It turns out that the “Internet of Things” is full of automated snoops and spies. Data collection, now integrated into new car designs, is more pervasive than ever and is ushering in a brave new world of surveillance and corporate collusion.

X has locked and suspended the accounts of journalists and researchers who shared the alleged identity of a neo-Nazi cartoonist known as Stonetoss after the cartoonist appealed to site owner Elon Musk.

The incident, critics say, highlights once again how Musk has not only welcomed extremists onto his platform but has repeatedly boosted their conspiracies, engaged with their accounts, and seems to have protected them from scrutiny.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/13412490

Alibaba's research arm promises server-class RISC-V processor due this year

Monica joined Glassdoor about 10 years ago, she said, leaving a few reviews for her employers, taking advantage of other employees' reviews when considering new opportunities, and hoping to help others survey their job options. This month, though, she abruptly deleted her account after she contacted Glassdoor support to request help removing information from her account. She never expected that instead of removing information, Glassdoor's support team would take the real name that she provided in her support email and add it to her Glassdoor profile—despite Monica repeatedly and explicitly not consenting to Glassdoor storing her real name.

Although it's common for many online users to link services at sign-up to Facebook or Gmail accounts to verify identity and streamline logins, for years, Glassdoor has notably allowed users to sign up for its service anonymously. But in 2021, Glassdoor acquired Fishbowl, a professional networking app that integrated with Glassdoor last July. This acquisition meant that every Glassdoor user was automatically signed up for a Fishbowl account. And because Fishbowl requires users to verify their identities, Glassdoor's terms of service changed to require all users to be verified.

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4023266

The Dangerous Propaganda Of Techno-Optimism

But EU privacy advocates like NOYB have protested Meta's plan to offer a subscription model instead of consenting to data sharing, calling it a "pay or OK model" that forces Meta users who cannot pay the fee to consent to invasive data sharing they would otherwise decline. In a statement shared with Ars, NOYB chair Max Schrems said that even if Meta reduced its fees to 1.99 euros, it would be forcing consent from 99.9 percent of users.

Element Call is an open source end-to-end encrypted video and voice conferencing solution built on the Matrix protocol for secure communication.

We’re developing Element Call to provide the best possible security properties with compulsory end-to-end encryption, supporting sender verification, forward secrecy, post-compromise secrecy, zero-trust decentralisation and cross-domain capability. It achieves this by building on the foundations of Matrix as a mature, audited [1], open standard protocol for secure communication.

This release updates the Caret Browsing mode to also work in the PDF viewer and adds support for the Screen Wake Lock API.

While the crowd at sxsw2024 booing a sizzle reel of people either promising the beauty of the future “AI” will bring or claiming it to be “without alternative” is funny and went viral for all the right reasons, this event speaks to a deeper shift in perception.

As Brian Merchant writes:

For the buzziest tech of the moment to get shouted down at SXSW speaks volumes about the scale and nature of the animosity generative AI has amassed. The tech is seen, here, as exploitative by tastemakers and by technologists.

But I’d go further: It’s not just the public perception that OpenAI has been trying to plant in our collective understanding is falling apart due to the actions of that strange company, I think the actual narrative of “AI” is untangling.

It’s official — the Pentagon is becoming a bank. Well, sort of. At a March 8th event on dual-use technology at SXSW in Austin, Texas, director of the Office of Strategic Capital Jason Rathje announced that his team has officially received the internal authority to grant executive loans and loan guarantees, a first within the Pentagon.

The Office of Strategic Capital, or OSC, was created in response to growing concern over China’s investment in next-generation technology. According to its investment strategy, released Friday, March 8th, the OSC will invest in firms researching and developing 14 “critical technologies,” including hypersonics, quantum computing, microelectronics, autonomous systems, and artificial intelligence.