The 404 Media Podcast

Ursa Ag is an Alberta, Canada-based company that is selling a repairable, no tech tractor. It’s not often we have companies on this podcast, but listeners of the show will know we have been covering the right to repair movement for years. One of the things I’ve written about most is the frustration that farmers feel with agriculture giant John Deere, which has made their tractors very difficult to repair by loading it up with tech, lobbying against right to repair legislation, and making parts and diagnostic tools and repair guides hard to access. When we write about right to repair, people often say - why don’t people just vote with their dollars and buy something else? Well, all the major tractor companies have more or less done the same thing Deere has done - add software locks, sensors, and digital rights management to their tractors. There wasn’t any other alternative.

Doug Wilson of Ursa Ag has built an alternative. Ursa Ag is selling a repairable dumb tractor specifically to provide an alternative in the market. We spoke with Doug about how one creates a tractor company, how it all works, and what the response has been.

00:00 Doug Wilson Introduction
00:02:05 Why IRSA Ag Exists
00:04:24 Modern Tractors & Repair Locks
00:07:40 Demand for Older Tractors
00:08:46 The $800K Tractor Story
00:09:37 Building a Repairable Tractor
00:12:56 Precision Ag vs Simplicity
00:20:45 Starting a Tractor Company
00:22:52 AI & Everyday Farm Work
00:27:21 Viral Response & Demand
00:28:52 Expansion Plans
00:31:56 Why Farmers Want Simpler Machines
00:34:11 Farm Consolidation
00:35:48 Tech Overload Beyond Farming
00:36:57 What’s Next

YouTube Version: https://youtu.be/wYM4Ho-Ma9w
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We start this week with Sam’s deeply reported story on how deepfakes rocked a high school, and how those kids were failed at each step. After the break, Joseph tells us about BusPatrol, a company that plans to turn school buses into roaming surveillance vehicles. In the subscribers-only section, Jason explains why a councilmember crashed out over Flock.

LA Made x 404 Media Presents: How AI is Threatening the Future of Media

How Deepfakes Tore a High School Apart

‘BusPatrol’ Put AI Cameras in Tens of Thousands of School Buses. Now They Want to Give Cops Access

After Town Bans Flock, Councilmember Crashes Out, Proposes Internet and Phone Ban

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This week Joseph speaks to Zack Whittaker, an editor at TechCrunch. Zack has been leading coverage into the spouseware or stalkerware industry. This is malware sold to ordinary people, which they then often install on their girlfriend’s or someone else’s phone. Zack talks about the crazy scope of this problem.

Behind the stalkerware network spilling the private phone data of hundreds of thousands

Spyzie stalkerware is spying on thousands of Android and iPhone users

Stalkerware tag on TechCrunch

This Week In Security Newsletter

YouTube Version: https://youtu.be/BLb46310iLs

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We start this week with Sam telling us all about the commencement speeches where speakers have been praising AI, including former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. That did not go down well! After the break, Jason tells us how he was offered the chance to buy a bunch of images of poop to train AI (really). In the subscribers-only section, Joseph explains how researchers planned to stick cameras onto preschool teachers to train AI.

Students Boo Commencement Speaker After She Calls AI the ‘Next Industrial Revolution’

Internet of Shit: AI Poop Analysis App Offered to Sell Me Database of Its Users' Poops

Researchers Wanted Preschool Teachers to Wear Cameras to Train AI

YouTube Version: https://youtu.be/VE0EtqQLcgY

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This week, I’m delighted to be joined by Britt Paris. Britt is a critical informatics scholar and Associate Professor of Library and Information Science at Rutgers University’s School of Communication & Information. Her work focuses on Internet infrastructure, artificial intelligence-generated information objects, digital labor, civic data, and social epistemology. She’s also a fellow with AI Now. Her book Radical Infrastructure: Imagining the Internet from the Ground Up just came out in February. 

Britt tells us about how her great-great-great uncle started a telecommunications cooperative in rural Missouri before the city even had connection, how examples like NEMR show us an alternative to monopolies that provide internet access and let people decide how they want their internet to work for them, and what’s giving her hope as she helps bargain for educators’ rights at Rutgers. 

Radical Infrastructure: Imagining the Internet from the Ground Up

The American Association of University Professors on AI

University Professors Disturbed to Find Their Lectures Chopped Up and Turned Into AI Slop

Community Votes to Deny Water to Nuclear Weapons Data Center

YouTube Version: https://youtu.be/5twr0EUo2YE

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