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Submission + - Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella warns companies not to give AI firms their secrets (nerds.xyz) 1

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella warns companies not to give AI firms their secrets

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says businesses may be paying twice for artificial intelligence: once with money, and again with the proprietary knowledge they feed into AI systems to make them useful. He calls this the Reverse Information Paradox, arguing that prompts, corrections, evaluations, workflows, and other usage data can gradually expose how a company actually operates.

Nadella says enterprises should keep control of their own models, memory, feedback, and internal learning loops while avoiding dependence on a single AI provider. The warning is notable coming from Microsoft, which sells the cloud infrastructure and AI services needed to build exactly that kind of private environment.

Comment Re: Oh no the Russians! (Score 1) 44

by Z00L00K (#66234002) Attached to: Russia Hacks Doorbell Cameras To Spy On NATO Bases

Don't underestimate the skills of some people. If it's a live stream camera then it's not that impossible.

Timezone is the easiest part. Shadows can indicate latitude, so if you can narrow it down to state level then you can start to look for the visible details like vegetation and road details. If you can capture a few vehicles with identifiable information (handymen with their phone numbers are golden info) it's also going to be easier.

Submission + - Once Unimaginable, Publishers Are Preparing to Opt Out of Google Search (adweek.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: For decades, publishers have done everything in their power, from the legal to the not-explicitly illegal, to rank as highly in Google Search as possible. For many websites, traffic from the search engine was their single greatest source of audience and, as a result, revenue.

Now though, a handful of influential players in the digital media ecosystem have begun moving in the opposite direction, laying the groundwork for what was once unthinkable: removing themselves from Google Search.

Last week, the content delivery network Cloudflare, which hosts roughly one-fifth of the websites in the world, gave Google an ultimatum.

The nuclear option is gaining traction as web traffic collapses and Google refuses to negotiate with content creators

Beginning Sept. 15, all new websites signing up for Cloudflare, as well as all the customers on its free tier, will have the default settings in their bot management protocol set to block “multi-purpose crawlers” on any webpage that has ads. This means that any crawler that scrapes for both search indexing and AI training will be turned away at the door, unless the site owner decides otherwise.

“We’ve been clear about what we want,” said Cloudflare chief strategy officer Stephanie Cohen. “We want a technical solution that allows you to be discoverable without having to give your content away for free.”

While a handful of crawlers fit this description—Apple and Bing, among others—the primary, unnamed target of this action is Google, which infamously uses one crawler to both index sites and train its AI models.

In doing so, Google forces publishers to make an impossible choice: They either allow both functions, enabling Google to scrape their content to train the AI products that are regurgitating their data without compensation; or they shut off both functions and disappear from Google Search, presumably losing their largest source of traffic in the process.

Submission + - How Flock Cameras Wrongly Tracked Journalist for Days Over 'Stolen' Plates (thedrive.com)

Submitted by sinij
sinij writes:

The New Jersey plates that were allegedly stolen from the LA dealer were 34 03 DTM, not 34 10 DTM. But when the police report was created and the plate was entered into Flock’s system, it was just recorded as 34 DTM.
Still, he warned me to drive straight home, park the Range Rover, and leave it there. If I were to cross into the neighboring town, I’d probably get flagged again and go through this entire ordeal again with a different set of officers. His parting words were ominous: “You’re lucky we’re in Plymouth. If you were in Minneapolis, they definitely would’ve come at you with guns drawn.”

Submission + - Nordstjernen Web Browser 1.0.18 released (nordstjernen.org)

Submitted by Andreas(R)
Andreas(R) writes: Today marks the release of Nordstjernen Web Browser version 1.0.18. Developed entirely from scratch in C, Nordstjernen is a lightweight browser focused strictly on conforming to modern HTML and CSS standards. Built in Norway, the project currently supports Windows, macOS, and Linux, with an active Android port currently underway.

Version 1.0.18 is a maintenance release that builds upon the stability of the 1.0.17 branch. In an era dominated by Chromium forks and Gecko-based engines, it's refreshing to see an independent, compiled-from-scratch layout engine entering the ecosystem. For those interested in minimal overhead or native C development, the full release details and binaries are available on their official site.

Submission + - Satya O'Nadella? Microsoft Defends its $47B Irish Pot of Gold and Low Tax Rates

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: The NY Times reports on a new required EU country-by-country compliance report released by Microsoft this week, which provided a rare look into how tech giants shift profits out of the countries where they have many employees and significant sales and into low-tax havens that help them cut their tax bills by billions of dollars. Like other big companies, Microsoft uses transactions between subsidiaries to shift profits around to reduce its tax bill. The report revealed a consistent pattern: high returns in low-tax jurisdictions and slim margins in higher-tax ones.

Among the sometimes absurd results, Microsoft said it had generated almost 40% of its pretax income in tax-friendly Ireland, where it employed about 3% of its global work force. In higher-tax Germany, the largest economy in Europe, Microsoft earned barely half of 1% of its global profits, it said. Excluding Ireland, the company said, it generated less than 2% of its worldwide pretax earnings in Europe. For its 2025 fiscal year, Microsoft reported profit margins of 24% in Ireland, where it paid taxes at a rate of just over 14%, and $47+ billion in pretax profit on revenues of $196 billion (the entire population of Ireland is about 7 million). Microsoft employs roughly 6,600 in Ireland. In Luxembourg, Microsoft claimed profit margins of 142% and a tax rate of just 3%. The company said it had $283 million in pretax income and only 34 employees in the tiny country. But in several of Microsoft’s biggest markets — where tax rates exceed 25% — it reported tiny profit margins. In Germany, France and Italy, the company claimed single-digit profit margins, sometimes barely 5%.

The report still gave only a partial picture, because it lumped in the U.S. with other countries. Microsoft said in a blog post accompanying the report that it followed all the laws in every jurisdiction where it operated, and that the reporting standards created some inconsistencies among countries. “Microsoft is committed to a tax structure that reflects where our people work, where we invest, and where functions, assets, and risks occur,” wrote Jeff Bullwinkel, Microsoft’s top lawyer in Europe. Bullwinkel said Microsoft’s capital expenditures in data centers, its corporate work forces and its work through local partners were also key investments in local economies. “Tax is one important measure of contribution, but it is not the only one,” he wrote. The IRS is challenging profit-shifting transactions used by Microsoft, and is seeking back taxes of nearly $29 billion. The company has said it disagrees with the IRS and said in a securities filing that it “will vigorously contest” the proposed tax bills.

Hey, say what you will about former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, but at least he didn't try to blow smoke up the public's butt about why Ireland held such a special place in Microsoft's heart. "Corporate tax is part of the overall advantage of doing business in Ireland," Ballmer told journalists in 2005 while in Dublin on a tour of the company’s Irish operations. "It would be disingenuous to say otherwise."

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