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AI fuels more than half of cybercrime in Africa as scams surge – Interpol

https://www.africanews.com/2026/08/04/ai-fuels-more-than-half-of-cybercrime-in-africa-as-digital-...
92•bookofjoe•1h ago•45 comments

Gwern reties from fulltime writing to launch Guardian Angel Inc

https://twitter.com/i/status/2084739205071343837
63•mattsterett•2h ago•23 comments

Mistral's Shieldstral: 3B open-weights model for multimodal moderation

https://mistral.ai/news/shieldstral/
278•riadsila•6h ago•69 comments

DuckDB – Data power tools for your laptop, now in Clojure (2023)

https://techascent.com/blog/just-ducking-around.html
19•sourdecor•1h ago•0 comments

libexpat now funded by the City of Munich for up to 6 months

https://blog.hartwork.org/posts/libexpat-city-of-munich-open-source-sabbatical/
10•spyc•16m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Simple algorithm and color space to generate diverse skin tones

https://toneyalexander.github.io/inclusive-color-space/
442•automatoney•8h ago•87 comments

In Memory of My Wife, Elise Cawley, with Thanks for 36 Wonderful Years

https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2026/08/in-memory-of-my-wife-elise-cawley-1961-2026-with-than...
741•jdcampolargo•4h ago•43 comments

We finally learned to center a div, then browsers added sidebars

https://seg6.space/posts/center-div/
13•seg6•1h ago•8 comments

Waymo in Dallas

https://waymo.com/blog/shorts/dallas-open-to-all/
223•xnx•5h ago•273 comments

Video2NAND – Abusing video codecs for great computational power

https://sharedobject.blog/posts/vp8-combinatorial-logic/
18•firer•2d ago•2 comments

Third-party cyber evaluations involving OpenAI models

https://openai.com/index/third-party-cyber-evaluations-involving-openai-models/
25•glub•2h ago•2 comments

DeepSeek V4 Flash on a Single AMD MI300X

https://github.com/ryanzhou/deepseek-v4-flash-mi300x
361•zhoutong•13h ago•87 comments

Thanks FedEx, This Is Why We Keep Getting Phished (2024)

https://www.troyhunt.com/thanks-fedex-this-is-why-we-keep-getting-phished/
181•stymaar•2h ago•44 comments

Show HN: Maple-Preview – ternary 20B MoE running at 120 tok/s on a iPhone

https://deepgrove.ai/maple-preview
22•edwardbzhang•3h ago•5 comments

Oxide Computer raises $445M (SEC Form D)

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1795071/000179507126000002/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml
147•depr•3h ago•60 comments

Hop.earth – OpenStreetMap based car racing game

https://hop.earth/?server=lkhr7&route=fQ5nuu9R
74•faebi•5h ago•37 comments

Pi's Minimalism Is Its Advantage

https://earendil.com/posts/pi-autoresearch-and-databricks/
5•luispa•1h ago•0 comments

Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees

https://www.thisandthat.chat/blog/most-tech-revolutions-made-work-worse-for-employees/
82•jreynar•8h ago•45 comments

Truemetrics (YC S23) Is Hiring in Berlin – GTM Lead

https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/truemetrics/jobs/bIQQ7tP-founding-gtm-lead
1•truemetricsIngo•6h ago

Don't stop early: Case-folding source code at memory speed

https://github.blog/engineering/architecture-optimization/dont-stop-early-case-folding-source-cod...
41•sbulaev•4d ago•9 comments

Keyv and friends compromised in active Shai-Hulud supply chain attack

https://www.aikido.dev/blog/keyv-and-friends-compromised-in-npm-supply-chain-attack
226•cimi_•12h ago•114 comments

When AI Benchmarks Plateau: A Systematic Study of Benchmark Saturation

https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.16763
71•doppp•7h ago•78 comments

Why some people mow a lawn better than others

https://pudding.cool/2026/06/mow/
160•carlos-menezes•5h ago•142 comments

The physics of Docker build caching

https://www.blacksmith.sh/blog/the-physics-of-docker-build-caching
13•piobio•4d ago•2 comments

Launch HN: EdotEnv (YC S26) – Quant Trading RL Envs to Teach LLMs Research

https://edotenv.com/
26•Mzzzzz•4h ago•20 comments

Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

https://birchtree.me/blog/xbox-goes-down-you-cant-play-games-you-own-on-disc/
562•surprisetalk•11h ago•607 comments

Apple says more ex-employees may have taken confidential data to OpenAI

https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/04/apple-says-more-ex-employees-may-have-taken-confidential-data-t...
321•thewebguyd•7h ago•243 comments

There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

https://users.wpi.edu/~zrbutzke/Docs/BradburyStories(1).pdf
339•pmg101•1d ago•374 comments

The Warp Agent CLI

https://www.warp.dev/blog/introducing-the-warp-agent-cli-coding-agent
92•emschwartz•6h ago•55 comments

Harness engineering for self-improvement

https://lilianweng.github.io/posts/2026-07-04-harness/
296•tosh•17h ago•68 comments
Open in hackernews

AI fuels more than half of cybercrime in Africa as scams surge – Interpol

https://www.africanews.com/2026/08/04/ai-fuels-more-than-half-of-cybercrime-in-africa-as-digital-scams-surge-interpol/
91•bookofjoe•1h ago
https://www.interpol.int/Media/Documents/Publications/Cyberc...

Comments

restlessforge•1h ago
I'm surprised it's only half

There's a joke about certain princes here but I just feel bad for the people getting scammed since I know firsthand how realistic these things can seem

usernametaken29•1h ago
Coincidentally it’s also the biggest scam in the west. Wait till the IPO and the inevitable 80% stock drop of OpenAI ….
spiderfarmer•47m ago
If someone who is as unpopular as Elon the cringelord Musk can convince the markets that Tesla is worth its current stock price, I doubt the AI bubble will burst.
asdfman123•13m ago
He can keep the scam going for a long time but not forever.
slig•29m ago
Do you plan to bet on this by buying PUTs? Should be easy money, right? /s
amazingamazing•27m ago
OpenAI isn’t public so… /s
ecshafer•24m ago
Tesla is imo overvalued and has been for a long time. Its bankrupted a lot of pretty savvy investors in the last 10 years trying to short them because its obviously over valued. Market irrationality vs solvency and all of that.
thenewnewguy•12m ago
While I agree with you in general, usernametaken29 made a specific prediction about OpenAI's IPO which is an event that will very likely happen in the next year or so.

That said, OpenAI isn't public, so you can't directly short it easily. I guess you could short Microsoft but I don't know if that gives you enough exposure to truly be worth it, even if you do genuinely believe what OOP claims.

cineticdaffodil•1h ago
[flagged]
nkrisc•41m ago
Whatever country you live in, I guarantee you have homegrown criminals from your culture too.
tomxor•40m ago
> You know about the values of a culture, if they call your old parents to rip them off.

Large groups of people in a poor country steal from rich countries, and your explanation is a morally corrupt culture? not the obviously extremely poor prospects of it's citizens?

> They have none, or worse they can talk themselves into this "Robin Hood" psychosis, where stealing the pension from the elderly is just fine, because they are part of the upper crust of the world.

You're describing a cartoon character. Most of these people are trying to survive, not make some kind of twisted moral stand. Please try to recognise the privilege your place of birth affords you and how much of a global minority you are in. Incentives are everything here.

tomhow•38m ago
We've banned this account. This is not what HN is for and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
simonw•1h ago
Here's the report this story is about: https://www.interpol.int/Media/Documents/Publications/Cyberc... (PDF)

Page 24 is where the AI stuff starts being described in detail.

bobajeff•54m ago
>Access to this site was denied for security reasons. Please contact your network or system administrator

Is what I see. Which makes sense I guess. Maybe just tell me how you got to the page?

gruez•46m ago
Works for me with VPN enabled. Might just be your IP is blocked.
giancarlostoro•43m ago
Dunno first time I have ever been on that domain, I think the direct link to the PDF gets you blacklisted, I can navigate the rest of the site just fine.

The PDF is linked here, which you can get to this article from the front page:

https://www.interpol.int/News-and-Events/News/2026/INTERPOL-...

bobajeff•23m ago
Thanks, That worked.
merelydev•1h ago
The main fuel is the internet , followed by mobile phones and social media.

AI definitely makes the scams more believable, a Nigerian Prince can now easily forge documents.

But at the same time AI is a double edged sword, it can be used for both offence and defense.

LocalH•57m ago
The main fuel is the "need" to have browsers that can execute code, coupled with the ability to transfer money via the internet. JavaScript was a mistake, e-commerce was a mistake, and so is everything else that came after.

Let's ask Vint Cerf whether the web was meant to run logic, or just be a document format. I bet no matter what he answers, the world would be like the GIF pronunciation "I don't care if the original creator said it's pronounced like giraffe, I'm gonna say it like gift because I KnOw BeTtEr"

Internet 3 when (because I know that academia does already have an "Internet 2", although I bet due to Internet 1 security issues, Internet 2 is already compromised too)

cyberax•51m ago
The first Nigerian Prince scams started over email.
stingraycharles•46m ago
> JavaScript was a mistake, e-commerce was a mistake, and so is everything else that came after.

That’s a really extreme take that lacks any nuance.

Might as well blame the OS as well for allowing any custom code to be executed.

cyanydeez•44m ago
the point though of a proper scam is to filter out the believables and find the guillibles.

You don't exactly want convincing evidence; you want a good story.

bad_haircut72•55m ago
Crypto and now AI, every new tech we make these days it seems the main utility is just to enable criminals
ryoshu•41m ago
In the old days porn peddlers were the pioneers of digital.
TacticalCoder•39m ago
> Crypto and now AI, every new tech we make these days it seems the main utility is just to enable criminals ...

It's nearly as if there was a lesson here about some individuals in the human race?

What was that yet about psychos? That 1% of all humans, no matter the socio-economic class, no matter the parents, are just full-on psychopaths.

The question is: what do we do, as a society, about those who only want to harm others?

knicholes•36m ago
Sounds simple to me. Remove them from society.
rvz•54m ago
So not only AI is consuming more energy than than the entire bitcoin network is [0], it is also accounts for more than half of cybercrimes and digital scams in Africa.

I don't think you can even dispute this. AI will be the one to cause the next financial crisis.

[0] https://www.cell.com/joule/abstract/S2542-4351(25)00142-4

gruez•42m ago
>AI will be the one to cause the next financial crisis.

So what's the implication here? It sounds like you want AI canceled or curtailed, and if you apply the same logic to the internet in the mid 90s, you would have correctly called out the dotcom bubble. Does that we mean we should have also canceled the internet?

miyoji•22m ago
> Does that we mean we should have also canceled the internet?

In retrospect, I think the world would be a much better place if we'd just turned it off in 1998.

boelboel•13m ago
Late 90s/early 00s internet would've probably been the sweet spot for utility while causing little harm. Sadly we can't just freeze the internet in time.
jackvalentine•21m ago
I don't think it's necessary to have wants or plans in place when you point out this kind of thing.

You should also be careful about taking imagined positions to the extreme ..."Does that we mean we should have also canceled the internet?"

karim79•36m ago
Here's an amazing study from Microsoft which I recalled from back in the day (PDF):

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/...

motbus3•25m ago
Criminals are bad, evil, jail etc etc. I agree. But while the core problem that creates this environment is not solved, nothing will fix it. Not even if you bomb the hell out of it.

Ethics, morals and whatever people call only exists if economy is stable. If you let this sort of opportunistic environment exist there will be people to work in it

AIorNot•22m ago
Same for global migrants issues..as long as people in dirt poor/war torn/unstable countries can watch tik toks of fat people dancing and crying about first world problems while they starve on the streets or deal with gangs and infrastructure issues we will have migrant problem.. we live in a hyperconnected world these days

Viewing the world as haves and have nots and building giant Walls and moats and hyper-capitalism alone will never solve this..

ElProlactin•18m ago
> Ethics, morals and whatever people call only exists if economy is stable.

What is a "stable" economy? The US has the world's largest GDP, the highest nominal GDP per capita of any nation with a population over 10 million, the highest amount of investable and liquid private assets of any country in the world, more than a third of the world's millionaires, etc.

And yet I think you'd have a hard time convincing most people that the US is a bastion of ethics and morals.

baby•25m ago
SWIM got scammed on poshmark a few days ago, as they were selling something they received an email from ethiopia and didn’t pay too much attention and lost $3k
navs•16m ago
Having run a small social media SaaS for a while, the amount of AI bots (and I say AI bots because the comments and direct messages sent by them definitely read like AI), was staggering.

I'm thankful for Cloudflare and I don't think I would have had the resources to deal with it any other way.

IncreasePosts•15m ago
It's great to know that AI can be used for scams. Meanwhile, here I am paying for AI, and it accusing me of being either a pedophile or child abuser by asking it to change an image of my six-year-old into a "spy kid" like he requested.
Razengan•7m ago
Why not use AI to detect and avoid scams?

As if people weren't scamming before AI, with the billions of dollars seized from the Chinese scam dungeons in Cambodia, where they had kidnapped people and tied them to computers (including a few deaths, and another wave of arrests just recently)

Scammers gonna scam. At least if they can use AI for it then maybe they'll kidnap fewer people

j-conn
•
11m ago
So deepfakes and “AI was also used to generate synthetic identities that bypassed KYC checks, craft hyper-personalized phishing lures tailored to individual victims, and produce AI-driven malware capable of evading signature-based detection.”

Our most vulnerable must be getting absolutely hammered by scams. Is anyone working on protecting e.g. elderly people from social engineering? I feel like banks should be proactively suggesting people have a second family member or fiduciary sign off on risky transactions like wiring money to new accounts or pulling out a ton of cash.

I was recently on the phone with a very articulate member of my banks fraud department, or at least I believed they were up until they asked for my two factor code to reset my account. They had visibility into some past legitimate wire transfers which they asked me about along with a fictitious fraudulent one that they “blocked“, and when I pushed back against giving them my two factor code, they had a whole script prepared about needing to freeze my account until I went to a branch with four forms of identification (or just give us the two factor code and avoid the hassle). An acquaintance wired their down payment to a scammer after the real estate firms email system was compromised and scammer inserted their own wire instructions.

Not to mention reports of mythos directly hacking into banking systems. Scary times.

asdfman123•12m ago
It's been used for defense for a long time. AI is why spam filters started actually working in the 2000s.