Technology

I have informed President Xi, of China, that the United States will allow NVIDIA to ship its H200 products to approved customers in China, and other Countries, under conditions that allow for continued strong National Security. President Xi responded positively! $25% will be paid to the United States of America. This policy will support American Jobs, strengthen U.S. Manufacturing, and benefit American Taxpayers. The Biden Administration forced our Great Companies to spend BILLIONS OF DOLLARS building “degraded” products that nobody wanted, a terrible idea that slowed Innovation, and hurt the American Worker. That Era is OVER! We will protect National Security, create American Jobs, and keep America’s lead in AI. NVIDIA’s U.S. Customers are already moving forward with their incredible, highly advanced Blackwell chips, and soon, Rubin, neither of which are part of this deal. My Administration will always put America FIRST. The Department of Commerce is finalizing the details, and the same approach will apply to AMD, Intel, and other GREAT American Companies. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

We're finally benchmarking GPU performance in Linux, first using the Bazzite OS following thousands of community requests specifically for this operating system.

The Open Rights Group warns the government's digital ID plan is a "surveillance infrastructure" leading to "unprecedented tracking." They point to the faulty eVisa scheme.

Our recent research into Snapchat shows that its uses misleading notification. This is not legally allowed. Namely, the European Digital Services Act prohibits misleading and manipulative design on online platforms. The research serves as input for possible enforcement actions by the Dutch Authority for Consumer and Markets (Autoriteit Consument & Markt) and supports our advice to include the regulation of attention-grabbing notifications in the Digital Fairness Act.

Reetle’s smartink I is an iPhone case with an e-ink display that lets users flip their device and read books without screen glare.

Exclusive: Campaign urges PM to show independence from US and push to rein in development of superintelligence

The complaint alleges that Temu does much more than provide Arizonans access to cheap goods. Modeled after an earlier Chinese app, Pinduoduo, the Temu app is allegedly designed to harvest sensitive user data without users’ knowledge or consent and to evade detection.

Temu allegedly collects an alarming amount of sensitive user data and personally identifiable information (PII) that goes far beyond what is necessary for a typical online shopping app. According to the lawsuit, the app secretly infiltrates users’ devices to access and harvest sensitive information, including the user’s precise physical location, the phone’s microphone and camera, and the user’s private activity on other apps installed on the phone, all without their knowledge or consent.

A review of the Temu app’s code allegedly shows that it is purposely designed to evade front-end security review, using multiple layers of encryption to shield its processes from forensic inspection. The app is even able to edit its own code once downloaded to a consumer’s phone, potentially allowing it to exploit users’ PII and other data—or otherwise control the device—in unknown and unknowable ways. These serious privacy risks are compounded by the fact that Temu is wholly owned by a Chinese company and subject to Chinese law, including laws that mandate secret cooperation with the Chinese Communist Party’s intelligence apparatus.

In addition to the alleged privacy violations, the complaint also alleges that Temu has engaged in deceptive and unfair trade practices in the offer and sale of products and in the resolution of consumer complaints, including:

• Advertising items that look nothing like the items that eventually arrive;
• Faking customer reviews;
• Using consumer payment information to order items the consumer never asked for;
• Misappropriating the intellectual property of U.S.-owned companies, including some of Arizona’s most iconic brands including the Arizona Cardinals, Fender Guitars, the University of Arizona, Arizona State University, and Northern Arizona University;
• Charging for goods not ordered or not delivered;
• Using bait and switch signup schemes to lure users to invite their friends to the app in exchange for the promise of prizes and rewards that never arrive; and
• Using forced labor in clear violation of U.S. trade policies.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/6952495

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/11910

Public opposition to artificial intelligence data centers—and the push by corporations and officials to move forward with their construction anyway—were vividly illustrated in a viral video this week of a woman who was arrested after speaking out against a proposed data center in her community in Wisconsin.

Christine Le Jeune, a member of Great Lakes Neighbors United in Port Washington, spoke at a Common Council meeting in the town on Tuesday evening. The meeting was not focused on the recently approved $15 million "Lighthouse" data center set to be built a mile from downtown Port Washington—part of a project developed by Vantage Data Centers for OpenAI and Oracle—but the first 30 minutes were taken up by members of the public who spoke out against the project.

As CNBC reported last month, more than 1,000 people signed a petition calling on Port Washington officials to obtain voter approval before entering into the deal, but the Common Council and a review board went ahead with creating a Tax Incremental District for the project without public input. The data center still requires other approvals to officially move forward.

"We will not continue to be silenced and ignored while our beautiful and pristine city is taken away from us and handed over to a corporation intent on extracting as many resources as they can regardless of the impact on the people who live here," said Le Jeune. "Most leaders would have tabled the issue after receiving public input and providing sufficient notice. But you did nothing, and you laughed about it."

Le Jeune spoke for her allotted three minutes and went slightly over the time limit. She then chanted, "Recall, recall, recall!" at members of the Common Council as other community members applauded.

Police Chief Kevin Hingiss then approached Le Jeune while she was sitting in her seat, listening to the next speaker, and asked her to leave.

She refused, and another officer approached her before a chaotic scene broke out.

Last night, the Port Washington Police Department used excessive force to arrest a woman for speaking up against the Vantage data center.

We are thankful that this local advocate is safe, and we condemn the Port Washington PD’s actions in the strongest possible terms. SHAME! pic.twitter.com/35dhEKvojL
— Our Wisconsin Revolution (@OurWisconsinRev) December 3, 2025

City officials had told attendees not to speak out of order during the meeting, and Le Jeune acknowledged that she and others had spoken out of turn at times.

But she told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that she had been surprised by the police officers' demand that she leave, and by the eventual violence of the incident, with officers physically removing her from her seat and dragging her and two other people across the floor.

The two other residents had approached Le Jeune to protest the officers' actions.

"I never expected something like that to happen in a meeting. It was very strange," she told the Journal Sentinel. "Suddenly this police chief showed up in front of me, and all I was thinking was: 'Wait, what is going on? Why is he interrupting her speech? ... It felt like [police] were kind of primed tonight to pounce."

State Sen. Chris Larson (D-7) said that "police should not be allowed to violently detain a person who is nonviolently exercising their free speech. This used to be something all Americans agreed on."

William Walter, executive director of Our Wisconsin Revolution, filmed the arrest and told ABC News affiliate WISN, "I've never seen a response like that in my life."

"What I did see was a lot of members of the Port Washington community who are really frustrated that they're being ignored and they're being dismissed by their elected officials," he said.

AI data centers, he added, "will impact you. They'll impact your friends, your family, your neighbors, your parents, your children. These are the kinds of things that are going to be dictating the future of Wisconsin, not just for the next couple of years but for the next decade, the next 50 years."

After Le Jeune's arrest, another resident, Dawn Stacey, denounced the Common Council members for allowing the aggressive arrest.

"We have so many people who have these concerns about this data center," said Stacey. “Are we being heard by the Common Council? No we’re not. Instead of being heard we have people being dragged out of the room.”

“For democracy to thrive, we need to have respect between public servants and the people who they serve," she added.

Vantage has distributed flyers in Port Washington, which has a population of 17,000, promising residents 330 full-time jobs after construction. But as CNBC reported, "Data centers don’t tend to create a lot of long-lasting jobs."

Another project in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin hired 3,000 construction workers and foresees 500 employees, while McKinsey said a data center it is planning would need 1,500 people for construction but only around 50 for "steady-state operations."

Residents in Port Washington have also raised concerns about the data center's impact on the environment, including through its water use, the potential for exploding utility prices for residents, and the overall purpose of advancing AI.

As Common Dreams reported Thursday, the development of data centers has caused a rapid surge in consumers' electricity bills, with costs rising more than 250% in just five years. Vantage has claimed its center will run on 70% renewable energy, but more than half of the electricity used to power data center campuses so far has come from fossil fuels, raising concerns that the expansion of the facilities will worsen the climate emergency.

A recent Morning Consult poll found that a rapidly growing number of Americans support a ban on AI data centers in their surrounding areas—41% said they would support a ban in the survey taken in late November, compared to 37% in October.

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

• A clear divide persists between top performers and the rest

A clear divide persists between the top performers (Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google DeepMind) and the rest of the companies reviewed (Z.ai, xAI, Meta, Alibaba Cloud, DeepSeek). The most substantial gaps exist in the domains of risk assessment, safety framework, and information sharing, caused by limited disclosure, weak evidence of systematic safety processes, and uneven adoption of robust evaluation practices.

• Existential safety remains the industry’s core structural weakness

All of the companies reviewed are racing toward AGI/superintelligence without presenting any explicit plans for controlling or aligning such smarter-than-human technology, thus leaving the most consequential risks effectively unaddressed.

• Despite public commitments, companies’ safety practices continue to fall short of emerging global standards

While many companies partially align with these emerging standards, the depth, specificity, and quality of implementation remain uneven, resulting in safety practices that do not yet meet the rigor, measurability, or transparency envisioned by frameworks such as the EU AI Code of Practice.

Anthropic, Block, and OpenAI are backing the Linux Foundation’s new Agentic AI Foundation, donating MCP, Goose, and AGENTS.md to standardize AI agents, boost interoperability, and curb proprietary fragmentation.

It’s not every day a video codec wins an Emmy. But yesterday, the Television Academy honored the AV1 specification with a Technology & Engineering Emmy Award, recognizing its impact on how the world delivers video content.

In theory, you just @ it and it gets to work.

Tldr: he wants a non-upgradeable laptop that is maxed out from day one. I'd want a bit more upgrade path than he does, but he has some interesting thoughts.

Year in Review.

Including two popes, the Prince of Darkness, and MrBeast.

Wikipedia will mark its 25th anniversary on January 15, 2026. No one could have predicted 25 years ago that Wikipedia would grow into the backbone of knowledge on the internet it is today—powering search engines, voice assistants, and generative AI tools.

Today, nearly 250,000 volunteers generously give their time and energy to update Wikipedia, add citations, build consensus, and more. They keep knowledge human. In 2025, people spent an estimated 2.4 billion hours reading English Wikipedia articles, according to data from the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that operates Wikipedia and other Wikimedia free knowledge projects. The top 20 most-read English Wikipedia articles of 2025 outlined below focus on politics, popular culture, and loss.