176075435
submission
tlhIngan writes:
Police in Cleveland, Ohio investigating the murder of Blake Story were dealt a major setback when it was revealed that their suspect was identified using the services of Clearview AI. They sent the surveillance video to be analyzed and came back with a suspect, and used those results to obtain a search warrant on the suspect's house. A search turned up a weapon. However, during the trial the search warrant was ruled inadmissible because it was based on the results of the analysis done by Clearview AI, resulting in the evidence being suppressed. The report from Clearview AI clearly stated that its results are inadmissible in court and should only be used to pursue other investigative leads. Note the decision to suppress the evidence found in the search is being appealed . There are no other suspects in the case. Clearview AI is best known for scraping up photos of people to train its AI, which several courts around the world have declared it to be privacy violations and banned its use.
175955403
submission
tlhIngan writes:
In what is perhaps the greatest irony ever, the operators of RedNote (known as Xiaohongshu) have decided to "wall off" US TikTok refugees fleeing to its service as the TikTok ban looms. The reason? The CCP wants to prevent American influence from spreading to Chinese citizens. The ban is expected to be in place next week, while many believe that the influx of Americans to be temporary and just a reaction to the TikTok ban to move to another Chinese app. Many Chinese users are not happy with the influx as having "ruined" their ability to connect with "Chinese culture, Chinese values and Chinese news".
175437021
submission
tlhIngan writes:
A new interesting issue has cropped up making law enforcement lives harder — iPhones have been mysteriously rebooting. The problem is the iPhone can be in one of two states — "Before First Unlock" (BFU) or "After First Unlock" (AFU). iPhones in AFU mode are much easier to unlock using the traditional tools, but after a reboot, they go into BFU mode which requires a stronger authentication scheme in order to unlock as many services, including saved passwords are unavailable in BFU mode. They discovered their iPhones, even ones locked away in Faraday cages were mysteriously rebooting on them which locked them up. They speculate iPhones can emit a "mystery signal" that tells other iPhones around them to reboot, but that seems implausible at best.
174824614
submission
tlhIngan writes:
The ARRL (Amateur Radio Relay League), one of the largest ham radio organizations out there, was attacked with ransomware way back in May of this year. It has been recently revealed that the ARRL has paid a $1 million ransom in order to decrypt their systems. The ARRL has not specified which ransomware gang was responsible but other sources have said it was traced to the Embargo gang.
171772788
submission
tlhIngan writes:
Starfield, a Bethesda space-based RPG that was recently released, was criticized for not having nVidia DLSS support — instead the game was primarily written to feature AMD's FSR support instead. This isn't too surprising since the major consoles all use AMD processors and GPUs. However, an enterprising modder created a mod that enables players with nVidia cards to enable DLSS. This isn't the unusual bit — the mod makes DLSS2 (ca. 2020) available for free, while the version enabling DLSS3 (which adds the ability to use AI to generate frames in-between) is behind a Patreon paywall. This has lead to several other people to crack the DRM protecting the mod itself (note: this is not the DRM on the game itself — the game's Steam page doesn't seem to imply use of 3rd party DRM beyond Steam). Imagine that — DRM on a game mod because it requires payment.
166307149
submission
tlhIngan writes:
The iPhone 14's "dynamic island" feature is where the pinhole used for the front facing camera is replaced by a pill shaped cutout that can be filled with "useful" snippets of information. It's basically used to help hide the black hole caused by the pinhole camera (as an alternative to the notch) or pill by multiple cameras. Apparently the feature is so innovative, Chinese cellphone company realme is asking its fans for ideas on how to copy, but not copy, the feature. They're asking for submissions in images, GIFs, text or other form on how a "realme Island" should work.
159361909
submission
tlhIngan writes:
As reported in many outlets, Epic Games has acquired indie music store Bandcamp. Epic Games wishes to build out a "creator marketplace" and that Bandcamp will continue to be run as it is.
156166749
submission
tlhIngan writes:
The AstraZeneca vaccine, one of the few approved vaccines to fight COVID-19, was under fire earlier this year for causing blood clots. While the vaccine is still approved for use, and is being used, scientists have been working hard to figure out the cause. The main trigger appears to be caused by the immune system mistakenly identifying a blood protein as part of the virus. The AstraZeneca vaccine has viral RNA embedded on a normal cold virus. Platelet factor 4, a blood protein, is attracted to the virus and sticks to it. Sometimes, the immune system thinks the protein on the virus is the virus and attacks it, causing red blood cells to clump on it, creating a blood clot. This is a positive hope in helping figure out who may be susceptible to blood clots caused by the vaccine and to offer an alternative to those allergic to components of the mRNA vaccines.
155658477
submission
tlhIngan writes:
We know Spotify has many complaints about Apple, specifically how Apple Music competes with Spotify. This has resulted in many complaints about unfair competition from Spotify, enough to bring about the scrutiny of European regulators. However, it appears Spotify might be the architect of their own complaints, from not supporting AirPlay 2 (which they rapidly backtracked on due to customer complaints), to now, not not supporting the HomePod natively. Apple introduced 3rd party support for the HomePod, which allows the speaker to natively play streaming services audio without requiring an iOS device. Most notably, when the list of providers supporting the feature was announced by Apple, Spotify was conspicuously absent. Now Apple users are demanding Spotify add support for HomePod or they are switching to Apple Music.
155258465
submission
tlhIngan writes:
Tim Sweeney is at it again. The CEO of Epic Games blasts Apple and Google and calling for a universal app store that works across all platforms. Naturally he's proposing that Epic Games to manage the store across iOS, Android, Xbox, PC, Nintendo and Sony. Bloomberg (paywalled) has more details.
154718295
submission
tlhIngan writes:
In a Bloomberg report, subscription seller and exercise equipment maker Peloton has cut their forecasted revenue by $1 billion and lowered their subscriber and new customer growth. Peloton blames Apple's App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework allowing users to choose whether to allow tracking for blocking Peloton's attempts to grow their customer and subscriber base by tracking users across apps and ads. Peloton isn't the only company blaming Apple for lowered growth — social media companies like Meta (formerly Facebook), YouTube, Twitter and Snapchat have blamed ATT for reducing revenues by as much as $10 billion for the second half of 2021.
153870173
submission
tlhIngan writes:
Windows 11 has odd specs and many recent processors are on the unsupported list. However @Carlos_SM1995 found that a Pentium 4 from 2006 is fully supported by Windows 11. Yes, Windows Update works fully and the processor is fully supported. So maybe if your first gen Ryzen or 7th gen Intel Core can't run Windows 11, it's time to dig out the old Pentium...
148782711
submission
tlhIngan writes:
Earlier this year in April Apple started mandating App Tracking Transparency by offering users the choice for apps to track them. The numbers are in and a number of ad companies are reporting lowered iOS spending, but 10% or more increases in Android ad spending. The complaint is, of course, that without the granular data they used to get from tracking it's no longer worth spending on iOS ads. Interestingly, only about 66% of users have actually denied tracking.
148415558
submission
tlhIngan writes:
A file containing every PS3 console ID was apparently publicly accessible leading to reports by PS3 players that they're consoles are getting banned. This list is being used by malicious people in order to wreak havoc and Sony is banning the fake consoles, leading to innocent users getting their consoles banned. Even though the PS3 is two generations old at this point, lack of PS3 compatibility in the PS4 has lead to many PS3s still being enjoyed today. Sony has not issued any response to this attack.
138304816
submission
tlhIngan writes:
Many years ago Kojima Productions produced P.T., a Playable Trailer (rumored meaning to P.T.) for a now-cancelled Silent Hill survival-horror reboot. This was a popular trailer but when Kojima and Konami parted ways, it was swiftly removed from the Sony Playstation Store. People who downloaded the trailer could still re-download it for a period but that was swiftly removed, leading to PS4s preloaded with the game spiking in price. Since the PS5 offered backwards compatibility, reviewers did test the PS5 playing back P.T. to find it still worked. However, this was short lived, as Sony removed the trailer from working in backwards compatible mode, as well as removing the ability to transfer the game to the PS5. Sony's response to the removal was "it was a publisher decision" to remove it from the backwards compatibility list.
