Manjushri

It’s Hisense and they will likely be forcing ads on you at every opportunity.

Hardware and software laden with ads have, unfortunately, become part and parcel of modern life, but there are occasions when the hunt for revenue goes too far. One of those cases comes from Hisense, known across Western markets as a budget electronics brand. The firm’s TV sets have repeatedly come under fire for forcing non-skippable ads when switching inputs, turning the TV on, navigating to the home screen, and even when switching channels — all changes that took effect unilaterally after purchase, reportedly even for users who had all ad-related options disabled.

Can second this comment regarding Linux Mint. Many years ago I tried switching to Linux (Ubuntu, I think, back around 2008) but I lacked the knowledge and skills to make it work. Three or four months ago I decided to try again and downloaded Mint and installed it. I’ve been reading that gaming on Linux had gotten worlds better lately.

I decided to just dip my toes first and set it up to dual boot, in case I chose to go back to Windows. I had very few problems with the installation and operation. Nothing that took more than a quick google search to solve. Since then it’s been not unlike using Windows.

And yes, gaming seems to work pretty flawlessly too. I installed Steam and have had few issues with running any of the games I’ve tried.

Don’t count on it. These things don’t just zip along in their orbits. LEO is crowded. They have to maneuver to avoid collisions… a lot.

Over the past six months, Starlink satellites have been increasingly performing collision avoidance maneuvers. According to a report filed by SpaceX with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), SpaceX broadband satellites were forced to avoid more than 25 thousand times from December 1, 2022 to May 31, 2023. And since their launch in 2019, the total number of maneuvers has reached 50 thousand.

If Starlink or any other mega-constellation company loses control of their satellites for any reason, there could be collisions. A recent study (Note: PDF) suggests that a sufficiently powerful CME could cause a runaway Kessler Syndrome in as little as 2.8 days if the loss of control lasts that long.

I’ve been twitchy about Lenova since they got caught selling computers with a rootkit that reinstalled crap-ware that users had uninstalled. A user would uninstall useless software from their computer, and when they rebooted, the rootkit would kick in and reinstall the bloatware.

The “rootkit”-style covert installer, dubbed the Lenovo Service Engine (LSE), works by installing an additional program that updates drivers, firmware, and other pre-installed apps. The engine also “sends non-personally identifiable system data to Lenovo servers,” according to the company. The engine, which resides in the computer’s BIOS, replaces a core Windows system file with its own, allowing files to be downloaded once the device is connected to the internet.

But that service engine also put users at risk.

In a July 31 security bulletin, the company warned the engine could be exploited by hackers to install malware. The company issued a security update that removed the engine’s functionality, but users must install the patch manually.

They had previously been caught selling computers with adware installed on them.

Earlier this year, the computer maker was forced to admit it had installed Superfish adware over a three-month period on new machines sold through retail channels. The adware had the capability to intercept and hijack internet traffic flowing over secure connections, including online stores, banks, among others.

Users were told they should “not use their laptop for any kind of secure transactions until they are able to confirm [the adware] has been removed,” security researcher Marc Rogers told ZDNet at the time.

It was thought as many as 16 million consumers and bring-your-own-device users were affected by the preinstalled adware.

Yep. This has only been an issue for nearly a decade.

The Strava Heat Map and the End of Secrets

The revelations began unspooling at a rapid pace after Nathan Ruser, a student studying international security at the Australian National University, began posting his findings via Twitter on Saturday afternoon. In a series of images, Ruser pointed out Strava user activities potentially related to US military forward operating bases in Afghanistan, Turkish military patrols in Syria, and a possible guard patrol in the Russian operating area of Syria.

Other researchers soon followed up with a dizzying array of international examples, based on cross-referencing Strava user activity with Google Maps and prior news reporting: a French military base in Niger, an Italian military base in Djibouti, and even CIA “black” sites. Several experts observed that the Strava heatmap seemed best at revealing the presence of mostly Western military and civilian operations in developing countries.

Damn! Thanks for pointing this out.

Ars Technica article about it

In the course of discussing whether Archive.today should be deprecated because of the DDoS, Wikipedia editors discovered that the archive site altered snapshots of webpages to insert the name of the blogger who was targeted by the DDoS. The alterations were apparently fueled by a grudge against the blogger over a post that described how the Archive.today maintainer hid their identity behind several aliases.

That turns out not to be the case. P eople have been charged and convicted with convincing others to commit suicide before. Those at Google should be held responsible for this death in the same way.

Michelle Carter, who as a teenager sent texts urging her then-boyfriend to commit suicide three years ago, has been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter by a Massachusetts judge, who described her behavior as “reckless.”

I’m in a very rural part of the USA. My electric, telephone(landlines which I don’t have), and internet are all coops. They are all very efficient and inexpensive. I’m very happy with them.

Per the article they are working on that, which is good since cattle farming is not exactly eco friendly.

The researchers are currently investigating the use of other metals with this nanocluster fabrication technique. They are also testing natural polymers as more abundant replacements for bovine proteins to facilitate potential manufacturing.

Security by obscurity is not really a good strategy. Lemmy is small potatoes, sure. But that just means they can devote a small number of assets to effectively monitor it.

…it’s safe to say that Pam Bondi’s DoJ did not put its best and brightest on this (admittedly gargantuan) undertaking

Actually they did. It’s just that their best and brightest are fairly dim.

It’s good to see all this come out, but I bet they don’t get more than a slap on the wrist that they’ll write off as a cost of doing business and then just keep doing the same sleazy shit.

10 percent of Telly’s shipments through FedEx arrived broken

No big surprise there. Shipments I get through FedEx are always beat to hell.

Everyone wants to run everything like a business these days. They want to save on payroll so rather than paying actual police to do the paperwork, they want to use Copilot or whatever to do the paperwork for them. Of course, because AI models are so crappy and error prone, they need to spend the same amount of money on payroll to verify the accuracy of the AI output. But they don’t do that. They just run with whatever the AI output is and figure it’ll be close enough to accurate. After all, big tech keeps telling everyone that AI is wonderful and can do anything.That is far from the truth though.

A lawyer in California last year got in trouble for using ChatGPT to generate briefs for a trial. He wound up filing those briefs with the court even though they 21 of the 23 quotes from previous trials were complete fabrications. In another incident, a police department in Utah used an AI to generate a report from a traffic stop. That report claimed that an officer shape-shifted into a frog during the incident.

There are endless reports of AI making shit up and demonstrating how error prone those tools are. Yet, people who should know better keep trusting AI to do these important jobs, just to save money on payroll, when AI is clearly far from ready for prime-time.

the breach appears to be legitimate and includes email addresses, along with optional fields such as first and last name, phone number, physical address, gender, and date of birth — although many of these fields appear to be empty.

So, this may be the most inconsequential leak in a long time. Grats to Conde Nast for not storing a zillion pieces of data on all their customers.

That makes sense. Thanks for the explanation.

Okay, thanks.

Forgive my ignorance, but does this mean that my gforce card performance will be degraded if I don’t pay for this subscription? Why would I want to use this cloud gaming to play games I already own?

AI firms “ask public officials to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) preventing them from sharing information with their constituents…

How is this even remotely legal? Is this even remotely legal?

Thank you for that concise explanation. Any idea why they think these gamma detections are not from regular matter/anti-matter annihilation?