Technology

DRAM shortages may lead to the return of 4GB RAM smartphones and microSD slots by 2026, with flagship devices seeing a slowdown in RAM upgrades.

hands on: Powered by the original mobile Linux OS with crowdsourced specs

The approvals were required under Israel’s Land Law because Nvidia is a foreign-controlled company. The deal will allow the global technology giant to establish a new development campus on state land, allocated without a public tender and at a 51% discount.

The proposed 51% land discount is valued at tens of millions of shekels. Officials cited the significant economic impact on northern Israel, noting that thousands of employees would work directly at the campus and that hundreds of additional businesses are expected to benefit from providing services to the site.

According to the plan, Nvidia will build a unique, large-scale campus unlike any previously seen in Israel, modeled in part on the company’s headquarters in Santa Clara, California. The project is expected to span approximately 160,000 square meters and employ about 8,000 workers

We’ve talked about the Australian social media ban that went into effect last week, how dumb it is, and why it’s already a mess.

Ulefone has already made a name for itself in the rugged smartphone business. Now, it's got a sub-brand that's focused on more niche innovations for people who want more differentiated devices – and its first flagship product is quite something.

Samsung has reportedly increased the contract price of DDR5 memory by over 100%. Claiming that there is no stock, the Korean Giant has pushed the contract price of DDR5 DRAM near $20. OEMs are likely to pass this price hike on to the consumers in 2026.

Chinese satellite came within 200m of Starlink-6079, travelling at ~17,400mph.

LG smart TV owners are reporting that a recent webOS software update has added Microsoft Copilot to their TVs, with no apparent way to remove it. Reports first surfaced over the weekend on Reddit, where a post showing a Copilot tile pinned to an LG TV home screen climbed to more than 35,000 upvotes on r/mildlyinfuriating, accompanied by hundreds of comments from users describing the same behavior.

Minister insists 'modest' bill is not an assault on privacy-preserving tech

Google's dark web report was initially a feature that was available only to paid subscribers of its Google One program, but last year, it was made available for free to all Google account holders. As the name suggests, the tool allowed users to set up a profile which would constantly monitor the dark web and notify users if their breached information was located online. Although this seems quite useful on paper, the company has decided to kill off dark web reports, with the feature being axed early next year.

One of the issues with "age verification" is that an effect of the suggested technologies is that they ultimatively take control of your computer. In the suggested form, they require elements that are not controlled by you, the user. It is like replacing the lock to your home's main door, for which YOU (and only you) have the keys, with an electronic, remotely controlled lock, controlled by goverments, which can lock out at any time.

Paywall Bypass Link: https://archive.is/3G4fp

Dec 14 (Reuters) - Roomba vacuum cleaner maker iRobot (IRBT.O), said on Sunday that it had filed for bankruptcy protection, and would go private after being acquired by Picea, its primary manufacturer.

The company, which raised concerns about staying in business in March, filed for bankruptcy in the District of Delaware as it grapples with macroeconomic and tariff-related uncertainties.

We all know that children with unrestricted access to the internet are always at risk of encountering predators. That’s why social platforms have introduced parental control tools, and governments are working on different legislations to protect children in the online space. However, the UK government is now directly demanding Google and Apple to take a stance against taking and sharing of explicit images.

Users accessing the SoundCloud audio streaming platform through a virtual private network (VPN) connection are denied access to the service and see a 403 'forbidden' error.

Companies tend to be rather picky about who gets to poke around inside their products. Manufacturers sometimes even take steps that prevent consumers from repairing their device when it breaks, or modifying it with third-party products.

But those unsanctioned device modifications have become the raison d'être of a bounty program set up by a nonprofit called Fulu, or Freedom from Unethical Limitations on Users. The group tries to spotlight the ways companies can slip consumer-unfriendly features into their products, and it offers cash rewards in the thousands of dollars to anyone who can figure out how to disable unpopular features or bring discontinued products back to life.

“We want to be able to show lawmakers, look at all these things that could be out in the world,” says right-to-repair advocate and Fulu cofounder Kevin O’Reilly. “Look at the ways we could be giving device owners control over their stuff.”

Fulu has already awarded bounties for two fixes. One revives an older generation of Nest Thermostats no longer supported by Google. And just yesterday, Fulu announced a fix that circumvents restrictive digital-rights-management software on Molekule air purifiers.

Fulu is run by O’Reilly and fellow repair advocate and YouTuber Louis Rossmann, who announced the effort in a video on his channel in June.

The basic concept of Fulu is that it works like a bug bounty, the long running practice in software development where devs will offer prize money to people who find and fix a bug in the operating system. Fulu adopts that model, but the bounty it offers is usually meant to “fix” something the manufacturer considers an intended feature but turns out to be detrimental to the user experience. That can mean a device where the manufacturer has put in restrictions to prevent users from repairing their device, blocked the use of third-party replacement parts, or ended software support entirely.

“Innovation used to mean going from black-and-white to color,” Rossmann says. “Now innovation means we have the ability to put DRM in an air filter.”

Fulu offers up a bounty of $10,000 to the first person to prove they have a fix for the offending feature of a device. Donors can also pool money to help incentivize tinkerers to fix a particular product, which Fulu will match up to another $10,000. The pot grows as donations roll in.

Bounties are set on devices that Rossmann and O’Reilly have deemed deliberately hostile to the owners that have already paid for them, like some GE refrigerators that have DRM-locked water filters, and the Molekule air purifiers with DRM software that blocks customers from using third-party air filters. A bounty on the XBox Series X seeks a workaround to software encryption on the disk drive that prevents replacing the part without manufacturer approval. Thanks to donations, the prize for the Xbox fix has climbed to more than $30,000.

Sounds like a sweet payout for sure, but there is risk involved.

Fixing devices, even ones disabled and discontinued by the manufacturer, is often in direct violation of Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the 1998 US law that prevents bypassing passwords and encryption or selling equipment that could do so without manufacturer permission. Break into a device, futz with the software inside to keep it functional, or go around DRM restrictions, and you risk running afoul of the likes of Google's gargantuan legal arm. Fulu warns potential bounty hunters they must tackle this goal knowing full well they're doing so in open violation of Section 1201.

“The dampening effect on innovation and control and ownership are so massive,” O’Reilly says. “We want to prove that these kinds of things can exist.” Empty Nest

In October, Google ended software support for its first- and second-generation Nest thermostats. For lots of users, the devices still worked but couldn’t be controlled anymore, because the software was no longer supported. Users lamented that their fancy thermostats had now become hunks of e-waste on their walls.

Fulu set up a bounty that called for a software fix to restore functionality to the affected Nest devices. Cody Kociemba, a longtime follower of Rossmann’s YouTube channel and a Nest user himself, was eager to take the bounty on. (He has “beef with Google,” he says on his website.) After a few days of tinkering with the Nest software, Kociemba had a solution. He made his fix publicly available on GitHub so users could download it and restore their thermostats. Kociemba also started No Longer Evil, a site devoted to his workaround of Nest thermostats and perhaps hacks of future Google products to come.

“My moral belief is that this should be accessible to people,” Kociemba says.

Kociemba submitted his fix to Fulu, but discovered that another developer, calling themselves Team Dinosaur, had just submitted a fix slightly before Kociemba did. Still, Fulu paid out the full amount to both, roughly $14,000 apiece. Kociemba was surprised by that, as he thought he had lost the race or that he might have to split the prize money.

O’Reilly says that while they probably won't do double payouts again, both fixes worked, so it was important for Fulu’s first payout to show support for the people willing to take the risk of sharing their fixes.

“Folks like Cody who are willing to put it out there, make the calculated risk that Google isn't going to sue them, and maybe save some thermostats from the junk heap and keep consumers from having to pay $700 or whatever after installation to get something new,” O’Reilly says. “It's been cool to watch.”

This week, Fulu announced it had paid out its second-ever bounty. It was for a Molekule Air Pro and Air Mini, air purifier systems that used an NFC chip in its filters to ensure the replacement filters were made by Molekule and not a third-party manufacturer. The goal was to disable the DRM and let the machine use any filter that fit.

Lorenzo Rizzotti, an Italian student and coder who had gone from playing Minecraft as a kid to reverse engineering and hacking, submitted proof that he had solved the problem, and was awarded the Fulu bounty.

“Once you buy a device, it's your hardware, it's no longer theirs,” Rizzotti says. “You should be able to do whatever. I find it absurd that it's illegal.”

But unlike Kociemba, he wasn’t about to share the fix. Though he was able to fix the problem, he doesn’t feel safe weathering the potential legal ramifications that he might face if he released the solution publicly.

“I proved that I can do it,” he says. “And that was it.”

Still, Fulu awarded him the bounty. O’Reilly says the goal of the project is less about getting actual fixes out in the world, and more about calling attention to the lengths companies are allowed to go to wrest control from their users under the auspices of Section 1201.

“We need to show how ridiculous it is that this 27-year-old law is preventing these solutions from seeing the light of day,” O’Reilly says. “It's time for the laws to catch up with technology.”

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7023619

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/13181

US President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order aimed at preventing state-level regulation of the burgeoning artificial intelligence industry, a gift to tech corporations that bankrolled his inauguration and are currently funding his White House ballroom project.

Trump's order instructs the US Justice Department to establish an AI Litigation Task Force with a single mandate: sue states that enact AI laws that the administration deems "onerous and excessive." The order also threatens to withhold federal funding from states that implement AI regulations.

Public Citizen, a watchdog group that has tracked increasingly aggressive AI influence-peddling in Congress and the administration, said Trump's order "grants his greedy Big Tech buddies’ Christmas wish."

"This reward to Big Tech is a disgraceful invitation to reckless behavior by the world’s largest corporations and a complete override of the federalist principles that Trump and MAGA claim to venerate," said Robert Weissman, Public Citizen's co-president. "Everyone should understand why this is happening: During and since the last election cycle, Big Tech has spent at least $1.1 billion on campaign contributions and lobby expenditures. Big Tech corporations poured money into Trump’s inaugural committee and to pay for his garish White House ballroom. A major Big Tech and AI investor is serving as Trump’s 'AI czar' and driving administration policy."

"While Trump has ensured the federal government is doing almost nothing to address the harms that AI is already causing, states are moving forward with sensible AI regulation," Weissman added. "These include efforts to address political deepfakes, nonconsensual intimate deepfakes, algorithmic pricing manipulation, consumer protection measures, excessive data center electricity and water demand, and much more. Big Tech is whining about these modest measures, but there is zero evidence that these rules are impeding innovation; in fact, they are directing innovation in more positive directions."

Jenna Sherman, a campaign director focused on tech and gender at Ultraviolet Action, said Trump's order "only has one group of winners: his wealthy donors in the tech sector."

"Every other person loses from this wildly unpopular move. And not just in theory, as stripping away state AI regulations puts many—namely, women and children—at risk of real harm," said Sherman. "These harms of AI—which the Trump and the tech sector are clearly happy to ignore—are already here: non-consensual deepfake porn sexualizing women and girls, children being led to suicidal ideation by AI chatbots, and AI-powered scams and crimes targeting older Americans, especially women, to name but a few."

The US Chamber of Commerce and other corporate lobbying organizations representing tech giants such as Microsoft and Google celebrated the order, predictably characterizing it as a win for "small businesses."

The leaders of California and other states that have proposed and finalized AI regulations were defiant in the face of Trump's threats of legal action and funding cuts."

"President Trump and Davis Sacks aren’t making policy—they’re running a con," said California Gov. Gavin Newsom, referring to the scandal-plagued White House AI czar. "Every day, they push the limits to see how far they can take it. California is working on behalf of Americans by building the strongest innovation economy in the nation while implementing commonsense safeguards and leading the way forward."

Trump signed the order after the Republican-controlled Congress repeatedly rejected efforts to tuck a ban on state AI regulations into broader legislation.

"After months of failed lobbying and two defeats in Congress, Big Tech has finally received the return on its ample investment in Donald Trump," Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said in a statement Thursday. "With this executive order, Trump is delivering exactly what his billionaire benefactors demanded—all at the expense of our kids, our communities, our workers, and our planet."

"A broad, bipartisan coalition in Congress has rejected the AI moratorium again and again," he added, "and I intend to keep that streak going. I will use every tool available to challenge this indefensible and irresponsible power grab. We will defeat it again."

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