Étiquette : wtf (Page 1 of 12)

How do tech bros plan to ride out Armageddon? Living it up on their private islands

Not for sale … part of the coast of the sovereign state of Nauru.

“I want to stress again that EA is a very serious and intelligent movement promoted by very serious and intelligent people because, to the untrained eye, it can sometimes look like a cult of unhinged narcissists. That Nauru project, for example? That wasn’t the only weird idea the folk at FTX had dreamed up in the name of effective altruism. According to the court filings, the FTX Foundation, the non-profit arm of FTX, had authorised a $300,000 (£230,000) grant to an individual to “write a book about how to figure out what humans’ utility function is (are)”. The foundation also made a $400,000 grant “to an entity that posted animated videos on YouTube related to ‘rationalist and [effective altruism] material’, including videos on ‘grabby aliens’”.
So there you go. Some of the best minds of our generation (or so they’d have you believe) are busying themselves with strategies on grabby aliens and Pacific island bunkers. Is this effective? Is this altruism? I can’t tell you for sure what the future of effective altruism is, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. ”

Source : How do tech bros plan to ride out Armageddon? Living it up on their private islands | Arwa Mahdawi | The Guardian

The biggest thing to happen to TV since color (Really ?)

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“Now, all smart TVs come with ads. But you still pay for the TV. All of that changes today. During the signup process we ask questions about you and your household to optimize your ad experience. Brands in turn, pay for the non-intrusive ad on the Smart Screen. That’s how you get Telly free. Plain and simple. It’s time you got cut in on the deal.”

Source : Telly I The biggest thing to happen to TV since color.

A Roomba recorded a woman on the toilet. How did screenshots end up on Facebook?

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“In one particularly revealing shot, a young woman in a lavender T-shirt sits on the toilet, her shorts pulled down to mid-thigh. The images were not taken by a person, but by development versions of iRobot’s Roomba J7 series robot vacuum. They were then sent to Scale AI, a startup that contracts workers around the world to label audio, photo, and video data used to train artificial intelligence.  They were the sorts of scenes that internet-connected devices regularly capture and send back to the cloud—though usually with stricter storage and access controls.”

Source : A Roomba recorded a woman on the toilet. How did screenshots end up on Facebook? | MIT Technology Review

Qualcomm’s new always-on smartphone camera is a potential privacy nightmare

“’Your phone’s front camera is always securely looking for your face, even if you don’t touch it or raise to wake it.’ That’s how Qualcomm Technologies vice president of product management Judd Heape introduced the company’s new always-on camera capabilities in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor set to arrive in top-shelf Android phones early next year.
Depending on who you are, that statement can either be exciting or terrifying. For Qualcomm, it thinks this new feature will enable new use cases, like being able to wake and unlock your phone without having to pick it up or have it instantly lock when it no longer sees your face.
But for those of us with any sense of how modern technology is used to violate our privacy, a camera on our phone that’s always capturing images even when we’re not using it sounds like the stuff of nightmares and has a cost to our privacy that far outweighs any potential convenience benefits.”

Source : Qualcomm’s new always-on smartphone camera is a potential privacy nightmare – The Verge

Facebook va recruter 10 000 personnes en Europe pour créer le « métavers »

Le patron de Facebook Mark Zuckerberg, le 23 octobre 2019, à Washington DC.

So 90’s !!!

“Le métavers, contraction de « méta » et « univers » (metaverse en anglais), est une sorte de doublure numérique du monde physique, accessible via Internet. Grâce, notamment, à la réalité virtuelle et augmentée, il devrait permettre de démultiplier les interactions humaines, en les libérant des contraintes physiques, par le biais d’Internet. Il pourrait, par exemple, offrir la possibilité de danser dans une boîte de nuit avec des personnes situées à des milliers de kilomètres, mais aussi d’acheter ou de vendre des biens ou des services numériques, dont beaucoup restent encore à inventer.”

Source : Facebook va recruter 10 000 personnes en Europe pour créer le « métavers »

We need to talk about how Apple is normalising surveillance

“When it comes to privacy, iOS arguably has a better reputation among consumers than Android, as does Siri vs Alexa, and Safari vs Chrome. But that doesn’t give Apple permission to track our lived experience at all times with its microphones, cameras and sensors. Apple’s groundbreaking devices are pushing the limits of what technology companies can track, and that is not good news for privacy. Thanks to Apple, physical shops can track us through our phones, hackers can potentially access our most sensitive health and biometric details, and now it has developed a technology that can scan content that was supposed to be encrypted. Apple has been playing two games at once – protecting privacy and developing surveillance tools – while only acknowledging the former.”

Source : We need to talk about how Apple is normalising surveillance | WIRED UK

“We’ve enhanced Android’s auto-rotate feature with face detection, using the front-facing camera to more accurately recognize when to rotate the screen. This is especially helpful for people who are using their devices while lying down on a couch or in bed, for example. For developers, this means that the auto-rotation behavior will provide a better user experience for users who have opted in through Settings. The enhanced auto-rotate feature lives within our recently announced Private Compute Core, so images are never stored or sent off the device. In Beta 3 this feature is available on Pixel 4 and later Pixel devices.To make screen rotation as speedy as possible on all devices, we’ve also optimized the animation and redrawing and added an ML-driven gesture-detection algorithm. As a result, the latency for the base auto-rotate feature has been reduced by 25%, and the benefits of the face detection enhancement build on top of those improvements. Give the auto-rotate improvements a try and let us know what yo”

Source : Android Developers Blog: Android 12 Beta 3 and final APIs

Allocation adultes handicapés (AAH) : non, notre « système informatique » n’est pas le problème

“«  Nous sommes le gouvernement des droits réels, pas des droits incantatoires », a scandé Sophie Cluzel pour justifier la timidité du gouvernement sur le sujet. Mais dire non à une idée à un instant T sous prétexte qu’actuellement « aucun système informatique ne pourra la mettre en œuvre », c’est prendre le problème à l’envers. C’est se réfugier derrière une fausse idée de l’informatique pour justifier une décision politique. Indexer un droit aux capacités de nos systèmes informatiques, c’est mettre le code au-dessus de la loi.”

Source : Allocation adultes handicapés (AAH) : non, notre « système informatique » n’est pas le problème

“In a nutshell, to actually get Chia coins, you need a Proof of Space. The more storage you own, the higher your odds of getting a Proof of Space, the more Chia coins you can make. While Chia was originally meant to take advantage of unused storage space in your laptop, things are now getting out of hand. Farmers are acquiring all the storage available in the market to improve their chances of getting coins, and thus actual money.”

Source : Scaleway and Chia

“Facebook representatives approached controversial surveillance vendor NSO Group to try and buy a tool that could help Facebook better monitor a subset of its users, according to an extraordinary court filing from NSO in an ongoing lawsuit. Facebook is currently suing NSO for how the hacking firm leveraged a vulnerability in WhatsApp to help governments hack users. NSO sells a product called Pegasus, which allows operators to remotely infect cell phones and lift data from them.”

Source : Facebook Wanted NSO Spyware to Monitor Users, NSO CEO Claims – VICE

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