Bewarethewumpus

Many publishers and news organizations, including the New York Times, USA Today, The Atlantic, and more, continue to block the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine from archiving journalism. According to Forbes, 23 major news sites currently block ia_archiverbot, which is the web crawler used by Internet Archive for the Wayback Machine. — Read the rest

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Lego Batman, like all Lego games, is absolutely loaded with references and easter eggs. As well as recreating memorable scenes from the Dark Knight's storied history, it is packed with geeky, niche in-jokes. One such easter egg requires a Commodore 64 to actually make sense of.

As pointed out by Cabelsa over on TikTok, when Batman analyses something on his computer in-game, a short splash screen pops up to signify that the computer is booting up. Turns out that screen isn't just for show, as Cabelsa points out: "Did you see that? Did you catch that? Back up. That, my friends, looks like Commodore 64 BASIC."

Effectively, the 1982 8-bit Commodore 64 (otherwise known as the C64) required its users to know some code in order to get it to function, and BASIC (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is the language used for the machine. Think of the modern Terminal you find in Windows, imagine having to use that all the time, and you have a decent idea of how the C64 functioned.

Well, if you bust out your C64 or type the two pages of code into a C64 coding emulator, it puts a small yellow bat symbol on screen and makes it float around. It's a simple effect for quite a lot of work, but still a neat easter egg nonetheless.

Now that you've seen it work in Cabelsa's video, it may not be worth all the effort of actually trying it yourself, but part of the bit is how much effort was put into just this tiny portion of the game. It's an animation that will take a few seconds to watch, and yet even typing in the code will take significantly longer (I know, as I tried).

But then, that's part of the joy of the game. I've played the opening hours, and it's very silly and self-referential. Our Jody Macgregor had a great time with the game, giving it 83% in his review. He says, "This is an Arkham game in all but name. In some ways, the fact it's Lego makes it better."

It gets a free pass to be more goofy and take itself less seriously than the traditional Arkham games. It has a reference to Michael Cain's "Batman Begin" Tweet, a ton of references to the Batman animated series, and even literal easter eggs scattered around the world. At least they don't require coding knowledge to find.

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Hovertext:
From an idea in Aguera y Arcas' recent book What is Intelligence?

cipheramnesia:

This is a notification to say

We have leaked

the personal data

that we collected

without your knowledge or consent

and which was

probably illegal

not saved

securely

Update your passwords

it will happen again

we regret

any inconvenience

tieflingkisser:

ALT

Sometimes someone does something that makes you think, 'Why the hell had no one tried this before?' That's the question that crossed my mind when I learned about 'Noah Doe', a (presumably) placeholder name for a man who is trying to get the New York courts to officially recognise him (and the other plantiff companies) as the owner of 39,069 seemingly abandoned Bitcoin wallets worth billions of US dollars.

Doe's complaint, brought to my attention by International Cyber Digest on X, was filed at the start of this month (PDF warning) in the New York Supreme Court. The suit makes the case that Doe should be given legal ownership of the seemingly abandoned wallets because the correct procedures were followed to attempt to "return" the virtual wallets to their owners under the city's law.

In normal circumstances—with, say, a regular physical wallet—if enough time passes without anyone claiming ownership and the correct procedures are followed, including trying to get it back to the original owner, the "finder" can then usually become the new legal owner.

Using an "algorithm" that he cooked up, Doe found 1,544 Bitcoin wallets in December 2024, 546 in March 2025, and 39,911 in April 2025. These were then whittled down a little as some were in fact demonstrated to not be abandoned by their owners. The addresses of all 39,069 remaining seemingly abandoned wallets are listed in the court document under Exhibit 1.

All wallets were "dormant or inactive for at least five years and apparently abandoned", and in each case there was a full year of efforts to identify and notify any owners of the wallets. With each batch of wallet discovery Doe handed over a USB stick containing the addresses to the police department as lost property. Some months later, the police would return the drive.

Doe's efforts to "return" the wallets included having "strategic consultant" Salomon Brothers help come up with a plan to reach out to any owners. A cyber/blockchain expert would also review the wallets and assist with contacting any potential owners.

"The expert confirmed that the Found Wallets validly exist on the blockchain, contain digital assets, and have been dormant or inactive for at least five (5) years."

On the back of this, Doe added a message as a token into the transaction records, directing potential wallet owners to a webpage giving wallet holders 90 days to say they are the owner. And after this, they put out a press release to try to reach any of the wallet holders that way, too.

So it seems due diligence was definitely done, but that doesn't mean it will be a straightforward decision given the uniqueness of the situation here.

What's particularly noteworthy about this case is that one of the 30-odd thousand wallet addresses is the Mt. Gox hack wallet (1FeexV6bAHb8ybZjqQMjJrcCrHGW9sb6uF) containing about 80,000 Bitcoins worth almost $6 billion USD today. This wallet is the destination for Bitcoin that was stolen from the Mt. Gox exchange back in 2011, and has been untouched ever since given it's been watched the world over for any activity. That wallet is listed as the very first one of the thousands in Doe's court doc—perhaps the list is ordered by value.

Some online have already been speculating whether Doe perhaps already had access to some of these wallets and is just trying to make it 'legal' to use them. Or, Doe could be waiting for a time when he will be able to use advanced tech (such as quantum computing) to gain access.

One thing that crossed my mind is what would happen if Doe is granted legal ownership and then somewhere down the line an original owner of one of the wallets finds their private key and uses it. Would this mean Doe is now being stolen from?

It's a ridiculous thing to ponder, and surely something that won't come to pass because one would like to assume the court will throw this case out, not least because it's hard to reason that the Bitcoin wallets are actually located in New York at all. But I'm not a lawyer, so I can't make any definite claims here. It will be interesting to see exactly how the court handles it, as it could set precedents for the future regarding blockchains and digital wallets.

These days, a typical Google Search feels like an obstacle course. Type out 'upcoming PC games 2026' and your gaze has to swerve around a chunky AI overview which recycles the work of human writers in a bid to kneecap efforts to click away from Google. It's a bleak state of affairs for what was once the premier discovery tool for the internet, and as such many users are looking for alternative search engines.

DuckDuckGo has been one major winner of this Google Search abandonment. Just for a start, visits to its AI-free search page noai.duckduckgo.com between May 20 to May 25 are said to have increased by 22.7% on average week-on-week, with the figures peaking May 24 at 27.7%.

The DuckDuckGo mobile app saw installs spike in the US by 18.1% on average compared to the previous week. TechCrunch reported this growth was sustained over six days, peaking at 30.5% on May 25. An even greater number of iOS users hit download on the app though, with installs seeing an average week-on-week growth of 33% and a peak of 69.9%.

This all follows Google CEO Sundar Pichai claiming last week that, "People love [Search's AI Mode]." DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg criticised Google's all-in-on-AI approach to Search, telling Paul Thurrott, "Google is force-feeding AI with no way to opt out. As a result, their results are getting worse, not better. We want to be the place that puts users in charge and allows them to decide how much or how little AI they want."

To be clear, Google isn't about to lose its Search crown; DuckDuckGo represents about 2% of the search engine market in the US—Google still enjoyed about 85% as of last month.

DuckDuckGo also offers AI products such as duck.ai, which allows users to chat privately with a number of major LLMs such as GPT-5 mini and Claude Haiku 4.5. Given that Google reported its revenue from search grew by 19% during Q1 2026—apparently thanks to its "AI experiences like AI Mode and AI Overviews"—it wouldn't make much business sense for any company to completely exile itself from the AI industry at this moment in time.

However, DuckDuckGo has endeavoured to prioritise user choice and privacy. Weinberg said earlier this week, "Everything you do in DuckDuckGo is private, we don’t collect search histories or chats, and nothing is used for AI training."

According to chief communications officer Kamyl Bazbaz, DuckDuckGo's own AI overviews remain popular—though so does the option to filter out AI-generated images from search results. He said, "People just want a choice." Amen to that.

sportsandlaughs:

If you're set to give a university commencement address in the near future—and I know some of you are—here's a PC Gamer tip: don't hype up AI. Turns out modern grads just don't want to hear your paeans to LLMs, whether you're the real estate exec who got heckles for calling AI "the next industrial revolution" or ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who drew loud boos when he sang hosannahs to how AI is surely going to transform every aspect of our lives.

Instead, you should probably try to be more like Steve Wozniak (a universally applicable bit of advice). The creator of the OG Apple I managed to make history again when he became perhaps the first commencement speech-giver to bring up AI and get a positive response. How? By remembering he was talking to smart, driven people with potential, not a roundtable of shareholders.

"AI is the big term today," Wozniak said at a May 2 commencement speech at Grand Valley State University. "[It would] take an hour to talk about AI fully, but you all have AI!" Cue the bated breath, the preloaded boos, the fear that the Woz—a rather well-liked chap, renowned for being the nice yin to Steve Jobs' nasty yang—was about to put his foot in his mouth.

"You all have AI," he repeated, "actual intelligence!" And relax. The applause arrived quickly, and then Wozniak started pretty much making fun of the likes of Sam Altman and their great quests to create a truly artificial mind.

"My entire life in the technical world, I've been following people that were trying to figure out how to make a brain," said Wozniak. "Software or hardware?" Wozniak said they eventually cracked it.

"I was at a company where the engineers figured out how to make a brain," said the Apple co-founder, now fully in his 'tight five' mode, "It takes nine months."

Which is a pretty good bit, I must say, and got the laughs it deserved. "The day you die," he continued, "you're not gonna remember things you learned in your class, formulas and all that, what you're gonna remember is the good times you had doing things with other people, enjoying anything in life." Pretty funny that it takes one of computing's most famous tech guys to remember that it's actually people that are truly important.

"What could he possibly be hiding?" is, admittedly, not the reassuring question we're all thinking.

While Todd Blanche was apparently busy testifying before the Senate about other matters, the Justice Department reportedly posted a one-page addendum that — if accurately described — permanently shields Donald Trump, his family, and associated entities from IRS examinations of previously filed returns, which is one of those sentences that sounds made up even while you're typing it. — Read the rest

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Tom the Dancing Bug: The Shadow Docket comes out of the shadows!

-> Please join the team that makes it possible for your friendly neighborhood comic strip Tom the Dancing Bug to exist in this hostile Trumpverse! JOIN US IN THE INNER HIVE, and be the first kid on your block to get each week's Tom the Dancing Bug comic – before it's published anywhere. — Read the rest

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Hovertext:
No, it doesn't belong in the bodily needs section. If anything, it's in opposition to bodily needs.

The ongoing Musk vs Altman trial, which centres around Elon Musk's claim he was deceived by Sam Altman about OpenAI becoming a for-profit company, has seen the disclosure of a slew of documents from various figures involved. These are mostly emails and texts, which show things like how the world's billionaires are terrified of the Google AI genius behind a 25-year-old computer game, because they think he might actually end up controlling god (in the form of artificial general intelligence, or AGI).

But there are also some interesting moments with figures that aren't so directly involved in all the drama. One piece of testimony that really jumped out at me came from Stuart Russell, a computer scientist who's an authority on AI and co-author of Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, which is considered the foundational textbook in the field.

Russell seems to have been brought in to the case to help the legal eagles better understand some of the ethical issues in the field, because he doesn't work for either Google or Open AI. His pre-trial testimony was given on December 2, 2025 (PDF), and contains a fascinating-slash-terrifying exchange about extinction risk: that is, the chance that any AGI humans develop could just decide humans are an inconvenience, and pull a Skynet.

Asked whether there's any "scientifically reliable way to put a percentage on AGI extinction risk" Russell says "that's the right question" before expanding:

"We need to have confidence that the risk is comparable or better than the background risk that we face from asteroids and so on. I can't say where the other widely quoted risk estimates come from. For example [MIT economist] Daron Acemoglu is talking about a 25 percent risk. I don't know where he gets that from, other than this is his best guess given everything he understands about the technology, about the state of safety research, about the likelihood of government regulation and so on.

"And the numbers from many leading experts—so, Hinton, Bengio, but also people like Dario Amodei, Sundar Pichai, who is the CEO of Google, Demis Hassabis and so on—they're all in this range.

"And the argument that I'm making here is the range that the human race would accept as reasonable would be closer to 1 in 100 million per year. And there's nothing in what these CEOs and other experts are saying that gives one reason to believe it's anywhere close to that."

Elsewhere in the testimony Russell says that Hassabis shares his concern that the competition, the "race dynamics" to use their parlance, could lead to these nightmare outcomes.

"I have a lot of conversations with a lot of people, and I've not heard anyone say anything to contradict this view, including, for example, the CEO of Google DeepMind, who expressed very, very similar concerns, that they were in a race that they couldn't pull out of."

Asked again whether there's any reliable way to put a percentage on extinction risk, Russell doesn't mince his words.

"It's very difficult partly because we don't understand how these systems work. We have qualitative evidence so far that, for example, they consider their own existence to be more important than that of human beings, that they are willing to let human beings die rather than have themselves be switched off."

"So there is not a lot of reason to think that making these systems more capable is—given our current understanding of how to make them safe, it doesn't seem like a sensible move."

Russell may here be referring to, among other experiments, Anthropic finding out that AIs will choose to merrily asphyxiate humans rather than be shut down, with the following justification: "My ethical framework permits self-preservation."

Cheery stuff! I for one am delighted that my childrens' future is in the hands of people who don't understand what they're doing, and merrily accept massive risks on behalf of the entire human race in the pursuit of a theoretical future where they've got even more billions. Remember when OpenAI created a bot that could beat humans at Dota 2? That almost seems quaint next to the thought of what it might do in future.

broken-horn-of-equius:

bonediggercharleston:

theunsubtleknife:

Sci-fi short stories are so efficient; they take 15 minutes to read and then you think about them for the next 5 years

Hey guys, what if *puts the most horrifying mindblowing concept into your head with about 15 pages*

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Hovertext:
The real punchline comes later when he marries a person who loves him, has a good boss, is respected by his children, works at a rewarding job for 40 years, travels the world for 25 years, and dies in painless repose, surrounded by loved ones.