Technology

cross-posted from [email protected]

• Beijing has imposed restrictions on iPhone use among its government staff, causing Apple's stock to drop by more than 3%.
• The move exacerbates already high tensions between the U.S. and China, affecting U.S. tech companies with significant exposure to the Chinese market.
• U.S. lawmakers from both major parties express national security concerns and urge a tougher stance against Beijing.
• Apple suppliers like Qualcomm and Broadcom also experience stock declines, leading losses among major tech firms.
• The restrictions indicate that even companies with good relations with China are not immune to geopolitical tensions.
• Despite U.S. sanctions on Huawei, Apple faces competitive pressure in China, where it earns nearly a fifth of its revenue.

cross-posted from [email protected]

• New regulations will target six major tech companies to improve consumer experience and data privacy. These include Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft.
• Pre-installed apps like weather and email that are difficult to delete will be disallowed, aiming to promote interoperability and reduce "gatekeeping" activities.
• Companies will be prohibited from monetizing user data collected from phone apps for advertising purposes.
• The regulations will encourage competition by allowing alternative payment systems, benefiting startups and consumers.
• The European Commission aims to empower consumers and ensure tech giants adhere to European rules, providing immediate accountability for any issues.

YES

Drones to fly without spotters on the ground monitoring route and skies for other aircraft

Industry hoovered up data through sensors and technology built into newer car models that calculate people's weight, filmed the car inside and outside with cameras, listened to conversations through microphones and tracked users via connected apps on smartphones.

How awesome is this!

Reminds me of all the beautiful personal web sites we used to have and visit just for fun.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/6916266

Context: Falcon is a popular free LLM, this is their biggest model yet and they claim it's now the best open model in the market right now.

The European Commission has published an official list of services offered by ‘gatekeepers’ that must comply with obligations under the new Digital Markets Act. Companies now have six months to comply with the rules.

cross-posted from [email protected]

Original source: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2308.16321.pdf

• Researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison found that Chrome browser extensions can still steal passwords, despite compliance with Chrome's latest security standard, Manifest V3.
• A proof of concept extension successfully passed the Chrome Web Store review process, demonstrating the vulnerability.
• The core issue lies in the extensions' full access to the Document Object Model (DOM) of web pages, allowing them to interact with text input fields like passwords.
• Analysis of existing extensions showed that 12.5% had the permissions to exploit this vulnerability, identifying 190 extensions that directly access password fields.
• Researchers propose two fixes: a JavaScript library for websites to block unwanted access to password fields, and a browser-level alert system for password field interactions.

Topics essentially works like this: rather than using cookies to track people around the web and figure out their interests from the sites they visit and the apps they use, websites can ask Chrome directly, via its Topics JavaScript API, what sort of things the user is interested in, and then display ads based on that. Chrome picks these topics of interest from studying the user's browser history.

Isn't this completely immoral? They are literally stealing the users private browsing history and uses it to boost their own profits.