Back in April, two New York artists caused quite a stir when they placed a bust of Edward Snowden atop a pillar on the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument at Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn with a plaque that read, “Hero.” The 100-pound bust of Snowden was quickly taken down, but now, thanks to a file on Thingiverse, Snowden fans with a 3D printer can print out an 8-inch replica of the bust for themselves.
Both the file and the original bust were created by artists Andrew Tider, Jeff Greenspan, and Doyle Trankina. The original goals of the bust were to spread awareness for Snowden’s actions, and to celebrate the whistleblower’s legacy. Since the bronze bust is no longer on display, the artists decided to open up the design to anyone who wants to have their very own version of it at home.
“It would be great if people put these in public spaces and Instagrammed them, or put photos on Twitter and Facebook to project them around the world,” Greenspan said speaking to Wired. “Anywhere it can get people thinking about surveillance, your rights and liberties, it would be wonderful.”
While it might take quite a bit of time to convince many Americans to embrace Snowden’s stance against the NSA, it’s almost certain that those who print the bust will do so to honor his actions and declare him a hero.
“We figured, not everyone needs to be so theatrical and dramatic and guerilla and borderline illegal to make a statement. Everyone can have their small way of keeping the ball up in the air,” said Greenspan.
Since the original bronze bust was first taken down, Greenspan and the other artists have recovered it from the NYPD and have been receiving support to find the Snowden bust a permanent home.
Google has been finding more ways to make Gemini a part of your daily routine, from putting together playlists to ordering groceries through your favorite apps. Now it's expanding those capabilities to more services, with Google Search joining in, too.
The company has announced a new Connected Apps Platform that makes it easier for developers to bring their services to both Gemini and Search. Alongside this, Google is adding new partners to its growing lineup, bringing more of the apps people already use into its AI ecosystem.
In the broad context of AI and its perceived harms, health and medical risks often pop up in the conversation. The warnings even come from frontier AI labs, such as ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and Anthropic, both of which have warned about misusing AI to cook up bioweapons. Security experts have already spotted a few such incidents in the wild, especially with the usage of AI models without any solid guardrails.
Well, it appears that the risks run deeper. As per an analysis appearing in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), AI bots are now being deployed to influence public policies governing health risks to citizens. In this instance, an attempt was made using AI bots to thwart regulations that aim to restrict the sale of disposable vapes, all while disguising the manipulation efforts as a response from real humans.
What if checking your drinking water for dangerous chemicals were as simple as plugging a tiny gadget into your smartphone? Researchers in Japan have developed a compact sensor that could make that possible, potentially bringing sophisticated water contamination testing out of expensive laboratories and into people's hands.
Scientists at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) have created a portable device capable of detecting extremely low concentrations of PFAS, commonly known as "forever chemicals." The findings were published in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics, which demonstrate how an inexpensive sensor and a smartphone could make identifying potentially harmful chemicals in water a lot easier.