Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:Redundant feature (Score 2) 62

Bookmarking? In 2025?? Well that's just uncivilized!

In 2025, I need all of my content links uploaded to the cloud so it can be paraphrased and narrated by an AI that sounds like Patrick Stewart complete with corresponding random vertical videos of random things getting assembled from my smart hub screen as I fall asleep at night to maximize content retention. Anything less is too much of a bother.

Transportation

Class Action Accuses Toyota of Illegally Sharing Drivers' Data (insurancejournal.com) 51

"A federal class action lawsuit filed this week in Texas accused Toyota and an affiliated telematics aggregator of unlawfully collecting drivers' information and then selling that data to Progressive," reports Insurance Journal: The lawsuit alleges that Toyota and Connected Analytic Services (CAS) collected vast amounts of vehicle data, including location, speed, direction, braking and swerving/cornering events, and then shared that information with Progressive's Snapshot data sharing program. The class action seeks an award of damages, including actual, nominal, consequential damages, and punitive, and an order prohibiting further collection of drivers' location and vehicle data.
Florida man Philip Siefke had bought a new Toyota RAV4 XLE in 2021 "equipped with a telematics device that can track and collect driving data," according to the article. But when he tried to sign up for insurance from Progressive, "a background pop-up window appeared, notifying Siefke that Progressive was already in possession of his driving data, the lawsuit says. A Progressive customer service representative explained to Siefke over the phone that the carrier had obtained his driving data from tracking technology installed in his RAV4." (Toyota told him later he'd unknowingly signed up for a "trial" of the data sharing, and had failed to opt out.) The lawsuit alleges Toyota never provided Siefke with any sort of notice that the car manufacture would share his driving data with third parties... The lawsuit says class members suffered actual injury from having their driving data collected and sold to third parties including, but not limited to, damage to and diminution in the value of their driving data, violation of their privacy rights, [and] the likelihood of future theft of their driving data.
The telemetry device "can reportedly gather information about location, fuel levels, the odometer, speed, tire pressure, window status, and seatbelt status," notes CarScoop.com. "In January, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton started an investigation into Toyota, Ford, Hyundai, and FCA..." According to plaintiff Philip Siefke from Eagle Lake, Florida, Toyota, Progressive, and Connected Analytic Services collect data that can contribute to a "potential discount" on the auto insurance of owners. However, it can also cause insurance premiums to be jacked up.
The plaintiff's lawyer issued a press release: Despite Toyota claiming it does not share data without the express consent of customers, Toyota may have unknowingly signed up customers for "trials" of sharing customer driving data without providing any sort of notice to them. Moreover, according to the lawsuit, Toyota represented through its app that it was not collecting customer data even though it was, in fact, gathering and selling customer information. We are actively investigating whether Toyota, CAS, or related entities may have violated state and federal laws by selling this highly sensitive data without adequate disclosure or consent...

If you purchased a Toyota vehicle and have since seen your auto insurance rates increase (or been denied coverage), or have reason to believe your driving data has been sold, please contact us today or visit our website at classactionlawyers.com/toyota-tracking.

On his YouTube channel, consumer protection attorney Steve Lehto shared a related experience he had — before realizing he wasn't alone. "I've heard that story from so many people who said 'Yeah, I I bought a brand new car and the salesman was showing me how to set everything up, and during the setup process he clicked Yes on something.' Who knows what you just clicked on?!"

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader sinij for sharing the news.

Comment Probably would be an improvement at this point. (Score 1) 57

Where I live, Most of our stations are owned by either IHeartMedia or Cumulus. The "DJ's" are all nationwide cookie cutter Random Factoid Top 40 Celebrity News spewers that are basically placeholders to give them an excuse to tell you what car dealership bought the Studio, News desk, Weather center, Traffic report, ETC's Naming Rights in between more commercials and playing stingers of one of their station "Brands" such as Kiss, Froggy or Real.

At this point an AI DJ would be an improvement. They might actually play music on the station instead of commenting how a gecko loses it's tail when it feels threatened and how he wished he could do that when confronted by his girlfriend. (actual random factoid one of our stations used BTW)

Comment More like Foreign Intelligence (Score 1) 104

AI, while it may in the next decade, isn't cutting jobs. If anything, Telecommuting is. and when I mean telecommuting, I mean halfway across the world.

The Reason H1B's exists, and the reason you have politicians on both sides of the isle fighting tooth and nail to keep them even though it displaces high paid American workers out of jobs, is because even though it's a job held by a foreign employee, it still counts as an American Job on paper complete with it's tax revenue. Simply put, if H1B's disappeared overnight, then thousands of jobs would basically disappear in the US and reappear on foreign shores overnight thanks to VOIP and Teleconferencing.

Here's an example. Where I work, the finance dept is working on transitioning their old accounting system to a new accounting system created by the Big O due to someone hearing their pitch of "Visibility and Control" and "Single Source of Truth" on the radio against our better judgement. Once they singed the contract the Big O sent us to an Implementer headquartered in the US (since that was a requirement) to transition from our old system to the new system. Imagine my zero reaction shock and awe when we had to open India on our firewall because none of the programmers could access our servers or even chat with our staff because their Webex server cluster was based in India and our staff couldn't join their Webex sessions. The same goes for their Microsoft Cloud service since they use Indian based cloud locations.

TL:DR: COVID proved that Telecommuting works, H1B's are getting harder and more expensive to get, and it's cheap to rent a former scam call center in India and fill it with minimum wage coders than hiring coders that are expecting big bucks to pay their college loans in the US.

Submission + - AdGuard brings full-system ad blocking to Linux with new standalone app (betanews.com)

BrianFagioli writes: For many years now, Linux users looking to block ads have needed to piece together a mixture of browser extensions, DNS-based filtering, and network-wide tools (such as Pi-hole). While these solutions certainly help, none of them offer complete system-wide protection.

Yeah, with Windows and macOS users having access to various tools for years, Linux users have mostly had to rely on workarounds. Thatâ(TM)s where AdGuard for Linux comes in! Yes, folks, we finally have a dedicated ad blocker that works across all browsers and applications!

Unlike browser extensions that only work inside a single browser, AdGuard for Linux blocks ads across your entire system. That means it removes ads from websites and apps. It also protects against tracking scripts, blocks malicious websites, and allows users to customize filtering rules. So it is not just about blocking ads.

Despite being a pre-release version, it already includes useful features like ad blocking, tracker protection, and the ability to remove annoying cookie pop-ups. Future updates will add DNS-level filtering and app-specific exclusions for even more control.

Submission + - GamersNexus: Effect of 32-bit PhysX removal on older games (youtube.com)

UnknowingFool writes: Gamer's Nexus performed tests on the effect of removing legacy PhysX on the newest generation of NVidia cards with older games, and the results are not good. With PhysX on, the latest generation NVidia was slightly beaten by a GTX 580 (released 2010) on some games and handily beaten by a GTX 980 (2014) on some games.

With the launch of the 5000 series, NVidia dropped 32-bit CUDA support going forward. Part of that change was dropping support for 32-bit PhysX. As a result older titles that used it would perform poorly with 5000 series cards as it would default to CPU for calculations. Even the latest CPUs do not perform as well as 15 year old GPUs when it comes to PhysX.

The best performance on the 5080 was to turn PhysX off however that would remove many effects like smoke, breaking glass, and rubble from scenes. The second best option was to pair a 5000 series with an older card like a 980 to just handle the PhysX computations.

Comment Re:We Need to Talk About Wireless (Score 2) 163

if Starlink was the best option for internet service, it would be eating Verizon's and Comcast's lunch.

It depends. Right now I can pull 1-2Gbps+ symmetrical from my phone on Verizon on 5GUW. It's faster than the 1Gbps I get from Spectrum and both are faster, less latent and cheaper than Starlink. (with spectrum being the cheapest and not throttled for usage, although not symmetrical.) It doesn't make sense for me to get Starlink here.

5 Miles north of me is Amish Country. It has very spotty Verizon DSL in some places and can barely hit a Verizon tower at 4G speed at absolute best. Chances are you'll never see Verizon run new lines there unless they absolutely have to because it'll literally serve 1 house per sq mile at best and they can serve you better with a new cell tower since they don't have to worry about lines breaking from Plows or Severe Storms. Spectrum won't run lines there for the same reasons. Your only other option is Hughesnet which is basically DSL speed at 10x the cost, or Starlink, which is the same price as Hughesnet but with 10x the speed and 5x better latency.

In those areas it makes sense to utilize wireless like Starlink or LTE Home internet because it's much cheaper to give everyone who wants high speed internet a Starlink dish or LTE Router instead of running millions of dollars of network infrastructure in a 20 sq mile area to serve the equivalent of 10-20 homes. Even paying Verizon to build a million dollar 5G+ tower to serve that area makes more sense since your covering a huge radius of land and some Amish utilize cell phones for emergency and business purposes and want nothing to do with anything attached to their homes.

Comment Its not official until it's official. (Score 0) 73

Until Microsoft's documentation on MV3 changes, I wouldn't take this DEV build as being set in stone.

I don't see Microsoft flushing away it's only good chance to pull users from Chrome when the Ublockalypse happens in Google land. They know as soon as that happens there's going to be a mass exodus of Chrome users to other browsers, and they want to be the one people and businesses flock to since they're based on chromium for maximum compatibility and they also make it easy to Sync your Google account Chrome Profile to Edge without having to use Chrome to Import.

They're either going to support Ublock Origin until the heat death of the universe, or they are going to implement a built in customizable ad blocker baked right into Edge ala Brave.

If they Kill Ublock Origin with Chrome they know the world+dog will migrate back to Firefox. Even though Mozilla is doing a bang up job screwing themselves out of the running with their Agreement Shenanigans.

Comment PHEV is where it's at. (Score 1) 241

The goal of transitioning to electric should be to maximize electric use on short trips, relegating ICE use to long trips only, and minimizing maintenance costs. Electric minimizes routine maintenance but have a huge back end cost when the battery fails. ICE cars have an exponential maintenance curve as the car ages, but is overall cheaper than replacing one battery in a electric. Hybrids, while they have the worst of both worlds, they still have less overall maintenance and a more manageable battery cost when the battery eventually fails.

Hopefully, it means BMW is going to bring back the Range Extender ICE in their electric line. Although it didn't bring much range to the table, what it did do was bring a fully electric powertrain with no crazy ICE coupling to complicate things. It was simply a motorcycle engine directly attached to a Generator feeding directly to the battery to maximize generator to battery efficiency. It just needed a slightly bigger gas tank and the car would have easily sold twice as much. This design gave you most of the maintenance advantages of an electric with smaller ICE maintenance costs (since the engine was simpler and there's no complicated transmission) and a smaller (which means lower cost) battery.

This coupled with more efficient motors and you would have a very interesting design, and when I mean more efficient, I'm talking about space efficiency. This was one of the reasons I was interested in the Lordstown Endurance because it's hub motor design freed up a ton of space in the mid section of the car, which could be used for a larger generator setup or at the very least a larger fuel tank for longer trips. Also the Hub motors were crazy simple to replace if issues arose since it was basically removing the wheel from the suspension.

The other thing that has to happen is industry standard modular battery packs. There needs to be an industry standard for battery sizes and connectivity to the point that swapping battery packs is like swapping a traditional car battery. Once you get multiple companies making cars using the same modular design, battery costs will drop significantly to the point that people will be more comfortable owning an electric car longer than 8 years. This will also benefit PHEV's at first but once you get the battery swap to under $10000 for a long range electric vehicle, The electrics will displace the PHEV's for most drivers.

Comment CSS - Chrome Stockholm Syndrome (Score 1) 30

If Chrome isn't Supporting your plugin anymore, why are you supporting Chrome?

I'm sure Edge, Firefox and Safari would appreciate your plugin while Chrome is actively trying to kill you.

And before you say "market share" keep in mind that the reason Chrome has so much market share was because it was faster than Firefox and supported plugins. Now that they're killing Plugin support, and everyone else is just as fast, whats the point with staying with them other than obligation?

Is it because of your phone? because if it is there's Edge and Firefox on your phone, and Firefox for Android unlike the others supports plugins so even though it's slower it's still faster without ads than Chrome ever will be with ads.

AI

DeepSeek IOS App Sends Data Unencrypted To ByteDance-Controlled Servers (arstechnica.com) 68

An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes a new article from Ars Technica: On Thursday, mobile security company NowSecure reported that [DeepSeek] sends sensitive data over unencrypted channels, making the data readable to anyone who can monitor the traffic. More sophisticated attackers could also tamper with the data while it's in transit. Apple strongly encourages iPhone and iPad developers to enforce encryption of data sent over the wire using ATS (App Transport Security). For unknown reasons, that protection is globally disabled in the app, NowSecure said. What's more, the data is sent to servers that are controlled by ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok...

[DeepSeek] is "not equipped or willing to provide basic security protections of your data and identity," NowSecure co-founder Andrew Hoog told Ars. "There are fundamental security practices that are not being observed, either intentionally or unintentionally. In the end, it puts your and your company's data and identity at risk...." This data, along with a mix of other encrypted information, is sent to DeepSeek over infrastructure provided by Volcengine a cloud platform developed by ByteDance. While the IP address the app connects to geo-locates to the US and is owned by US-based telecom Level 3 Communications, the DeepSeek privacy policy makes clear that the company "store[s] the data we collect in secure servers located in the People's Republic of China...."

US lawmakers began pushing to immediately ban DeepSeek from all government devices, citing national security concerns that the Chinese Communist Party may have built a backdoor into the service to access Americans' sensitive private data. If passed, DeepSeek could be banned within 60 days.

Slashdot Top Deals

"I think Michael is like litmus paper - he's always trying to learn." -- Elizabeth Taylor, absurd non-sequitir about Michael Jackson

Working...