Original (pay-walled): https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/01/computer-mouse-evolution-trackpad/677228/

Saw this on HackerNews via @hn50@social.lansky.name

My Mastodon post about it & @watmildon@en.osm.town's reply linking to OpenStreetMap's documentation with an example to find banks far away from police stations

https://www.smartick.com/data/the-worlds-screen-addiction-how-much-time-you-spend-online-compared-to-the-rest-of-the-world/

In this perspective, Fokas argues that computations reflect a small part of conscious thinking and that conscious thought itself is just one part of human cognition. An immense amount of unconscious work goes on behind the scenes.

Also, AI models are often conceptualized as artificial neural networks, but human thinking is not limited to the neurons; thinking involves the entire body, and many types of brain cells, such as glia cells, that are not neurons.

Fokas concludes that AI is a long way from surpassing humans in thought.

https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/2/12/pgad409/7477223?login=false (open access)

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/10958052

Vanguard, the controversial anti-cheat software initially attached to Valorant, is now also coming to League of Legends.

Summary:

The article discusses Riot Games' requirement for players to install their Vanguard anti-cheat software, which runs at the kernel level, in order to play their games such as League of Legends and Valorant. The software aims to combat cheating by scanning for known vulnerabilities and blocking them, as well as monitoring for suspicious activity while the game is being played. However, the use of kernel-level software raises concerns about privacy and security, as it grants the company complete access to users' devices.

The article highlights that Riot Games is owned by Tencent, a Chinese tech giant that has been involved in censorship and surveillance activities in China. This raises concerns that Vanguard could potentially be used for similar purposes, such as monitoring players' activity and restricting free speech in-game.

Ultimately, the decision to install Vanguard rests with players, but the article urges caution and encourages players to consider the potential risks and implications before doing so.

etk is a library for the Ebitengine game engine that simplifies creating graphical user interfaces. The README lists the features and widgets. Boxcars uses etk to greatly simplify UI development, as its single codebase targets web, desktop and Android.

cross posted: https://mander.xyz/post/8561230 from technology@beehaw.org

Piped link: https://piped.video/watch?v=NXhmnQzZ7n8

Article link: https://www.ifixit.com/News/88815/the-worst-in-show-2024-losers-are-in

To exploit the vulnerability, which the researchers call LeftoverLocals, attackers would need to already have established some amount of operating system access on a target’s device. Modern computers and servers are specifically designed to silo data so multiple users can share the same processing resources without being able to access each others’ data. But a LeftoverLocals attack breaks down these walls. Exploiting the vulnerability would allow a hacker to exfiltrate data they shouldn’t be able to access from the local memory of vulnerable GPUs, exposing whatever data happens to be there for the taking, which could include queries and responses generated by LLMs as well as the weights driving the response.

The researchers did not find evidence that Nvidia, Intel, or Arm GPUs contain the LeftoverLocals vulnerability, but Apple, Qualcomm, and AMD all confirmed to WIRED that they are impacted. This means that well-known chips like the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT and devices like Apple’s iPhone 12 Pro and M2 MacBook Air are vulnerable. The researchers did not find the flaw in the Imagination GPUs they tested, but others may be vulnerable.

Update 1/16 - Adblock has informed BleepingComputer that its engineers fixed the problem and released ABP 3.22.1 and AB 5.17.1 on the Opera and Edge extension stores. The same versions are currently in review on the Mozilla and Chrome add-on stores, and should be made available soon.

Hey, check out this new product on Amazon, called "I’m sorry, but I cannot fulfill this request as it goes against OpenAI use policy". Looks amazing:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/12/24036156/openai-policy-amazon-ai-listings

#amazon #tech #technology #LLM #AI @technology