaster even called the show "a cinematic masterpiece... masterfully orchestrating a mythology that fans have been waiting for."

Deadline reports that "Critics reviews, save a scathing piece in the UK Daily Mail, have generally been positive for The Rings of Power, as measured by aggregators like Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic.... As of Friday evening, the IMDb rating stood at a respectable 7.1 out of 10." And Variety adds that Amazon had already taken steps to thwart review bombers three weeks ago: Starting around the time of the launch of the distaff baseball dramedy "A League of Their Own," which premiered its full first season on Aug. 12, Amazon Prime Video quietly introduced a new 72-hour delay for all user reviews posted to Prime Video, a representative for the streamer confirmed to Variety. Each critique is then evaluated to determine whether it's genuine or a forgery created by a bot, troll or other breed of digital goblin.

The practice caught notice after the premiere of the first two episodes of "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power"... The series appears to have been review bombed — when trolls flood intentionally negative reviews for a show or film — on other sites like Rotten Tomatoes, where it has an 84% rating from professional critics, but a 37% from user-submitted reviews. "The Rings of Power" has been fending off trolls for months, especially ones who take issue with the decision to cast actors of color as elves, dwarves, harfoots and other folk of Tolkien's fictional Middle-earth. Amazon's new initiative to review its reviews, however, is designed to weed out ones that are posted in bad faith, deadening their impact.... Whether Amazon successfully beat back the tide of internet trolls for "The Rings of Power" will likely be revealed on Sunday.
Reuters reports that future episodes of the series will be released weekly until the October 14 season finale.

"Amazon plans to let the full story unfold in 50 hours over five seasons."

Sociologist Ashley Mears know the secret to making viral videos on Facebook. "It's like a magic trick," one creator explains. Literally.

"Many of the most successful people in the content-creation game on Facebook are magicians," Mears explains in a video. "I think that that's not such a surprise, because magicians are extremely skilled in manipulating people's attention, which is basically what the viral video economy does."

Mears recently visited the "new creative elites," a group of creators regularly getting 100 million to 200 million views, which includes former jazz singer Anna Rothfuss and her magician boyfriend Justin Flom: Rothfuss and Flom are among the 180 video-makers (or "creators" in the industry's jargon) working with a Las Vegas magician called Rick Lax. They produce short videos timed to last the precise number of seconds that Facebook requires a clip to run to be eligible for an ad (this used to be three minutes but recently went down to one). Though the clips usually look like authentic user-generated material, all are scripted. Most fall into genres: diy, crafts, hazards, adultery and proposals. Lax manages his network like a cross between a Hollywood agent and a schoolteacher. He takes a slice of the ad revenue that creators earn. In exchange, he gives them online tutorials about how to make viral content: everything from how to hold the camera to which metrics matter to Facebook. He releases new instructions every time the algorithm changes substantially, and offers feedback on people's videos. He also posts his creators' videos on his own Facebook page, which has 14m followers....

A friend was making videos for Rick Lax, and invited Rothfuss to join in 2019. A year later she bought her first mansion. Entering the viral-content game involves a certain surrendering of artistic aspirations, but Rothfuss says she doesn't care. "I do not want to be famous," she says. "I love being low-key and flying under the radar, and just getting rich...."

Lax realised that appetite for these videos was insatiable: the only obstacle to earning more money was how many clips he could make in a day.... Lax wouldn't go into details of his profit-sharing arrangement but his creators are clearly flourishing. Many told me they felt like they were taking part in a 21st-century gold rush. "This doesn't happen to that many people," says Amy Boiss, a one-time Uber driver whose magician boyfriend introduced her to Lax's network. "To make more money than neurosurgeons...." Lax and his friends got rich without anyone knowing who they are....

It's perhaps no coincidence that the two most-viewed Facebook creators in 2021, Lax and Julius Dein, both started out as magicians (as did many of their affiliates). Their videos aren't magic performances as such, but they're informed by the art of magic. "Magicians start by looking for blind spots, edges, vulnerabilities and limits of people's perception," wrote a former Google employee (and amateur magician) in an essay published on Medium in 2017, "How technology hijacks your mind". Social-media companies, wrote the author, "influence what people do without them even realising it", just as magicians do: "Once you know how to push people's buttons you can play them like a piano."
Ironically, the creators end up driven by "the same dopamine rush they were exploiting in us," the article points out. "If you're looking at the data, you can actually see your earnings go up as people watch your work: making viral videos can be just as addictive as watching them."

One of the magicians in Lax's network even says point-blank that "It feels like a drug."

Instagram's Android code is hiding a design change that hides the number of likes your posts get. "During this test, only the person who shares a post will see the total number of likes it gets," the company says. TechCrunch reports on the seemingly small design change test and the massive potential impact it'll have on users' well-being: Hiding Like counts could reduce herd mentality, where people just Like what's already got tons of Likes. It could reduce the sense of competition on Instagram, since users won't compare their own counts with those of more popular friends or superstar creators. And it could encourage creators to post what feels most authentic rather than trying to rack up Likes for everyone to see.

You can see [in a leaked screenshot] on the left that the Instagram feed post lacks a Like count, but still shows a few faces and a name of other people who've Liked it. Users are alerted that only they will see their post's Like counts, and anyone else won't. Many users delete posts that don't immediately get "enough" Likes or post to their fake "Finstagram" accounts if they don't think they'll be proud of the hearts they collect. Hiding Like counts might get users posting more because they'll be less self-conscious. It appears there's no plan to hide follower counts on user profiles, which are the true measure of popularity, but also serve a purpose of distinguishing great content creators and assessing their worth to marketers. Hiding Likes could just put more of a spotlight on follower and comment counts. And even if users don't see Like counts, they still massively impact the feed's ranking algorithm, so creators will still have to battle for them to be seen.

A while ago you had the chance to ask programmer and open source advocate Bruce Perens about the future of open source, its role in government, and a number of other questions. Below you'll find his answers and an update on what he's doing now.

benrothke writes "With Adobe Flash, it's possible to quickly get a pretty web site up and running; something that many firms do. But if there is no content behind the flashy web page, it's unlikely anyone will return. In The Digital Crown: Winning at Content on the Web, author Ahava Leibtag does a fantastic job on showing how to ensure that your web site has what it takes to get visitors to return, namely great content." Read below for the rest of Ben's review.

Last week we asked you to submit questions for several Blizzard employees on a wide range of issues. Since we undertook the pilgrimage to Blizzcon in person this year, we decided to use the question ideas as a guide rather than an absolute, so that it could be a little more conversational in tone. Below we have included the responses from Chris Sigaty, lead producer on StarCraft II; Jeffrey Kaplan (aka Tigole), game director for World of Warcraft; Leonard Boyarsky, lead world designer on Diablo III; and Paul Sams, Blizzard's COO. One interesting point: Paul Sams indicated in his interview that, with enough interest, Blizzard would be willing to entertain the idea of open sourcing some of their older games. He suggested that if you are interested in this to contact them directly (please be at least semi-coherent and polite). Update 19:00 by SM: Bob Colayco from Blizzard just contacted us to mention that if users wish to leave feedback about open sourcing games, support for Linux, or anything else you would like to express to them, you should do so in the comments section of this story. They plan on perusing the comments below for user feedback and interest, so don't be shy.

Another year, another Gen Con? Hardly. This year was the 40th anniversary of Gen Con, marked the announcement of the newest edition of Dungeons and Dragons, and was the first year videogame companies were actively sought out as exhibitors. Put together this resulted in what felt like record crowds, a healthy dealer's hall, and an instant conversation-starter with every other person at the event. Read on for notes on the new tabletop releases, thoughts on the new edition of D&D, impressions of the videogames that were in attendance, and a shameful admission of weakness.

Joystiq has a post up taking a look at the extremely out-of-character title coming up from Rockstar. For better or worse, Rockstar's Table Tennis is the real deal. From the article: "If you're a ping pong addict, this is another opportunity for you to deepen your involvement with a hobby you already love. This game will satisfy you because -- at least to this ping pong amateur and the two legit ping pong players I brought along with me -- it feels authentic. That authenticity comes from Rockstar choice to embrace realism rather than a stylized or simplified arcade style. The company calling Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis the "first true sports simulation title" that they've ever done. "

Here's another doubleheader review, this time of The Cluetrain Manifesto, the four-author print extension of the Web site of the same name. Hemos and Jason Bennett here dissect the book and provide some insight into where the cluetrain is steaming.