Roku’s New Idea to Show You Ads When You Pause Your Video Game and spy on the content on your hdmi cable Is Horrifying

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[…]

Roku describes its idea in a patent application, which largely flew under the radar when it was filed in November, and was recently spotted by the streaming newsletter Lowpass. In the application, Roku describes a system that’s able to detect when users pause third-party hardware and software and show them ads during that time.

According to the company, its new system works via an HDMI connection. This suggests that it’s designed to target users who play video games or watch content from other streaming services on their Roku TVs. Lowpass described Roku’s conundrum perfectly:

“Roku’s ability to monetize moments when the TV is on but not actively being used goes away when consumers switch to an external device, be it a game console or an attached streaming adapter from a competing manufacturer,” Janko Roettgers, the newsletter’s author, wrote. “Effectively, HDMI inputs have been a bit of a black box for Roku.”

In addition, Roku wouldn’t just show you any old ads. The company states that its innovation can recognize the content that users have paused and deliver customized related ads. Roku’s system would do this by using audio or video-recognition technologies to analyze what the user is watching or analyze the content’s metadata, among other methods.

[…]

In the case of gaming, there’s also the danger of Roku mistaking a long moment of pondering for a pause and sticking an ad right when you’re getting ready to face the final boss. The company is aware of this potential failure and points out that its system will monitor the frames of the content being watched to ensure there was a phase. It also plans on using other methods, such as analyzing the audio feed on the TV for extended moments of silence, to confirm there has been a pause.

[…]

Source: Roku’s New Idea to Show You Ads When You Pause Your Video Game Is Horrifying

It’s Not Just You, Google Pixels Are Glitching Right Now

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[…] As reported by Android Authority, more and more users are complaining about their Pixel phones not working as, well, phones. Users will miss phone calls entirely, and only notice after they see the call went directly to voicemail, while text messages don’t appear as they’re received, but rather pop in all at once in batches. It’s affecting multiple types of Pixel, as well, including Pixel 7a, Pixel 7, Pixel 7 Pro, Pixel 8, and Pixel 8 Pro.

In a Google Support thread about the issue, users blame the March 2024 update for causing this chaos, and suggest the April 2024 update didn’t include a patch for it, either. (It isn’t present in the release notes.) One alleges this update somehow messed with the phone’s IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem), which is responsible for powering different communication standards on the Pixel. One commenter goes so far as to say the SMS issues have nearly driven them to iPhone, saying, “Google – are you getting the message?”

We don’t know exactly what is causing this network issue with Pixel, and it’s not affecting each and every Pixel user, as this Android Police commenter would like readers to know. But there are enough Pixel devices experiencing network problems around the world that this seems to be an issue Google can address.

[…]

it seems like the only temporary workaround is to toggle wifi off and on again, to essential toggle wifi calling off and on again as well. Reports suggest the workaround will allow calls and texts through as normal, but only temporarily, as the issue does seem to come back in time.

Source: It’s Not Just You, Google Pixels Are Glitching Right Now | Lifehacker

Ubisoft At The Center Of A Fight To Stop Online Game Shutdowns – help out yourself

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In an increasingly digital age, owning media outright has become less and less possible. Whether it’s movies, music, books, or video games, the pivot to digital has made it harder for consumers to own permanent, physical copies of their favorite pieces of media. In video games, myriad titles that players have spent time and money on have been taken offline by publishers, never to be played again. Legislation around this is spotty worldwide, and some companies have gotten away with raking in consumer money just to pull the plug on a game months or years down the line. However, YouTube channel Accursed Farms is starting a coordinated campaign to force stronger legislation against this practice, with Ubisoft’s racing game The Crew at the center of it.

The growing lack of ownership in video games

Ross Scott, who runs Accursed Farms, posted a 31-minute video on the channel, which outlines the problem and how he believes drawing attention to The Crew’s April 1 shutdown could cause governments to enact greater consumer protections for people who purchase online games. As laid out in the video, consumer rights for these situations vary in different countries. France, however, has some pretty robust consumer laws, and Ubisoft is based there.

“This isn’t really about The Crew or even Ubisoft,” Scott says in the video. “It’s about trying to find a weak link in the industry so governments can examine this practice to stop publishers from destroying our games.”

Accursed Farms

According to a since-deleted blog post by Ubisoft, The Crew had over 12 million players before it was delisted in December of last year. Even if most of those people weren’t actively playing the game by the end of its lifetime, that still means that millions of copies of the game were sold—zero of which can be played today. This has become pretty common practice for a lot of online games from some of the biggest companies in the industry, like when Square Enix shut down Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier in January 2023 or Electronic Arts sunsetting the mobile version of Apex Legends the following May. However, Scott hypothesizes that players don’t form substantial collective action to save these games because, by the time a company makes a decision to shut a game down, most of its player base has already moved on. This is why he’s formed the Stop Killing Games initiative, which is attempting to rally concerned video game fans into pushing local governments to examine the situation with The Crew. The hope is that this can spark broader change.

How the Stop Killing Games initiative is coordinating action

The Stop Killing Games website includes step-by-step instructions for different countries and regions on how to support the cause, whether by contacting local representatives and government bodies or just spreading the word.

[…]

The Stop Killing Games’ end goal is that governments will implement legislation to ensure the following:

  • Games sold must be left in a functional state
  • Games sold must require no further connection to the publisher or affiliated parties to function
  • The above also applies to games that have sold microtransactions to customers
  • The above cannot be superseded by end user license agreements

As Scott lays out, the ideal outcome is that legislation will require online games to be run on player-hosted servers after developers stop supporting it, rather than publishers shouldering the burden of hosting servers internally. This is often a leading cause for games and services being shut down.

[…]

Ubisoft’s director of subscriptions, Philippe Tremblay, recently said the company wants players to be more comfortable not owning the games they buy the same way people have grown accustomed to not owning albums on Spotify or films on Netflix:

One of the things we saw is that gamers are used to, a little bit like DVD, having and owning their games. That’s the consumer shift that needs to happen. They got comfortable not owning their CD collection or DVD collection. That’s a transformation that’s been a bit slower to happen [in games]. As gamers grow comfortable in that aspect… you don’t lose your progress. If you resume your game at another time, your progress file is still there. That’s not been deleted. You don’t lose what you’ve built in the game or your engagement with the game. So it’s about feeling comfortable with not owning your game.

Source: Ubisoft At The Center Of A Fight To Stop Online Game Shutdowns

Window coating blocks sun heat from any angle but not view

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Windows welcome light into interior spaces, but they also bring in unwanted heat. A new window coating blocks heat-generating ultraviolet and infrared light and lets through visible light, regardless of the sun’s angle. The coating can be incorporated onto existing windows or automobiles and can reduce air-conditioning cooling costs by more than one-third in hot climates.

[…]

Window coatings used in many recent studies are optimized for light that enters a room at a 90-degree angle. Yet at noon, often the hottest time of the day, the sun’s rays enter vertically installed windows at oblique angles.

Luo and his postdoctoral associate Seongmin Kim previously fabricated a transparent window coating by stacking ultra-thin layers of silica, alumina and titanium oxide on a glass base. A micrometer-thick silicon polymer was added to enhance the structure’s cooling power by reflecting thermal radiation through the atmospheric window and into outer space.

Additional optimization of the order of the layers was necessary to ensure the coating would accommodate multiple angles of solar light.

[…]

Their model produced a coating that both maintained transparency and reduced temperature by 5.4 to 7.2 degrees Celsius in a model room, even when light was transmitted in a broad range of angles. The lab’s results were recently published in Cell Reports Physical Science.

[…]

Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Notre Dame. Original written by Karla Cruise. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:

  1. Seongmin Kim, Serang Jung, Alexandria Bobbitt, Eungkyu Lee, Tengfei Luo. Wide-angle spectral filter for energy-saving windows designed by quantum annealing-enhanced active learning. Cell Reports Physical Science, 2024; 5 (3): 101847 DOI: 10.1016/j.xcrp.2024.101847

Source: Sunrise to sunset, new window coating blocks heat — not view | ScienceDaily

Stanford: Biomarkers predict weight loss on either low carb or low fat diet (one of these will work best for you) – suggest personalized diets

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Strictly following a diet – either healthy low-carb or healthy low-fat – was what mattered for short-term weight loss during the first six months. But people who maintained long-term weight loss for a year ate the same number of calories as those who regained weight or who did not lose weight during the second six months.

So what explains this difference?

According to the study, the bacteria living in your gut and the amounts of certain proteins your body makes can affect your ability to sustain weight loss. And some people, it turns out, shed more pounds on low-fat diets while others did better on low-carb diets.

Stanford Medicine researchers have identified several biomarkers that predict how successful an individual will be at losing weight and keeping it off long-term. These biomarkers include signatures from the gut microbiome, proteins made by the human body and levels of exhaled carbon dioxide. The researchers published their findings in Cell Reports Medicine Dec. 13.

[…]

The study showed that just cutting calories or exercising were not enough to sustain weight loss over a year. To try and understand why, the team turned their focus to biomarkers of metabolism.

[…]

Throughout the study, the researchers measured the ratio of inhaled oxygen to exhaled carbon dioxide, known as a respiratory quotient, which serves as a proxy for whether carbohydrates or fats are the body’s primary fuel. A lower ratio means the body burns more fat, while a higher ratio means it burns more carbohydrates. So, those who started the diet with a higher respiratory quotient lost more weight on a low-carb diet.

“There are people who can be eating very few calories but still sustain their weight because of how their bodies metabolize fuels. It is not for lack of will: It is just how their bodies work,” Perelman said.

In other words, if your body prefers carbs and you’re predominately eating fat, it will be much harder to metabolize and burn off those calories.

[…]

tracking amounts of certain gut microbe strains will be a way for people to determine which diets are best for weight loss.

We’re not there yet, so until then, according to the researchers, the focus should be on eating high-quality foods that are unprocessed and low in refined flours and sugar.

The research team identified specific nutrients that were correlated with weight loss during the first six months. Low-carb diets should be based on monounsaturated fats — such as those that come from avocados, rather than bacon — and high in vitamins K, C and E. These vitamins are in vegetables, nuts, olives, and avocados. Low-fat diets should be high in fiber, such as is found in whole grains and beans, and avoid added sugars.

“Your mindset should be on what you can include in your diet instead of what you should exclude,” Perelman said. “Figure out how to eat more fiber, whether it is from beans, whole grains, nuts or vegetables, instead of thinking you shouldn’t eat ice cream. Learn to cook and rely less on processed foods. If you pay attention to the quality of food in your diet, then you can forget about counting calories.”

Source: Biomarkers predict weight loss, suggest personalized diets – Scope

Google will delete data collected from private browsing

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In hopes of settling a lawsuit challenging its data collection practices, Google has agreed to destroy web browsing data it collected from users browsing in Chrome’s private modes – which weren’t as private as you might have thought.

The lawsuit [PDF], filed in June, 2020, on behalf of plaintiffs Chasom Brown, Maria Nguyen, and William Byatt, sought to hold Google accountable for making misleading statements about privacy.

[…]

“Despite its representations that users are in control of what information Google will track and collect, Google’s various tracking tools, including Google Analytics and Google Ad Manager, are actually designed to automatically track users when they visit webpages – no matter what settings a user chooses,” the complaint claims. “This is true even when a user browses in ‘private browsing mode.'”

Chrome’s Incognito mode only provides privacy in the client by not keeping a locally stored record of the user’s browsing history. It does not shield website visits from Google.

[…]

During the discovery period from September 2020 through March 2022, Google produced more than 5.8 million pages of documents. Even so, it was sanctioned nearly $1 million in 2022 by Magistrate Judge Susan van Keulen – for concealing details about how it can detect when Chrome users employ Incognito mode.

What the plaintiffs’ legal team found might have been difficult to explain at trial.

“Google employees described Chrome Incognito Mode as ‘misleading,’ ‘effectively a lie,’ a ‘confusing mess,’ a ‘problem of professional ethics and basic honesty,’ and as being ‘bad for users, bad for human rights, bad for democracy,'” according to the declaration [PDF] of Mark C Mao, a partner with the law firm of Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, which represents the plaintiffs.

[…]

On December 26 last year the plaintiffs and Google agreed to settle the case. The plaintiffs’ attorneys have suggested the relief provided by the settlement is worth $5 billion – but nothing will be paid, yet.

The settlement covers two classes of people: one of which excludes those using Incognito mode while logged into their Google Account:

  • Class 1: All Chrome browser users with a Google account who accessed a non-Google website containing Google tracking or advertising code using such browser and who were (a) in “Incognito mode” on that browser and (b) were not logged into their Google account on that browser, but whose communications, including identifying information and online browsing history, Google nevertheless intercepted, received, or collected from June 1, 2016 through the present.
  • Class 2: All Safari, Edge, and Internet Explorer users with a Google account who accessed a non-Google website containing Google tracking or advertising code using such browser and who were (a) in a “private browsing mode” on that browser and (b) were not logged into their Google account on that browser, but whose communications, including identifying information and online browsing history, Google nevertheless intercepted, received, or collected from June 1, 2016 through the present.

The settlement [PDF] requires that Google: inform users that it collects private browsing data, both in its Privacy Policy and in an Incognito Splash Screen; “must delete and/or remediate billions of data records that reflect class members’ private browsing activities”; block third-party cookies in Incognito mode for the next five years (separately, Google is phasing out third-party cookies this year); and must delete the browser signals that indicate when private browsing mode is active, to prevent future tracking.

[…]

The class of affected people has been estimated to number about 136 million.

 

Source: Google will delete data collected from private browsing • The Register

10 second Euro Instant payments now mandatory in NL

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It will become mandatory for payment service providers, such as banks, that offer standard credit transfers in euros to offer the sending and receipt of instant payments in euros. The regulation relating to this has now been published.

Thanks to the regulation, people will be able to transfer money within 10 seconds at any time of the day.

The situation varies widely from Member State to Member State as regards the availability of instant payments and any associated fees. At the beginning of 2022, only 11 percent of all euro transfers in the EU were instant.

On October 26, 2022, the European Commission presented a proposal for a regulation on instant payments in euros. With the proposal, the Commission fulfilled a key commitment in the Commission’s 2020 Retail Payments Strategy.

The regulation provides for a longer transition period for countries outside the eurozone, as they need more time to adapt to the new rules.

Source: Instant payments in euros now mandatory – Emerce

It’s pretty silly that it’s 2024 and only now are database bits being forced to flip within 10 seconds, but that shows how long overdue this kind of regulation is.

The Digital Identity Wallet approved by parliament and council

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On the 28th February, The European Parliament gave its final approval to the Digital Identity Regulation, with 335 votes to 190, with 31 abstentions. It was adopted by the EU Council of Ministers on 26th of March. The next step will be its publication in the Official Journal and its entry into force 20 days later.

The regulation introduces the EU Digital Identity Wallet, which will allow citizens to identify and authenticate themselves online to a range of public and private services, as well as store and share digital documents. Wallet users will also be able to create free digital signatures.

The EU Digital Identity Wallet will be used on a voluntary basis, and no one can be discriminated against for not using the wallet. The wallet will be open-source, to further encourage transparency, innovation, and enhance security.

Find out more about the history of the regulation and the project here.

Open-source code and new version of the ARF released for public feedback.

The open-source code of the EU Digital Identity Wallet, and the latest version of the Architecture and Reference Framework (ARF) are now available on our Github.

Version 1.3 of the ARF is now available to the public, to gather feedback before its adoption by the expert group. The ARF outlines how wallets distributed by Member States will function and contains a high level overview of the standards and practices that are needed to build the wallet.

The open-source code of the wallet (also referred to as the reference implementation) is built on the specifications outlined in the ARF. It is based on a modular architecture composed of a set of business agnostic, reusable components which will evolve in incremental steps and can be reused across multiple projects.

[…]

Large Scale Pilot projects are currently test driving the many use cases of the EU Digital Identity Wallet in the real world.

Discover the Large Scale Pilots

Source: The Digital Identity Wallet is now on its way – EU Digital Identity Wallet –

This is an immensely complex project which is very very important to get right. I am very curious if they did.

Aston Martin Show the way forward: Don’t trigger the piss off factor with your touchscreens

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To decide how to best implement their cars’ touchscreens, Aston designers went out and sampled a range of vehicles, using their controls and noting the steps necessary to activate certain functions. Any feature expected to be immediately available that wasn’t triggered the “piss-off factor.”

The new Vantage is a good example of Aston’s design philosophy. It has a touchscreen, but it’s accompanied by many physical buttons, switches, and knobs. Nurnberger told CarExpert that Aston considered moving the seat controls into the touchscreen, but owners said they like to adjust their seat on the move depending on how they’re driving, and touchscreen-based settings are cumbersome and unsafe to use on the fly. The same thinking applies to volume and HVAC-related inputs.

“That’s the thing about the piss-off factor. When you want it, you want it instantly,” said Nurnberger. “If you want to turn the volume up and down, temperature absolutely—the minute you’ve got to go into a screen and tap for temperature, you’ve lost the customer. You’ve lost the experience.”

Aston is echoing what so many of us have already been saying. I think we can all agree that more button-heavy interiors are preferred. Touchscreens require more mental effort to use while simultaneously offering zero tactile feedback—frustrating at best and downright dangerous at worst. The automaker’s approach is a simple and sensible one that the entire industry should follow, especially brands that sell cars most of us can actually afford: if it pisses people off, don’t do it.

Source: Aston Martin Created a Metric for Touchscreen-Induced Anger

63 hour GPS jamming attack over Baltics affects 1600 aircraft over Europe

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[…]

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Europe has experienced an uptick in the number of large-scale disruptions of GPS and other global navigation satellite systems (GNSS). The disruption has been felt near the Mediterranean and Black Sea, and near the Baltic Sea and Arctic. Since December 2023, for instance, the Baltic region has experienced fairly consistent GPS jamming. That roughly coincided with Russian media reports that the Russian navy’s Baltic Fleet based in Kaliningrad – a Russian enclave located between Lithuania and Poland – was conducting electronic warfare exercises.

Such interference can include jamming of satellite signals to block service. It can also include “spoofing” of signals – a technique that can be used to make aircraft GPS receivers appear to be in completely different locations, says Zach Clements at the University of Texas at Austin. His analysis has shown that the Christmas-time GPS interference in Europe included multiple incidents of GPS jamming, along with a spoofing attack originating from inside Russia.

[…]

The newest record-breaking run of jamming in the Baltic region started on the evening of 22 March and lasted 63 hours and 40 minutes – until the afternoon of 25 March, according to an open-source intelligence analyst who uses the social media account Runradion. The attack included 24 hours of interference patterns spread across parts of Sweden, Germany and Poland, before a switch to more focused interference primarily covering Poland, which lasted for about 40 hours.

More than 1600 aircraft were affected by this record-breaking period of disruption, according to another analyst using the pseudonym Markus Jonsson. In an earlier incident on 13 March, a Royal Air Force aircraft carrying UK Defence Secretary Grant Shapps experienced GPS signal interference on both legs of a journey between the UK and Poland as the aircraft flew near Kaliningrad.

[…]

Improved awareness among airline crews when entering areas with known jamming or spoofing activities has helped reduce the risk, says a spokesperson from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency. The agency has also been working on strengthening GPS alternatives using ground-based or on-board inertial guidance systems.

Source: Unprecedented GPS jamming attack affects 1600 aircraft over Europe | New Scientist

No Man’s Sky gets unique computer-generated space stations and ship customisation

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No Man’s Sky is still getting major updates. Developer Hello Games’ “Orbital” update, due Wednesday, adds procedurally generated space stations (so they’ll be different every time), a ship editor and a Guild system to the nearly eight-year-old space exploration sim.

Up until now, space stations have been one of the few parts of No Man’s Sky that weren’t created and randomized by algorithms as something truly unique. That changes with today’s update, which uses game engine upgrades to “create vast interior spaces and exterior spaces, with improved reflection and metallic surfaces.”

The stations’ broader scale will be evident from the outside, while their interiors will include new shops, gameplay and things to do. Hello Games describes them as being “uniquely customized” based on their virtual inhabitants’ system, race and locale.

Interior of new procedurally generated space stations in the game No Man's Sky. Three characters stand in action poses in the foreground of a space hangar as ships whizz by.
Hello Games

Inside the stations, you’ll find the new ship editor. Hello Games says it previously withheld ship customization to maintain the title’s focus on exploration. (If players could build any ship they wanted at any time, it could ruin some of the fun of scouting out existing ones to buy in-game.) In that spirit, you’ll still need to collect, trade and salvage the parts to build yours how you like it.

[…]

Source: Eight years after launch, No Man’s Sky gets computer-generated space stations that are different each time

Completely awesome!

Twitch bans streams overlaid on boobs and butts – because Americans are petrified of sex

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[…]

Twitch is putting a stop to its streamers’ shenanigans, though, and will officially prohibit “content that focuses on clothed intimate body parts such as the buttocks, groin, or breasts for extended periods of time” starting on March 29.

In a writeup on the trend, Kotaku explained that it all started when controversial streamer Morgpie projected her Fortnite gaming session on a closeup of her behind. After that, other streamers followed suit, overlaying their games on body parts both real and fictional, like anime thighs or anime boobs breasting boobily on screen while they’re playing. Now, boobs and butts streaming is out.

[…]

unclothed versions are also prohibited, as per Twitch’s policy that doesn’t allow users to broadcast or upload “content that contains depictions of real or fictional nudity, regardless of the medium used to create it.”

[…]

Source: Twitch bans streams overlaid on boobs and butts

Posted in Sex

Song lyrics really are getting simpler, more repetitive

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You’re not just getting older. Song lyrics really are becoming simpler and more repetitive, according to a study published on Thursday.

Lyrics have also become angrier and more self-obsessed over the last 40 years, the study found, reinforcing the opinions of cranky aging music fans everywhere.

A team of European researchers analyzed the words in more than 12,000 English-language songs across the genres of rap, country, pop, R&B and from 1980 to 2020.

[…]

For the study in the journal Scientific Reports, the researchers looked at the emotions expressed in lyrics, how many different and complicated words were used, and how often they were repeated.

[…]

The results also confirmed previous research which had shown a decrease in positive, joyful lyrics over time and a rise in those that express anger, disgust or sadness.

Lyrics have also become much more self-obsessed, with words such as “me” or “mine” becoming much more popular.

‘Easier to memorize’

The number of repeated lines rose most in rap over the decades, Zangerle said—adding that it obviously had the most lines to begin with.

“Rap music has become more angry than the other genres,” she added.

The researchers also investigated which songs the fans of different genres looked up on the lyric website Genius.

Unlike other genres, rock fans most often looked up lyrics from older songs, rather than new ones.

Rock has tumbled down the charts in recent decades, and this could suggest fans are increasingly looking back to the genre’s heyday, rather than its present.

Another way that music has changed is that “the first 10-15 seconds are highly decisive for whether we skip the song or not,” Zangerle said.

Previous research has also suggested that people tend to listen to music more in the background these days, she added.

Put simply, songs with more choruses that repeat basic appear to be more popular.

“Lyrics should stick easier nowadays, simply because they are easier to memorize,” Zangerle said.

“This is also something that I experience when I listen to the radio.”

More information: Eva Zangerle, Song lyrics have become simpler and more repetitive over the last five decades, Scientific Reports (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-55742-x. www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-55742-x

Source: Song lyrics are getting simpler, more repetitive: Study

Posted in Art

In-app browsers still a privacy, security, and choice issue

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[…] Open Web Advocacy (OWA), a group that supports open web standards and fair competition, said in a post on Tuesday that representatives “recently met with both the [EU’s] Digital Markets Act team and the UK’s Market Investigation Reference into Cloud Gaming and Browsers team to discuss how tech giants are subverting users’ choice of default browser via in-app browsers and the harm this causes.”

OWA argues that in-app browsers, without notice or consent, “ignore your choice of default browser and instead automatically and silently replace your default browser with their own in-app browser.”

The group’s goal isn’t to ban the technology, which has legitimate uses. Rather it’s to prevent in-app browsers from being used to thwart competition and flout user choice.

In-app browsers are like standalone web browsers without the interface – they rely on the native app for the interface. They can be embedded in native platform apps to load and render web content within the app, instead of outside the app in the designated default browser.

[…]

The problem with in-app browsers is that they play by a different set of rules from standalone browsers. As noted by OWA in its 62-page submission [PDF] to regulators:

  • They override the user’s choice of default browser
  • They raise tangible security and privacy harms
  • They stop the user from using their ad-blockers and tracker blockers
  • Their default browsers privacy and security settings are not shared
  • They are typically missing web features
  • They typically have many unique bugs and issues
  • The user’s session state is not shared so they are booted out of websites they have logged into in their default browser
  • They provide little benefit to users
  • They create significant work and often break third-party websites
  • They don’t compete as browsers
  • They confuse users and today function as dark patterns

Since around 2016, software engineers involved in web application development started voicing concerns about in-app browsers at some of the companies using them. But it wasn’t until around 2019 when Google engineer Thomas Steiner published a blog post about Facebook’s use of in-app browsers in its iOS and Android apps that the privacy and choice impact of in-app browsers began to register with a wider audience.

Steiner observed: “WebViews can also be used for effectively conducting intended man-in-the-middle attacks, since the IAB [in-app browser] developer can arbitrarily inject JavaScript code and also intercept network traffic.” He added: “Most of the time, this feature is used for good.”

[…]

In August 2022, developer Felix Krause published a blog post titled “Instagram and Facebook can track anything you do on any website in their in-app browser.” A week later, he expanded his analysis of in-app browsers to note how TikTok’s iOS app injects JavaScript to subscribe to “every keystroke (text inputs) happening on third party websites rendered inside the TikTok app”

[…]

Even assuming one accepts Meta’s and TikTok’s claims that they’ve not misused the extraordinary access granted by in-app browsers – a difficult ask in light of allegations raised in ongoing Meta litigation – the issue remains that companies implementing in-app browsers may be overriding the choices of users regarding their browser and whatever extensions they have installed.

However, Meta does provide a way to opt out of having its in-app browser open links clicked in its Facebook and Instagram apps.

[…]

As for the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the UK watchdog appears to be willing to consider allowing developer choice to supersede user choice, or at least that was the case two years ago. In its 2022 response to the CMA’s Interim Report, Google observed [PDF] that the competition agency itself had conceded that in an Android native app, the choice of browser belongs to the app developer rather than to Google.

“The Interim Report raises concerns about in-app browsers overriding users’ chosen default browsers,” Google said in its response. “However, as the CMA rightly notes, the decision on whether a native app launches an in-app browser, and if so, which browser, lies with the respective app developer, not Google. Having control over whether or not an in-app browser is launched allows app developers to customize their user interfaces, which can in turn improve the experience for users. There is therefore, to some extent, a trade-off between offering developers choice and offering end users choice.”

Source: In-app browsers still a privacy, security, and choice issue • The Register

However, in-app browsers are a horrible security breach and the choice should belong to the user – not Google, not an app developer.

Soofa Digital Kiosks Snatch Your Phone’s Data When You Walk By, sell it on

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Digital kiosks from Soofa seem harmless, giving you bits of information alongside some ads. However, these kiosks popping up throughout the United States take your phone’s information and location data whenever you walk near them, and sell them to local governments and advertisers, first reported by NBC Boston Monday.

“At Soofa, we developed the first pedestrian impressions sensor that measures accurate foot traffic in real-time,” says a page on the company’s website. “Soofa advertisers can check their analytics dashboard anytime to see how their campaigns are tracking towards impressions goals.”

While data tracking is commonplace online, it’s becoming more pervasive in the real world. Whenever you walk past a Soofa kiosk, it collects your phone’s unique identifier (MAC address), manufacturer, and signal strength. This allows it to track anyone who walks within a certain, unspecified range. It then creates a dashboard to share with advertisers and local governments to display analytics about how many people are walking and engaging with its billboards.

This can offer local cities new ways to understand how people use public spaces, and how many people are reading notices posted on these digital kiosks. However, it also gives local governments detailed information on how people move throughout society and raises a question of how this data is being used.

[…]

A Soofa spokesperson said it does not share data with any 3rd parties in an email to Gizmodo, and it only offers the dashboard to an organization that bought the kiosk. The company also claims to anonymize your MAC address by the time it gets to advertisers and local governments.

However, Soofa also tells advertisers how to effectively use your location data on its website. It notes that advertisers can track when you’ve been near a physical billboard or kiosk in the real world based on location data. Then, using cookies, the advertisers can send you more digital ads later on. While Soofa didn’t invent this technique, it certainly seems to be promoting it.

[…]

Source: These Digital Kiosks Snatch Your Phone’s Data When You Walk By

Mass claim CUIC against virus scanner (but really tracking sypware) Avast

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Privacy First has teamed up with Austrian NOYB (the organisation of privacy activist Max Schrems) to form the new mass claim organisation CUIC founded. CUIC stands for Consumers United in Court, also pronounceable as ‘CU in Court’ (see you in court).

[…]

Millions spied on by virus scanner

CUIC today filed subpoenas against software company Avast that made virus scanners that illegally collected the browsing behaviour of millions of people on computer, tablet or phone, including in the Netherlands. This data was then resold to other companies through an Avast subsidiary for millions of euros. This included data about users’ health, locations visited, political affiliation, religious beliefs, sexual orientation or economic situation. This information was linked to each specific user through unique user IDs. In a press release articulates CUIC president Wilmar Hendriks today as follows: “People thought they were safe with a virus scanner, but its very creator tracked everything they did on their computers. Avast sold this information to third parties for big money. They even advertised the goldmine of data they had captured. Companies like Avast should not be allowed to get away with this. That is why we are bringing this lawsuit. Those who won’t hear should feel.”

Fines

Back in March 2023, the Czech privacy regulator (UOOU) concluded that Avast violated the AVG and fined the company approximately €13.7 million. The US federal consumer authority, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), also recently ordered Avast to pay USD16.5 million in compensation to users and ordered it to stop selling or making collected data available to third parties, delete that collected data and implement a comprehensive privacy programme.

The lawsuit for which CUIC today sued Avast should lead to compensation for users in the Netherlands

[…]

Source: Mass claim CUIC against virus scanner Avast launched – Privacy First

Software vendors dump open source, go for the cash grab – Redis is the latest

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Essentially, all software is built using open source. By Synopsys’ count, 96% of all codebases contain open-source software.

Lately, though, there’s been a very disturbing trend. A company will make its program using open source, make millions from it, and then — and only then — switch licenses, leaving their contributors, customers, and partners in the lurch as they try to grab billions. I’m sick of it.

The latest IT melodrama baddie is Redis. Its program, which goes by the same name, is an extremely popular in-memory database. (Unless you’re a developer, chances are you’ve never heard of it.) One recent valuation shows Redis to be worth about $2 billion — even without an AI play! That, anyone can understand.

What did it do? To quote Redis: “Beginning today, all future versions of Redis will be released with source-available licenses. Starting with Redis 7.4, Redis will be dual-licensed under the Redis Source Available License (RSALv2) and Server Side Public License (SSPLv1). Consequently, Redis will no longer be distributed under the three-clause Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD).”

For those of you who aren’t open-source licensing experts, this means developers can no longer use Redis’ code. Sure, they can look at it, but they can’t export, borrow from, or touch it.

Redis pulled this same kind of trick in 2018 with some of its subsidiary code. Now it’s done so with the company’s crown jewels.

Redis is far from the only company to make such a move. Last year,  HashiCorp dumped its main program Terraform’s Mozilla Public License (MPL) for the Business Source License (BSL) 1.1. Here, the name of the new license game is to prevent anyone from competing with Terraform.

Would it surprise you to learn that not long after this, HashiCorp started shopping itself around for a buyer? It didn’t surprise me.

Before this latest round of license changes, MongoDB and Elastic made similar shifts. Again, you might never have heard of these companies or their programs, but each is worth, at a minimum, hundreds of millions of dollars. And, while you might not know it, if your company uses cloud services behind the scenes, chances are you’re using one or more of their programs

[…]

Software companies are ticked off. At least two Linux distros, Fedora and openSUSE, are considering getting rid of the Redis program. If they do, you can expect their big commercial brothers, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) to follow suit.

Who’s really furious about this, though, are developers. It’s their work, after all, that’s disappearing into semi-proprietary vaults, never to be touched by them again.

So, as they’ve done before and they’ll do again, at least two sets of programmers are forking it. First off the mark was Drew DeVault, founder and CEO of SourceHut, with Redict. He was quickly followed by Madelyn Olson, principal engineer at Amazon ElastiCache, itself an open-source fork of Elastic. However, as Olson observed, this as-yet-unnamed Redis fork is not an AWS project. AWS is working on its own response.

Source: Software vendors dump open source, go for the cash grab | Computerworld

Why is this a problem? Using open source also means you get free contributions whilst creating the code – that could be programming done for free, but also quality assurance done for free. So basically you take other people’s work and steal it to sell as your own.

Part of the problem is caused by the Free Open Source Software (FOSS) die-hard fundamentalists, a bunch of tenured university based software developers on a payroll, who absolutely refuse to allow other FOSS developers – who may not have a payroll – to make any money whatsoever on a FOSS license. This is a problem I have been addressing for years and which has gained quite a lot of traction since then.

 

Amazon fined almost $8M in Poland over dark patterns

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Poland’s competition and consumer protection watchdog has fined Amazon’s European subsidiary around $8 million (31.9 million Zlotys) for “dark patterns” that messed around internet shoppers.

The preliminary ruling applies to Amazon EU SARL, which oversees Amazon’s Polish e-commerce site, Amazon.pl, out of Luxembourg. Poland’s Office of Competition and Consumer Protection said the decision, subject to appeal, reflected misleading practices related to product availability, delivery dates, and drop-off time guarantees.

According to the ruling, Amazon’s Polish operation repeatedly canceled customer orders for e-book readers and other gear. The online souk believed it was within its rights to do so because it considers its sales contract and delivery obligations are active only after an item has shipped, rather than when the customer purchases it.

But these abrupt cancellations left punters who thought they’d successfully paid for stuff and were awaiting delivery disappointed, sparking complaints to the watchdog, which has seemingly upheld the claims.

Not only that, the regulator was unimpressed that the language on Amazon’s website warning this could happen is difficult to read – “it is written in gray font on a white background, at the very bottom of the page.”

[…]

Source: Amazon fined almost $8M in Poland over ‘dark patterns’ • The Register

OpenAI reveals tool to re-create human voices

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OpenAI said on Friday it’s allowed a small number of businesses to test a new tool that can re-create a person’s voice from just a 15-second recording.

Why it matters: The company said it is taking “a cautious and informed approach” to releasing the program, called Voice Engine, more broadly given the high risk of abuse presented by synthetic voice generators.

How it works: Based on the 15-second recording, the program can create a “emotive and realistic” natural-sounding voice that closely resembles the original speaker.

  • This synthetic voice can then be used to read text inputs, even if the text isn’t in the original speaker’s native language.

Case in point: In one example offered by the company, an English speaker’s voice was translated into Spanish, Mandarin, German, French and Japanese while preserving the speaker’s native accent.

  • OpenAI said Voice Engine has so far been used to provide reading assistance to nonreaders, to translate content, and to help people who are nonverbal.

[…]

Source: OpenAI reveals tool to re-create human voices

Age Verification Laws Drag Us Back to the Dark Ages of the Internet

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The fundamental flaw with the age verification bills and laws passing rapidly across the country is the delusional, unfounded belief that putting hurdles between people and pornography is going to actually prevent them from viewing porn. What will happen, and is already happening, is that people–including minors–will go to unmoderated, actively harmful alternatives that don’t require handing over a government-issued ID to see people have sex. Meanwhile, performers and companies that are trying to do the right thing will suffer.

[…]

Source: Age Verification Laws Drag Us Back to the Dark Ages of the Internet

The legislators passing these bills are doing so under the guise of protecting children, but what’s actually happening is a widespread rewiring of the scaffolding of the internet. They ignore long-established legal precedent that has said for years that age verification is unconstitutional, eventually and inevitably reducing everything we see online without impossible privacy hurdles and compromises to that which is not “harmful to minors.” The people who live in these states, including the minors the law is allegedly trying to protect, are worse off because of it. So is the rest of the internet.
Yet new legislation is advancing in Kentucky and Nebraska, while the state of Kansas just passed a law which even requires age-verification for viewing “acts of homosexuality,” according to a report: Websites can be fined up to $10,000 for each instance a minor accesses their content, and parents are allowed to sue for damages of at least $50,000. This means that the state can “require age verification to access LGBTQ content,” according to attorney Alejandra Caraballo, who said on Threads that “Kansas residents may soon need their state IDs” to access material that simply “depicts LGBTQ people.”
One newspaper opinion piece argues there’s an easier solution: don’t buy your children a smartphone: Or we could purchase any of the various software packages that block social media and obscene content from their devices. Or we could allow them to use social media, but limit their screen time. Or we could educate them about the issues that social media causes and simply trust them to make good choices. All of these options would have been denied to us if we lived in a state that passed a strict age verification law. Not only do age verification laws reduce parental freedom, but they also create myriad privacy risks. Requiring platforms to collect government IDs and face scans opens the door to potential exploitation by hackers and enemy governments. The very information intended to protect children could end up in the wrong hands, compromising the privacy and security of millions of users…

Ultimately, age verification laws are a misguided attempt to address the complex issue of underage social media use. Instead of placing undue burdens on users and limiting parental liberty, lawmakers should look for alternative strategies that respect privacy rights while promoting online safety.
This week a trade association for the adult entertainment industry announced plans to petition America’s Supreme Court to intervene.

Source: Slashdot

This is one of the many problems caused by an America that is suddenly so very afraid of sex, death and politics.

Lamborghini Is the Latest to Fall Victim to the Flat Logo Trend. Kills one of the most recognisable logos in the world

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Would it surprise you to know that there are still some automotive brands out there that haven’t drained the texture and depth out of their famous logos yet? Lamborghini was actually one of those storied marques that hadn’t responded to the so-called digital revolution up until now and, I think at this point, you would’ve just chalked it up to Sant’Agata not really caring about stuff like that, because they’re freaking Lamborghini. But it’s Thursday, March 28, 2024, and the originator of Italian wedges on wheels has a “new” logo that’s a lot like their old one, only flat and with a typeface best described as looking like it was lifted from Google’s free collection.

This is Lambo’s latest logo, and I’ll tell you where my mind went straight away: the Brooklyn Nets! It looks like the shield for the basketball team Jay-Z used to have a stake in, especially in that black-and-white getup. The brand says that additionally, for the first time in its history, its raging bull will be separated from those borders in some uses, particularly on “digital touchpoints.” No example of that’s been provided yet, but you can imagine what that’ll look like.

Lamborghini News photo
Lamborghini News photo
Lamborghini News photo

Lamborghini’s new logo as well as marketing mockups showing off its usage, along with some of the brand’s new typography. Interestingly, the script name often seen in badging is nowhere to be found. Lamborghini

Lamborghini’s announcement of the change also mentions a new custom typeface “that echoes the unmistakable lines and angularity of the cars.” I don’t know what that means, especially because the mockups the company’s shared with us have a variety of typefaces, and there’s no obvious way to know which, precisely, the press release is referring to. The one on the logo does look a lot like Google’s Roboto to me at first glance—which happens to be used on Lambo’s media portal—but it isn’t. In any case, it feels like a step back in terms of individuality, but that’s why these adjustments happen, after all. Even Lamborghini is concerned about falling behind the times.

Can you tell I’m just not feeling it? The whole “flat design” thing has been kicking around since like 2013, and some automakers, ever on the cutting edge of visual art, are only catching up to it now. The monochromatic look is often justified for its readability particularly on screens, but was anyone really having a hard time identifying Lambo’s shield and bull before? The way pretty much every brand has gone about this is to take their existing insignias and uncheck the blending options box on Photoshop, and listen, it just never results in anything interesting.

If you’ve gotta go flat, you should move to something that looks interesting and complete, flat. That’s what Honda’s done with the new treatment for its 0 Series EVs seen below, and I think it’s genius. The slashed zero looks like something I’d see in some kind of subtly unsettling futuristic Japanese story-driven action game, and the fact it also works as a skewed “H” is just so dang clever. Paul Rand’s Ford logo is another example of flatness with purpose, as it still looks progressive almost 60 years on.

Honda's clever logo for its upcoming 0 Series EVs.

Honda’s clever logo for its upcoming 0 Series EVs. Honda

What Lamborghini’s done here is far from the worst automotive logo redesign I’ve seen yet; that distinction would have to go to Peugeot or Citroën, which not only went for something unremarkable but obviously tried way too hard to come across as futuristic and aggressive. The only thing worse than being boring is lame. Lamborghini was never going to reach as far, because it doesn’t have to. But like Ferrari, it should know by now that the hardest power move you can make as an iconic brand is to never change, especially when everyone else does.

Source: Lamborghini Is the Latest to Fall Victim to the Flat Logo Trend

So it looks like the company, which has a pretty awesome design aesthetic , has found someone’s son’s marketing company, and spent a huge amount of money on a counter productive and very poorly executed brand campaign. So it’s not only insulting that they damaged the logo, but they did so inconsistently and badly. And the most important questions: why? what do they hope to achieve by changing? have not been asked.

Posted in Art

Project Ghostbusters: Facebook Accused of Using Your Phone to Wiretap Snapchat, Youtube, Amazon through Onavo VPN

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Court filings unsealed last week allege Meta created an internal effort to spy on Snapchat in a secret initiative called “Project Ghostbusters.” Meta did so through Onavo, a Virtual Private Network (VPN) service the company offered between 2016 and 2019 that, ultimately, wasn’t private at all.

“Whenever someone asks a question about Snapchat, the answer is usually that because their traffic is encrypted we have no analytics about them,” said Mark Zuckerberg in an email to three Facebook executives in 2016, unsealed in Meta’s antitrust case on Saturday. “It seems important to figure out a new way to get reliable analytics about them… You should figure out how to do this.”

Thus, Project Ghostbusters was born. It’s Meta’s in-house wiretapping tool to spy on data analytics from Snapchat starting in 2016, later used on YouTube and Amazon. This involved creating “kits” that can be installed on iOS and Android devices, to intercept traffic for certain apps, according to the filings. This was described as a “man-in-the-middle” approach to get data on Facebook’s rivals, but users of Onavo were the “men in the middle.”

[…]

A team of senior executives and roughly 41 lawyers worked on Project Ghostbusters, according to court filings. The group was heavily concerned with whether to continue the program in the face of press scrutiny. Facebook ultimately shut down Onavo in 2019 after Apple booted the VPN from its app store.

Prosecutors also allege that Facebook violated the United States Wiretap Act, which prohibits the intentional procurement of another person’s electronic communications.

[…]

Prosecutors allege Project Ghostbusters harmed competition in the ad industry, adding weight to their central argument that Meta is a monopoly in social media.

Source: Project Ghostbusters: Facebook Accused of Using Your Phone to Wiretap Snapchat

Who would have thought that a Facebook VPN was worthless? Oh, I have been reporting on this since 2018

DDOS attack takes down NL provinces and government organizations’ websites

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Various websites of provinces and government organizations were down on Monday due to a DDOS attack. At the moment, the website of the Province of North Holland is still unavailable or unavailable again.

The websites of the provinces of Groningen, Overijssel and North Brabant were also down for some time.

The sites of the Senate and the ports of Amsterdam and Den Helder were also bombarded.

According to FalconFeeds, a cyber threat intelligence platform, the DDoS attack was claimed by pro-Russian hacker group NoName05716. The attack is said to be in retaliation for the Dutch decision to give F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine.

More than a year ago, the province of North Holland was also the victim of a DDoS attack for some time.

Thanks to a temporary solution, the Groningen site is working again and subsidies and permits can also be applied for.

Research is still underway into the cause and possible consequences of this DDoS attack.

Source: DDOS aanval legt websites provincies en overheidsorganisaties plat – Emerce

Rapid biodegradation of microplastics generated from bio-based thermoplastic polyurethane in compost

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Accumulation of microplastics in the natural environment is ultimately due to the chemical nature of widely used petroleum-based plastic polymers, which typically are inaccessible to biological processing. One way to mitigate this crisis is adoption of plastics that biodegrade if released into natural environments. In this work, we generated microplastic particles from a bio-based, biodegradable thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU-FC1) and demonstrated their rapid biodegradation via direct visualization and respirometry. Furthermore, we isolated multiple bacterial strains capable of using TPU-FC1 as a sole carbon source and characterized their depolymerization products. To visualize biodegradation of TPU materials as real-world products, we generated TPU-coated cotton fabric and an injection molded phone case and documented biodegradation by direct visualization and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), both of which indicated clear structural degradation of these materials and significant biofilm formation.

Source: Rapid biodegradation of microplastics generated from bio-based thermoplastic polyurethane | Scientific Reports

Conclusion

In this work, particle count and respirometry experiments demonstrated that microplastic particles from a bio-based thermoplastic polyurethane can rapidly biodegrade and therefore are transiently present in the environment. In contrast, microplastic particles from a widely used commercial thermoplastic, ethyl vinyl acetate, persists in the environment and showed no significant signs of biodegradation over the course of this experiment. Bacteria capable of utilizing TPU-FC1 as a carbon source were isolated and depolymerization of the material was confirmed by the early accumulation of monomers derived from the original polymer, which are metabolized by microbes in short order. Finally, we demonstrated that prototype products made from these materials biodegrade under home compost conditions. The generation of microplastics is an unavoidable consequence of plastic usage and mitigating the persistence of these particles by adoption of biodegradable material alternatives is a viable option for a future green circular economy.

GitHub’s new AI-powered tool auto-fixes vulnerabilities in your code

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GitHub introduced a new AI-powered feature capable of speeding up vulnerability fixes while coding. This feature is in public beta and automatically enabled on all private repositories for GitHub Advanced Security (GHAS) customers.

Known as Code Scanning Autofix and powered by GitHub Copilot and CodeQL, it helps deal with over 90% of alert types in JavaScript, Typescript, Java, and Python.

After being toggled on, it provides potential fixes that GitHub claims will likely address more than two-thirds of found vulnerabilities while coding with little or no editing.

“When a vulnerability is discovered in a supported language, fix suggestions will include a natural language explanation of the suggested fix, together with a preview of the code suggestion that the developer can accept, edit, or dismiss,” GitHub’s Pierre Tempel and Eric Tooley said.

The code suggestions and explanations it provides can include changes to the current file, multiple files, and the current project’s dependencies.

Implementing this approach can significantly reduce the frequency of vulnerabilities that security teams must handle daily.

This, in turn, enables them to concentrate on ensuring the organization’s security rather than being forced to allocate unnecessary resources to keep up with new security flaws introduced during the development process.

However, it’s also important to note that developers should always verify if the security issues are resolved, as GitHub’s AI-powered feature may suggest fixes that only partially address the security vulnerability or fail to preserve the intended code functionality.

“Code scanning autofix helps organizations slow the growth of this “application security debt” by making it easier for developers to fix vulnerabilities as they code,” added Tempel and Tooley.

“Just as GitHub Copilot relieves developers of tedious and repetitive tasks, code scanning autofix will help development teams reclaim time formerly spent on remediation.”

The company plans to add support for additional languages in the coming months, with C# and Go support coming next.

More details about the GitHub Copilot-powered code scanning autofix tool are available on GitHub’s documentation website.

Last month, the company also enabled push protection by default for all public repositories to stop the accidental exposure of secrets like access tokens and API keys when pushing new code.

This was a significant issue in 2023, as GitHub users accidentally exposed 12.8 million authentication and sensitive secrets via more than 3 million public repositories throughout the year.

As BleepingComputer reported, exposed secrets and credentials have been exploited for multiple high-impact breaches [1, 2, 3] in recent years.

Source: GitHub’s new AI-powered tool auto-fixes vulnerabilities in your code