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Technology
Greetings everyone,
We wanted to take a moment and let everyone know about the !business@lemmy.world community on Lemmy.World which hasn't gained much traction. Additionally, we've noticed occasional complaints about Business-related news being posted in the Technology community. To address this, we want to encourage our community members to engage with the Business community.
While we'll still permit Technology-related business news here, unless it becomes overly repetitive, we kindly ask that you consider cross-posting such content to the Business community. This will help foster a more focused discussion environment in both communities.
We've interacted with the mod team of the Business community, and they seem like a dedicated and welcoming group, much like the rest of us here on Lemmy. If you're interested, we encourage you to check out their community and show them some support!
Let's continue to build a thriving and inclusive ecosystem across all our communities on Lemmy.World!
Those claiming AI training on copyrighted works is "theft" misunderstand key aspects of copyright law and AI technology. Copyright protects specific expressions of ideas, not the ideas themselves. When AI systems ingest copyrighted works, they're extracting general patterns and concepts - the "Bob Dylan-ness" or "Hemingway-ness" - not copying specific text or images.
This process is akin to how humans learn by reading widely and absorbing styles and techniques, rather than memorizing and reproducing exact passages. The AI discards the original text, keeping only abstract representations in "vector space". When generating new content, the AI isn't recreating copyrighted works, but producing new expressions inspired by the concepts it's learned.
This is fundamentally different from copying a book or song. It's more like the long-standing artistic tradition of being influenced by others' work. The law has always recognized that ideas themselves can't be owned - only particular expressions of them.
Moreover, there's precedent for this kind of use being considered "transformative" and thus fair use. The Google Books project, which scanned millions of books to create a searchable index, was ruled legal despite protests from authors and publishers. AI training is arguably even more transformative.
While it's understandable that creators feel uneasy about this new technology, labeling it "theft" is both legally and technically inaccurate. We may need new ways to support and compensate creators in the AI age, but that doesn't make the current use of copyrighted works for AI training illegal or unethical.
For those interested, this argument is nicely laid out by Damien Riehl in FLOSS Weekly episode 744. https://twit.tv/shows/floss-weekly/episodes/744
- www.latimes.com Column: The air begins to leak out of the overinflated AI bubble
Shares in AI companies have powered a huge runup in the stock market this year, but users are beginning to question whether the craze will fall flat.
- www.dexerto.com Discord lowers free upload limit to 10MB: “Storage management is expensive” - Dexerto
Discord is lowering the upload limit for free users from 25MB to 10MB, citing operational and financial reasons.
>Discord isn’t exactly known for generous file-sharing limits, still, the messaging app offered a 25MB limit to free users. The company has now updated its support page to reflect the upload limit for free users has been lowered to 10MB.
I just moved into a student dorm for a semester abroad, and beforehand I emailed them asking whether they had ethernet ports to plug my router into (I use it to connect all my devices, and for WiVRn VR streaming). They confirmed that I could, but now that I'm here the wifi login portal is asking me to accept these terms from the ISP, which forbid plugging in a router. There's another clause that forbids "Disruptive Devices" entirely, defined as: > “Disruptive Device” means any device that prevents or interferes with our provision of the 4Wireless to other customers (such as a wireless access point such as wireless routers) or any other device used by you in breach of the Acceptable Use Policy;
So what are my options? I don't think I can use this service without accepting the terms, but also I was told by the student dorm support that I could bring a router, which contradicts this.
EDIT: some additional context:
- dorm provider is a company separate from my uni (they have an agreement but that's it)
- ISP (ask4) is totally separate from dorm provider, and have installed a mesh network that requires an account. On account creation, there are many upsells including one for connecting more than one device. The "free" plan only allows me to sign in on a single device, and I can upgrade to two devices for 15 pounds.
- ethernet requires login too
- VR streaming requires a high performance wifi 6 network, which is why I bought this router (Archer C6 from tp-link)
- www.eff.org School Monitoring Software Sacrifices Student Privacy for Unproven Promises of Safety
Imagine your search terms, key-strokes, private chats and photographs are being monitored every time they are sent. Millions of students across the country don’t have to imagine this deep surveillance of their most private communications: it’s a reality that comes with their school districts’...
https://files.catbox.moe/a6111d.png / https://nitter.poast.org/LinusTech/status/1825956050685800834
If you go the video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsjHMzGl-VY. You will see it's gone. So Youtube being Youtube.
Here's a Odysee mirror of the video, https://odysee.com/@jopec:7/linus-tech-tips-degoogle-your-life-part-2-adfree-youtube:0.
- • 98%futurism.com Man Arrested for Creating Fake Bands With AI, Then Making $10 Million by Listening to Their Songs With Bots
An alleged scammer has been arrested under suspicion that he used AI to create a wild number of fake bands — and fake streams to with them.
The songs that the AI CEO provided to Smith originally had file names full of randomized numbers and letters such as "n_7a2b2d74-1621-4385-895d-b1e4af78d860.mp3," the DOJ noted in its detailed press release.
When uploading them to streaming platforms, including Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube Music, the man would then change the songs' names to words like "Zygotes," "Zygotic," and "Zyme Bedewing," whatever that is.
The artist naming convention also followed a somewhat similar pattern, with names ranging from the normal-sounding "Calvin Mann" to head-scratchers like "Calorie Event," "Calms Scorching," and "Calypso Xored."
To manufacture streams for these fake songs, Smith allegedly used bots that stream the songs billions of times without any real person listening. As with similar schemes, the bots' meaningless streams were ultimately converted to royalty paychecks for the people behind them.
I remember when you could go on Facebook and look through your feed at what your friends are saying, catch up with them, and browse posts that they have made. Now, it's just completely random and chaotic, almost nonsensical. There's no logical sense to my Facebook feed at all. As you can see in the image, they are showing me stuff that I'm not even following. This is not even something that I am actively a part of! It's some random group. So what's the point of following a group or liking a page, if they're just going to show you random stuff anyway?
Like, wtf happened to this website?
- www.gmanetwork.com Active SIM card led Indonesians to Alice Guo's door
The Bureau of Investigation said that discovering an active mobile number helped Indonesian police trace the whereabouts of dismissed Bamban, Tarlac Mayor Alice Guo.
- gizmodo.com The Guy Who Designed the iPhone Made a New Button
Jony Ive swears he's not trying to "disrupt" apparel fasteners and just wanted to make something "humble."
- • 95%frozenfractal.com Why my apps will soon be gone from the Google Play Store
The first real money I ever made from game development was on Android. It was in 2013, when Android was still the underdog compared to the iPhone, and was being touted as a great platform for developers.
Disclaimer:
Even though the title says "my", this is not my blogpost.
- • 65%www.pcgamer.com Everyone assumes it's game over, but Intel's huge bet on 18A is still very much game on
The opportunity for Intel remains absolutely enormous.
- • 86%futurism.com Startup Says It'll Use Huge Space Mirror to Sell Sunlight During Nighttime
A unique startup claims it will soon let people buy spots of sunlight reflected with a giant satellite mirror.
- torrentfreak.com Man Arrested for Sharing Copyright Infringing Nude Scenes Through Reddit * TorrentFreak
Danish police have arrested a 39-year-old man who shared nude scenes of more than a hundred female actors through Reddit and porn sites.
- • 99%arstechnica.com After seeing Wi-Fi network named “STINKY,” Navy found hidden Starlink dish on US warship
To be fair, it's hard to live without Wi-Fi.
- arstechnica.com AT&T sues Broadcom for refusing to renew perpetual license support
Ars cited in lawsuit AT&T recently filed against Broadcom.
- • 99%www.tomshardware.com Bluetooth 6.0 adds centimeter-level accuracy for device tracking — upgraded version also improves device pairing
Bluetooth 6 could make Apple's UWB chip redundant.
- github.com GitHub - WebShieldApp/WebShield: A new wide-spectrum content blocker for Safari designed to be performant, efficient, and effective.
A new wide-spectrum content blocker for Safari designed to be performant, efficient, and effective. - WebShieldApp/WebShield
I just wanted to share with you the work of this developer on GitHub, I am a macOS and iOS user and I can't wait to use this new FOSS adblocker (there are no others on macOS).
I'm not a computer scientist and I don't have expertise but I try to help by spreading the spread, maybe someone can help or share it again!
Thank you all! P.S. I'm not the developer so I can't answer any question
- • 91%www.spacebar.news These repairable phones still aren't built to last
HMD's "sustainable" phones don't have software built to last.
- • 74%www.newscientist.com Generative AI creates playable version of Doom game with no code
A neural network can recreate the classic computer game Doom despite using none of its code or graphics, hinting that generative AI could be used to create games from scratch in future
The model, called GameNGen, was made by Dani Valevski at Google Research and his colleagues, who declined to speak to New Scientist. According to their paper on the research, the AI can be played for up to 20 seconds while retaining all the features of the original, such as scores, ammunition levels and map layouts. Players can attack enemies, open doors and interact with the environment as usual.
After this period, the model begins to run out of memory and the illusion falls apart.
- • 90%www.theguardian.com Racism, misogyny, lies: how did X become so full of hatred? And is it ethical to keep using it?
Ever since Elon Musk took over Twitter, I and many others have been looking for alternatives. Who wants to share a platform with the likes of Andrew Tate and Tommy Robinson?
> I considered leaving Twitter as soon as Elon Musk acquired it in 2022, just not wanting to be part of a community that could be bought, least of all by a man like him – the obnoxious “long hours at a high intensity” bullying of his staff began immediately. But I’ve had some of the most interesting conversations of my life on there, both randomly, ambling about, and solicited, for stories: “Anyone got catastrophically lonely during Covid?”; “Anyone hooked up with their secondary school boy/girlfriend?” We used to call it the place where you told the truth to strangers (Facebook was where you lied to your friends), and that wide-openness was reciprocal and gorgeous.
> “Twitter has broken the mould,” Mulhall says. “It’s ostensibly a mainstream platform which now has bespoke moderation policies. Elon Musk is himself inculcated with radical right politics. So it’s behaving much more like a bespoke platform, created by the far right. This marks it out significantly from any other platform. And it’s extremely toxic, an order of magnitude worse, not least because, while it still has terms of service, they’re not necessarily implementing them.”
> Global civil society, though, finds it incredibly difficult to reject the free speech argument out of hand, because the alternative is so dark: that a number of billionaires – not just Musk but also Thiel with Rumble, Parler’s original backer, Rebekah Mercer (daughter of Robert Mercer, funder of Breitbart), and, indirectly, billionaire sovereign actors such as Putin – are successfully changing society, destroying the trust we have in each other and in institutions. It’s much more comfortable to think they’re doing that by accident, because they just love “free speech”, than that they’re doing that on purpose. “Part of understanding the neo-reactionary and ‘dark enlightenment’ movements, is that these individuals don’t have any interest in the continuation of the status quo,”
- www.cbr.com U.S. Court Orders Identity Exposore of Two Anime Leakers in Anti-Piracy Crackdown
Anti-piracy efforts take a historic turn after a U.S. court orders the identities of Jujutsu Kaisen and Demon Slayer anime leakers to be exposed.
- • 98%arstechnica.com WaveCore runs right through a concrete wall with gigabit-speed network signal
Core drilling is tricky. Getting a 6 GHz signal through concrete is now easier.
- www.theguardian.com YouTube to restrict teenagers’ exposure to videos about weight and fitness
Platform will ensure algorithms do not keep pushing similar content to young viewers, even though it does not breach guidelines
- arstechnica.com FTC urged to make smart devices say how long they will be supported
Sudden subscription fees, lost features causing users "death by a thousand cuts."
- • 26%www.fairobserver.com How to Make History Come Alive With AI
Harrison May, creator of the Instagram account Legends of Amsterdam, uses AI to generate photorealistic images of historical Amsterdam.
- • 96%www.theverge.com Startup accuses Nvidia and Microsoft of infringing on patents and forming a cartel
Xockets says it patented an innovation used in high-tech chips.
Social media platforms like Twitter and Reddit are increasingly infested with bots and fake accounts, leading to significant manipulation of public discourse. These bots don't just annoy users—they skew visibility through vote manipulation. Fake accounts and automated scripts systematically downvote posts opposing certain viewpoints, distorting the content that surfaces and amplifying specific agendas.
Before coming to Lemmy, I was systematically downvoted by bots on Reddit for completely normal comments that were relatively neutral and not controversial at all. Seemed to be no pattern in it... One time I commented that my favorite game was WoW, down voted -15 for no apparent reason.
For example, a bot on Twitter using an API call to GPT-4o ran out of funding and started posting their prompts and system information publicly.
https://www.dailydot.com/debug/chatgpt-bot-x-russian-campaign-meme/
Bots like these are probably in the tens or hundreds of thousands. They did a huge ban wave of bots on Reddit, and some major top level subreddits were quiet for days because of it. Unbelievable...
How do we even fix this issue or prevent it from affecting Lemmy??
YouTube Video
Click to view this content.
cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/15918116
- www.euractiv.com Google uses anti-competitive advertising practices, UK authority finds
Google's anti-competitive advertising practices are harming UK publishers and advertisers, the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) found on Friday (6 September), amid similar investigations in the EU and US over the company's monopolistic behaviour in search and ad markets.
- info.firefish.dev Firefish (@firefish)
**Announcement: Firefish will enter maintenance mode** For those who have been supporting Firefish and me, I can’t thank you enough. But today, I have to make an announcement of my very difficult decision: As of today’s release, Firefish will enter maintenance mode and reach end-of-support at the e...
Edit: Removed the photos due to lemmy crawler displaying the toot.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/16162455
> How Russia is Influencing US Voters. Russian Intelligence Document "Guerrilla Media Campaign in the US" [Translated] Page 5 > > Rest of the document is visible here: > > https://www.justice.gov/d9/2024-09/exhibits_9a_and_9b.pdf
- www.dexerto.com Google & Facebook partner admits it can listen to device microphone to serve ads - Dexerto
A media firm has admitted that it can target adverts based on what you said out loud near device microphones.
A media firm that has worked with the likes of Google and Meta has admitted that it can target adverts based on what you said out loud near device microphones.
Media conglomerate Cox Media Group (CMG) has been pitching tech companies on a new targeted advertising tool that uses audio recordings collected from smart home devices, according to a 404 Media investigation. The company is partners with Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Bing.
In a pitch deck presented to Google, Facebook, and others in November 2023, CMG referred to the technology used for monitoring and active listening as “Voice Data.” The firm also mentioned using artificial intelligence to collect data about consumers’ online behavior.
- • 97%www.theguardian.com Advertiser exodus from X gathers pace with 26% ‘planning to cut spending’
Annual survey highlights growing concern about platform content and trust in information disseminated
- www.crikey.com.au AI worse than humans in every way at summarising information, government trial finds
A test of AI for Australia's corporate regulator found that the technology might actually make more work for people, not less.
Artificial intelligence is worse than humans in every way at summarising documents and might actually create additional work for people, a government trial of the technology has found.
Amazon conducted the test earlier this year for Australia’s corporate regulator the Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) using submissions made to an inquiry. The outcome of the trial was revealed in an answer to a questions on notice at the Senate select committee on adopting artificial intelligence.
The test involved testing generative AI models before selecting one to ingest five submissions from a parliamentary inquiry into audit and consultancy firms. The most promising model, Meta’s open source model Llama2-70B, was prompted to summarise the submissions with a focus on ASIC mentions, recommendations, references to more regulation, and to include the page references and context.
Ten ASIC staff, of varying levels of seniority, were also given the same task with similar prompts. Then, a group of reviewers blindly assessed the summaries produced by both humans and AI for coherency, length, ASIC references, regulation references and for identifying recommendations. They were unaware that this exercise involved AI at all.
These reviewers overwhelmingly found that the human summaries beat out their AI competitors on every criteria and on every submission, scoring an 81% on an internal rubric compared with the machine’s 47%.
- arstechnica.com City of Columbus sues man after he discloses severity of ransomware attack
Mayor said data was unusable to criminals; researcher proved otherwise.
>A judge in Ohio has issued a temporary restraining order against a security researcher who presented evidence that a recent ransomware attack on the city of Columbus scooped up reams of sensitive personal information, contradicting claims made by city officials.
>The order, issued by a judge in Ohio's Franklin County, came after the city of Columbus fell victim to a ransomware attack on July 18 that siphoned 6.5 terabytes of the city’s data. A ransomware group known as Rhysida took credit for the attack and offered to auction off the data with a starting bid of about $1.7 million in bitcoin. On August 8, after the auction failed to find a bidder, Rhysida released what it said was about 45 percent of the stolen data on the group’s dark web site, which is accessible to anyone with a TOR browser.
>Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther said on August 13 that a “breakthrough” in the city’s forensic investigation of the breach found that the sensitive files Rhysida obtained were either encrypted or corrupted, making them “unusable” to the thieves. Ginther went on to say the data’s lack of integrity was likely the reason the ransomware group had been unable to auction off the data.
>Shortly after Ginther made his remarks, security researcher David Leroy Ross contacted local news outlets and presented evidence that showed the data Rhysida published was fully intact and contained highly sensitive information regarding city employees and residents. Ross, who uses the alias Connor Goodwolf, presented screenshots and other data that showed the files Rhysida had posted included names from domestic violence cases and Social Security numbers for police officers and crime victims. Some of the data spanned years.
>On Thursday, the city of Columbus sued Ross for alleged damages for criminal acts, invasion of privacy, negligence, and civil conversion. The lawsuit claimed that downloading documents from a dark web site run by ransomware attackers amounted to him “interacting” with them and required special expertise and tools.