Technology

TL;DR: Mozilla has a new CEO and a new mission: transform Firefox into an AI browser. That has run into some snags, as Firefox users don’t seem that interested in AI. Mozilla is forging ahead, utilizing deceptive patterns (previously known as dark patterns) to nag and annoy people into enabling AI features. You can see this in the introduction of Link Previews, an extremely invasive anti-feature that exists solely to push AI into your experience.

Found this post at a great time where I'm slowly having a falling out with youtube and trying to use less of it. Not necessarily because "youtube is evil" but I'm starting to appreciate the beauty and minimalism of just written articles and blog posts. I enjoy going through them at my own pace and I don't need to look at a guy for him to read what could have been a blog post to me or watch those stock clips while he reads it. This is especially true for code content. Obviously I'm talking about a small subset of all videos on youtube (tech/news content ish).

I was actually a long term subscriber to youtube premium but I cancelled maybe a month ago. I was hesitant for a long time because I thought the value I got from it was so great that it was worth paying, especially since youtube splits the premium revenue 40/60 or 50/50 with creators. On top of that I also had youtube music. It felt wrong to do all these mental gymnastics and go the adblock route because of the creators. The author in the post touches on this point.

But as I started getting into Lemmy and reading blog posts more and more (also started reading a book), I understood that a lot of that perceived value was because that's the only thing I used and knew. There's a whole world out there and since then I've slowly started minimizing my time on it. Again, not because it's bad but just because I feel for a lot of content there are other things out there. It's a choice. Learning to enjoy reading a light book vs watching Youtube before bed, for example.

I do think there's some dishonesty and delusion going on in a lot of people's minds when it comes to adblockers. They use adblock and think they're somehow doing the right thing and they're so righteous about it, yet they continue watching Youtube and never donate to any creators. I have a few friends like that.

Since I don't spend that much time on it anymore, honestly I just watch the ads. Not as big of a deal as I once thought, and they make me want to spend even less time on the platform. I used to also use it for white noise or background music. Now I just use mynoise.net -great platform, would recommend.

Just a random stream of thoughts on my youtube experience.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/44094403

Nepal is just one of at least 150 countries to which Chinese companies are supplying surveillance technology, from cameras in Vietnam to censorship firewalls in Pakistan to citywide monitoring systems in Kenya. This technology is now a key part of China’s push for global influence, as it provides cash-strapped governments with cost-effective, if invasive, forms of policing — turning algorithms and data into a force multiplier for control.

The irony at the heart of this digital authoritarianism is that the surveillance tools China exports are based on technology developed in its greatest rival, the United States, despite warnings that Chinese firms would buy, copy or outright steal American designs, an investigation by The Associated Press has found.

For decades, Silicon Valley firms often yielded to Beijing’s demands: Give us your technology and we will give you access to our market. Although tensions fester between Washington and Beijing, the links between American tech and Chinese surveillance continue today.

For example, Amazon Web Services offers cloud services to Chinese tech giants like Hikvision and Dahua, assisting them in their overseas push. Both are on the U.S. Commerce Department’s Entity List for national security and human-rights concerns, which means transactions with them are not illegal but subject to strict restrictions.

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Archived link

I'm gutted to hear this - I'm a big fan of Crucial memory and SSDs and all of my systems have at least one thing from them.

Micron will keep shipping Crucial products until the end of February 2026 and provide “continued warranty service and support.”

So only a few month left, plus however long they stay on retailers' shelves.

It was nice while it lasted I guess.

EDIT: archive link https://web.archive.org/web/20250929132913/https://www.404media.co/how-ruby-went-off-the-rails/

The game is simple:

Two photos side by side
One's made by a human, one's made with AI
Pick the AI one
See if you're right (plus the source/prompt)

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/42302635

Archived

Suspected Chinese hackers impersonated the chair of the House China Select Committee in emails to people involved in ongoing U.S.-China trade policy negotiations as part of a spying campaign, a House panel said Monday.

Why it matters: The fraudulent emails were sent to a wide range of individuals, including those at U.S. government agencies, business groups, D.C. law firms and think tanks and at least one foreign government.

[...]

• Hackers sent emails purportedly from Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) to key leaders ahead of a meeting between U.S. and Chinese officials in Sweden this summer asking for input on draft legislation.
• However, the attached document, which was sent from a nongovernmental email address, was instead laced with spyware that would infect a victim's computer, according the Journal.
• The FBI and Capitol Police are both investigating the emails, and the malware in the emails has been traced back to a hacking group tied to Beijing's Ministry of State Security, per WSJ.

[...]

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has axed 1,200 voice service providers from the US phone network for failing to meet the rules protecting users from malicious and illegal calls, known as robocalls.

The removal from the Robocall Mitigation Database (RMD) means that all other voice service and intermediate providers must cease accepting all calls directly from the companies that do not meet the requirements.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/4164353

Here is the original (and technical) article published by company. ...

The system, named the RU1, was unveiled today by Swedish startup TERASi. It’s billed as the world’s smallest and lightest mm-Wave radio, a form of communications that offers blazing-fast speeds and huge bandwidth.

James Campion, the CEO and co-founder of TERASi, describes the portable device as “the GoPro of backhaul radios.”

“RU1 can be deployed in minutes to keep units connected in fast-changing environments,” Campion told TNW. The devices, he continued, can be installed on tripods or drones. Multiple RU1s can then link into a resilient mesh, providing bandwidth for mission-critical applications such as live drone video, autonomous fleet control, and sensor data fusion.

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