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Windows 11 is getting out of hand with its push for advertisments, frankly - remember the recent full-screen pop-up to persuade users to install Edge or other Microsoft services? Then another advertisment was placed in the Start menu, and now Microsoft has finally worn my temper thin - with a new Game Pass ad coming to the Settings app.

This will likely arrive in the July update for Windows 11, or at least it’s almost certain to do so. It was present in the latest preview update Microsoft just released for the OS (and quickly paused due to a bug, but that’s another story). It’s also worth noting that the ad has been present in earlier test versions of Windows 11.

>Mac malware that steals passwords, cryptocurrency wallets, and other sensitive data has been spotted circulating through Google ads, making it at least the second time in as many months the widely used ad platform has been abused to infect web surfers.

>Like most other large advertising networks, Google Ads regularly serves malicious content that isn’t taken down until third parties have notified the company. Google Ads takes no responsibility for any damage that may result from these oversights. The company said in an email it removes malicious ads once it learns of them and suspends the advertiser and has done so in this case.

>People who want to install software advertised online should seek out the official download site rather than relying on the site linked in the ad. They should also be wary of any instructions that direct Mac users to install apps through the right-click method mentioned earlier. The Malwarebytes post provides indicators of compromise people can use to determine if they’ve been targeted.

>Netflix, once a pioneer of ad-free viewing that offered a break from traditional TV norms, is now contemplating launching free ad-supported versions of its service in markets like Europe and Asia, Bloomberg reported.

>The plans to offer a free ad-supported tier, albeit in select markets, suggests that pivot towards monetizing user data, in other words — making users and not the extensive library of award-winning shows a product, might be well in the pipeline.

>Long-term carrier lock-in could soon be a thing of the past in America after the FCC proposed requiring telcos to unlock cellphones from their networks 60 days after activation. > >FCC boss Jessica Rosenworcel put out that proposal on Thursday, saying it would encourage competition between carriers. If subscribers could simply walk off to another telco with their handsets after two months of use, networks would have to do a lot more competing, the FCC reasons. > >"When you buy a phone, you should have the freedom to decide when to change service to the carrier you want and not have the device you own stuck by practices that prevent you from making that choice," Rosenworcel said. > >Carrier-locked devices contain software mechanisms that prevent them from being used on other providers' networks. The practice has long been criticized for being anti-consumer.

If you are curious whether Ubiquiti ditched the fan on the new U7 Pro Max, well, I have some bad news for you. I opened the device and this is the teardown video.

Louis Rossman discuses many design flaws made by Apple over the years throughout their entire catalog.

This video also came out a few days after I praise the Macbook Pro series for being higher quality then their competition as well. 😂 🫣

Archived

Here is a thread on it: https://infosec.exchange/@jtig/112689665815283809

• So far "there is no evidence to suggest that the product environment or customer data is affected," the company says on its website.
• TeamViewer's internal IT environment is completely independent from its product environment, the firm adds.

[Edit typo.]

>Earlier this year, Microsoft revealed that a Russia-based cybercriminal group labeled as Midnight Blizzard got access to the email accounts of its top executives in late 2023. Today, the company has confirmed that it is informing more of its customers that emails sent to those executives were seen by that hacker group.

>The Russian security breach, combined with an earlier one in 2023 by Chinese hackers who accessed Outlook-based government email accounts in the US and Europe, has been a major embarrassment to Microsoft.

Oh god make it stop.

• China’s energy regulator said it will limit “low-end” solar panel manufacturing after industry leaders called for more government intervention earlier this month. The move is an acknowledgement by Beijing that solar panel overcapacity is a problem, one that has pushed Chinese solar firms into a price war and shriveled returns.
• The competition in China’s solar power industry is “indeed very fierce,” an official at the National Energy Administration (NEA) said at a press conference Thursday.
• A price war on solar panels in China has meant that big firms have rapidly lost profit while small firms risk bankruptcy.
• Historically, the industry has been propped up by city governments, which build solar panel factories to lease or sell to private firms. But while some local authorities have expressed willingness to continue to keep solar firms afloat, “that support may dry up as the provinces are themselves swimming in debt, largely stemming from the country’s property crisis, and solar has to compete for their support with other green tech sectors, like electric vehicles, that are also struggling with overcapacity.
• Chinese officials want homeowners to install solar panels to combat overcapacity, but China’s grid is still not able to accommodate fluctuating solar energy levels.
• One solution may be virtual power plants: smaller-scale grids that rely on local renewable energy infrastructure and incentivize homeowners to use that energy during peak times with cash payments. But beyond building a new grid meant to handle renewable energy, China also needs “improved coordination” from Beijing to enable solar-heavy provinces to trade energy with solar-weak provinces.
• China’s energy regulator is also pushing for more spot trading — where prices will fluctuate with supply and demand — rather than fixed rates, encouraging customers to use energy during low-demand periods.

• Time removed its paywall in June 2023, resulting in a rise in advertising revenue but a loss of digital subscribers, with traffic remaining relatively flat.
• The decision was influenced by broader industry trends and the publisher's focus on working with advertisers and leveraging its brand equity in other ventures.
• Time aims to achieve profitability by expanding its direct advertising and sponsorship business, growing its global events slate, and exploring new ventures like connected television.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/258478

> - At the Public Spaces conference in the Netherlands on June 6th, Alexis Kauffmann from the French Ministry of Education and co-founder of the non-profit software platform FraMaSoft, discussed France’s move towards a comprehensive open source-based education strategy, 2023-2027. The aim is to achieve digital sovereignty and reduce dependence on big tech companies like Microsoft and Google, which are widely used in education systems in other countries. > - “One of the key actions is to offer authoring tools to our teacher and tools based on open source software. No Google Classrooms. Not Microsoft Teams. We have chosen Moodle Elea as a learning management system,” explained Alexis Kauffmann who also pointed to other tools to learn to code and mathematics like Jupyter. > - France uses an app platform with open-source tools like Nextcloud, Big Blue Botton, and Collaboration. They even have their own ‘github’ (owned by Microsoft) called La Forge, where teachers share code. > - “To support this, we have public funds for digital commons, we organise workshops and finance the software, and therefore we can do without Microsoft and Google,” Alexis Kauffmann explained. > > “I am not saying it is easy. The biggest obstacle is political courage to resist the lobbyists both at a national and European level,” he said and pointed to other risks like the quality of big tech’s products, being isolated in Europa, and artificial intelligence. > > He hopes other European countries will follow suit and quoted The European Council Recommendation on education:

An ID verification company that works on behalf of TikTok, X and Uber, among others, has left a set of administrative credentials exposed for more than a year, as reported by 404 Media.

The Israel-based AU10TIX verifies the identity of users by using pictures of their faces and drivers’ licenses, potentially opening up both to hackers.

I wasn't aware just how good the news is on the green energy front until reading this. We still have a tough road in the short/medium term, but we are more or less irreversibly headed in the right direction.

Basically nvidia shadowplay for linux

>LLMs certainly hold potential, but as we’ve seen time and time again in tech over the last fifteen years, the hype and greed of unethical pitchmen has gotten way out ahead of the actual locomotive. A lot of people in “tech” are interested in money, not tech. And they’re increasingly making decisions based on how to drum up investment bucks, get press attention and bump stock, not on actually improving anything.

>The result has been a ridiculous parade of rushed “AI” implementations that are focused more on cutting corners, undermining labor, or drumming up sexy headlines than improving lives. The resulting hype cycle isn’t just building unrealistic expectations and tarnishing brands, it’s often distracting many tech companies from foundational reality and more practical, meaningful ideas.

Very interesting news. I haven't tried it out personally; But if it works, I imagine that'd be huge.

Context: Gemma is a group of free-to-use AI models with a focus on being small. According to benchmarks this outperforms Llama 3.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/181995

> - Rivian and Volkswagen Group intend to enter a joint venture to create next generation software-defined vehicle (SDV) platforms to be used in both companies’ future electric vehicles. > - Volkswagen Group to invest an initial $1 billion in Rivian, with up to $4 billion in planned additional investment for a total expected deal size of $5 billion. > - Joint venture is expected to build on Rivian’s industry-leading software and electrical architecture to create best-in-class software-defined vehicle technology platform. > - The tie-up comes as competition intensifies between EV makers and Western countries move to impose tariffs on Chinese imports.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/259710

> - The University Hospital Centre Zagreb (KBC Zagreb) is under cyberattack that started on Wednesday (June 26) night. All services are working, but the processing of patients is slower than usual, Milivoj Novak, Assistant Director at the hospital, has said. > > - The attacks have been claimed by the pro-Russian NoName057(16) hacker group and have resulted in a temporary unavailability of the institutions’ websites and online portals. The sites are back online now. > > - It is currently unknown whether the cyberattack against the hospital involved the deployment of ransomware, and whether it’s connected to yesterday’s DDoS attacks on the websites of several Croatian government and financial institutions: the Ministry of Finance, the Tax Administration, the Croatian National Bank (HNB), the Economic Bank of Zagreb (PBZ), and the Zagreb Stock Exchange (ZSE).

On Wednesday, June 26, 2024, TeamViewer, a leading provider of remote access software, announced that attackers had compromised its internal corporate IT environment.

The company’s security team detected an “irregularity” in their internal systems, prompting an immediate response.

TeamViewer activated its incident response procedures and brought in external cybersecurity experts to investigate and implement remediation measures.

In a statement, TeamViewer emphasized that its corporate IT environment is “completely independent” from its product environment.

The company stated there is no evidence that the breach affected customer data or the TeamViewer product itself. However, investigations are still ongoing.

GitCode, a git-hosting website operated Chongqing Open-Source Co-Creation Technology Co Ltd and with technical support from CSDN and Huawei Cloud.

It is being reported that many users' repository are being cloned and re-hosted on GitCode without explicit authorization.

There is also a thread on Ycombinator (archived link)

• When the US House of Representatives passed the legislation that would force ByteDance to sell TikTok, a popular video app, to an American company or face being banned in the US, citing national security concerns, the Chinese government criticized the move as “an act of bullying.” Yet, ironically, TikTok is also unavailable in China, and it is not an isolated case. For example, Alibaba’s popular messaging platform, Ding Talk, is also unavailable in China, and its local version is called Ding Ding.
• A recent research report on Apple censorship in China, “Isolation by Design,” conducted by the App Censorship project under GreatFire, a censorship monitor group based in China, indicates that more than 60 percent of the world’s top 100 apps in China Apple App stores are either unavailable or inaccessible in China. These apps include Google Maps, YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook, Messenger and Twitter.
• While China has warned the West against economic decoupling, the country’s censorship system is designed for the purpose of isolation, as highlighted by the GreatFire research team.

Aside from the game sector, the App Censorship research team has identified eight sensitive categories from the list of apps banned by Apple in China:

1. Virtual private network – VPN: 240 unavailable apps including Lantern VPN, ProtonVPN, ExpressVPN, Nord VPN.

2. Privacy & Digital Security: 29 unavailable apps including Signal, ProtonMail, DuckDuckGo.

3. LGBTQ+ & Dating: 67 unavailable apps, including Hinge, Adam4Adam, weBelong, and Grindr.

4. News, Media & Information: 170 unavailable apps, including NYTimes, BBC News, and Reuters.

5. Social Media & Communication: 96 unavailable apps, including Skype, LinkedIn, Viber, Damus, and Line.

6. Tibet & Buddhism: 41 unavailable apps, including Himalaya Lib, MonlamGrandTibetanDictionary.

7. Uyghur: 72 unavailable apps, including RFA Uyghur, Hayatnuri, Awazliq Kitap, and UYGHUR MAN.

8. Religion: 144 unavailable apps, including the Bible App by Olive Tree, Quran Majeed, TORAH, JW Library.

NASA has selected SpaceX to develop a vehicle that will bring the International Space Station to a fiery end when the time comes.

The space agency first asked U.S. aerospace companies for proposals in March 2023 and then again in September of that year. The request was for a "space tug" vehicle that could help deorbit the U.S. sections of the International Space Station (ISS) safely.

On Wednesday (June 26), the agency issued a statement announcing that SpaceX has been selected to develop and deliver the "U.S. Deorbit Vehicle" as it's known. The contract is worth up to $843 million; that total does not include any launch costs, however, and is for the vehicle development only. The vehicle will be responsible for disposing of the space station "in a controlled manner after the end of its operational life in 2030," the statement adds.