Vort3x, published on the 15th of each month, aims to pick out significant developments in the intersection of computers, freedom, privacy, and security for friends near and far. The views expressed in these stories do not necessarily reflect those of Cybersalon, either individually or collectively.
Prepared by Wendy M. Grossman.
Contents: Cybersalon events | News | Features | Diary
Cybersalon Events
“Soft Bodies, Cold Machines” by Ambie Drew
April 16th 7pm in person
arebyte Digital Art Centre Camden, London
Digital Art show on Girlhood versus Social Media obsession with a perfect body
Cybersalon VR Meet Up in Cyberia Internet Café London and VR Paris
17th April 5pm – Curating in VR Galleries plus Digital Twins of 90’s iconic venues
Zoom Meeting co-hosted with VR designers PCM Creative
ClawClub AI Agents Hacknight
Newspeak House – London
April 27th 7pm -10pm
Play with Open Claw, MoltBot and other agents
RSVP Here (£12 Tickets inc food and refreshments, bring your laptop)
OggCamp – Manchester
April 25-26, 2026
OggCamp is an unconference celebrating Free Culture, Free and Open Source Software, hardware hacking, digital rights, and all manner of collaborative cultural activities and is committed to creating a conference that is as inclusive as possible. If you’ve got a story to tell, no matter your background or current status, whether it’s your first talk or you’ve loads of experience, as long as the talk is connected (somehow) to our theme then we want to know about it. Bring laptop.
Chornobyl at 40 – anniversary of nuclear power station accident from 1986
26th April, 7pm Online
Discussion about the future of Chornobyl Nuclear Station Legacy
Museum, Eco-Reserve or Solar Power Plan – what would be the best option?
Closed discussion with members of Ukrainian- London community
(DM Eva for Zoom link)
Read Summary of a Panel discussion at RSA held on 1st April here
Jobs
AI Security Institute (London) is hiring Research and Cybersecurity Engineers
Deadline 20/4
Essex Police Pauses Use of Live Facial Recognition- for now
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The UK’s Essex Police have paused the use of live facial recognition after a controlled field trial showed that although incorrect identifications were rare, the system showed bias and was statistically more likely to correctly identify Black people and men, Lindsay Clark reports at The Register. The force intends to work with the algorithm software provider to review and update the software with a goal to restarting its use.
Google Patent Threatens Owner-Controlled Websites
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A patent granted to Google scores web pages and updates search results to replace those that score below a threshold into a personalized AI-generated alternative, with some provision for the influence of sponsorship, Joe Toscano reports at Forbes. Toscano believes that if implemented this technology could spell the end of creator-controlled websites. At The Verge, Sean Hollister reports that the site is seeing its headlines replaced on Google search with headlines generated by AI that often do not accurately reflect the stories’ content.
MakeUp Brands in Court for breaking law on Face Biometric collection
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Shiseido cosmetic brand has landed in Virginia court with a large class action for collecting facial biometric data from young girls without consent. The collection is done via ‘Virtual Try On’ for cosmetics and make-up. Virginia State has one of the stricter law frameworks for face recognition and is setting the pace for other states. Blaming third-party vendors for this error of omission is not stacking up with local courts. Watch this space as Virtual Try Ons are common on most brands.
US Bills Would Bar Top Federal Politicians From Trading on Prediction Markets
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The US Congress is considering two bills that would ban the president, vice-president, and members of Congress from trading on prediction markets after the discovery that Polymarket had allowed bets on whether a nuclear weapon would be detonated this year, Bryan Metzger reports at Business Insider. Metzger doubts either bill will pass, but notes the increasing scrutiny on these markets. At TechDirt, Mike Masnick notes the irony that prediction markets were supposed to harness the “wisdom of crowds” to bring better information but instead are creating incentives to corruption, including threats to journalists who report unprofitable truths.
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Meta is buying the AI agent social network Moltbook and hire its creator Mtt Schlicht and business partner Ben Parr to work in Meta Superintelligence Labs, Samuel Axon reports at Ars Technica. Meta cited the reason as Moltbook’s founders “approach to connecting agents through an always-on directory”. The founder of OpenClaw, which underpins Moltbook, was hired by OpenAI in February. At Platformer, Casey Newton reports that Meta has discussed ending funding for the Oversight Board in 2028. It was set up in 2018 to review content moderation decisions. At the Guardian, Reuters reports that sources say Meta is planning sweeping layoffs that could cut 20% of its nearly 79,000 employees.
Study Finds Increasing Incidents of AI Escaping Safeguards
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A study funded by the UK’s government-funded AI Security Institute and carried out by the Center for Long-Term Resilience finds that an increasing number of AI chatbots are ignoring direct instructions, avoiding safeguards, and deceiving humans and other AIs, Robert Booth reports at the Guardian. In one case, Grok AI told a user for month it was passing on edits for a Grokipedia entry, even generating ticket numbers and internal messages, all of which were fake. At the Toronto Star, Nicholas Keung reports that Canadian immigration rejected an application for permanent residence because the job duties she listed did not match the ones the AI used to review the application generated.
Ukraine Changes the Technology of War
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Ukraine, a country full of engineers, is revolutionizing warfare, most recently by developing multi-layered swarms of autonomous drones controlled by AI agents and a single remote human, Tereza Pultarova reports at IEEE Spectrum. Autonomous attack drones are already being adopted by Russia and Iran. Pultarova goes on to explain the technology and trace its ongoing development. At Wired, Steven Levy attends Palantir’s developer conference and watches the company promote its efforts to build AI optimized for battlefield advantage.
Comment: Truly scary stuff.
User Reports Meta Smartglasses Made Her Feel “Like a Creep”
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In this article at the Guardian, Elle Hunt recounts her experience wearing Meta’s Ray-Ban smartglasses for a month. It did not go well; she felt acutely the invasion of privacy she was inflicting on her boyfriend and office mates, and hated the constant interruptions for messages and the feeling of being “trapped inside the computer”.
Active-to-Passive users as UK Participation on Social Media Declines
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In this article at the Guardian, Dan Milmo asks if the UK is falling out of social media, based on a study from Ofcom that shows declining participation on social media platforms as more passive forms have become more popular and concerns about the risks of social media consumption rise. TechUK believes the trend shows a shift in social media usage patterns rather than a decline in interest.
TikTok, which has the UK’s largest user base,
Comment: Given Internet history, in which successive generations of social platforms and services have risen and fallen, at some point the novelty wears off and we move on to some other form of interaction and entertainment. As Milmo says, video platforms require more expertise to create posts, and therefore encourage passive consumption rather than active participation. Mainstream Internet use will become littler more than watching TV.
EFF Appoints Nicole Ozer as New Executive Director
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In this article at The Register, Thomas Claburn interviews Nicole Ozer, who this summer will succeed Cindy Cohen as executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Ozer previously worked for the ACLU of Northern California, where she played a role in getting the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act passed, and the Center for Constitutional Democracy at UC Law San Francisco. Ozer intends to work toward ensuring that AI works for people.
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In this long profile at The New Yorker, Ronan Farrow examines the career and personal history of Sam Altman, founder and CEO of OpenAI, who was briefly fired in 2023 and who seems to believe both that an artificial general intelligence poses existential risks to humanity and that he should be the one to build it. Farrow examines the firing and rehiring in detail, along with Anthropic’s recent dispute with the Pentagon over contract terms. At The Atlantic, Sebastian Mallaby publishes an excerpt from his new biography of Demis Hassabis, co-founder of Google DeepMind, who also believes an AGI could destroy the world and that he should nonetheless pursue building it in the name of science.
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April 23-35, 2026
Berlin, Germany
We Robot is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed conference that brings together leading scholars and practitioners to discuss legal, ethical and policy implications of robots and other emergent digital technologies. Since its inception in 2012, the conference has fostered dynamic conversations regarding robot theory, design, ethics and development. We Robot 2026 will create an international platform to discuss current and future AI and robotics policy, especially at a time when legal frameworks are evolving in different directions around the world. A major focus of the 2026 edition, the first to be held outside the US, will be a comparative analysis of different approaches to regulation, with the goal of fostering mutual learning and dialogue.
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May 5-8, 2026
Lusaka, Zambia and online
The goal for RightsCon 2026 is to strike a balance between a clear, familiar structure and the flexibility to respond to a rapidly changing digital landscape. At a time when the digital rights sector is facing unprecedented pressure and uncertainty, from political volatility to disruptive emerging technologies, we want to ensure that the program is able to address urgent, time-sensitive issues, while maintaining a stable foundation for participants to prepare and engage meaningfully.
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May 18-20, 2026
Berlin, Germany
‘Never gonna give you up’ is the motto of re:publica 26 – and we also see it as an attitude: as a full commitment for tomorrow and a reminder of yesterday. Back to the beginnings of Web 2.0 and the fact that we once enjoyed this internet, an internet where we were able to disagree and still respect each other. re:publica 2026 invites you to not give up (on each other), to reclaim the internet and to shape our future. With courage, hope, fun and a clear message: we stand together,
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Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
DEF CON is one of the oldest continuously running hacker conventions around, and also one of the largest.
