Author Archives: Robin Edgar

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TV Museum Will Die in 48 Hours Unless Sony Retracts YouTube Copyright Strikes on 40 – 60 year old TV shows

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Rick Klein and his team have been preserving TV adverts, forgotten tapes, and decades-old TV programming for years. Now operating as a 501(c)(3) non-profit, the Museum of Classic Chicago Television has called YouTube home since 2007. However, copyright notices sent on behalf of Sony, protecting TV shows between 40 and 60 years old, could shut down the project in 48 hours.

[…]

After being reborn on YouTube as The Museum of Classic Chicago Television (MCCTv), the last sixteen years have been quite a ride. Over 80 million views later, MCCTv is a much-loved 501(c)(3) non-profit Illinois corporation but in just 48 hours, may simply cease to exist.

In a series of emails starting Friday and continuing over the weekend, Klein began by explaining his team’s predicament, one that TorrentFreak has heard time and again over the past few years. Acting on behalf of a copyright owner, in this case Sony, India-based anti-piracy company Markscan hit the MCCTv channel with a flurry of copyright claims. If these cannot be resolved, the entire project may disappear.

[…]

No matter whether takedowns are justified, unjustified (Markscan hit Sony’s own website with a DMCA takedown recently), or simply disputed, getting Markscan’s attention is a lottery at best, impossible at worst. In MCCTv’s short experience, nothing has changed.

“Our YouTube channel with 150k subscribers is in danger of being terminated by September 6th if I don’t find a way to resolve these copyright claims that Markscan made,” Klein told TorrentFreak on Friday.

“At this point, I don’t even care if they were issued under authorization by Sony or not – I just need to reach a live human being to try to resolve this without copyright strikes. I am willing to remove the material manually to get the strikes reversed.”

[…]

Complaints Targeted TV Shows 40 to 60 years old

[…]

Two episodes of the TV series Bewitched dated 1964 aired on ABC Network and almost sixty years later, archive copies of those transmissions were removed from YouTube for violating Sony copyrights, with MCCTv receiving a strike.

[…]

Given that copyright law locks content down for decades, Klein understands that can sometimes cause issues, although 16 years on YouTube suggests that the overwhelming majority of rightsholders don’t consider his channel a threat. If they did, the option to monetize the recordings can be an option.

No Competition For Commercial Offers

Why most rightsholders have left MCCTv alone is hard to say; perhaps some see the historical value of the channel, maybe others don’t know it exists. At least in part, Klein believes the low quality of the videos could be significant.

“These were relatively low picture quality broadcast examples from various channels from various years at least 30-40 years ago, with the original commercial breaks intact. Also mixed in with these were examples of ’16mm network prints’ which are surviving original film prints that were sent out to TV stations back in the day from when the show originally aired. In many cases they include original sponsorship notices, original network commercials, ‘In Color’ notices, etc.,” he explains.

[…]

Klein says the team is happy to comply with Sony’s wishes and they hope that given a little leeway, the project won’t be consigned to history. Perhaps Sony will recall the importance of time-shifting while understanding that time itself is running out for The Museum of Classic Chicago Television.

Source: TV Museum Will Die in 48 Hours Unless Sony Retracts YouTube Copyright Strikes * TorrentFreak

Mozilla investigates 25 major car brands and finds privacy is shocking

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[…]

The foundation, the Firefox browser maker’s netizen-rights org, assessed the privacy policies and practices of 25 automakers and found all failed its consumer privacy tests and thereby earned its Privacy Not Included (PNI) warning label.

If you care even a little about privacy, stay as far away from Nissan’s cars as you possibly can

In research published Tuesday, the org warned that manufacturers may collect and commercially exploit much more than location history, driving habits, in-car browser histories, and music preferences from today’s internet-connected vehicles. Instead, some makers may handle deeply personal data, such as – depending on the privacy policy – sexual activity, immigration status, race, facial expressions, weight, health, and even genetic information, the Mozilla team found.

Cars may collect at least some of that info about drivers and passengers using sensors, microphones, cameras, phones, and other devices people connect to their network-connected cars, according to Mozilla. And they collect even more info from car apps – such as Sirius XM or Google Maps – plus dealerships, and vehicle telematics.

Some car brands may then share or sell this information to third parties. Mozilla found 21 of the 25 automakers it considered say they may share customer info with service providers, data brokers, and the like, and 19 of the 25 say they can sell personal data.

More than half (56 percent) also say they share customer information with the government or law enforcement in response to a “request.” This isn’t necessarily a court-ordered warrant, and can also be a more informal request.

And some – like Nissan – may also use this private data to develop customer profiles that describe drivers’ “preferences, characteristics, psychological trends, predispositions, behavior, attitudes, intelligence, abilities, and aptitudes.”

Yes, you read that correctly. According to Mozilla’s privacy researchers, Nissan says it can infer how smart you are, then sell that assessment to third parties.

[…]

Nissan isn’t the only brand to collect information that seems completely irrelevant to the vehicle itself or the driver’s transportation habits.

“Kia mentions sex life,” Caltrider said. “General Motors and Ford both mentioned race and sexual orientation. Hyundai said that they could share data with government and law enforcement based on formal or informal requests. Car companies can collect even more information than reproductive health apps in a lot of ways.”

[…]

the Privacy Not Included team contacted Nissan and all of the other brands listed in the research: that’s Lincoln, Mercedes-Benz, Acura, Buick, GMC, Cadillac, Fiat, Jeep, Chrysler, BMW, Subaru, Dacia, Hyundai, Dodge, Lexus, Chevrolet, Tesla, Ford, Honda, Kia, Audi, Volkswagen, Toyota and Renault.

Only three – Mercedes-Benz, Honda, and Ford – responded, we’re told.

“Mercedes-Benz did answer a few of our questions, which we appreciate,” Caltrider said. “Honda pointed us continually to their public privacy documentation to answer your questions, but they didn’t clarify anything. And Ford said they discussed our request internally and made the decision not to participate.”

This makes Mercedes’ response to The Register a little puzzling. “We are committed to using data responsibly,” a spokesperson told us. “We have not received or reviewed the study you are referring to yet and therefore decline to comment to this specifically.”

A spokesperson for the four Fiat-Chrysler-owned brands (Fiat, Chrysler, Jeep, and Dodge) told us: “We are reviewing accordingly. Data privacy is a key consideration as we continually seek to serve our customers better.”

[…]

The Mozilla Foundation also called out consent as an issue some automakers have placed in a blind spot.

“I call this out in the Subaru review, but it’s not limited to Subaru: it’s the idea that anybody that is a user of the services of a connected car, anybody that’s in a car that uses services is considered a user, and any user is considered to have consented to the privacy policy,” Caltrider said.

Opting out of data collection is another concern.

Tesla, for example, appears to give users the choice between protecting their data or protecting their car. Its privacy policy does allow users to opt out of data collection but, as Mozilla points out, Tesla warns customers: “If you choose to opt out of vehicle data collection (with the exception of in-car Data Sharing preferences), we will not be able to know or notify you of issues applicable to your vehicle in real time. This may result in your vehicle suffering from reduced functionality, serious damage, or inoperability.”

While technically this does give users a choice, it also essentially says if you opt out, “your car might become inoperable and not work,” Caltrider said. “Well, that’s not much of a choice.”

[…]

Source: Mozilla flunks 25 major car brands for data privacy fails • The Register

Experts Fear Crooks are Cracking Keys Stolen in LastPass Breach

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In November 2022, the password manager service LastPass disclosed a breach in which hackers stole password vaults containing both encrypted and plaintext data for more than 25 million users. Since then, a steady trickle of six-figure cryptocurrency heists targeting security-conscious people throughout the tech industry has led some security experts to conclude that crooks likely have succeeded at cracking open some of the stolen LastPass vaults.

[…]

Since late December 2022, Monahan and other researchers have identified a highly reliable set of clues that they say connect recent thefts targeting more than 150 people, Collectively, these individuals have been robbed of more than $35 million worth of crypto.

Monahan said virtually all of the victims she has assisted were longtime cryptocurrency investors, and security-minded individuals. Importantly, none appeared to have suffered the sorts of attacks that typically preface a high-dollar crypto heist, such as the compromise of one’s email and/or mobile phone accounts.

[…]

Monahan has been documenting the crypto thefts via Twitter/X since March 2023, frequently expressing frustration in the search for a common cause among the victims. Then on Aug. 28, Monahan said she’d concluded that the common thread among nearly every victim was that they’d previously used LastPass to store their “seed phrase,” the private key needed to unlock access to their cryptocurrency investments.

[…]

Bax, Monahan and others interviewed for this story say they’ve identified a unique signature that links the theft of more than $35 million in crypto from more than 150 confirmed victims, with roughly two to five high-dollar heists happening each month since December 2022.

[…]

But the researchers have published findings about the dramatic similarities in the ways that victim funds were stolen and laundered through specific cryptocurrency exchanges. They also learned the attackers frequently grouped together victims by sending their cryptocurrencies to the same destination crypto wallet.

A graphic published by @tayvano_ on Twitter depicting the movement of stolen cryptocurrencies from victims who used LastPass to store their crypto seed phrases.

By identifying points of overlap in these destination addresses, the researchers were then able to track down and interview new victims. For example, the researchers said their methodology identified a recent multi-million dollar crypto heist victim as an employee at Chainalysis, a blockchain analysis firm that works closely with law enforcement agencies to help track down cybercriminals and money launderers.

Chainalysis confirmed that the employee had suffered a high-dollar cryptocurrency heist late last month, but otherwise declined to comment for this story.

[…]

I’ve been urging my friends and family who use LastPass to change all of their passwords and migrate any crypto that may have been exposed, despite knowing full well how tedious that is.”

[…]

Source: Experts Fear Crooks are Cracking Keys Stolen in LastPass Breach – Krebs on Security

Paper Cups Are Bad for the Environment Too, Study Finds

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[…]

A study published last month in the journal Environmental Pollution outlines how paper cups can leach toxic materials into the surrounding environment. This is because paper cups are often coated in a layer of polylactic acid, otherwise known as PLA. It’s a bioplastic and is touted as a biodegradable alternative to traditional plastic. However, researchers found that it caused adverse health effects in aquatic midge larvae.

Researchers at the University of Gothenburg tested the effects of both plastic cups and paper cups on the midge larvae. Both types of cups were put in water or sediments for up to four weeks. The larvae were then put into aquariums that contained the sediment and water that once held the plastic and paper cups. The contaminated sediment and water were tested separately.

“We observed a significant growth inhibition with all the materials tested when the larvae were exposed in contaminated sediment,” the researchers wrote in the study. “Developmental delays were also observed for all materials, both in contaminated water and sediment.”

They found that growth challenges and developmental delays were observed in environments where the cups leached into them for only one week. The negative effects of the exposure increased in the water and sediment that held the paper and plastic cups for longer periods of time. This challenges the belief that bioplastics are safer. PLA does break down faster than traditional fossil fuel-based plastic material, but the study results show that they aren’t much safer.

“Bioplastics does not break down effectively when they end up in the environment, in water,” Bethanie Carney Almroth, a professor at the University of Gothenburg and study author, said in a press release. “There may be a risk that the plastic remains in nature and resulting microplastics can be ingested by animals and humans, just as other plastics do. Bioplastics contain at least as many chemicals as conventional plastic.”

Other previous studies have found that the plastic coating in paper cups can also create microplastics that enter the liquid in the cup. In 2019, a research group based out of India filled paper cups with hot water and found that there were an alarming amount of microplastic particles in a paper cup after filling the cups with hot liquids, Wired reported. The researchers found that there were about 25,000 particles per 100 ml cup after 15 minutes.

[…]

Source: Paper Cups Are Bad for the Environment Too, Study Finds

Watch Oscilloscope Kickstarter rewards sent – 10 years after backing

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It may have taken ten years to come through on this particular Kickstarter, but a promise is a promise. In late August 2023, backers who had since likely forgotten all about the project started receiving their oscilloscope watches from creator [Gabriel Anzziani]. Whatever the reason(s) for the delay, the watch looks great, and is miles ahead of the prototype pictures.

As you may have guessed, it functions as both a watch and an oscilloscope. The watch has 12- and 24-hour modes as well as an alarm and calendar, and the ‘scope has all the features of the Xprotolab dev board, which [Gabriel] also created: ‘scope, waveform generator, logic analyzer, protocol sniffer, and frequency counter.

Internally, it has an 8-bit Xmega microcontroller which features an internal PDI, and the display is a 1.28″ e-ink display. When we covered this ten years ago, the screen was the type of Sharp LCD featured in the Pebble watch. [Gabriel]’s ‘scope watch features eight buttons around the edge which are user-programmable. One of [Gabriel]’s goals was for people to make their own apps.

Of course, the Kickstarter rewards are no longer available, but if you want to build your own small, digital ‘scope, check out this DIY STM32 project.

Source: The ‘Scope Of This Kickstarter? Ten Years. | Hackaday

Some Galaxies Contain Double Supermassive Black Holes

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Blazars occupy an intriguing spot in the cosmic zoo. They’re bright active galactic nuclei (AGN) that blast out cosmic rays, are bright in radio emission, and sport huge jets of material traveling in our direction at nearly the speed of light. For some blazars, their jets look curvy and snaky and astronomers have questions.

[…]

“We present evidence and discuss the possibility that it is in fact the precession of the jet source, either caused by a supermassive binary black hole at the footpoint of the jet or – less likely – by a warped accretion disk around a single black hole, that is responsible for the observed variability,” said Britzen from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany.

[…]

Britzen and the team investigated an object called OJ 287 to see if it could give some clues. It appears to have two black holes—essentially a black hole binary—at its core. Studies of this galaxy and 12 other AGNS led to the conclusion that jet curvature may provide a smoking gun clue to the existence of binary black holes in galaxy cores.

[…]

One black hole is emitting the jet and the other one’s gravitational influence affects the appearance and behavior of the jet. According to Michal Zajacek, who is a co-author of the study with Britzen, it helps explain the jet’s appearance. “Physics of accretion disks and jets is rather complex but their bulk kinematics can be compared to simple gyroscopes,” he said. “If you exert an external torque on an accretion disk, for instance by an orbiting secondary black hole, it will precess and nutate, and along with it the jet as well, similar to the Earth’s rotation axis that is affected by the Moon and the Sun.”

 A magnetized radio jet (yellow), precessing due to a pair of supermassive black holes. The larger one is shown in black at the center of the accretion disk. It contains warmer (blue) and cooler (red) gas. The white arrow indicates the spin of the larger black hole. The second black hole orbits (orange) around the central supermassive black hole and the orange arrow shows the orientation of its orbital angular momentum. Due to misalignment, torque from the secondary drives the precession of the accretion disk as well as the launched jet (green circle and arrows).  Radio emission is indicated with white curved lines. These show how the jet swirls around and produces variations in radio emission. Courtesy: Michal Zaja?ek/UTFA MUNI
 A magnetized radio jet (yellow), precessing due to a pair of supermassive black holes. The larger one is (black) at the center of the accretion disk. It contains warmer (blue) and cooler (red) gas. The white arrow indicates the spin of the larger black hole. The second black hole orbits (orange) around the central supermassive black hole and the orange arrow shows the orientation of its orbital angular momentum. Due to misalignment, torque from the secondary drives the precession of the accretion disk as well as the launched jet (green circle and arrows).  White curved lines indicate radio emission. Courtesy: Michal Zaja?ek/UTFA MUNI

Searching for the Black Hole Binaries

If this is the case for other blazars, the meandering jet and brightness variability may well be the clue astronomers need to probe for other binary black holes. It’s not an easy task to find the black holes, even though the AGNS themselves are bright, according to Britzen. “We still lack the sufficient resolution to probe the existence of supermassive binary black holes directly,” she said. “But jet precession seems to provide the best signature of these objects, whose existence is expected not only by the black hole / AGN community but also from the gravitational wave/pulsar community who recently published evidence for the existence of a cosmic gravitational background due to the gravitational waves emitted by the mergers of massive black holes through cosmic history.”

[…]

Source: Some Galaxies Contain Double Supermassive Black Holes – Universe Today

antiX 23: Ultralightweight minimal Debian 12 desktop

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The latest release of antiX is Linux how it used to be, in the good way. It’s not the friendliest, but it does everything – and, wow, it’s fast.

The “proudly antifascist” antiX project has released its latest edition, based on Debian 12. This release is codenamed Arditi del Popolo – “the People’s Daring Ones” – after a 1920s Italian antifascist group formed to oppose Mussolini’s regime. antiX is not, as the name might imply, opposed to the X window system: its main editions are graphical, with a choice of environments (although there is a super-minimal, text-only edition if that’s what you want).

Instead, antiX seems to be opposed to pretty much all of the modern trends in desktop Linux, the sorts of technologies that old-timers often consider bloated or inefficient. It doesn’t use systemd or elogind. It doesn’t have Wayland, or heavyweight cross-distro packaging tools such as Flatpak or Snap. It doesn’t even have any of the standard desktop environments. By antiX standards, we suspect that a “desktop environment” would count as bloat.

(If you prefer a familiar desktop, then antiX 23 is one of the parent distros of MX Linux 23, which offers both Xfce and KDE variants.)

Instead of an integrated desktop, antiX provides a broad selection of tools that provide all the functionality of a desktop: app launchers, status monitors, wireless networking, file managers, whatever you need. Not only is it present, but you get a selection of alternatives, and in many cases there are both graphical and shell-based tools available. Despite all this, the 64-bit edition with kernel 6.1 still idles at under 200MB of memory in use, which is startlingly good for a 2023 distro. The Reg standard recommendation for a lightweight desktop Linux is the Raspberry Pi Desktop, which is based on Debian 11 and LXDE. antiX is built from newer components, but even so it uses less memory and it’s faster too.

So in a way, it reminds The Reg FOSS Desk of the good aspects of Linux the way it was in the 20th century. The full edition comes with lots of applications, including a few of the standard big names, such as Firefox ESR and LibreOffice. Aside from them, though, most are less well-known alternatives, ones that are smaller, faster, and take less memory.

antiX 23 with IceWM and a couple of ROX Filer windows open. Looks like a desktop, works like a desktop – but faster

antiX 23 with IceWM and a couple of ROX Filer windows open. Looks like a desktop, works like a desktop – but faster

What’s missing are the bad parts. From modern Linux, the multiple huge, lumbering tools, all too often written in relatively sluggish interpreted programming languages, each of which pulls in a gigabyte of dependencies; and worse still, allegedly “local applications” which are actually web applets implemented in Javascript, so each tool drags an entire embedded web browser around with it. And from 1990s Linux, the rough edges: this is a modern distro, with modern hardware support, and the standard installation gives you a complete graphical environment with sound, networking and so on all pre-configured and working.

It stands in contrast to most other contemporary minimal distros such as Alpine Linux, Arch Linux or Void Linux, to pick some random examples. While these are all very capable distros, you must do a substantial amount of manual installation and configuration post-installation if you want a graphical desktop and the usual assortment of text editors, media players, communications tools, and so on. They also have their own idiosyncratic packaging tools etc. so to get started with customizing your new distro, you’ll probably have to spend some time on Google finding the commands and their syntax.

antiX is based on Debian, which, as we said when celebrating its 30th birthday recently, is the most widely used family of Linux distros there is – so it uses the familiar apt commands for managing software.

antiX 23 with JWM and the zzz file manager. It's different, but not very. We're not convinced it really needs both

antiX 23 with JWM and the zzz file manager. It’s different, but not very. We’re not convinced it really needs both

So it’s a cut-down Debian “Bookworm”, with some of the controversial bits – such as systemd and the fancy desktop environments – taken out. You get a choice of two init systems: the default sysvinit or the more modern runit. These aren’t installation options, as they are in Devuan, say: you must choose and download the appropriate installation image. There are both 32-bit and 64-bit x86 editions.

The full edition offers four window managers: IceWM, JWM, Fluxbox, and Herbsluftwm. IceWM offers a fairly rich Windows-like setup, with a taskbar, start menu, and some preconfigured system monitors and applets. JWM offers a more basic, no-frills version of the same layout. Fluxbox drops all that stuff for an even more minimalistic overlapping window manager. All include the Conky desktop status display. Finally, Herbsluftwm is an extremely minimal tiling window manager.

But the choices don’t end there. antiX also includes two different file managers, ROX Filer and zzz, both of which provide desktop icons and multi-folder-window style navigation. Optionally, ROX Filer has its own desktop panel too for an approximate simulation of RISC OS desktop, which means you get two different desktop panels.

There are also “minimal” login options, which don’t load a file manager. This means the (extremely basic) slimski login screen offers no less than 13 desktop options.

This is emblematic of the main issue with antiX: if anything, it offers too much choice. There are full, light, and minimal editions; sysvinit and runit editions; and i686 and x86-64 editions. There are over a dozen different combinations of window manager and file managers. The top-level app menu has 14 entries, with both a “Control Centre” and a “Settings” submenu. One of the menu entries is called “Applications” and contains the usual hierarchical list of apps, but some are also on the top level, and there’s a “Personal” menu where you can pin your favourites. This is accessible from the Start button analog in the two window managers which have one, and by right-clicking the desktop in all three which have a desktop. For all the main app categories – text editors, and web browsers, media players, and so on – there are multiple options, sometimes three or four of them.

Considering that this is one of the most lightweight Linux distros, it’s an embarrassment of riches. There are so many options, choices, themes, and settings, most of them with multiple ways to get at them, that even for an experienced user, it’s bewildering. There are even 16 different downloads on offer: Full, Base, Core, and Net, two init systems, and two CPU architectures.

The Fluxbox window manager, with its virtual desktop switcher control at the bottom, and ROX Session's panel at the top. With some tweaking, it could be very like RISC OS

The Fluxbox window manager, with its virtual desktop switcher control at the bottom, and ROX Session’s panel at the top. With some tweaking, it could be very like RISC OS

While with Alpine or Void, you can achieve an extremely lightweight, fully graphical desktop system, you must do this by installing and configuring most of it yourself. With antiX, to get to a setup you are happy with, you will still have to do quite a lot of custom configuration, but it will be removing tools that you don’t want. Of course, there are package management tools to help you do that: there’s Package Installer, and Program Remover, and Synaptic, and a menu-driven shell-based package manager, and of course apt – and apt-get and aptitude.

When you download, install, and boot antiX, it feels amazingly tiny and fast by modern standards. We have the older release 21 on our elderly Atom-based Sony Vaio P, and it makes that geriatric sub-netbook feel sprightly. Then you log in, start to browse the application menu, and find a Swiss army knife, where there’s a tool for everything. The trouble is, each blade unfolds to reveal another Swiss army knife. It’s almost fractal.

Back when Ubuntu first launched in 2004, it scored over Debian because someone had done the curation of programs for you. You got what was arguably the best completely FOSS desktop at the time, GNOME 2, and one best-of-breed app in each category of essential program – one web browser, one email client, one media player, and so on, all nicely set up and integrated into a harmonious whole. And when it started out, it was relatively slim and lightweight and fast. With Debian, you had to choose all this for yourself, which gives you great freedom, but requires considerable expertise, and the result might not feel very coherent and require quite some fine tuning. Now, both are pretty big, and these days Ubuntu offers a choice of 10 different desktop flavors, plus Server and Core and container images and more.

This is where MX Linux scores over this, its much smaller parent distro. The MX team does that curation for you. With antiX, you get the freedom to pick and choose from a profusion of tools, many of which you’ve probably never heard of and so wouldn’t know to install. But you will probably want to break out the hammer and chisel, and sculpt it down into something you find pleasing.

It’s a very interesting distro, if you know a bit of what you’re doing and want to learn and experiment and customize it. It’s also very lightweight in resource usage, and will run well on some ancient hardware that most modern distros won’t even attempt to boot on.

But we can’t help but feel that, as its name hints, it’s a bit anarchic. It feels designed by committee, where everyone got their choices included. Some judicious pruning and selection would really help buff it to a shine.

Source: antiX 23: Ultralightweight minimal Debian 12 • The Register

Australian Government, Of All Places, Says Age Verification Is A Privacy & Security Nightmare

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In the past I’ve sometimes described Australia as the land where internet policy is completely upside down. Rather than having a system that protects intermediaries from liability for third party content, Australia went the opposite direction. Rather than recognizing that a search engine merely links to content and isn’t responsible for the content at those links, Australia has said that search engines can be held liable for what they link to. Rather than protect the free expression of people on the internet who criticize the rich and powerful, Australia has extremely problematic defamation laws that result in regular SLAPP suits and suppression of speech. Rather than embrace encryption that protects everyone’s privacy and security, Australia requires companies to break encryption, insisting only criminals use it.

It’s basically been “bad internet policy central,” or the place where good internet policy goes to die.

And, yet, there are some lines that even Australia won’t cross. Specifically, the Australian eSafety commission says that it will not require adult websites to use age verification tools, because it would put the privacy and security of Australians’ data at risk. (For unclear reasons, the Guardian does not provide the underlying documents, so we’re fixing that and providing both the original roadmap and the Australian government’s response

[…]

Of course, in France, the Data Protection authority released a paper similarly noting that age verification was a privacy and security nightmare… and the French government just went right on mandating the use of the technology. In Australia, the eSafety Commission pointed to the French concerns as a reason not to rush into the tech, meaning that Australia took the lessons from French data protection experts more seriously than the French government did.

And, of course, here in the US, the Congressional Research Service similarly found serious problems with age verification technology, but it hasn’t stopped Congress from releasing a whole bunch of “save the children” bills that are built on a foundation of age verification.

[…]

Source: Australian Government, Of All Places, Says Age Verification Is A Privacy & Security Nightmare | Techdirt

Don’t update Baldur’s Gate 3: Companions Hornyness and sex is being cancelled

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Sorry, it turns out it wasn’t that there was just something irresistible about you. Instead it seems that Baldur’s Gate 3 shipped with a bug that meant all the companions were way hornier than intended.

I thought something felt odd. Having played enough BioWare games over the years to know that all my companions would inevitably find me impossibly alluring at some point, I kind of shrugged when they began throwing themselves at me almost from the off. I figured Baldur’s Gate 3 developers Larian just wanted to get it out of the way, have Gale and Karlach and try to get in my pants sooner rather than later, but it certainly seemed hasty.

It turns out, as discovered by TheGamer, that this wasn’t meant to be the case. A bug slipped through that meant the requirements for companions to be unable to resist your illithid charms were set way too low.

Speaking to the game’s director and Larian boss-guy, Swen Vincke, TheGamer learned that “approval thresholds” were set too low, meaning the buddies you gather into your gang were ready to have special cuddles far sooner than planned. “That’s why they were so horny in the beginning,” explained Vincke.

This has already been fixed for a bunch of the game’s companions, but some still have their libido set to 11, awaiting cold showers in forthcoming patches. Gale was the most affected, as you probably noticed if you played the game, the thirsty wizard ready to make magic happen from the moment he meets you. Vincke told the site that he “wasn’t supposed to be, like, instantly there.”

Read More: 7 Horny Fantasy Games To Play After Baldur’s Gate 3

It’s interesting that Larian has stuck to this being a bug, not a feature, given that being ready to go isn’t exactly abnormal human/tiefling/drow behavior. “It was supposed to simulate how real relationships are,” Vincke told TheGamer, adding that behaving like this would be “problematic” in real life. Well…to some, certainly. But, you know.

It also seems less immediately untoward given Baldur’s Gate 3‘s laudable conversation options to make it clear to your NPC chums that sex isn’t something you’re interested in, even if you do want to roleplay being in love with them.

Even to my old fuddy-duddy British ways, it seems rather quaint, seeing sexual relationships as something only feasible after enough time and approval, as if an instant attraction is so unlikely or impossible. Of course, that’d be kind of weird if it were every companion, as was the case at launch. But this more conservative approach is already going to be in place for many companions for those starting the game today. Sorry, PS5 players.

Source: Baldur’s Gate 3 Companions Are So Horny Because Of A Bug

It must be Americans having complained or something. Boo.

Posted in Sex

The AI Act needs a practical definition of ‘subliminal techniques’ (because those used in Advertising aren’t enough)

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While the draft EU AI Act prohibits harmful ‘subliminal techniques’, it doesn’t define the term – we suggest a broader definition that captures problematic manipulation cases without overburdening regulators or companies, write Juan Pablo Bermúdez, Rune Nyrup, Sebastian Deterding and Rafael A. Calvo.

Juan Pablo Bermúdez is a Research Associate at Imperial College London; Rune Nyrup is an Associate Professor at Aarhus University; Sebastian Deterding is a Chair in Design Engineering at Imperial College London; Rafael A. Calvo is a Chair in Engineering Design at Imperial College London.

If you ever worried that organisations use AI systems to manipulate you, you are not alone. Many fear that social media feeds, search, recommendation systems, or chatbots can unconsciously affect our emotions, beliefs, or behaviours.

The EU’s draft AI Act articulates this concern mentioning “subliminal techniques” that impair autonomous choice “in ways that people are not consciously aware of, or even if aware not able to control or resist” (Recital 16, EU Council version). Article 5 prohibits systems using subliminal techniques that modify people’s decisions or actions in ways likely to cause significant harm.

This prohibition could helpfully safeguard users. But as written, it also runs the risk of being inoperable. It all depends on how we define ‘subliminal techniques’ – which the draft Act does not do yet.

Why narrow definitions are bound to fail

The term ‘subliminal’ traditionally refers to sensory stimuli that are weak enough to escape conscious perception but strong enough to influence behaviour; for example, showing an image for less than 50 milliseconds.

Defining ‘subliminal techniques’ in this narrow sense presents problems. First, experts agree that subliminal stimuli have very short-lived effects at best, and only move people to do things they are already motivated to do.

Further, this would not cover most problematic cases motivating the prohibition: when an online ad influences us, we are aware of the sensory stimulus (the visible ad).

Furthermore, such legal prohibitions have been ineffective because subliminal stimuli are, by definition, not plainly visible. As Neuwirth’s historical analysis shows, Europe prohibited subliminal advertising more than three decades ago, but regulators have hardly ever pursued cases.

Thus, narrowly defining ‘subliminal techniques’ as subliminal stimulus presentation is likely to miss most manipulation cases of concern and end up as dead letter.

A broader definition can align manipulation and practical concerns

We agree with the AI Act’s starting point: AI-driven influence is often problematic due to lack of awareness.

However, unawareness of sensory stimuli is not the key issue. Rather, as we argue in a recent paper, manipulative techniques are problematic if they hide any of the following:

  • The influence attempt. Many internet users are not aware that websites adapt based on personal information to optimize “customer engagement”, sales, or other business concerns. Web content is often tailored to nudge us towards certain behaviours, while we remain unaware that such tailoring occurs.
  • The influence methods. Even when we know that some online content seeks to influence, we frequently don’t know why we are presented with a particular image or message – was it chosen through psychographic profiling, nudges, something else? Thus, we can remain unaware of how we are influenced.
  • The influence’s effects. Recommender systems are meant to learn our preferences and suggest content that aligns with them, but they can end up changing our preferences. Even if we know how we are influenced, we may still ignore how the influence changed our decisions and behaviours.

To see why this matters, ask yourself: as a user of digital services, would you rather not be informed about these influence techniques?

Or would you prefer knowing when you are targeted for influence; how influence tricks push your psychological buttons (that ‘Only 1 left!’ sign targets your aversion to loss); and what consequences influence is likely to have (the sign makes you more likely to purchase impulsively)?

We thus propose the following definition:

Subliminal techniques aim at influencing a person’s behaviour in ways in which the person is likely to remain unaware of (1) the influence attempt, (2) how the influence works, or (3) the influence attempt’s effects on decision-making or value- and belief-formation processes.

This definition is broad enough to capture most cases of problematic AI-driven influence; but not so broad as to become meaningless, nor excessively hard to put into practice. Our definition specifically targets techniques: procedures that predictably produce certain outcomes.

Such techniques are already being classified, for example, in lists of nudges and dark patterns, so companies can check those lists and ensure that they either don’t use them or disclose their usage.

Moreover, the AI Act prohibits, not subliminal techniques per se, but only those that may cause significant harm. Thus, the real (self-)regulatory burden lies with testing whether a system increases risks of significant harm—arguably already part of standard user protection diligence.

Conclusion

The default interpretation of ‘subliminal techniques’ would render the AI Act’s prohibition irrelevant for most forms of problematic manipulative influence, and toothless in practice.

Therefore, ensuring the AI Act is legally practicable and reduces regulatory uncertainty requires a different, explicit definition – one that addresses the underlying societal concerns over manipulation while not over-burdening service providers.

We believe our definition achieves just this balance.

(The EU Parliament draft added prohibitions of “manipulative or deceptive techniques”, which present challenges worth discussing separately. Here we claim that subliminal techniques prohibitions, properly defined, could tackle manipulation concerns.)

Source: The AI Act needs a practical definition of ‘subliminal techniques’ – EURACTIV.com

Lenovo Yoga Book 9i: a dual-screen laptop

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Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget

Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget

Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget

Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget

Every now and then, a device comes along and challenges you to consider the viability of an entirely new product category. That’s precisely what Lenovo is doing with the Yoga Book 9i. By replacing the traditional physical keyboard with a second display, the company is rethinking what a laptop can do. In tight confines, you can rely on a virtual keyboard or an included magnetic alternative.

[…]

The dual 13.3-inch displays (2,880 x 1,800) look great too, boasting OLED panels with rich colors and a tested brightness just shy of 400 nits.

[…]

Around the outside, the Yoga Book features a polished metal frame with three Thunderbolt 4 ports, which is nice to see on a system this size. Unfortunately for fans of wired audio, you don’t get a 3.5mm audio jack. Thankfully, Lenovo’s 5-megapixel IR webcam is sharper than what you get on most competing devices, and holding everything together is the company’s signature speaker bar hinge, which is impressively loud and punchy. All told, despite being slightly heavier than a typical 13-inch ultraportable due to that second layer of glass, it’s still very easy to carry around.

[…]

The remaining pieces of the Yoga Book 9i’s kit are its accessories, which include a stylus, a detached magnetic physical keyboard, a folding kickstand cover and even a sleek travel mouse. The keyboard communicates via Bluetooth and has its own USB-C port for charging. Despite its size, it doesn’t feel cramped and offers more key travel than you might expect. During transport, the cover wraps around the keyboard to keep it protected, while Lenovo’s Digital Pen 3 can be stashed in the attached loop.

[…]

you just tap eight fingers on the bottom panel and instantly you get virtual stand-ins. And for times when you only need to mouse around, you can use a three-finger tap instead, which summons a floating touchpad that leaves room for Lenovo’s widgets (weather, news, etc.) or anything else you’d like to put down there.

Surprisingly, typing on a touchscreen isn’t as bad as you might think. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still not nearly as fast or accurate as using a physical keyboard. But it’s serviceable, as long as you’re willing to make some adjustments.

[…]

What’s most impressive about the Yoga Book 9i’s is its ability to transform into a portable all-in-one PC when it’s propped up on its kickstand cover. In this mode, there are two options for its displays: a stacked setup with one screen on top of the other and a side-by-side arrangement. Both configurations have their uses.

[…]

Packing an Intel Core i7-155U chip, 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, the Yoga Book 9i can handle most productivity needs. Even when multitasking across both displays, performance felt relatively snappy. However, if you’re planning on regularly doing more demanding things like video editing, you’ll probably want a beefier machine.

[…]

Even with a relatively large 80Wh battery, for a system with two screens, the Yoga Book 9i fared better than expected on our standard video rundown test. It posted a time of eight hours and 12 minutes

[…]

he Yoga Book 9i is a rather divisive machine. Starting at $2,000, not only is it really expensive, its performance is also slower than more traditional competitors in this price range. However, for people like me who constantly yearn for more screen real estate when I’m away from home, Lenovo has created something that is more than the sum of its parts. When space is limited, the Yoga Book 9i’s clamshell mode feels right at home on an airplane tray table. But when it’s not, it can expand into a portable dual-screen workstation–complete with all the fixings of your desktop at home. And when you need to pack up, everything collapses into a neat, semi-self-contained bundle that fits in the smallest of laptop bags.

The Yoga Book 9i is a nifty little transformer that’s more engaging than anything Michael Bay has directed in the last two decades. With how little laptops have changed recently, it feels like the Yoga Book has even more room to grow in the years to come. Sure, it’s still a bit awkward, but as the starting point for a new type of notebook, Lenovo’s debut dual-screen convertible has me convinced.

Source: Lenovo Yoga Book 9i review: The world isn’t ready for dual-screen laptops, but Lenovo is | Engadget

Sourcegraph published admin token, someone creates API endpoint with free access

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An unknown hacker gained administrative control of Sourcegraph, an AI-driven service used by developers at Uber, Reddit, Dropbox, and other companies, and used it to provide free access to resources that normally would have required payment.

In the process, the hacker(s) may have accessed personal information belonging to Sourcegraph users, Diego Comas, Sourcegraph’s head of security, said in a post on Wednesday. For paid users, the information exposed included license keys and the names and email addresses of license key holders. For non-paying users, it was limited to email addresses associated with their accounts. Private code, emails, passwords, usernames, or other personal information were inaccessible.

Free-for-all

The hacker gained administrative access by obtaining an authentication key a Sourcegraph developer accidentally included in a code published to a public Sourcegraph instance hosted on Sourcegraph.com. After creating a normal user Sourcegraph account, the hacker used the token to elevate the account privileges to those of an administrator. The access token appeared in a pull request posted on July 14, the user account was created on August 28, and the elevation to admin occurred on August 30.

“The malicious user, or someone connected to them, created a proxy app allowing users to directly call Sourcegraph’s APIs and leverage the underlying LLM [large language model],” Comas wrote. “Users were instructed to create free Sourcegraph.com accounts, generate access tokens, and then request the malicious user to greatly increase their rate limit. On August 30 (2023-08-30 13:25:54 UTC), the Sourcegraph security team identified the malicious site-admin user, revoked their access, and kicked off an internal investigation for both mitigation and next steps.”

The resource free-for-all generated a spike in calls to Sourcegraph programming interfaces, which are normally rate-limited for free accounts.

A graph showing API usage from July 31 to August 29 with a major spike at the end.
Enlarge / A graph showing API usage from July 31 to August 29 with a major spike at the end.
Sourcegraph

“The promise of free access to Sourcegraph API prompted many to create accounts and start using the proxy app,” Comas wrote. “The app and instructions on how to use it quickly made its way across the web, generating close to 2 million views. As more users discovered the proxy app, they created free Sourcegraph.com accounts, adding their access tokens, and accessing Sourcegraph APIs illegitimately.”

[…]

Source: Hacker gains admin control of Sourcegraph and gives free access to the masses | Ars Technica

Lenovo’s new 27-inch, 4K monitor offers glasses-free 3D

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Lenovo’s next 27-inch 4K monitor is unlike any display it has released before. Featuring a lenticular lens and real-time eye-tracking, it’s a 3D monitor that doesn’t require any glasses. Other companies are already pushing stereoscopic products, but Lenovo’s ThinkVision 27 3D Monitor, announced at the IFA conference today, takes the glasses-free experience to a bigger screen.

[…]

Like other glasses-less 3D screens, the ThinkVision works by projecting two different images to each of your eyes, resulting in a 3D effect where, […] it appears that the images are popping out of the screen. Lenovo says the monitor’s 3D resolution is 1920×2160. The lenticular lens in the monitor is switchable, allowing for normal, 2D viewing at 3840×2160, too.

[…]

The ThinkVision’s 27-inch display gives workers a bigger palette. It also means the monitor can be a regular 2D monitor when needed.

PCMag had a “brief demo” with Lenovo’s upcoming monitor, viewing a red race car model “suspended in 3D,” representing a potential use case for creators. The publication said the 3D was impressive and the monitor “would no doubt be useful to those who spend lots of time building 3D objects in software.”

[…]

As a regular 2D monitor, the ThinkVision’s specs are pretty standard. It’s a 4K IPS screen claiming a 60 Hz refresh rate, 310 nits, a 1,000:1 contrast ratio, and 99 percent DCI-P3 and Adobe RGB color coverage with a Delta E under 2.

Like a proper workplace monitor, there’s also a strong port selection: two HDMI 2.1, one DisplayPort 1.4, four USB-A (3.1 Gen 1) ports, one USB-C port (3.2 Gen 1) with up to 15 W power delivery, RJ45, a 3.5mm jack, plus an upstream USB-C port with up to 100 W power delivery.

Glasses-free 3D is having a bit of a moment, with Lenovo being the latest major PC OEM to release a screen with stereoscopic views. It’s a niche product category, of course, but some publications, like PCWorld and CNET, that have tried newer releases have said that they are much better than the 3D TVs that required glasses, which you don’t see anymore.

[…]

Source: Lenovo’s new 27-inch, 4K monitor offers glasses-free 3D | Ars Technica

Microplastics Tied to Behavioral Changes in Mice, Study Finds

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[…]

Researchers at the University of Rhode Island exposed mice to different levels of microplastics via their drinking water to research the impacts on behaviors and how the plastics build up in their bodies. Researchers observed that the microplastics accumulated in the tissue of multiple organs, including those outside of the digestive systems of the mice.

[…]

“We expected to see the microplastics in the feces of the animal, that wasn’t altogether surprising,” Ross told Earther. “Then we found them deep inside liver cells, spleen, [and] kidneys. Not just the center of the digestive tract, but actually in the tissue of the digestive tract.”

[…]

The team of researchers also looked at behavioral changes in mice that had steadily ingested microplastics, versus those that did not and those with lower levels of exposure. After three weeks of drinking microplastics in their water, the mice were placed in something called an open-field test. They explored a low-lit chamber for 90 minutes and their spontaneous movements were monitored.

[…]

“They don’t [usually] hang out waiting to be scooped up by a predator…they feel more protective along the sides,” Ross said. “We look at that type of behavior to understand: Are they going around the outside of this chamber? Are they going into the center?”

The mice that had higher exposures to microplastics in their water were more likely to be out in the open of the “field” environment compared to mice that were not exposed and those that had lower microplastic exposures. These mice had more erratic movements and traveled longer distances in the artificial field. This was especially notable in older mice. The differences in behavior were alarming, especially because the mice intentionally ingested the microplastics for only three weeks.

When the mice were studied, researchers also noticed inflammation in their brains. They also recorded a decrease in a glial fibrillary acidic protein, which is also known as GFAP. This is a protein that supports cell processes in the brain. Lower levels of this protein are associated with early stages of some neurodegenerative diseases including mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease, Ross said. The team hadn’t expected this finding, and they intend to conduct future research to further understand the role of microplastics in neurological disorders and disease.

[…]

Source: Microplastics Tied to Behavioral Changes in Mice, Study Finds

Magic Leap 1 Vaporware Headsets Will Cease To Function After 2024

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Magic Leap 1 AR headsets will “cease to function” from 31 December 2024, the company announced.

Magic Leap sent an email to all customers containing the following:

As such, we are announcing that Magic Leap 1 end of life date will be December 31, 2024.  Magic Leap 1 is no longer available for purchase, but will continue to be supported through December 31, 2024 as follows:

• OS Updates: Magic Leap will only address outages that impact core functionality (as determined by Magic Leap) until December 31, 2024.

• Customer Care will continue to offer Magic Leap 1 product troubleshooting assistance through December 31, 2024.

• Warranties: Magic Leap will continue to honor valid warranty claims under the Magic Leap 1 Warranty Policy available here.

• Cloud Services: On December 31, 2024, cloud services for Magic Leap 1 will no longer be available, core functionality will reach end-of-life and the Magic Leap 1 device and apps will cease to function.

Former Magic Leap Senior Manager Steve Lukas said on X that his understanding is that the device will cease to function due to a hardcoded cloud security check it runs every six months.

[…]

Content for the device included avatar chat, a floating web browser, a Wayfair app for seeing how furniture might look in your room, two games made by Insomniac Games, and a Spotify background app.

But Magic Leap 1’s eye-watering $2300 price and the limitations of transparent optics (even today) meant it reportedly fell significantly short of sales expectations. Transparent AR currently provides a much smaller field of view than the opaque display systems of VR-style headsets, despite costing significantly more. And Magic Leap 1’s form factor wasn’t suitable for outdoor use, so it didn’t provide the out-of-home functionality AR glasses promise to one day like on-foot navigation, translation, and contextual information.

[…]

The Information reported that Magic Leap’s founder, the CEO at the time, originally expected it to sell over one million units in the first year. In reality it reportedly sold just 6000 units in the first six months.

[…]

The company today is still fully focused on enterprise. Magic Leap 2 launched last year at $3300, leapfrogging HoloLens 2 with a taller field of view, brighter displays, and unique dynamic dimming.

[…]

Source: Magic Leap 1 Headsets Will “Cease To Function” After 2024

So after promising stuff which took years in coming and when it did was an intense and hugely expensive dissapointment, the company will now insure that the fortune you spent on junk is now really really turned into a brick.

Alfa Romeo Releases Gorgeous Concept Car – only makes 33 of them. Apparently doesn’t like sales

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The Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale is one of only a few cars out there that’ll be available with both a V6 engine and a fully electric drivetrain. While that lets it swing from both sides of the plate, it also highlights just how much heavier EVs are than their combustion counterparts these days. And try as Alfa Romeo might, there’s no way that doesn’t affect the supercar’s handling.

The limited-production, 33-unit-only Alfa supercar debuted earlier today, with one version using a 3.0-liter, twin-turbo V6, and the other a 102 kilowatt-hour battery feeding an 800-volt, tri-motor drivetrain. The difference in their weight is stark, with the V6 model said to weigh less than 3,307 pounds, and the EV a good 1,300 lbs more at (under) 4,630 lbs. Because of the EV’s power advantage though, the two are said to perform pretty much identically in a straight line, doing zero-to-60 in under three seconds, and stopping in a similar sub-108 feet. (That said, the EV runs out of steam at high speed, and has a slightly lower top speed.)

Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale (modern)

The new Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale. Alfa Romeo

Their handling differences may be minimized by torque vectoring, which seems to be offered only on the EV. But even then, it’s impossible to completely hide the effect that a 40-percent weight gain has on a car’s performance

[…]

Source: The Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale EV Weighs 1,300 Pounds More Than the Gas Version

So these cars will rot in a garage, barely being driven, where no one will see them. These limited editions are a waste of designers time.

OpenAI disputes authors’ claims that every ChatGPT response is a derivative work, it’s transformative

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This week, OpenAI finally responded to a pair of nearly identical class-action lawsuits from book authors

[…]

In OpenAI’s motion to dismiss (filed in both lawsuits), the company asked a US district court in California to toss all but one claim alleging direct copyright infringement, which OpenAI hopes to defeat at “a later stage of the case.”

The authors’ other claims—alleging vicarious copyright infringement, violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), unfair competition, negligence, and unjust enrichment—need to be “trimmed” from the lawsuits “so that these cases do not proceed to discovery and beyond with legally infirm theories of liability,” OpenAI argued.

OpenAI claimed that the authors “misconceive the scope of copyright, failing to take into account the limitations and exceptions (including fair use) that properly leave room for innovations like the large language models now at the forefront of artificial intelligence.”

According to OpenAI, even if the authors’ books were a “tiny part” of ChatGPT’s massive data set, “the use of copyrighted materials by innovators in transformative ways does not violate copyright.”

[…]

The purpose of copyright law, OpenAI argued, is “to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts” by protecting the way authors express ideas, but “not the underlying idea itself, facts embodied within the author’s articulated message, or other building blocks of creative,” which are arguably the elements of authors’ works that would be useful to ChatGPT’s training model. Citing a notable copyright case involving Google Books, OpenAI reminded the court that “while an author may register a copyright in her book, the ‘statistical information’ pertaining to ‘word frequencies, syntactic patterns, and thematic markers’ in that book are beyond the scope of copyright protection.”

[…]

Source: OpenAI disputes authors’ claims that every ChatGPT response is a derivative work | Ars Technica

So the authors are saying that if you read their book and then are inspired by it, you can’t use that memory – any of it – to write another book. Which also means that you presumably wouldn’t be able to use any words at all, as they are all copyrighted entities which have inspired you in the past as well.

Europe’s new DSA and DMA rules for Big Tech in force

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The Act (DSA) sets rules that the EU designed to make very large online platforms (VLOPs) “tackle the spread of illegal content, online disinformation and other societal risks” presented by online service providers.”

The DSA and the Digital Market Act (DMA) are a double act. Both were introduced in 2022 and will be implemented in phases through early 2024. While the DMA applies to companies who act as gatekeepers of online services and are designed to ensure equal access for some third-party software, the DSA is all about ensuring that activities which are illegal in the real world are enforceably illegal online, too.

Under the DSA digital service providers – including hosting services, online platforms, VLOPs and even intermediary service providers like ISPs – have obligations to ensure that products sold are safe and not counterfeit, and to eliminate advertising that targets minors or is served using sensitive data. Another requirement is to get rid of dark patterns in advertising. Clarity on how orgs moderate content and a requirement to present their algorithms for scrutiny is also required.

VLOPs, which the DSA defines as platforms large enough to reach 10 percent of the EU’s population, or around 45 million people, have even more rules to comply with.

The EU believes that VLOPs present the most risk to the public due to their wide reach. In addition to rules that other digital service providers have to follow, VLOPs also have to share data with “vetted” researchers and governments, allow users to opt out of profiling recommendations, submit to regular audits, and have risk management and a crisis response plans in place.

The EU made its initial declaration to cover 17 VLOPs and two very large online search engines (Bing and Google) on April 25. The DSA will apply to any and all digital service providers come February 2024. VLOPs were told they had four months from the day they were designated to achieve compliance.

Non-compliant VLOPs could face fines of up to six percent of global turnover, rather than the relatively small fines they usually face. The EC said it also has the power to require immediate platform changes and, in the case of continued noncompliance, has the right to suspend offenders from the trading bloc entirely.

[…]

Source: Europe’s new rules for Big Tech start today. Are they ready? • The Register

Zoom CEO Says It’s Hard to Build Trust Over Zoom

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In the wake of the onslaught of the covid-19, employees across the world grew chummy with a perfectly appropriate remote work schedule that allows them to work from home. However, one of the companies that carried pandemic digital infrastructure on its back, Zoom, isn’t too keen on keeping remote workers away from the office since the video calling platform is making them too friendly, according to leaked audio of CEO Eric Yuan at an all-hands meeting at the company.

Insider first reported on the recording in which Yuan told employees within 50 miles of an office that they must report to the office a minimum of two days a week. The announcement came at a companywide meeting on August 3, during which Yuan said that it’s difficult for Zoomies—the pet name the company gives to employees—to build trust with each other on a computer screen. Yuan also reportedly added that it’s difficult to have innovative conversations and debates on the company’s own platform because it makes people too friendly.

“Over the past several years, we’ve hired so many new ‘Zoomies’ that it’s really hard to build trust,” Yuan said in the audio. “We cannot have a great conversation. We cannot debate each other well because everyone tends to be very friendly when you join a Zoom call.”

Zoom did not immediately return Gizmodo’s request for comment on the audio or when employees are expected to return to the office.

Yuan’s proposed hybrid schedule is not a huge ask as a lot of competently run companies are finding a happy medium between remote work and wholly in-office routine through hybrid arrangements. Yuan’s comments, however, point more toward the company’s beliefs in the ability of its platform—it makes you too friendly and is unable to help you build trust with the guests on your call or help you innovate.

While Yuan may have put his foot in his mouth, he is far from the first tech CEO to ask employees to return to office post-covid-19 lockdowns. Earlier this summer, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg mandated three days per week in the office for his employees, while Apple has reportedly begun taking attendance of those in the office. Some companies, however, have seen plenty of friction in mandating a return to in-office work, like Amazon, whose employees have staged a walkout in protest. During the height of the pandemic, a majority of big tech companies and their employees saw the promise in a completely remote schedule, which was touted as a massive perk during a hiring boom and helped these companies grow exponentially. Now that the likes of Zoom, Amazon, and Meta are scaling back on that perk, they may be facing increasing backlash from their workforce.

Source: Zoom CEO Says It’s Hard to Build Trust Over Zoom

DEA Falls for Crypto Airdrop Scam, Hands Fraudster $55,000 in Stolen Funds

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The same federal agency that once helped bring down the biggest crypto-based dark web drug marketplace Silk Road got swindled by one of the oldest tricks in the crypto scammer playbook. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration reportedly handed a fraudster a little more than $55,000 in confiscated crypto funds after it was duped by a classic airdrop phishing scam.

Forbes first reported on a warrant put out by the FBI investigating the scam. Those funds were stored in a Trezor crypto wallet, a more secure kind of crypto storage than an exchange-based wallet. The funds were further secured inside a “secure facility.” However, since all transactions are public on the blockchain, a scammer noticed when the DEA sent a test amount of $45.36 in Tether to a wallet owned by the U.S. Marshals.

The alleged scammer then performed what’s known as an airdrop scam. Essentially, the fraudster created a new address with the first five and last four digits of the Marshals’ account. Each crypto wallet has a unique address that’s about 30 characters long. Then, the fraudster sent, or “airdropped” some Tether into the DEA’s account, which shows up as looking like it came from the marshal’s address.

This works because the two accounts seem similar, so any layperson who only looks at the first few and last few characters to confirm will simply copy and paste the whole address rather than type it out. Trezor actively warns its users against airdrop scams, though in most cases, fraudsters want to access the wallet’s entire balance through a website link. These scams usually work against users investing in a new coin drop, but eagle-eyed fraudsters looking at crypto addresses might get lucky with a quick phishing attack, as they did here.

Amid the confusion, the DEA ended up sending funds to the fake marshal’s address, and by the time the two separate Department of Justice agencies realized what had happened, the funds had already been moved out of the scammer’s account.

[…]

Source: DEA Falls for Crypto Scam, Hands Fraudster $55,000 in Stolen Funds

What the article doesn’t explain is why the Feds were sending around these wallets at all, considering they were supposed to be impounded and evidence?

Companies are recording your conversations whilst you are on hold with them

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Is Achmea or Bol.com customer service putting you on hold? Then everything you say can still be heard by some of their employees. This is evident from research by Radar.

When you call customer service, you often hear: “Please note: this conversation may be recorded for training purposes.” Nothing special. But if you call the insurer Zilveren Kruis, you will also hear: “Note: Even if you are on hold, our quality employees can hear what you are saying.”

Striking, because the Dutch Data Protection Authority states that recording customers ‘on hold’ is not allowed. Companies are allowed to record the conversation, for example to conclude a contract or to improve the service.

Both mortgage provider Woonfonds and insurers Zilveren Kruis, De Friesland and Interpolis confirm that the recording tape continues to run if you are on hold with them, while this violates privacy rules.

Bol.com also continues to eavesdrop on you while you are on hold, the webshop confirms. She also gives the same reason for this: “It is technically not possible to temporarily stop the recording and start it again when the conversation starts again.”KLM, Ziggo, Eneco, Vattenfall, T-Mobile, Nationale Nederlanden, ASR, ING and Rabobank say they don’t answer their customers while they are on hold.

Source: Diverse bedrijven waaronder bol.com nemen gesprekken ‘in de wacht’ op – Emerce

Crypto Infra Startup Bankrupt After Losing Password to $38.9 Million Physical Crypto Wallet

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A buzzy startup offering financial infrastructure to crypto companies has found itself bankrupt primarily because it can’t gain access to a physical crypto wallet with $38.9 million in it. The company also did not write down recovery phrases, locking itself out of the wallet forever in something it has called “The Wallet Event” to a bankruptcy judge.

Prime Trust pitches itself as a crypto fintech company designed to help other startups offer crypto retirement plans, know-your-customer interfaces, ensure liquidity, and a host of other services. It says it can help companies build crypto exchanges, payment platforms, and create stablecoins for its clients. The company has not had a good few months. In June, the state of Nevada filed to seize control of the company because it was near insolvency. It was then ordered to cease all operations by a federal judge because it allegedly used customers’ money to cover withdrawal requests from other companies.

The company filed for bankruptcy, and, according to a filing by its interim CEO, which you really should read in full, the company offers an “all-in-one solution for customers that remains unmatched in the marketplace.” A large problem, among more run-of-the-mill crypto economy problems such as “lack of operational and spending oversight” and “regulatory issues,” is the fact that it lost access to a physical wallet it was keeping a tens of millions of dollars in, and cannot get back into it.

[…]

It called one of these wallets the “98f Wallet,” because its address ended in “98f.”

[…]

If a user loses both the hardware device and the seed phrases, it is virtually impossible for that user to regain access to the digital wallet.”

[…]

Prime Trust opted to laser etch them into a piece of steel called “Cryptosteel Hardware,” which are called “Wallet Access Devices” in the court filings, and which look like this:

Image: Court records

According to the filing, it lost these devices, which is why it can’t get back into the wallet.

[…]

For several years, the company then took customer deposits into this address, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. In December, 2021, “when a customer requested a significant withdrawal of ETH that the company could not fulfill [from other wallets,]” it went to withdraw it from this hardware wallet. “It was around this time that they discovered that the Company did not have the Wallet Access Devices and thus, could not access the cryptocurrency stored in the 98f Wallet.”

[…]

Source: ‘The Wallet Event’: Crypto Startup Bankrupt After Losing Password to $38.9 Million Physical Crypto Wallet

The predictive power of social media data in fashion forecasting

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Fashion and social media are both ever evolving. So why not put the two together? New research in Manufacturing & Service Operations Management says utilizing social media to predict sales of apparel and footwear items based on social media posts and interactions about color is possible and successful.

“We partner with three multinational retailers—two apparel and one footwear—and combine their data sets with publicly available data on Twitter and the Google Search Volume Index. We implement a variety of models to develop forecasts that can be used in setting the initial shipment quantity for an item, arguably the most important decision for fashion retailers,” says Youran Fu of Amazon, one of the study authors.

Despite challenges like short product lifetimes, long manufacturing lead times and constant innovation of fashion products, information can enable efficiency and increased revenue.

“Our findings show that fine-grained social media information has significant predictive power in forecasting color and fit demands months in advance of the sales season, and therefore greatly helps in making the initial shipment quantity decision,” says Marshall Fisher of the University of Pennsylvania.

“The predictive power of including social media features, measured by the improvement of the out-of-sample mean absolute deviation over current practice, ranges from 24% to 57%,” Fisher continues.

The paper, “The Value of Social Media Data in Fashion Forecasting,” proves consistent results across all three retailers. The researchers demonstrate the robustness of the findings over market and geographic heterogeneity, and different forecast horizons.

The researchers note, “Changes in fashion demand are driven more by ‘bottom-up’ changes in consumer preferences than by ‘top-down’ influence from the .”

More information: Youran Fu et al, The Value of Social Media Data in Fashion Forecasting, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management (2023). DOI: 10.1287/msom.2023.1193

Source: The predictive power of social media data in fashion forecasting

Paralysed woman able to ‘speak’ through digital avatar

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A severely paralysed woman has been able to speak through an avatar using technology that translated her brain signals into speech and facial expressions.

[…]

The latest technology uses tiny electrodes implanted on the surface of the brain to detect electrical activity in the part of the brain that controls speech and face movements. These signals are translated directly into a digital avatar’s speech and facial expressions including smiling, frowning or surprise.

[…]

The patient, a 47-year-old woman, Ann, has been severely paralysed since suffering a brainstem stroke more than 18 years ago. She cannot speak or type and normally communicates using movement-tracking technology that allows her to slowly select letters at up to 14 words a minute. She hopes the avatar technology could enable her to work as a counsellor in future.

The team implanted a paper-thin rectangle of 253 electrodes on to the surface of Ann’s brain over a region critical for speech. The electrodes intercepted the brain signals that, if not for the stroke, would have controlled muscles in her tongue, jaw, larynx and face.

After implantation, Ann worked with the team to train the system’s AI algorithm to detect her unique brain signals for various speech sounds by repeating different phrases repeatedly.

The computer learned 39 distinctive sounds and a Chat GPT-style language model was used to translate the signals into intelligible sentences. This was then used to control an avatar with a voice personalised to sound like Ann’s voice before the injury, based on a recording of her speaking at her wedding.

The technology was not perfect, decoding words incorrectly 28% of the time in a test run involving more than 500 phrases, and it generated brain-to-text at a rate of 78 words a minute, compared with the 110-150 words typically spoken in natural conversation.

[…]

Prof Nick Ramsey, a neuroscientist at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, who was not involved in the research, said: “This is quite a jump from previous results. We’re at a tipping point.”

A crucial next step is to create a wireless version of the BCI that could be implanted beneath the skull.

[…]

Source: Paralysed woman able to ‘speak’ through digital avatar in world first | Neuroscience | The Guardian

Tornado Cash ‘laundered over $1B’ in criminal cryptocurrency

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Two founders of Tornado Cash were formally accused by US prosecutors today of laundering more than $1 billion in criminal proceeds through their cryptocurrency mixer.

As well as unsealing an indictment against the pair on Wednesday, the Feds also arrested one of them, 34-year-old Roman Storm, in his home state of Washington, and hauled him into court. Fellow founder and co-defendant Roman Semenov, a 35-year-old Russian citizen, is still at large.

As a cryptocurrency mixer, Tornado Cash is appealing to cybercriminals as it offers to provide them a degree of anonymity.

[…]

Tornado Cash was sanctioned by Uncle Sam a little over a year ago for helping North Korea’s Lazarus Group scrub funds stolen in the Axie Infinity hack. Additionally, the US Treasury Department said Tornado Cash was used to launder funds stolen in the Nomad bridge and Harmony bridge heists, both of which were also linked to Lazarus.

Storm and Semenov were both charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to commit sanctions violations, each carrying a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. A third charge, conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, could net the pair up to an additional five years upon conviction.

In the unsealed indictment [PDF], prosecutors said Tornado Cash boasted about its anonymizing features and that it could make money untraceable, and that Storm and Semenov refused to implement changes that would dial back Tornado’s thief-friendly money-laundering capabilities and bring it in line with financial regulations.

“Tornado Cash failed to establish an effective [anti money laundering] program or engage in any [know your customer] efforts,” Dept of Justice lawyers argued. Changes made publicly to make it appear as if Tornado Cash was legally compliant, the DoJ said, were laughed off as ineffective in private messages by the charged pair.

“While publicly claiming to offer a technically sophisticated privacy service, Storm and Semenov in fact knew that they were helping hackers and fraudsters conceal the fruits of their crimes,” said US Attorney Damian Williams. “Today’s indictment is a reminder that money laundering through cryptocurrency transactions violates the law, and those who engage in such laundering will face prosecution.”

What of the mysterious third founder?

While Storm and Semenov were the ones named on the rap sheet, they aren’t the only people involved with, or arrested over, their involvement in Tornado Cash. A third unnamed and uncharged person mentioned in the DoJ indictment referred to as “CC-1” is described as one of the three main people behind the sanctioned service.

Despite that, the Dept of Justice didn’t announce any charges against CC-1.

Clues point to CC-1 potentially being Alexey Persev, a Russian software developer linked to Tornado Cash who was arrested in The Netherlands shortly after the US sanctioned the crypto-mixing site. Persev was charged in that Euro nation with facilitating money laundering and concealing criminal financial flows, and is now out of jail on monitored home release awaiting trial.

Persev denies any wrongdoing, and claimed he wasn’t told why he was being detained. His defenders argued he shouldn’t be held accountable for writing Tornado Cash code since he didn’t do any of the alleged money laundering himself.

It’s not immediately clear if Pertsev is CC-1, nor is it clear why CC-1 wasn’t charged. We put those questions to the DoJ, and haven’t heard back.

Source: Tornado Cash ‘laundered over $1B’ in criminal cryptocurrency