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Television

Your Smart TV Knows What You're Watching (themarkup.org) 164

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: If you bought a new smart TV during any of the holiday sales, there's likely to be an uninvited guest watching along with you. The most popular smart TVs sold today use automatic content recognition (ACR), a kind of ad surveillance technology that collects data on everything you view and sends it to a proprietary database to identify what you're watching and serve you highly targeted ads. The software is largely hidden from view, and it's complicated to opt out. Many consumers aren't aware of ACR, let alone that it's active on their shiny new TVs. If that's you, and you'd like to turn it off, we're going to show you how.

First, a quick primer on the tech: ACR identifies what's displayed on your television, including content served through a cable TV box, streaming service, or game console, by continuously grabbing screenshots and comparing them to a massive database of media and advertisements. Think of it as a Shazam-like service constantly running in the background while your TV is on.

These TVs can capture and identify 7,200 images per hour, or approximately two every second. The data is then used for content recommendations and ad targeting, which is a huge business; advertisers spent an estimated $18.6 billion on smart TV ads in 2022, according to market research firm eMarketer. For anyone who'd rather not have ACR looking over their shoulder while they watch, we've put together a guide to turning it off on three of the most popular smart TV software platforms in use last year. Depending on the platform, turning off ACR took us between 10 and 37 clicks.

Submission + - Pentium 5 - A Rare Look Into The CPU That Could Have Been But Never Was (wccftech.com)

Submitted by alaskana
alaskana writes: In late 2022 it was revealed that early samples of what was to be the 'Pentium 5' processor, codenamed Tejas and Jayhawk was in development and made it as far as being released to board partners for evaluation. A few of these samples made it (of course) onto Ebay and then — not surprisingly — into the hands of a YouTuber. To be fair, tech site Anandtech arguably got the first scoop on this P4 successor way back in 2004, but that story seemingly never gained much traction at that time.

Intel Prescott CPUs could hit 5GHz+ but had huge power and temperature numbers, but Tejas was expected to clock higher than Prescott — with Intel chasing the huge 10GHz CPU clocks within 10 years between 2000 and 2011 — but it ended up not happening at all."

In what was supposed to be a continuation of the 'GHz is king' days of the early aughts, the Pentium 5 was in spirit a continuation of the 'faster-is-better' philosophy of the P4 architecture, efficiency be damned. Speeds in excess of 7 GHz(!), and a pipeline upwards of 50 stages were rumored to be targeted by Intel, but reality (and physics) reared their ugly heads as always.

Intel engineer Steve Fischer, who was involved with the project, added: "The thing had a pipeline depth of around 50 stages and an expected clock target at one point north of 7 GHz. I call the thing "the Death Star of processors" and half-jokingly reasoned that consumer acceptance of liquid-cooled chassis would not be a big deal." Intel kicked off Project Tejas in 2003, expected in 2004 and later pushed into 2005 after issues forced Intel to redesign the chip. Before the company could do that, the Tejas Project was shelved on May 7, 2004.

In the end efficiency and parallelization was to be the rule of future CPU development, but the fact that Intel had (at least briefly) had planned on taking the P4 paradigm just a wee bit further with a true Pentium 5 is a fascinating look into the past of a future that never was to be for the venerable Pentium line.
The Almighty Buck

Credit Card Disputes Keep Rising at Visa as E-Commerce Booms (bloomberg.com) 115

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Credit card disputes at Visa continued rising past their pandemic boom despite the proliferation of prevention software, as fraud grows alongside e-commerce and inflation. From a report: Disputes on Visa's network rose to more than 90 million in 2022, data provided by the payment company showed. More than 70 million disputes were filed in 2019, Visa said in a presentation, before rising 24% in 2020 during the pandemic and about 2% a year in 2021 and 2022.

Despite being easy for consumers to file, making it one of the most-common credit card frauds, disputes are an opaque part of the payments industry. Both Mastercard Inc. and American Express declined to provide disputes data. Visa and Mastercard both bought dispute prevention companies in 2019, Verifi and Ethoca, respectively, and regularly promote their offerings at conferences. Disputes can be costly and onerous for both credit card companies and merchants to process, while chargebacks, when a dispute results in a refund, cost merchants dearly -- about $2.40 for every dollar disputed, according to Visa's Verifi, or as high as $3.36 for every dollar, according to Mastercard's Ethoca.
Government

UFO Reports Demand Greater Transparency, Lawmakers Say (washingtonpost.com) 79

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
An hours-long discussion on Capitol Hill captured the intensifying public interest in the unexplained and how authorities investigate such reports. From a report: A small group of House lawmakers called Wednesday for greater transparency in the government's reporting on encounters with unidentified phenomena, in an unusual congressional hearing featuring the testimony of UFO witnesses. But the hearing, which one freshman Democrat remarked was the most bipartisan discussion he'd seen in his seven months on Capitol Hill, oscillated between statements of concern about the potential national security threat posed by unknown objects flying close to U.S. military aircraft and more extreme allusions to government conspiracies to hide the existence of alien lifeforms. Convened by a House Oversight subcommittee, the hours-long discussion captured the intensifying public interest in the unexplained and what federal authorities are doing to document and investigate such reports.

"We're not bringing little green men or flying saucers into the hearing -- sorry to disappoint about half y'all," Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) said. "We're just going to get to the facts. We're going to uncover the cover up." In response to reported encounters by Navy pilots, the U.S. military and the intelligence community have sought to more closely analyze such incidents. The sightings, including some that are believed to be drones or unmanned craft -- like the Chinese surveillance airship shot down in U.S. airspace earlier this year -- have fueled concerns that American adversaries could have developed new technologies that pose a threat to U.S. security. The Pentagon has implemented new policies meant to encourage military personnel to come forward if they see something unusual so it can be investigated and accounted for, and last year established what it calls the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office to further study such reports. NASA has undertaken a similar independent initiative.
Yahoo!

Verizon Nears Deal to Acquire Yahoo (bloomberg.com) 70

Posted by msmash from the big-whale-small-whale dept.
Verizon Communications is nearing a deal to buy Yahoo, Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar with the matter. While nothing is official yet, the publication claims that Verizon is discussing a price close to $5 billion for Yahoo's core Internet business. The report adds that Yahoo's patents are not part of the discussion, and it's unclear whether the two companies are considering Yahoo's real estate. "The companies may be ready to announce the deal in the coming days, the people said," the report adds. Interestingly, CNBC, citing its own sources, is independently reporting the same thing.
Earth

Submission + - Scientists Cleared of Misusing Global Warming Data

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The NY Times reports that an inquiry by the Commerce Department's inspector general has found no evidence that NOAA scientists manipulated climate data (reg. may be required) to buttress evidence in support of global warming after climate change skeptics contended that e-mail messages between climate scientists that were stolen and circulated on the Internet in late 2009 showed that scientists were manipulating or withholding information to advance the theory that the earth is warming as a result of human activity. "None of the investigations have found any evidence to question the ethics of our scientists or raise doubts about NOAA’s understanding of climate change science,” says Mary Glackin, the agency’s deputy undersecretary for operations. The inquiry, requested last May by Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, who has challenged the science underlying human-induced climate change, comes at a critical moment for NOAA as some newly empowered Republican House members seek to rein in the EPA's plans to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, often contending that the science underpinning global warming is flawed. Inhofe says the report was far from a clean bill of health for the agency and that contrary to its executive summary, showed that the scientists “engaged in data manipulation.”"
Intel

Submission + - Intel announces a BIOS Implementation Test Suite (lwn.net)

Submitted by Josh Triplett
Josh Triplett writes: Intel announced the release of a BIOS Implementation Test Suite (BITS), a bootable pre-OS environment based on GNU GRUB2 that tests how well (or how badly) your BIOS has configured your platform hardware. BITS also includes Intel's official power management reference code, so you can override your BIOS's initialization with a known-good configuration. "In addition to those changes to GRUB2 itself, BITS includes configuration files which build a menu exposing the various BITS functionality, including the test suites, hardware configuration, and exploratory tools. These scripts detect your system's CPU, and provide menu entries for all the available functionality on your hardware platform. You can also access all of the new commands we've added directly via the command line."
PlayStation (Games)

Submission + - Sony’s War on Makers, Hackers, and Innovator (makezine.com) 1

Submitted by
ptorrone
ptorrone writes: "MAKE Magazine takes a look at Sony's history of suing makers, hackers and innovators. Over the last decade Sony has been targeting legitimate innovation, hobbyists, and competition. From picking on people who want to program their robot dogs to dance to suing people who want to run their own software on something they bought. Sony has made so many mistakes with technology choices (Memory Stick, Magic Gate, UMD!), perhaps they’ll end themselves soon enough, but until then MAKE is keeping score on Sony's all our war on tinkerers."
Facebook

Submission + - Saudi students in US seek segregation on Facebook (arabnews.com)

Submitted by Beetle B.
Beetle B. writes: A 22,000-member group for Saudis studying in the US on the social networking website Facebook has been split into two groups, one for women and one for men. The split follows a request from the group's female members who wanted extra privacy.

'The separate page for Saudi women is a valid decision. We took it to fulfill the wishes of the Saudi women in the US. We have been contacted by a lot of women asking for their private group,' Majed Aleid, media chair of the 'Saudis in the US' group, told Arab News in a letter.
HP

Submission + - Recent HP Laptops shipped CPU-Choking WiFi Driver (superuser.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Computer manufacturers have recently come under fire for the continued practice of shipping machines with excessive bloatware. Software preinstalled on some recent HP laptops was worse than normal though, consuming anywhere from 25-99% CPU by making incessant WMI queries, resulting in overheating laptops and reduced battery life. Users on a computer Q&A site did some sleuthing, and revealed that HP Wireless Assistant — software which does nothing but tell the user when their WiFi adapter is turned on or off — was causing the problem. According to an HP support forum, the problem is fixed in later versions, but thousands of laptops have the software installed, and the software does not get updated automatically.
Image

The 15 Strangest College Courses In America 4

Posted by samzenpus from the how-to-get-an-A-in-this-class-101 dept.
There is a lot of argument about whether colleges have become glorified diploma factories. Learning for learning's sake seems to have disappeared, and college is about getting a job or learning a trade. There are still some colleges, however, that offer unique classes on non-standard educational topics. Here are 15 of the strangest classes that will help earn you a degree. My favorites are, "The Art of Walking" and "Far Side Entomology."

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