Olivia Solon

Shortly after the first set of explosions, Iranians received bursts of notifications on their phones, not from the government advising caution, but from a prayer timing app called ‘BadeSaba Calendar’ which has been downloaded 5 million times from the Google Play Store. The messages arrived in quick succession over a period of 30 minutes, starting with the phrase ‘Help Has Arrived’ at 9:52 am Tehran time. No party has claimed responsibility for the hacks. Screenshots shared with WIRED Middle East show messages urging Iranian military personnel to surrender their weapons with the promise of amnesty. It also urged army personnel to join “the forces of liberation” and to “defend your brothers.”

Airborne leaflet propaganda in 2026: hacked push alerts from a prayer timing app

www.wired.me/story/hacked...

February, truly the asshole of months, is vanquished for another year.

OpenAI posted the terms of the deal. Reveals that it absolutely does allow for domestic surveillance. EO 12333 is how the NSA hides its domestic surveillance by capturing communications by tapping into lines *outside the US* even if it contains info from/on US persons.

openai.com/index/our-ag...

Sam Altman picked a hell of a day to basically urge the world to trust the morality and legal restraint of the Department of Defense

Unlikely Wins and Comped Spins: Inside Stake’s Empire Crypto casino Stake pays Drake and other stars to bet, spreading clips of big wins to impressionable gamblers. The numbers show unusual luck is at work.

NEW @bloomberg.com feature on Stake: the world's largest crypto casino. Our year-long piece dives into Stake employing superstar influencers such as Drake and Adin Ross to livestream gambling. By @cecianasta.bsky.social @oliviasolon.bsky.social and myself: www.bloomberg.com/features/202...

Unlikely Wins and Comped Spins: Inside Stake’s Empire Crypto casino Stake pays Drake and other stars to bet, spreading clips of big wins to impressionable gamblers. The numbers show unusual luck is at work.

Stake says influencers like Drake and Adin Ross don’t win more than the average gambler. We ran the numbers, and guess what :)

Here's our year-long data investigation into Stake and Kick's influencer empire, with @oliviasolon.bsky.social and @leonyin.bsky.social: www.bloomberg.com/features/202...

Epstein Paid Reputation Firms to Suppress Child Sex Offenses Online Jeffrey Epstein tapped online reputation management firms to bury negative coverage of his 2008 sex offense conviction and flood the internet with favorable content in a years-long effort to rehabilit...

There is a lot to find darkly comic in the Epstein files. What struck me in this @oliviasolon.bsky.social piece was the way he accesses the top intellectual echelons, pioneers in AI, physics. Yet spends so much time grubbing around with "SEO experts" and grifters. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Iran's shutdown is now 15 days and counting. Small amounts of service have been restored in recent days.
#DigitalBlackoutIran #IranRevoIution2026

State telecom TIC (A49666) re-established many of its lost connections with outside providers, such as GBI (AS200612) at 22:02 UTC on Jan-22.

It’s depressing to see women try to claw back control of their images by imploring a chatbot not to misuse their photos.

Posts like these are reminiscent of the copyright declarations you used to see on Facebook. Totally understandable but unlikely to have the desired effect.

So much interesting in this (and good work on @caseynewton.bsky.social documenting it). One thing to note though, Google's watermarking identified the image of the badge as created by its AI tool. Other image generators haven't bothered implementing anything similar, why? (Looking at you, Sora.)

Debunking the AI food delivery hoax that fooled Reddit A “whistleblower” tried to corroborate his viral post with AI-generated evidence. This is how I caught him. PLUS: Grok's image-generation crisis, and the rapture over Claude Opus 4.5

Great work from @caseynewton.bsky.social and an illuminating case study in how journalists authenticate allegations/sources in an age of generative AI

www.platformer.news/fake-uber-ea...

Nudify apps have been around for ages, but it's wild to see a mainstream platform like X effectively become a revenge porn machine, generating AND publishing non-consensual intimate images of women

For the first time in my career, I can’t tell people to trust what the CDC website says. And that is an incredibly sad and devastating place for this country to be.

aw. Jealous! Say hi to @tomasstatius.bsky.social

This thread chimes with my experience on so many fronts. Whether it's conspiracy theorists, freelancers pitching stories, or people applying for jobs it's so hard to filter based on writing quality. Weirdly I end up trusting the typo-strewn, clearly-dashed-out-by-a-human-in-a-hurry emails more now.

"Don't want no Samsung" Plus: Scroll down to see what might be the strangest new artwork in the capital and read more on our investigations into the capital's landlords.

The brutal reality of life as an Android owner in London: First you’re shocked as you’re mugged. Then you’re humiliated as the thief returns the device. www.londoncentric.media/p/london-pho...

Google, Meta Delay Red Sea Cables as Security Risks Rattle Plans Multiple subsea internet cables slated to run through the Red Sea are yet to complete as planned, as political tensions and heightened security threats have made the route more dangerous and complicat...

Read the article for free here: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Google, Meta Delay Red Sea Cables as Security Risks Rattle Plans Multiple subsea internet cables slated to run through the Red Sea are yet to complete as planned, as political tensions and heightened security threats have made the route more dangerous and complicat...

Houthi missile attacks on vessels in the Red Sea has created huge delays to several subsea cable projects, throttling the supply of internet capacity.

It's forcing companies like Meta and Google to rethink how they route internet traffic globally

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

The new poop emoji

AppLovin Axes Product Tied to Unwanted App Download Allegations AppLovin Corp. said it has shut down a product linked to user and short-seller allegations that apps were being downloaded to mobile phones without consent.

AppLovin has shut down a product linked to user and short-seller allegations that apps were being downloaded to mobile phones without consent.

The product, called Array, was offered to device-makers and carriers to promote or preload apps on phones.

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

AppLovin Has Been Probed By SEC Over Data-Collection Practices The Securities and Exchange Commission has been probing the data-collection practices of the mobile advertising tech company AppLovin Corp., according to people familiar with the matter. The company’s...

The SEC has been probing AppLovin over its data-collection practices, according to people familiar with the matter

My latest for @bloomberg.com

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Propping up AI data center providers keeps them buying Nvidia chips instead of going bust and flooding the market with second hand Nvidia chips, which is not good for sales of new Nvidia chips.

AI infrastructure ouroboros:

Microsoft funds OpenAI, which pays for Microsoft & other cloud/data center companies for compute, and those cloud companies buy Nvidia GPUs, and Nvidia props those companies up with investment and guarantees to buy unused compute capacity.

Evolution Games Ran in Banned Markets, Execs Say in Secret Tapes Current and former executives at Stockholm-based online gambling company Evolution AB were secretly filmed describing how its casino games made their way illegally to countries such as Iran, Sudan and...

Gift link to read story here: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Evolution declined to comment on the statements made by current and former execs, and said it has "no interest" in serving sanctioned markets.

It also notes that the New Jersey gaming regulator previously closed an investigation into the allegations without taking any action

In another video, shot in 2021, another exec says Evolution has players in Syria and he is “sure that Assad’s family are playing. 100%

In one video, shot last year, Evolution’s former US commercial director says it “absolutely shocked me” when he joined the company and learned how it served customers in sanctioned and unregulated markets.

Black Cube also secretly recorded meetings with current and former Evolution executives in which they describe how the companies knowingly supplies its games to black markets, according to the filing.

This week, more evidence showing how Evolution games could be played from Iran as recently as May 2025 has been filed to the court by private intelligence firm Black Cube.