Technology

Electron apps are ruining the Windows 11 experience, and even the JavaScript creator has warned against ‘rushed web UX over native,’ but it doesn’t look like that will change Microsoft’s plans. In a post on X and other places, Microsoft reaffirmed its commitment to AI in Windows 11 and encouraged Electron developers to consider using AI in their apps.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/56890254

The video’s opening shot shows a man hiding under a bed snipping in a hole in someone’s sock. Seconds later, the same man uses a saw to shorten a table leg so that it wobbles during breakfast. “My job is to make things shitty,” the man explains. “The official title is enshittificator. What I do is I take things that are perfectly fine and I make them worse.”

The video, released recently by the Norwegian Consumer Council, is an absurdist take on a serious issue; it is part of a wider, global campaign aimed at fighting back against the “enshittification”, or gradual deterioration, of digital products and services.

“We wanted to show that you wouldn’t accept this in the analogue world,” said Finn Lützow-Holm Myrstad, the council’s director of digital policy. “But this is happening every day in our digital products and services, and we really think it doesn’t need to be that way.”

Coined by author Cory Doctorow, the term enshittification refers to the deliberate degradation of a service or product, particularly in the digital sphere. Examples abound, from social media feeds that have gradually become littered with adverts and scams to software updates that leave phones lagging and chatbots that supplant customer service agents.

Hacker News.

Experts say that claims UK data remains under government ownership miss the point that the company has the capability to build its own detailed picture of the British population, and even infer state secrets.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/44340504

Our actions and voices do make a difference! Keep AI out of games and reward original creative work.

Research Opinion Article.

Within groups and societies, cognitive diversity bolsters creativity and problem-solving, say the researchers. However, cognitive diversity is shrinking worldwide as billions of people are using the same handful of AI chatbots for an increasing number of tasks, they add. When people use chatbots to help them polish their writing, for example, the writing ends up losing its stylistic individuality, and people feel less creative ownership over what they produce.

A new free, general policy to ensure a project only accepts human authored contributions. Released under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license, so anyone is free to use and modify it.

I’ve started to add it to my projects. Eventually, it will be on all of my projects. I made it so that any project could adopt it, or modify it to their needs. It’s got a thorough and clear definition of what is banned, too, so it should help any argument over pull requests.

Hopefully more projects will outright ban AI generated code (and other AI generated material). Feel free to share it with any projects you think might be interested, but please do not be pushy if they don't want to adopt something like this.

If this is not something you're a fan of, you absolutely do not need to adopt it in your project. This is for projects that want to ban AI contributions, which is their right.

It is as if you have walked into a branch of one of Vietnam’s banks. A row of customer service desks, divided by plastic screens, with landline phones, promotional leaflets and staff business cards. A seated waiting area and a private meeting room. All of it features the OCB bank’s logo, or its trademark green colour.

This is not a genuine bank branch, however. It’s one of various “mock up” rooms inside a sprawling compound on the Thai-Cambodian border, where criminal groups are accused of using elaborate and industrial-scale fraud schemes to trick victims into handing over money.

The scammers behind the compound targeted people not just in Vietnam, but across Asia, Australia and South America, according to documents and props discovered inside.

Within the six-floor building, in the Cambodian border town of O’Smach, there are rooms designed to look like offices for police forces from Australia, Singapore and China. There are even fake uniforms, badges and scripts to be read over the phone to victims.

The data throws new light on the department’s surveillance ambitions in the wake of the agency’s unprecedented $165bn funding boost in last year’s tax and spending bill, and controversies over agents’ apparent gathering of visual and biometric data on protesters in Minneapolis.

https://archive.ph/poRQJ

• Research— Meta Page;
• Poster;
• Video;
• PDF.

Using a single 3D deep learning model, researchers are able to detect three major causes of road accidents simultaneously; blood alcohol concentration, fatigue and expression, such as anger.

At least 10 alleged U.S.-based facilitators have been federally charged, including one active-duty member of the U.S. Army, for their alleged roles in hosting laptop farms, laundering payments and moving proceeds through shell companies. At least six other alleged U.S. facilitators have been identified in court documents but not named.

Can AI tools make meal plans that help us lose weight the right way? In a new study, a team of researchers compared AI’s meal planning abilities to those of a dietician. The results showed that AI-made meal plans – when compared to dietician plans – severely undercalculated the needed amount of calories and macronutrients like carbs and overemphasized other macronutrients like proteins and lipids. The team cautioned that teens should not solely rely on AI to make meal plans for weight loss, saying that the consistent deviation of five different AI models from nutritional guidelines recommended by health organizations could have negative effects on growing bodies.

Hacker News.

A landmark international study across five Central European countries has found hazardous chemicals in every single pair of headphones analysed, from premium models to cheap imports. Authors say the results reveal a systemic failure in consumer safety regulation across the electronics industry. The investigation, conducted as part of the EU-funded ToxFree LIFE for All project, analysed 180 samples of hard and soft plastic components from 81 headphone products marketed to children, teenagers, and adults in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, and Austria.

• Advance UK paid a secretive AI operation to make its political campaign content
• The same group created Danny Bones, a white-nationalist rapper whose videos target Muslims. They have been viewed millions of times
• Experts said this could mark new ground in the use of AI tools for political ends

Hacker News.

HP's long-running use of firmware updates that block third-party ink and toner cartridges is drawing scrutiny again – this time under a new global sustainability standard that explicitly forbids the practice.

The International Imaging Technology Council (Int'l ITC), a trade group for cartridge remanufacturers, says HP's latest printer firmware rollout conflicts with the requirements of the General Electronics Council's (GEC) updated Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool, or EPEAT 2.0.