Technology

Warning for gore and zombies.

A video showing how both the tech sector in general but more specifically the video game sector have no new ideas and try to repackage old ideas and get massive investment to sell 'innovated' ideas and products to people even though they're no better than the original ideas they're aping and in a lot of ways worse.

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Semafor, a global news publication that launched in late 2022, originally focussed on publishing e-mail newsletters. The rise of the newsletter was another strategy for building loyal audiences without relying on social media: rather than try to get readers to visit your Web site, you deliver your content straight to their in-boxes. But over time Semafor’s site has become more important. “It actually felt like a slightly counterintuitive choice to say, ‘We’re going to invest in building a Web page,’ ” Ben Smith, the co-founder of Semafor, told me. Smith was the long-running editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News, a publication built to distribute content through social media. “We were convinced that home pages were dead. In fact, they were just resting,” he said. (The New Yorker launched a redesigned home page in late 2023, having reached a similar conclusion.)

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"Everyone will go hungry,” one taxi driver said of Wuhan drivers competing against robotaxis from Apollo Go, a subsidiary of Chinese technology giant Baidu.

Ride-hailing and taxi drivers are among the first workers globally to face the threat of job loss from artificial intelligence as thousands of robotaxis hit Chinese streets, economists and industry experts said.

Self-driving technology remains experimental, but China has moved aggressively to green-light trials compared with the U.S, which is quick to launch investigations and suspend approvals after accidents.

Just a few weeks ago, the robotaxi revolution was causing public concerns in China with the issue blowing up on social media after an Apollo Go vehicle ran into a pedestrian in Wuhan. Footage of the incident spread online has sparked a wide debate about the issues created by robotaxis — especially the threat the technology poses to ride-hailing and taxi drivers.

Authorities in Wuhan have felt the need back then to respond to the “rumors” about problems caused by robotaxis. The city’s transportation bureau told domestic media that the local taxi industry is “relatively stable” and that Apollo Go only operates 400 robotaxis in the city, rather than 1,000 as many have claimed online.

Despite the safety concerns, fleets proliferate in China as authorities approve testing to support economic goals. Last year, President Xi Jinping called for “new productive forces,” setting off regional competition.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/18985984

Palantir, the company named for the dangerous seeing-stones that tended to mislead their users, has announced a partnership with Microsoft to deliver services for classified networks in US defense and intelligence agencies.

“This is a first-of-its-kind, integrated suite of technology that will allow critical national security missions to operationalize Microsoft’s best-in-class large language models (LLMs) via Azure OpenAI Service within Palantir’s AI Platforms (AIP) in Microsoft’s government and classified cloud environments,” the announcement says.

Palantir is a data-analysis company that sucks down huge amounts of personal data to assist governments and companies with surveillance. It is somewhat unclear from the text of the announcement what services Palantir and Microsoft will offer. What we do know is that Microsoft’s Azure cloud services will integrate Palantir products. Previously, Azure incorporated OpenAI’s Chat-GPT4 into a “top secret” version of its software.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/1814468

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Here is the stuy: The CCP’s Digital Charm Offensive

TikTok Stacking Algorithms in Chinese Government’s Favor, Study Claims

A study published on Thursday asserts TikTok’s algorithms promote Chinese Communist Party narratives and suppress content critical of those narratives, a claim the embattled company forcefully denied to KQED.

Titled “The CCP’s Digital Charm Offensive,” the study by the Rutgers University-based Network Contagion Research Institute argues that much of the pro-China content originates from state-linked entities. ByteDance, a Chinese technology company, owns TikTok.

Institute co-founder Joel Finkelstein wrote that includes media outlets and influencers, such as travel vloggers who post toothlessly about Chinese regions like Xinxiang, where the government has imprisoned more than 1 million Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim minorities.

“This manipulation is not just about content availability; it extends to psychological manipulation, particularly affecting Gen Z users,” Finkelstein wrote.

[...]

An NCRI analysis published in December looked at the volume of posts with certain hashtags — like “Uyghur,” “Xinjiang,” “Tibet” and “Tiananmen” — across TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. That report found **anomalies in TikTok content based on its alignment with the interests of the Chinese government. **For example, researchers wrote, hashtags about Tibet, Hong Kong protests and the Uyghur population appeared to be underrepresented on TikTok compared with Instagram.

uBlock Origin will soon stop functioning in Chrome as Google transitions to new browser extension rules.

Archived version

Researchers discovered a significant flaw which allowed them to take full control of the process of Windows Update. This also allowed the creation of Windows Downdate, a tool that can be used for downgrading updates and bypassing all verification steps including Integrity Verification and Trusted Installer Enforcement.

Additionally, after the downgrading of Critical OS components was achieved including DLLs, drivers and the NT kernel, the OS reported that it was fully updated and was unable to install future updates. Moreover, the recovery and scanning tools were not able to detect the issues in the Operating System.

Further escalating this attack, the researchers successfully downgraded Credential Guard’s Isolated User Mode process, Secure Kernel, and Hyper-V’s hypervisor to expose past privilege escalation vulnerabilities.

This concludes the overview with the final discovery of multiple ways to disable Windows virtualization-based Security (VBS), including Credential Guard and Hypervisor-Protected Code integrity (HVCI), even when enforced with UEFI locks.

The result of this attack resulted in a fully patched Windows machine that is vulnerable to thousands of previous patched vulnerabilities, changing fixed vulnerabilities to zero-days and still making the Operating System to think that it is “fully patched”.

Archived version

Here is the FCC proposal (pdf)

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has proposed new rules governing the use of AI-generated phone calls and texts. Part of the proposal centers on create a clear definition for AI-generated calls, with the rest focuses on consumer protection by making companies disclose when AI is being used in calls or texts.

"This provides consumers with an opportunity to identify and avoid those calls or texts that contain an enhanced risk of fraud and other scams," the FCC said. The agency is also looking ensure that legitimate uses of AI to assist people with disabilities to communicate remains protected.

Today's proposal is the latest action by the FCC to regulate how AI is used in robocalls and robotexts. The commission has already moved to place a ban on AI-generated voices in robocalls and has called on telecoms to crack down on the practice. Ahead of this year's November election, there has already been one notable use of AI robocalls attempting to spread misinformation to New Hampshire voters.

Archived version

Nearly 200 nations approved the United Nations Convention against Cybercrime on Thursday afternoon at a special committee meeting that capped months of complicated negotiations. The treaty expected to win General Assembly approval within months creates a framework for nations to cooperate against internet-related crimes including the illegal access and interception of computer information; electronic eavesdropping and online child sex abuse.

Many cited examples of probable downsides like the case against Rappler, an online Philippine news outlet that angered former President Rodrigo Duterte by reporting critically on his deadly crackdown on illegal drugs and alarming human rights record.

[...]

The deal allows two countries to cooperate on any serious crime with a tech link, said Nick Ashton-Hart, spokesman for the Cybersecurity Tech Accord, a group of 158 technology companies.

The United Nations label attached to the convention could provide cover for repressive countries that want to go after people who use the internet in ways they dislike, according to private companies, international civil rights groups and electronic freedom advocates.

I think it's a blank check for abuse because it has a very broad scope for domestic and cross-border spying and surveillance and a lack of robust checks and balances, said Katitza Rodrguez, the policy director for global privacy at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

[...]

The final result doesn't create more online safety and will be used to justify repression, Ashton-Hart said.

It's going to happen more now because now countries that want to do this can point to a UN treaty to justify cooperating on repression, he said.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/18923426

The Israeli army is using Amazon’s cloud service to store surveillance information on Gaza’s population, while procuring further AI tools from Google and Microsoft for military purposes, an investigation reveals.

alt-text for thumbnail in case it embeds: it is an image of a queer flag with an infinity symbol, on a drawn wooden background with the words "autistic people mistaken for AI" on it

Archived version

Microsoft embraces a very specific kind of spyware

Palantir, the company named for the dangerous seeing-stones that tended to mislead their users, has announced a partnership with Microsoft to deliver services for classified networks in US defense and intelligence agencies.

“This is a first-of-its-kind, integrated suite of technology that will allow critical national security missions to operationalize Microsoft’s best-in-class large language models (LLMs) via Azure OpenAI Service within Palantir’s AI Platforms (AIP) in Microsoft’s government and classified cloud environments,” the announcement says.

Palantir is a data-analysis company that sucks down huge amounts of personal data to assist governments and companies with surveillance. It is somewhat unclear from the text of the announcement what services Palantir and Microsoft will offer. What we do know is that Microsoft’s Azure cloud services will integrate Palantir products. Previously, Azure incorporated OpenAI’s Chat-GPT4 into a “top secret” version of its software.

Hello Bees!

I've got a couple of projects lined up that I want to use SBCs (single-board computers) for, and I admit that I have very little knowledge about how the different SBCs from different manufacturers compare to each other, so I figured I'd get y'all's help.

Project 1: Portable media server

This is something I've been wanting for a while in order to make long car trips that involve low or no internet access more enjoyable. The basic idea I have is an SBC with a 2-4 M.2 SSDs, wireless, and bluetooth, that I can load up with media and run Jellyfin on, and then connect to with whatever devices I have around (whether that's a tablet, a smart tv in a hotel, etc). I want to do this as an SBC versus on a laptop partially so I can power it off my car more easily, and potentially have the car play music from it while driving.

I'm leaning towards something like the CM3588 from FriendlyElec is where I'm leaning, so I could RAID 5 some 4TB M.2 SSDs and get ~11.5TB usable (which would match my current Jellyfin home server setup). I'd love to hear if thoughts on this for this kind of portable use case, and any recommendations on alternatives, or other routes to explore.

Project 2: Miniature AI Machine

I've enjoyed experimenting with LLMs and StableDiffusion, and I want to make something a little faster and more targeted towards AI without building a 5U GPU server (nor do I have a spare $14.5k for a barebones setup of one). I've seen SBCs targeting AI use via baked-in NPUs, or with NPU expansion slots, and I'm interested in what y'all think about this approach.

I've also seen people with rPi clusters ostensibly for ML applications, but never any real write-ups on how these perform compared to a regular (E-)ATX machine with a high-end GPU.

We’re happy to announce the launch of Raspberry Pi Pico 2, our second-generation microcontroller board, built on RP2350: a new high-performance, secure microcontroller designed here at Raspberry Pi.

With a higher core clock speed, twice the memory, more powerful Arm cores, new security features, and upgraded interfacing capabilities, Pico 2 delivers a significant performance and feature uplift, while retaining hardware and software compatibility with earlier members of the Pico series.

Pico 2 is on sale now, priced at $5.