How do you manage all these incredibly secure and reliable AI agents? Microsoft brings you: the Agent 365 platform! [YouTube]
Even better, you’ll be getting the same great capabilities in Windows 11. Microsoft has put a full Copilot agent into preview builds. The agent platform runs in the background, all the time, with full access to all your personal files. [Microsoft]
There’s just one teensy problem — Microsoft’s built a welcome mat for malicious software:
Agentic AI applications introduce novel security risks, such as cross-prompt injection (XPIA), where malicious content embedded in UI elements or documents can override agent instructions, leading to unintended actions like data exfiltration or malware installation.
Fortunately, Microsoft has duly warned you it’s your problem to keep the agent system switched off, and to check the agents to make sure they don’t do bad things. And can’t be prompt-injected.
You can do all that, right? That’s what you bought a computer to do, right? Watch battling malware agents play Robot Wars?
But Microsoft is here to keep the quality coming! Here’s a remarkable job ad for a senior product designer at Microsoft: [LinkedIn, archive]
You’ll be a part of an army of passionate, world-class AI experimenters.
OnlyFans will start running background checks on people signing up as content creators, the platform’s CEO recently announced.
As reported by adult industry news outlet XBIZ, OnlyFans CEO Keily Blair announced the partnership in a LinkedIn post. Blair doesn’t say in the post when the checks will be implemented, whether all types of criminal convictions will bar creators from signing up, if existing creators will be checked as well, or what countries’ criminal records will be checked.
OnlyFans did not respond to 404 Media's request for comment.
“I am very proud to add our partnership with Checkr Trust to our onboarding process in the US,” Blair wrote. “Checkr, Inc. helps OnlyFans to prevent people who have a criminal conviction which may impact on our community's safety from signing up as a Creator on OnlyFans. It’s collaborations like this that make the real difference behind the scenes and keep OnlyFans a space where creators and fans feel secure and empowered.”
Many OnlyFans creators turned to the platform, and to online sex work more generally, when they’re not able to obtain employment at traditional workplaces. Some sex workers doing in-person work turned to online sex work as a way to make ends meet—especially after the passage of the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act in 2018 made it much more difficult to screen clients for escorting. And in-person sex work is still criminalized in the U.S. and many other countries.
“Criminal background checks will not stop potential predators from using the platform (OF), it will only harm individuals who are already at higher risk. Sex work has always had a low barrier to entry, making it the most accessible career for people from all walks of life,” performer GoAskAlex, who’s on OnlyFans and other platforms, told me in an email. “Removing creators with criminal/arrest records will only push more vulnerable people (overwhelmingly, women) to street based/survival sex work. Adding more barriers to what is arguably the safest form of sex work (online sex work) will push sex industry workers to less and less safe options.”
Jessica Starling, who also creates adult content on OnlyFans, told me in a call that their first thought was that if someone using OnlyFans has a prostitution charge, they might not be able to use the platform. “If they're trying to transition to online work, they won’t be able to do that anymore,” they said. “And the second thing I thought was that it's just invasive and overreaching... And then I looked up the company, and I'm like, ‘Oh, wow, this is really bad.’”
Checkr is reportedly used by Uber, Instacart, Shipt, Postmates, and Lyft, and lists many more companies like Dominos and Doordash on its site as clients. The company has been sued hundreds of times for violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act or other consumer credit complaints. The Fair Credit Reporting Act says that companies providing information to consumer reporting agencies are legally obligated to investigate disputed information. And a lot of people dispute the information Checkr and Inflection provide on them, claiming mixed-up names, acquittals, and decades-old misdemeanors or traffic tickets prevented them from accessing platforms that use background checking services.
Checkr regularly acquires other background checking and age verification companies, and acquired a background check company called Inflection in 2022. At the time, I found more than a dozen lawsuits against Inflection alone in a three year span, many of them from people who found out about the allegedly inaccurate reports Inflection kept about them after being banned from Airbnb after the company claimed they failed checks.
“Sex workers face discrimination when leaving the sex trade, especially those who have been face-out and are identifiable in the online world. Facial recognition technology has advanced to a point where just about anyone can ascertain your identity from a single picture,” Alex said. “Leaving the online sex trade is not as easy as it once was, and anything you've done online will follow you for a lifetime. Creators who are forced to leave the platform will find that safe and stable alternatives are far and few between.”
Last month, Pornhub announced that it would start performing background checks on existing content partners—which primarily include studios—next year. "To further protect our creators and users, all new applicants must now complete a criminal background check during onboarding," the platform announced in a newsletter to partners, as reported by AVN.
Alex said she believes background checks in the porn industry could be beneficial, under very specific circumstances. “I do not think that someone with egregious history of sexual violence should be allowed to work in the sex trade in any capacity—similarly, a person convicted of hurting children should be not able to work with children—so if the criminal record checks were searching specifically for sex based offences I could see the benefit, but that doesn't appear to be the case (to my knowledge). What's to stop OnlyFans from deactivating someone's account due to a shoplifting offense?” she said. “I'd like to know more about what they're searching for with these background checks.”
Even with third-party companies like Checkr doing the work, as is the case with third-party age verification that’s swept the U.S. and targeted the porn industry, increased data means increased risk of it being leaked or hacked. Last year, a background check company called National Public Data claimed it was breached by hackers who got the confidential data of 2.9 billion people. The unencrypted data was then sold on the dark web.
“It’s dangerous for anyone, but it's especially dangerous for us [adult creators] because we're more vulnerable anyway. Especially when you're online, you're hypervisible,” Starling said. “It doesn't protect anyone except OnlyFans themselves, the company.”
OnlyFans became the household name in independent porn because of the work of its adult content creators. Starling mentioned that because the platform has dominated the market, it’s difficult to just go to another platform if creators don’t want to be subjected to background checks. “We're put in a position where we have very limited power," they said. "So when a platform decides to do something like this, we’re kind of screwed, right?”
Earlier this year, OnlyFans owner Fenix International Ltd reportedly entered talks to sell the company to an investor group at a valuation of around $8 billion.
Luxembourg has officially entered the era of 3D-printed living. Standing at just about 11.5 feet wide and 58 feet long, the Tiny House LUX squeezes innovation, sustainability, and style into a remarkably compact 506-square-foot footprint. Developed by Coral Construction Technologies – a division of ICE Industrial Services – and designed by ODA Architects, this petite dwelling isn’t just a one-off experiment. It’s a bold prototype for a new kind of housing solution in one of Europe’s most expensive and space-limited markets.
Luxembourg’s housing crisis is no secret. The nation needs about 7,000 new homes each year but delivers barely half that number – and only a fraction qualify as affordable. Meanwhile, countless leftover slivers of land sit empty because they’re too narrow or irregular for traditional construction. Tiny House LUX asks a simple question: what if these forgotten gaps became homes instead of wasted potential?
Architect Bujar Hasani of ODA Architects, together with the Municipality of Niederanven, set out to prove it’s possible. Their vision was to design a durable, permanent home – not a temporary pod or prefabricated box – that meets Luxembourg’s high building standards while using modern digital fabrication to keep costs, materials, and timelines in check.
To bring that vision to life, ODA teamed up with Coral Construction Technologies, a company specializing in on-site 3D concrete printing, along with collaborators Georgios Staikos. Using a mobile robotic printer, the team translated Hasani’s architectural model into precise toolpaths, layer by layer, directly on site. Unlike many 3D-printed homes that depend on imported dry mixes, Tiny House LUX uses standard local concrete from nearby batching plants – a first for Luxembourg and a sustainability win that reduces transport emissions.
The printing process itself took about a week, with the entire build – from foundation to finishing – completed in just four weeks. Even more impressive: several architectural details, like the shower niche and wall-mounted toilet cavity, were printed directly into the walls. No extra cutting or patching required – just pure efficiency and precision.
In another national first, the home sits not on a concrete slab but on a wooden platform supported by screw foundations. This clever engineering move reduces the environmental footprint, simplifies installation, and allows the structure to be dismantled or relocated later on – a nod to circular design thinking.
Inside, the house feels anything but cramped. A long, continuous sightline from front to back makes the space appear larger than its 506 square feet. Smartly placed built-ins line the walls, keeping the center open and airy. The palette mixes 3D-printed concrete with warm wood finishes and minimalist furnishings – including design-forward pieces like the Cocon armchair and UM barstool by Master & Master, and the Bandaska vase by DECHEM studio.
Beyond the wow factor of its printing process, Tiny House LUX is built to perform. The walls use mineral-based insulation and reinforcement, avoiding synthetic materials. Solar panels on the roof power both the home and a thin film floor-heating system, while large south-facing windows maximize natural light and heat gain.
Diagonal lines embedded in the concrete walls become channels for light, creating dynamic focal points. Hidden lighting around the ceiling brings additional light to the compact space making it feel brighter and larger than it actually is.
The result is a small yet sophisticated dwelling that generates its own energy, conserves resources, and fits seamlessly into an existing neighborhood – all while showing how advanced technology can serve real social and environmental goals.
While Tiny House LUX currently serves as a municipal test pilot, its implications stretch far beyond Niederanven. Imagine a city that can quickly and affordably infill its forgotten plots of land with energy-smart, beautifully designed homes – all using local materials, digital design, and robotic precision.
I wonder if this will ever actually be used in a real world application. I have seen these type of solutions now for a decade, but not really seen them used in commercial applications.
An erotic roleplay chatbot and AI image creation platform called Secret Desires left millions of user-uploaded photos exposed and available to the public. The databases included nearly two million photos and videos, including many photos of completely random people with very little digital footprint.
The exposed data shows how many people use AI roleplay apps that allow face-swapping features: to create nonconsensual sexual imagery of everyone, from the most famous entertainers in the world to women who are not public figures in any way. In addition to the real photo inputs, the exposed data includes AI-generated outputs, which are mostly sexual and often incredibly graphic. Unlike “nudify” apps that generate nude images of real people, these images are putting people into AI-generated videos of hardcore sexual scenarios.
The legendary hacker conference Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) says that it has been “banned” from St. John’s University, the venue where it has held the last several HOPE conferences, because someone told the university the conference had an “anti-police agenda.”
HOPE was held at St. John’s University in 2022, 2024, and 2025, and was going to be held there in 2026, as well. The conference has been running at various venues over the last 31 years, and has become well-known as one of the better hacking and security research conferences in the world. Tuesday, the conference told members of its mailing list that it had “received some disturbing news,” and that “we have been told that ‘materials and messaging’ at our most recent conference ‘were not in alignment with the mission, values, and reputation of St. John’s University’ and that we would no longer be able to host our events there.”
The conference said that after this year’s conference, they had received “universal praise” from St. John’s staff, and said they were “caught by surprise” by the announcement.
“What we're told - and what we find rather hard to believe - is that all of this came about because a single person thought we were promoting an anti-police agenda,” the email said. “They had spotted pamphlets on a table which an attendee had apparently brought to HOPE that espoused that view. Instead of bringing this to our attention, they went to the president's office at St. John's after the conference had ended. That office held an investigation which we had no knowledge of and reached its decision earlier this month. The lack of due process on its own is extremely disturbing.”
“The intent of the person behind this appears clear: shut down events like ours and make no attempt to actually communicate or resolve the issue,” the email continued. “If it wasn't this pamphlet, it would have been something else. In this day and age where academic institutions live in fear of offending the same authorities we've been challenging for decades, this isn't entirely surprising. It is, however, greatly disappointing.”
St. John’s University did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Hacking and security conferences in general have a long history of being surveilled by or losing their venues. For example, attendees of the DEF CON hacking conference have reported being surveilled and having their rooms searched; last year, some casinos in Las Vegas made it clear that DEF CON attendees were not welcome. And academic institutions have been vigorously attacked by the Trump administration over the last few months over the courses they teach, the research they fund, and the events they hold, though we currently do not know the specifics of why St. John’s made this decision.
It is not clear what pamphlets HOPE is referencing, and the conference did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the conference noted that St. Johns could have made up any pretext for banning them. It is worth mentioning that Joshua Aaron, the creator of the ICEBlock ICE tracking app, presented at HOPE this year. ICEBlock has since been deleted by the Apple App Store and the Google Play store after being pressured by the Trump administration.
“Our content has always been somewhat edgy and we take pride in challenging policies we see as unfair, exposing security weaknesses, standing up for individual privacy rights, and defending freedom of speech,” HOPE wrote in the email. The conference said that it has not yet decided what it will do next year, but that it may look for another venue, or that it might “take a year off and try to build something bigger.”
“There will be many people who will say this is what we get for being too outspoken and for giving a platform to controversial people and ideas. But it's this spirit that defines who we are; it's driven all 16 of our past conferences. There are also those who thought it was foolish to ever expect a religious institution to understand and work with us,” the conference added. “We are not changing who we are and what we stand for any more than we'd expect others to. We have high standards for our speakers, presenters, and staff. We value inclusivity and we have never tolerated hate, abuse, or harassment towards anyone. This should not be news, as HOPE has been around for a while and is well known for its uniqueness, spirit, and positivity.”
Lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) sued the city of San Jose, California over its deployment of Flock’s license plate-reading surveillance cameras, claiming that the city’s nearly 500 cameras create a pervasive database of residents movements in a surveillance network that is essentially impossible to avoid.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the Services, Immigrant Rights & Education Network and Council on American-Islamic Relations, California, and claims that the surveillance is a violation of California’s constitution and its privacy laws. The lawsuit seeks to require police to get a warrant in order to search Flock’s license plate system. The lawsuit is one of the highest profile cases challenging Flock; a similar lawsuit in Norfolk, Virginia seeks to get Flock’s network shut down in that city altogether.
“San Jose’s ALPR [automatic license plate reader] program stands apart in its invasiveness,” ACLU of Northern California and EFF lawyers wrote in the lawsuit. “While many California agencies run ALPR systems, few retain the locations of drivers for an entire year like San Jose. Further, it is difficult for most residents of San Jose to get to work, pick up their kids, or obtain medical care without driving, and the City has blanketed its roads with nearly 500 ALPRs.”
The lawsuit argues that San Jose’s Flock cameras “are an invasive mass surveillance technology” that “collect[s] driver locations en masse.”
“Most drivers are unaware that San Jose’s Police Department is tracking their locations and do not know all that their saved location data can reveal about their private lives and activities,” it adds. The city of San Jose currently has at least 474 ALPR cameras, up from 149 at the end of 2023; according to data from the city, more than 2.6 million vehicles were tracked using Flock in the month of October alone. The lawsuit states that Flock ALPRs are stationed all over the city, including “around highly sensitive locations including clinics, immigration centers, and places of worship. For example, three ALPR cameras are positioned on the roads directly outside an immigration law firm.”
Andrew Crocker, surveillance litigation director for the EFF, told 404 Media in a phone call that “it’s fair to say that anyone driving in San Jose is likely to have their license plates captured many times a day. That pervasiveness is important.”
DeFlock's map of San Jose's ALPRsA zoomed in look at San Jose
A search of DeFlock, a crowdsourced map of ALPR deployments around the country, shows hundreds of cameras in San Jose spaced essentially every few blocks around the city. The map is not exhaustive.
The lawsuit argues that warrantless searches of these cameras are illegal under the California constitution’s search and seizure clause, which Crocker said “has been interpreted to be even stronger than the Fourth Amendment,” as well as other California privacy laws. The case is part of a broader backlash against Flock as it expands around the United States. 404 Media’s reporting has shown that the company collects millions of records from around the country, and that it has made its national database of car locations available to local cops who have in turn worked with ICE. Some of those searches have violated California and Illinois law, and have led to reforms from the company. Crocker said that many of these problems will be solved if police simply need to get a warrant to search the system.
“Our legal theory and the remedy we’re seeking is quite simple. We think they need a warrant to search these databases,” he said. “The warrant requirement is massive and should help in terms of preventing these searches because they will have to be approved by a judge.” The case in Norfolk is ongoing. San Jose Police Department and Flock did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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