technology

Sure do love to have 50MB of bullshit poorly optimized Javascript visual effects crammed into my browser on every page. The cute little animations definitely make up for the fact that it takes like 5 seconds every time I load my private messages.

In 1979, Casio made a calculator that doubled as a cigarette lighter, a.k.a. the "calculighter' : pics

From another site...

The Casio QL10 is a standard refillable lighter 4″ tall, with 4-function calculator, multi-alarm clock, two time zones and stopwatch. It lasted all of one season in Casio’s 1980 line and retailed for around $90 at the time and was dubbed a Calcu-Lighter by the press. Calculator makers pushed the envelope after perfecting miniaturization and the LCD display system, so it was only logical to package a lighter within a calculator during the pro-tobacco days of the 80's.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/12083680

Are We Transitioning From Capitalism to Silicon Serfdom?

The idea that we are entering an era of techno-feudalism that will be worse than capitalism is chilling and controversial. We asked former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis to elucidate this idea, explain how we got here, and map out some alternatives.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/02/air-canada-must-honor-refund-policy-invented-by-airlines-chatbot/

Key Points:

…after spending the last few months periodically poking around the trees inhabited by little birdies, I do have good news for fans of coercive government regulation,” Gruber says. “Apple’s hand was effectively forced. But by China, not the EU.”

“Coercive government regulation” lmao.

Gruber points to a new law in the works in China that will require that 5G devices support RCS in order to receive certification in the country.

Chinese carriers have been proponents of RCS for years, and last year, the Chinese government began the process of codifying into law that to achieve certification, new 5G devices will be required to support RCS. Shockingly, the Chinese government seemingly isn’t concerned that the RCS standard has no provisions for encryption. The little birdies I’ve spoken to all said the same thing: iOS support for RCS is all about China.

“Shockingly”.

Apple would prefer simply to continue ignoring RCS, on the grounds that they want to support neither any new non-E2EE protocols, nor any new carrier-controlled protocols (whether encrypted or not). But when the CCP says device makers must jump to sell their products in China, Apple asks “How high?”

The sheer Sinophobia omg.

One narrative in the months since Apple’s RCS announcement in November has been that the move was driven by the Digital Markets Act in the European Union. The DMA, however, makes no mention of RCS specifically – and now have official confirmation that iMessage is not big enough in the EU to fall under the purview of the DMA.

There goes EU, the saviour of digital rights.

Anyways, what an article.

It seems like there's a lot of Salesforce consulting jobs being posted now.

So from that, my inference is that companies be shopping, while laying off workers

Fuck this shithole country I hope it collapses

This is partially a repost of my comment in the news megathread but not really.

OpenAI just announced Sora, a tool for creating video from text, and the results are really fucking good (especially compared to state-of-the-art AI video generation tools), and this has me thinking about job security again.

Generative AI is already displacing workers.

A study surveying 300 leaders across the entertainment industry reports that three-fourths of respondents indicated that AI tools supported the elimination, reduction or consolidation of jobs at their companies. Over the next three years, it estimates that nearly 204,000 positions will be adversely affected.

The Concept Art Assn. and the Animation Guild commissioned the report, which was conducted from Nov. 17 to Dec. 22 by consulting firm CVL Economics, amid concerns from members over the impact of AI on their work. Among the issues is that concept artists are increasingly being asked to “clean up” AI-generated works by studios, lowering their billed hours and the pool of available jobs, says Nicole Hendrix, founder of the advocacy group.

“We’re seeing a lot of role consolidation and reduction,” Hendrix says. “A lot of people are out of work right now.”

According to the report, nearly 77 percent of respondents use AI image generators enabling, for example, individuals to upload landscape photos to virtual productions screens or speed up rotoscoping in postproduction. They have applications in 3D modeling, storyboarding, animation and concept art, among other things.

Generative AI displacing workers isn't some future hypothetical, it's something that's already happening right now, and as someone working in a field which is vulnerable to automation by AI tools, I'm really worried that OpenAI (or some other company) is going to create a new tool that just completely puts me out of a job.

Is anyone else worried for their job? Is there anything that can be done?

Some highlights for me:

Proton is not a product of Silicon Valley but a crowdfunded project conceived at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research). Proton was not created to get rich (if you want to get rich, you don’t go to work at CERN) but rather to address the important societal problem of surveillance capitalism.

From the start, Proton has always been about the mission and putting people ahead of profits. The goal is not to raise endless rounds of VC funding at dizzying valuations, and there is no price at which we would compromise our integrity.

Proton is a very rare tech company that has managed to achieve scale but today does not have any venture capital investors. This gives us an unparalleled ability to put user interests first without being beholden to financially driven investors. We cannot be forced to sell ourselves, forced to deliver higher profits, or forced to seek sources of revenue that don’t align with our mission.

Proton is not profit-driven, and we are strong believers in long-term financial sustainability. We are not billionaire subsidized, government subsidized, or donation subsidized. Rather, we derive almost all of our revenues from selling services directly to users in a profitable way.

We charge a fair price that reflects our costs and can deliver long-term stability. The benefit of this should not be overlooked in an era where software companies are raising prices 20% year over year. Proton’s prices have not increased in 10 years. And when our costs go down, because we don’t have VC shareholders with specific financial requirements, we can actually pass those savings on to you.

Technological sustainability cannot be overlooked. Proton owns all our servers and network equipment, acts as our own internet service provider, and doesn’t rely upon any third-party cloud providers (no Google Cloud, AWS, Microsoft Azure, etc.). Our data centers are located in multiple countries (Switzerland, Germany, and Norway), our server hardware is provided by multiple suppliers, as is the electricity that runs into our data centers, with the goal of eliminating all single points of external dependency. The investments required to take this approach are massive, but they ensure we are protected against third-party risks. AWS suddenly raising prices won’t tank our sustainable business model because we are in much better control over our direct costs.

The same goes for core technology and expertise. We maintain our own encryption libraries, employ our own cryptographers, and build and maintain our entire stack in-house, from the physical hardware all the way to the front-end software. This comes at much higher cost, but allows us to better react to any unexpected situations. There is very little software (or hardware) run at Proton today where we do not have our own in-house experts who can fix it if something goes wrong.

from today's protest against Project Nimbus

they were all owned by the same company and sold to Kape, which has ties to the Israeli intelligence service, a few years back.

The issue is who he sold it to -- the notorious creator of some pernicious data-huffing ad-ware, Crossrider. The UK-based company was cofounded by an ex-Israeli surveillance agent and a billionaire previously convicted of insider trading who was later named in the Panama Papers. It produced software which previously allowed third-party developers to hijack users' browsers via malware injection, redirect traffic to advertisers and slurp up private data.

I personally use perfect-privacy, which didn't turn up any red flags when I did research a few years ago. it's a little lacking in features but openvpn isn't that hard to set up on linux & android. no clue how well their desktop app works.

I don't remember it downloading an update but normally it does this when it updates, so maybe one was d/ling in the background? I restarted the laptop because it was running slow and normally that fixes it. But this is the longest time it's ever been hung up.

About the photo...

Last year, my daughter Aurora and I were walking around in Muir Woods and we came across this payphone.

It's weird to me it's designed for kids. It's like something out of a horror movie. But that's not what this post is about.

Installing a payphone in my house | bertrand fan

The first part of blog is...

When I was growing up in the 90s, I remember wanting to get on the Internet. My parents weren’t going to help me, so I called up an ISP and said I wanted to set up an account. They asked for my name and I gave them a fake name. And then they asked for a credit card number and I told them I had to find my wallet and call them back.

There's more information that I'm sharing for science. I don't know how old he was at the time (a teenager?) but he figures out a way to use the net for free via payphones and clever math.

The second part is how/why he installed a payphone in his house. Their daughter "calls" him or his wife.

• My daughter is 5 - I don’t want her dialing 911.

• I also don’t want her calling up an ISP and convincing them to make an account for her - I’m not quite ready to reap what I sow.

• Technically the two phones could talk to each other, but first a call would have to be made to get into “Dad, get off the phone!” territory. Do those phone numbers that tell you the time still exist? Do they stop talking after a while?

This is when I discovered a crazy piece of technology, a phone line simulator.

[...]

I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting, but at random hours in the day I’ll be working in my office and the payphone will ring and my daughter will tell me about her dolls for a minute or so and then I’ll say, “That’s great, but I have to get back to work.” and we’ll say goodbye until the next time. Most of the time, it’s a nice break.

Not sure how much I would trust an 'open cell network' standard coming from 5EYES, but it is funny to see them trying to find a way to remain competitive with China's tech industry.

No one was in Waymo’s driverless taxi as it was surrounded and set on fire in San Francisco’s Chinatown.

A person jumped on the hood of a Waymo driverless taxi and smashed its windshield in San Francisco’s Chinatown last night around 9PM PT, generating applause before a crowd formed around the car and covered it in spray paint, breaking its windows, and ultimately set it on fire.

The fire takes place against the backdrop of simmering tension between San Francisco residents and automated vehicle operators. The California DMV suspended Waymo rival Cruise’s robotaxi operations after one of its cars struck and dragged a pedestrian last year, and prior to that, automated taxis had caused chaos in the city, blocking traffic or crashing into a fire truck. Just last week, a Waymo car struck a cyclist who had reportedly been following behind a truck turning across its path.