Democratizing Deepfakes Technology

Journalist and documentary filmmaker David Farrier (of Netflix’s Dark Tourist, and HBO’s Tickled) recently reported that off-the-shelf deepfakes technology is now available for as little as fifty cents per video.

Here are instructions on how you too can make deepfakes from any YouTube video for practically nothing. I invite you to try it out yourself and report back with your results. Everyone needs to see for themselves how easy this is, and how it works, and how freaking scary it can be if misused.

Be Very Afraid

As Farrier writes in his piece, “This won’t be fun for much longer.” In fact, it…

Millions of people believe in a weird new theory called the Quatria Conspiracy, and a new ebook on the topic is breaking all kinds of sales records.

The Quatria Conspiracy, which first gained a massive following on Reddit, posits that there is a huge cover-up happening of ancient ruins and technological artifacts that have been discovered melting out of the ice in Antarctica.

According to online sources, these shocking discoveries include massive celestial temples, free energy technologies, secret UFO tunnels, and a dimensional portal to an ancient lost land called Quatria. …

By now, we’ve all heard about deepfakes. What most people don’t know, is you can make them yourself now for next to nothing. Using a service called Deep Word. It is probably one of the scariest and most compelling technologies I’ve ever seen.

I think the (partial) answer to these technologies lies in talking about them candidly. Many people still think they are too expensive, time-consuming, or difficult to create. They are not. Any idiot can do it now, like me. Or you.

How to do it:

1. Head over to DeepWord.co …

I have for years kept up a friendship with a most interesting individual who I met in certain online circles over a decade ago, and to whom I will refer here as Mr. X for privacy reasons (or “X” for short). Though we had fallen out of touch for some time, X and I go way back. Which is why I was delighted when they contacted me out of the blue recently, sliding into my private home Mailbug inbox, even though I didn’t think I’d given them the number or appropriate access permissions.

“do you believe in quatria now”

That’s…

NFT Artist Spotlight

What’s a Chibson?

If you’ve ever gone to a guitar store and seen an incredible deal on a Gibson guitar, you’ve either never gone to a guitar store (cause Gibsons cost $$$), or you got taken in by a clever forgery. This phenomenon has been nicknamed “Chibson” guitars by the internet, based on their supposed bootleg manufacture in China. Countless web forums and YouTube videos offer tips and tricks on how you can differentiate a “real” Gibson guitar from a cheap Chibson knock-off, but the truth is a bit trickier!

This lengthy but insightful 2012 reply to a thread in ultimate-guitar.com …

Lost Books is an indie blockchain publisher specializing in NFT books. This essay explains how I published a regular book as an NFT.

WTF is NFT

You might have heard of NFTs, or non-understandable tokens, as most people probably know them. Without going into what they are too much (go search Google), just think of them as digital collectibles, or “assets” which can be owned and traded using cryptocurrencies, such as Ethereum (ETH).

I’m not going to spend this essay trying to prove whether or not they are a good thing. Audiences can make up their own minds about that (and in my…

As cryptoartists, we are all f***ing tired of shill threads. They’re exhausting & it’s rare they help you get the sales or recognition you want & deserve.

What if I told you, there’s another way?