Comment "leverages" (Score 1) 71
"leverages user audio systems"....what an interesting way to spell "spying".
Submission + - Citrix adds a Linux powered escape hatch for broken Windows PCs (nerds.xyz)
BrianFagioli writes: Citrix has introduced a dual boot capability for UniconOS that installs a separate Linux based recovery environment alongside Windows. If ransomware, a failed update, or operating system corruption leaves Windows unavailable, an employee can reboot into UniconOS and reconnect to company applications through Citrix DaaS and SecurAccess. The feature is available with Citrix UniconOS Release 7 2607.
The recovery environment sits on its own partition and remains isolated from the Windows filesystem. It does not repair Windows, and it cannot help with failed hardware, missing network access, or unavailable Citrix infrastructure. However, it could give enterprises a faster way to keep employees working while IT investigates or repairs affected Windows installations.
The recovery environment sits on its own partition and remains isolated from the Windows filesystem. It does not repair Windows, and it cannot help with failed hardware, missing network access, or unavailable Citrix infrastructure. However, it could give enterprises a faster way to keep employees working while IT investigates or repairs affected Windows installations.
Submission + - Study: Most Mealtime Screen Time Is TV, Not Social Media (reason.com)
fjo3 writes: Everyone has seen them out at restaurants: the "iPad babies" and zoned-out families. Parents letting their children, some quite young, stare at phones or tablets throughout the meal, sometimes while mom and dad also look at screens.
It's easy to judge those families, though I try to remind myself that we, as casual onlookers, never know the full story. Maybe this almost never happens but tonight the parent has a crucial work deadline. Maybe it's been that rare kind of extraordinarily stressful day. Maybe that boy has developmental issues and this is the only way he can get through a restaurant meal, which the family needs to do because they're traveling. Maybe, whatever the reason, this is an anomaly and not the mealtime norm.
But screen time during meals may be the norm for many families, according to some new research published in JAMA Pediatrics.
Hold up, though—before you call in Jonathan Haidt (or Josh Hawley, or Jean Twenge, or whoever your favorite tech-panic evangelist might be), take a closer look at what sorts of screens that kids are using. The most common form of mealtime media consumption for kids in this study was "watching content on a large-screen device." That is, a TV, or something akin to a TV.
It's easy to judge those families, though I try to remind myself that we, as casual onlookers, never know the full story. Maybe this almost never happens but tonight the parent has a crucial work deadline. Maybe it's been that rare kind of extraordinarily stressful day. Maybe that boy has developmental issues and this is the only way he can get through a restaurant meal, which the family needs to do because they're traveling. Maybe, whatever the reason, this is an anomaly and not the mealtime norm.
But screen time during meals may be the norm for many families, according to some new research published in JAMA Pediatrics.
Hold up, though—before you call in Jonathan Haidt (or Josh Hawley, or Jean Twenge, or whoever your favorite tech-panic evangelist might be), take a closer look at what sorts of screens that kids are using. The most common form of mealtime media consumption for kids in this study was "watching content on a large-screen device." That is, a TV, or something akin to a TV.
Submission + - Windows NT 4 went on sale 30 years ago today
An anonymous reader writes: Windows NT 4 went on sale 30 years ago today
Today marks the 30th anniversary of Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 becoming available on August 24, 1996.
It was not without flaws. To improve the responsiveness of the new desktop, Microsoft chose to move NT’s 2D graphics rendering subsystem, the Graphics Device Interface or GDI, directly into the Windows kernel for improved performance. This eliminated an elegant aspect of the NT 3.x design, and meant that a bug in a display driver could crash the OS, introducing issues that would persist for over a decade, until the release of Windows Vista in 2007.
It was the beginning of the end for Novell NetWare. It also compounded Apple’s technological difficulties, leading to the company acquiring Steve Jobs’ NeXT Computer four months later. ®
Today marks the 30th anniversary of Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 becoming available on August 24, 1996.
It was not without flaws. To improve the responsiveness of the new desktop, Microsoft chose to move NT’s 2D graphics rendering subsystem, the Graphics Device Interface or GDI, directly into the Windows kernel for improved performance. This eliminated an elegant aspect of the NT 3.x design, and meant that a bug in a display driver could crash the OS, introducing issues that would persist for over a decade, until the release of Windows Vista in 2007.
It was the beginning of the end for Novell NetWare. It also compounded Apple’s technological difficulties, leading to the company acquiring Steve Jobs’ NeXT Computer four months later. ®
Submission + - BMW Blames Young People for Loss of Real Buttons in New Cars (caranddriver.com)
sinij writes:
In an interview with CarExpert, Vikram Pawah, the CEO of BMW Group Australia, said that young buyers prefer the newer controls. “We can see that voice and touch are becoming more and more common,” Pawah told the outlet. “Maybe it’s a generational thing as well. You would see that a lot of the younger generation, maybe 45 or below, they’re tapped into these technologies at a faster pace, using voice, using touch.”
This would be somewhat believable if this design only affected cars targeted at young buyers. It does not. Many of BMW are targeted at affluent boomers and Gen X due to high price.
Submission + - Google plans to stop making Pixel products in China in 2027 (archive.is)
An anonymous reader writes: The news broke only after Google quietly passed word to suppliers. The company has made no public announcement and ignored a request for comment.
Vietnam first got a piece of Pixel production in 2019, but the real engineering — how new models get designed for mass production, down to the testing gear and tooling — stayed in China. The Pixel 11 was the first time Google moved all of that work to Vietnam, too. That was the hard part.
Pulling that off proved the concept. Google did not need to build from scratch, either; Samsung's massive investment in Vietnam had already drawn component suppliers to the country, and if Vietnam can handle a flagship smartphone, earbuds and watches are no problem.
Google also has far less to lose in China than Apple does. Pixel phones aren't sold there, so Beijing can't threaten Google's customer base the way it can Apple's. Apple is tangled up with Chinese consumers and Chinese factories at the same time; Google can cut the manufacturing cord without sacrificing a single sale.
China still accounts for a significant share of Pixel production today. Once those lines are gone, Beijing loses whatever leverage it currently holds over Google's hardware. That's not a small thing; the ability to slow, disrupt, or pressure a company through its own factories is a tool authoritarian governments have used before.
Vietnam first got a piece of Pixel production in 2019, but the real engineering — how new models get designed for mass production, down to the testing gear and tooling — stayed in China. The Pixel 11 was the first time Google moved all of that work to Vietnam, too. That was the hard part.
Pulling that off proved the concept. Google did not need to build from scratch, either; Samsung's massive investment in Vietnam had already drawn component suppliers to the country, and if Vietnam can handle a flagship smartphone, earbuds and watches are no problem.
Google also has far less to lose in China than Apple does. Pixel phones aren't sold there, so Beijing can't threaten Google's customer base the way it can Apple's. Apple is tangled up with Chinese consumers and Chinese factories at the same time; Google can cut the manufacturing cord without sacrificing a single sale.
China still accounts for a significant share of Pixel production today. Once those lines are gone, Beijing loses whatever leverage it currently holds over Google's hardware. That's not a small thing; the ability to slow, disrupt, or pressure a company through its own factories is a tool authoritarian governments have used before.
Submission + - A tiny âoerainbow on a chipâ could help supercharge 6G networks (sciencedaily.com)
alternative_right writes: Researchers have created a tiny chip that produces a stable âoerainbowâ of light capable of generating multiple high-frequency signals at once, potentially boosting the speed and capacity of future 6G networks. Its extreme precision could also make it valuable for quantum timing, navigation, radar, and even space-based technologies.
Submission + - How Big Tech Captured American Schools
theodp writes: In How Big Tech Captured American Schools (alt source), an adapted excerpt of the forthcoming book Coding Kids: Big Tech’s Battle to Remake Public Schools, the New York Times' Natasha Singer begins: "Many parents would likely object if, say, Exxon Mobil wrote their children’s environmental science curriculum. Or if Purdue Pharma trained their children’s biology teachers. Yet, over the last decade, schools have often embraced the technology industry in similar ways with few questions asked. Industry-sponsored teacher training is just one technique that Big Tech companies use to shape schools and promote their worldviews to students. In interviewing more than 100 education and tech industry figures for my book, and reviewing hundreds of school, government and corporate documents, it became clear that a handful of giants have used their money, their might and their mammoth platforms to influence nearly every step of the education supply chain."
"Consumer tech giants provide the essential scaffolding that schools run on. That means laptops and tablets; operating systems and device-tracking software; the apps students use to write essays and analyze data; the messaging platforms that connect students and teachers; and more. Some of these companies, including Google, Microsoft and Apple, have also used their status as classroom tech providers as a springboard to influence how and what schoolchildren learn."
"This story matters whether you want schools to center tech skills or are agnostic, because the recent learn-to-code craze and the growing push for A.I. in schools are not just about learning. Those trends are part of a larger exercise of Silicon Valley power. The public education system, hungry for resources to improve opportunities for students, has become an avenue for multitrillion-dollar companies to enact their agendas."
"This development taps into fundamental questions about education that Americans have been arguing over for more than a century. What is the purpose of public schooling? Is it to raise critical, independent thinkers? Train students in the latest career skills? Help young people discover their passions? Serve the needs of the prevailing industry or emerging ones? Create knowledgeable and active participants in a democracy? Or all of the above?"
In an accompanying LinkedIn post, Singer adds: "Every few years, Silicon Valley has urged American public schools to quickly adopt the latest technology or teach the latest tech subject: Big Data analytics; laptops for every child; algorithm-driven math and reading apps; computer programming; virtual reality. And each time the urgent arguments sounded remarkably similar: if schools just adopted the latest tech tool, or taught the latest tech subject, it would democratize learning for every child and equip students with valuable career skills. The campaign to expand student access to computer science and other efforts had good intentions. But today we know some of those classroom tech drives did not exactly pan out as advertised. Now some of the same companies that urged schools to provide laptops and coding lessons are employing similar arguments to urge schools to quickly adopt A.I. tools. I've spent years covering Chromebooks and student chatbot use. And I'm troubled by our collective amnesia around school tech."
"Consumer tech giants provide the essential scaffolding that schools run on. That means laptops and tablets; operating systems and device-tracking software; the apps students use to write essays and analyze data; the messaging platforms that connect students and teachers; and more. Some of these companies, including Google, Microsoft and Apple, have also used their status as classroom tech providers as a springboard to influence how and what schoolchildren learn."
"This story matters whether you want schools to center tech skills or are agnostic, because the recent learn-to-code craze and the growing push for A.I. in schools are not just about learning. Those trends are part of a larger exercise of Silicon Valley power. The public education system, hungry for resources to improve opportunities for students, has become an avenue for multitrillion-dollar companies to enact their agendas."
"This development taps into fundamental questions about education that Americans have been arguing over for more than a century. What is the purpose of public schooling? Is it to raise critical, independent thinkers? Train students in the latest career skills? Help young people discover their passions? Serve the needs of the prevailing industry or emerging ones? Create knowledgeable and active participants in a democracy? Or all of the above?"
In an accompanying LinkedIn post, Singer adds: "Every few years, Silicon Valley has urged American public schools to quickly adopt the latest technology or teach the latest tech subject: Big Data analytics; laptops for every child; algorithm-driven math and reading apps; computer programming; virtual reality. And each time the urgent arguments sounded remarkably similar: if schools just adopted the latest tech tool, or taught the latest tech subject, it would democratize learning for every child and equip students with valuable career skills. The campaign to expand student access to computer science and other efforts had good intentions. But today we know some of those classroom tech drives did not exactly pan out as advertised. Now some of the same companies that urged schools to provide laptops and coding lessons are employing similar arguments to urge schools to quickly adopt A.I. tools. I've spent years covering Chromebooks and student chatbot use. And I'm troubled by our collective amnesia around school tech."
Submission + - Who's Tracking You? Use This New Service to Find Out
Mirnotoriety writes: Who’s Tracking You? Use This New Service to Find Out
“A powerful and free new service called DecryptAds scrapes and correlates this adtech data and makes it simple to quickly learn a great deal about the entities that are tracking you.”
“A powerful and free new service called DecryptAds scrapes and correlates this adtech data and makes it simple to quickly learn a great deal about the entities that are tracking you.”
Submission + - Free AGPL Consent App Ships With No INTERNET Permission At All, Uses Bluetooth O (techtalkhawke.com)
kmleon writes: Recreational therapist and therapeutic-gaming researcher W.A. Hawkes-Robinson
has released the first beta of Game
Consent, a free AGPL-3.0 app giving participants at a game table,
classroom, or therapy group a private green/yellow/red "traffic light" for
signaling comfort to whoever is facilitating — in real time, anonymously. The
facilitator sees only an aggregate, worst-rating-wins, and never which
participant sent which rating; per the developer, that attribution "is never
transmitted in a form the facilitator's device is able to resolve."
The design decision of interest to this crowd: the free Basic Edition is deliberately serverless, and the shipped Android manifest omits the INTERNET permission entirely, so the OS itself will attest the app cannot reach the network. Everything runs over direct Bluetooth Low Energy between devices in the room. No account, no telemetry, no ads, no PII. The stated reasoning: anonymity is easier to guarantee when there is nothing to leak, and the Bluetooth-only transport also works in the rural, correctional, and hospital settings the developer's programs actually run in, where wifi is unavailable or prohibited. The developer notes he has spent years arguing that screens at the tabletop damage the social dynamics of play, considers the app an unresolved tension with his own research, and is adding audio alerts in beta 2 so a facilitator can run a single earbud instead of watching a screen.
The first working version of this was not software at all: green/amber/red LEDs and toggle switches hardwired into custom-built gaming tables, wired to a panel on the GM's side. It worked, and could not scale — you cannot ship a table.
Android is at beta 1 and tested on physical hardware with real groups. Linux (.deb and .rpm) and Windows (.msi, a -setup.exe, and a portable .zip) are
published as early alpha and, by the developer's own statement, have only ever
run on his development machines. SHA256 checksums are published alongside the
artifacts; the Windows installers are not code-signed, on the stated grounds
that a signing certificate is another recurring fee and the checksums plus
AGPL source are the things worth trusting. macOS is pre-alpha with nothing
downloadable, and the web version — architecturally a paid-tier feature, since
a browser cannot do local-only BLE peer-to-peer — has not been started.
iOS may never ship, and the developer is blunt about why: Apple charges $99 per year per developer ($299+ for companies) for any distribution to iPhone users, not merely an App Store listing, and this is free AGPL software with no revenue attached. He describes paying Apple in perpetuity to give away his own open source work as "ludicrous," and says if iOS ever happens it will likely be the one paid build of an otherwise free app, priced only to cover Apple's fee. The app is deliberately in no store yet; F-Droid is named as the intended first submission once it reaches 1.0.
Prior art is credited rather than dismissed: John Stavropoulos's X-Card (in-the-moment but public and binary) and Monte Cook Games' free Consent in Gaming checklist (private and granular but frozen before play begins). The claim is that nobody had shipped private, granular, and continuous at the same time.
Source and releases: git.dev2dev.net/Dev2Dev/gameconsent_public. Full write-up with install steps: techtalkhawke.com.
The design decision of interest to this crowd: the free Basic Edition is deliberately serverless, and the shipped Android manifest omits the INTERNET permission entirely, so the OS itself will attest the app cannot reach the network. Everything runs over direct Bluetooth Low Energy between devices in the room. No account, no telemetry, no ads, no PII. The stated reasoning: anonymity is easier to guarantee when there is nothing to leak, and the Bluetooth-only transport also works in the rural, correctional, and hospital settings the developer's programs actually run in, where wifi is unavailable or prohibited. The developer notes he has spent years arguing that screens at the tabletop damage the social dynamics of play, considers the app an unresolved tension with his own research, and is adding audio alerts in beta 2 so a facilitator can run a single earbud instead of watching a screen.
The first working version of this was not software at all: green/amber/red LEDs and toggle switches hardwired into custom-built gaming tables, wired to a panel on the GM's side. It worked, and could not scale — you cannot ship a table.
Android is at beta 1 and tested on physical hardware with real groups. Linux (.deb and
iOS may never ship, and the developer is blunt about why: Apple charges $99 per year per developer ($299+ for companies) for any distribution to iPhone users, not merely an App Store listing, and this is free AGPL software with no revenue attached. He describes paying Apple in perpetuity to give away his own open source work as "ludicrous," and says if iOS ever happens it will likely be the one paid build of an otherwise free app, priced only to cover Apple's fee. The app is deliberately in no store yet; F-Droid is named as the intended first submission once it reaches 1.0.
Prior art is credited rather than dismissed: John Stavropoulos's X-Card (in-the-moment but public and binary) and Monte Cook Games' free Consent in Gaming checklist (private and granular but frozen before play begins). The claim is that nobody had shipped private, granular, and continuous at the same time.
Source and releases: git.dev2dev.net/Dev2Dev/gameconsent_public. Full write-up with install steps: techtalkhawke.com.
Submission + - Alibaba secretly hijacking computer audio system (ppc.land)
An anonymous reader writes: A developer using Bluetooth headphones accidentally caught Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba secretly hijacking his computer's audio system without making a single sound.
When his wireless headphones refused to switch audio to his phone while browsing AliExpress, he inspected the site's hidden code. He discovered background scripts holding his computer's audio pipeline wide open.
Alibaba was using the browser's WebAudio API to run invisible sound waves at zero volume. By measuring tiny hardware differences in how each computer processes those signals, the site created a unique digital fingerprint to track devices.
Because the secret audio path stayed active, it froze his Bluetooth connection while quietly scraping hardware memory, screen dimensions, and network data in the background.
https://x.com/Unveiled_ChinaX/...
When his wireless headphones refused to switch audio to his phone while browsing AliExpress, he inspected the site's hidden code. He discovered background scripts holding his computer's audio pipeline wide open.
Alibaba was using the browser's WebAudio API to run invisible sound waves at zero volume. By measuring tiny hardware differences in how each computer processes those signals, the site created a unique digital fingerprint to track devices.
Because the secret audio path stayed active, it froze his Bluetooth connection while quietly scraping hardware memory, screen dimensions, and network data in the background.
https://x.com/Unveiled_ChinaX/...
Submission + - WHO IS TIBO? THE OPENAI ROCKSTAR BLESSING CODEX USERS WITH USAGE RESETS (nerds.xyz)
BrianFagioli writes: An OpenAI product leader has somehow become a rockstar among Codex users. Thibault Tibo Sottiaux has more than 500,000 followers, and his repeated usage resets have become such a big part of Codex culture that some developers actually plan their AI usage around his promises.
I am one of them. I have notifications turned on for his posts, and his resets have helped me keep building with Codex while staying on ChatGPT Plus instead of paying for Pro. Here is how the guy with the reset button became one of the most recognizable faces in the Codex community.
I am one of them. I have notifications turned on for his posts, and his resets have helped me keep building with Codex while staying on ChatGPT Plus instead of paying for Pro. Here is how the guy with the reset button became one of the most recognizable faces in the Codex community.
Submission + - Synthetic everything is warping America (axios.com)
alternative_right writes: A shadowy polling firm confessed this week to faking survey results in two marquee races â" then claimed the entire operation was a "short-term social experiment" on misinformation.
Why it matters: An AI-enabled flood of synthetic and outright fabricated content is wreaking havoc on reality, poisoning the signals people rely on to understand politics, business and culture.
Why it matters: An AI-enabled flood of synthetic and outright fabricated content is wreaking havoc on reality, poisoning the signals people rely on to understand politics, business and culture.
Submission + - Iran-linked hackers behind cyber attack that shut down UK power plant (bbc.co.uk)
Alain Williams writes: The government said that at no point was there a risk to the UK's energy system, but the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) has contacted power companies to advise them about the risk of cyber attacks.
The Telegraph reported, external that the attack, which took place last month, was carried out by hackers affiliated to the Iranian regime.
For security reasons, neither the government nor the National Cyber Security Centre, which deals with attacks on critical infrastructure, would give further details of the site affected. However this was not an attack on an essential service such as a large power station.
The Telegraph reported, external that the attack, which took place last month, was carried out by hackers affiliated to the Iranian regime.
For security reasons, neither the government nor the National Cyber Security Centre, which deals with attacks on critical infrastructure, would give further details of the site affected. However this was not an attack on an essential service such as a large power station.
Submission + - ByteDance Resolve Children's Privacy Litigation
An anonymous reader writes: Justice Department Secures $400M Settlement with TikTok and ByteDance to Resolve Children’s Privacy Litigation
“Today, the Department of Justice announced a $400 million settlement with TikTok, ByteDance, and affiliated entities (TikTok) resolving litigation concerning compliance with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and its implementing regulations (COPPA).
Under the settlement, TikTok will pay $300 million immediately and an additional $100 million upon entry of an order vacating a prior consent decree entered against TikTok’s predecessor, Musical.ly. The settlement represents one of the largest recoveries ever obtained in a COPPA case.”
“Today, the Department of Justice announced a $400 million settlement with TikTok, ByteDance, and affiliated entities (TikTok) resolving litigation concerning compliance with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and its implementing regulations (COPPA).
Under the settlement, TikTok will pay $300 million immediately and an additional $100 million upon entry of an order vacating a prior consent decree entered against TikTok’s predecessor, Musical.ly. The settlement represents one of the largest recoveries ever obtained in a COPPA case.”
