Linking ideas with the world
This report summarizes insights from the inaugural 2024 Open Source Software Funding Survey1, a collaboration between GitHub, the Linux Foundation, and researchers from Harvard University. The objective of this study was to better understand how organizations2 fund, contribute to, and otherwise support open source software. Key Findings Scale Organizations contribute $7.7 billion USD annually to Read more about 2024 Open Source Software Funding Report[…]
PayPal-owned browser extension Honey manipulates affiliate marketing systems and withholds discount information from users, according to an investigation by YouTube channel MegaLag. The extension — which rose in popularity after promising consumers it would find them the best online deals — replaces existing affiliate cookies with its own during checkout, diverting commission payments from content Read more about PayPal Honey extension to find deals instead hides discounts and reroutes commissions from promoters[…]
British soldiers have successfully trialled for the first time a game-changing weapon that can take down a swarm of drones using radio waves for less than the cost of a pack of mince pies. The Radio Frequency Directed Energy Weapon (RFDEW) development system can detect, track and engage a range of threats across land, air Read more about British soldiers successfully test drone killer radiowave weapon for first time[…]
[…] following a Dec. 5 driver update that skipped GeForce Experience in favor of the Nvidia App (all future updates will follow its lead). The new app is meant to streamline the grab bag of features Nvidia has accumulated over the years, pairing its driver updating utility with a streamlined gaming overlay and improved tools Read more about This Nvidia App Setting Is Tanking Your Frame Rate – the rest of the problems it causes cannot be fixed[…]
Digital license plates, already legal to buy in a growing number of states and to drive with nationwide, offer a few perks over their sheet metal predecessors. You can change their display on the fly to frame your plate number with novelty messages, for instance, or to flag that your car has been stolen. Now Read more about Hackers Can Jailbreak Digital License Plates to Make Others Pay Their Tolls and Tickets[…]
Hackers aligned with the Chinese government have infiltrated U.S. telecommunications infrastructure so deeply that it allowed the interception of unencrypted communications on a number of people, according to reports that first emerged in October. The operation, dubbed Salt Typhoon, apparently allowed hackers to listen to phone calls and nab text messages, and the penetration has Read more about Feds Warn SMS Authentication Is Unsafe[…]
Hundreds of websites will be shut down on the day that Britain’s Online Safety Act comes into effect, in what are believed to be the first casualties of the new internet laws. Microcosm, a web forum hosting service that runs 300 sites including cycling forums and local community hubs, said that the sites would go Read more about Hundreds of websites to shut down under UK’s ‘chilling’ internet laws[…]
The tool, named “EagleMsgSpy,” was discovered by researchers at U.S. cybersecurity firm Lookout. The company said at the Black Hat Europe conference on Wednesday that it had acquired several variants of the spyware, which it says has been operational since “at least 2017.” Kristina Balaam, a senior intelligence researcher at Lookout, told TechCrunch the spyware Read more about Researchers uncover Chinese spyware used to target Android devices[…]
The advent of Bluetooth trackers has made it a lot easier to find your bag or keys when they’re lost, but it has also put inconspicuous tracking tools in the hands of people who might misuse them. Apple and Google have both implemented tracker alerts to let you know if there’s an unknown Bluetooth tracker Read more about Android will let you find unknown Bluetooth trackers instead of just warning you about them[…]
[…] new research suggests these batteries, once thought to have short-lived, inherently expendable shelf-lives, may actually last significantly longer than expected. In some cases, properly cared for EVs may even outlive their fossil fuel counterparts. That’s potentially good news: longer-lasting EVs might buy manufacturers much-need time to fabricate components needed to meet increasing global demands. Read more about Surprise: EV batteries might have a longer shelf live than once thought[…]
A US bankruptcy court has blocked the sale of Infowars to parody news site The Onion, ruling that the auction didn’t yield the best potential bids. At the same time, judge Christopher Lopez rejected claims by Infowars‘ owner, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, that any “collusion” was involved in the case. The Onion reportedly outbid competitor Read more about Judge rejects The Onion’s bid for Infowars, changes the rules after the game is played[…]
[…]300-plus musicians who have signed an open letter supporting the Internet Archive as it faces a $621 million copyright infringement lawsuit over its efforts to preserve 78 rpm records. The letter, spearheaded by the digital advocacy group Fight for the Future, states that the signatories “wholeheartedly oppose” the lawsuit, which they suggest benefits “shareholder profits” Read more about 300 Artists Back Internet Archive in $621 Million Copyright Attack from Record Labels – over music older than the 1950s[…]
In 2021, EA made a pledge to let the wider game industry use its accessibility-related patents at no cost, and now the publisher has added 23 new patents to its lineup. As of today, third parties can freely use patented technology such as improved speech recognition, simplified speech tech in games, and the ability to Read more about EA makes photosensitivity and speech recognition tech patents open-source, adding to a pile of accessibility patents already there[…]
[…] Traditionally, entanglement is achieved through local interactions or via entanglement swapping, where entanglement at a distance is generated through previously established entanglement and Bell-state measurements. However, the precise requirements enabling the generation of quantum entanglement without traditional local interactions remain less explored. Here, we demonstrate that independent particles can be entangled without the need Read more about A new way to entangle Particles from a distance[…]
An optical fibre technology can help chips communicate with each other at the speed of light, enabling them to transmit 80 times as much information as they could using traditional electrical connections. That could significantly speed up the training times required for large artificial intelligence models – from months to weeks – while also reducing Read more about IBM develops fast Chips with light signals[…]
Imagine if scientists could grab virus particles the same way we pick up a tennis ball or a clementine, and prevent them from infecting cells. Well, scientists in Illinois have built a microscopic four-fingered hand to do just that. A team of scientists, led by Xing Wang of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has created Read more about Scientists Built a Tiny DNA ‘Hand’ That Grabs Viruses to Stop Infections[…]
The UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) and the University of Bristol have built a diamond battery capable of delivering power, albeit a tiny amount, for thousands of years. The university had an idea for a battery powered by carbon-14, the longest-lived radioactive isotope of carbon with a half-life of around 5,700 years. For safety reasons, Read more about Boffins build diamond battery that lasts millennia[…]
Chinese tech company employees and government workers are siphoning off user data and selling it online – and even high-ranking Chinese Communist Party officials and FBI-wanted hackers’ sensitive information is being peddled by the Middle Kingdom’s thriving illegal data ecosystem. “While Western cybercrime research focuses heavily on criminals in the English- and Russian-speaking worlds, there Read more about Chinese scammers, criminals and businesses are exploiting its surveillance state[…]
Walled Culture has been following the sorry saga of Italy’s automated blocking system Piracy Shield for a year now. Blocklists are drawn up by copyright companies, without any review, or the possibility of any objections, and those blocks must be enforced within 30 minutes. Needless to say, such a ham-fisted and biased approach to copyright Read more about Why Italy’s Piracy Shield destroys huge internet companies and small businesses with no recourse (unless you are rich) and can lay out the entire internet in Italy to… protect against football streaming?![…]
America’s top cybersecurity and law enforcement officials made a coordinated push Tuesday to raise awareness about cyber threats from foreign actors in the wake of an intrusion of U.S. telecom equipment dubbed Salt Typhoon. The hackers are linked to the Chinese government and they still have a presence in U.S. systems, spying on American communications, Read more about In massive U-turn, FBI Warns Americans to Start Using Encrypted Messaging Apps, after discovering the problem with backdoors[…]
[…] AI learns primarily through massive datasets and extensive simulations, regardless of the application. Now, researchers from Duke University and the Army Research Laboratory have developed a platform to help AI learn to perform complex tasks more like humans. Nicknamed GUIDE for short […] “It remains a challenge for AI to handle tasks that require Read more about Training AI through human interactions instead of datasets[…]
[…] Remote sensing engineers at the University of South Australia have built a new, low cost prototype system that merges celestial triangulation with vision-based algorithmic computing for UAVs flying at night. But unlike existing GPS, the novel design doesn’t emit any signals, making it impervious to current jamming methods. […] To make it work, engineers Read more about Drones can avoid GPS jammers by navigating with the stars[…]
From 23% less in the northern Alps to a decrease of almost 50% on the southwestern slopes: Between 1920 and 2020, snowfall across the entirety of the Alps has decreased on average by a significant 34%. The results come from a study coordinated by Eurac Research and were published in the International Journal of Climatology. Read more about Snowfall in the Alps is a third less than a hundred years ago, meteorologists find[…]
[…] In 2022, Doctorow coined the word “enshittification”, which has just been crowned Macquarie Dictionary’s word of the year. The dictionary defined the word as follows. “The gradual deterioration of a service or product brought about by a reduction in the quality of service provided, especially of an online platform, and as a consequence of Read more about ‘What many of us feel’: why ‘enshittification’ is Macquarie Dictionary’s word of the year | Oxford names ‘Brain rot’ (out of a very poor list)[…]
Education should promote deep inquiry and individual autonomy, but often, it has been used as a vehicle for indoctrination. That’s what Agustina S. Paglayan, a UC San Diego assistant professor of political science in the School of Social Sciences and the School of Global Policy and Strategy, argues in her new book, “Raised to Obey: Read more about Mass education was designed to quash critical thinking, argues researcher[…]