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Submission + - TikTok Users Flocks To Chinese Social App Xiaohongshu (apnews.com)

Submitted by hackingbear
hackingbear writes: As the threat of a TikTok ban looms, U.S. TikTok users are flocking to the Chinese social media app Xiaohongshu – making it the top downloaded app in the U.S. Xiaohongshu, which in English means “Little Red Book” is a Chinese social media app that combines e-commerce, short video and posting functions, enticing mostly Chinese young women from mainland China and regions with with a Chinese diaspora such as Malaysia and Taiwan who use it as a de-facto search engine for product, travel and restaurant recommendations, as well as makeup and skincare tutorials. After the justices seemed inclined to let the law stand, masses of TikTok users began creating accounts on Xiaohongshu, including hashtags such as #tiktokrefugee or #tiktok to their posts. “I like your makeup,” a Xiaohongshu user from Beijing comments one of the posts by Alexis Garman, a 21-year-old TikTok user in Oklahoma with nearly 20,000 followers, and Garman thanks them in a reply. A user from the southwestern province of Sichuan commented “I am your Chinese spy please surrender your personal information or the photographs of your cat (or dog).” “TikTok possibly getting banned doesn’t just take away an app, it takes away jobs, friends and community,” Garman said. “Personally, the friends and bond I have with my followers will now be gone.” Xiaohongshu doesn't even have an English user interface. In only two days, more than 700,000 new users joined Xiaohongshu, a person close to the company told Reuters. Xiaohongshu, which was found in 2013 and is backed by investors such as Alibaba, Tencent and Sequoia, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. U.S. downloads of RedNote were up more than 200% year-over-year this week, and 194% from the week prior, according to estimates from app data research firm Sensor Tower. The second most-popular free app on Apple's App Store list on Tuesday, Lemon8, another social media app owned by ByteDance, experienced a similar surge last month, with downloads jumping by 190% in December to about 3.4 million.

Submission + - Slashdot Dies A Slow Death with Crippling Advertisements (slashdot.org) 1

Submitted by zamboni1138
zamboni1138 writes: Anybody familiar with the technology news web forum known as Slashdot have known about the recent decline in quality of stories and comments. Recently Slashdot decided to "upgrade" their advertisement experience resulting in an almost broken user experience for users that implement any kind of ad-blocking technology. Over the last week visitors to the site using ad blockers have noticed a unique experience with javascript alerts explaining "This page could not be loaded properly due to incorrect / bad filtering rule(s) of adblockers in use. Please disable all adblockers to continue using the website. (click OK if you'd like to learn more)". These notices are almost non-stop while trying to load/read a page making the site unusable.

Submission + - Slashdot goes mental with advertising 6

Submitted by sizzlinkitty
sizzlinkitty writes: Has anyone else noticed Slashdot failing to load because of your ad blocker? I know I sure have and it's breaking my user experience like no other.

Please post the blocking patterns you're using to make Slashdot usable again.

Submission + - Slashdot is dead and has been replaced by an ad-saturated shithole (slashdot.org) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: ..and nothing of value was lost.
Between all the Trump-supporting shitheads that permeate this place, and now ads everywhere you look that can't be blocked without blocking the entire site, I declare Slashdot to be dead.
RIP Slashdot.

Submission + - JPMorgan Chase Disables Employee Comments After Return-to-Office Backlash (msn.com)

Submitted by AsylumWraith
AsylumWraith writes: From the article:

"JPMorgan Chase shut down comments on an internal webpage announcing the bank’s return-to-office policy after dozens of them criticized the move and at least one suggested that affected employees should unionize, according to people familiar with the matter."

"After the bank announced the policy change, it posted it to an internal company website where it often shares news. Employees are able to post comments that include their first and last names.

Many employees shared concerns such as increased commuting costs, child-care challenges and the impact on work-life balance. One person suggested that they should consider unionizing to fight for a hybrid-work schedule, the people familiar with the matter said."

Submission + - CES 'Worst in Show' Mocked in iFixit Ceremony (thenewstack.io)

Submitted by destinyland
destinyland writes: Thursday a "panel of dystopia experts" was livestreamed to iFixit’s feed of over 1 million subscribers on YouTube, with the video’s description warning about manufacturers “hoping to convince us that they have invented the future. But will their vision make our lives better, or lead humanity down a dark and twisted path?” The resulting video is a fun and rollicking romp that tries to forestall a future clogged with power-hungry AI and data-collecting sensors.

“We’re seeing more and more of these things that have basically surveillance technology built into them,” iFixit‘s Chamberlain told The Associated Press... Proving this point was EFF executive director Cindy Cohn, who gave a truly impassioned takedown for "smart" infant products that "end up traumatizing new parents with false reports that their baby has stopped breathing." But worst for privacy was the $1,200 "Revol" baby bassinet — equipped with a camera, a microphone, and a radar sensor. The video also mocks Samsung's "AI Home" initiative which let you answer phone calls with your washing machine, oven, or refrigerator. (And LG's overpowered "smart" refrigerator won the "Overall Worst in Show" award.)

One of the scariest presentations came from Paul Roberts, founder of SecuRepairs, a group advocating both cybersecurity and the right to repair. Roberts notes that about 65% of the routers sold in the U.S. are from a Chinese company named TP-Link — both wifi routers and the wifi/ethernet routers sold for homes and small offices.Roberts reminded viewers that in October, Microsoft reported “thousands” of compromised routers — most of them manufactured by TP-Link — were found working together in a malicious network trying to crack passwords and penetrate “think tanks, government organizations, non-governmental organizations, law firms, defense industrial base, and others” in North America and in Europe. The U.S. Justice Department soon launched an investigation (as did the U.S. Commerce Department) into TP-Link’s ties to China’s government and military, according to a SecuRepairs blog post. The reason? “As a China-based company, TP-Link is required by law to disclose flaws it discovers in its software to China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology before making them public.” Inevitably, this creates a window “to exploit the publicly undisclosed flaw That fact, and the coincidence of TP-Link devices playing a role in state-sponsored hacking campaigns, raises the prospects of the U.S. government declaring a ban on the sale of TP-Link technology at some point in the next year.”

TP-Link won the award for the worst in security.

Submission + - Twitter/X and Musk's 'free speech' hypocrisy (www.cbc.ca)

Submitted by Baron_Yam
Baron_Yam writes: Musk's X has suspended a Canadian account for posting an image countering the current political narrative that Canadians want their country to become an American state, on the pretext that it is hate speech.

Submission + - Open Source Developer Responds to AI "Holiday Roast" of Source Code (soatok.blog)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Early morning on Christmas, Soatok received an email informing him that an AI called "Greta" decided to "roast" one of his open source projects. It turns out, he wasn't the only open source dev to receive one of these unsolicited "roasts" from Muhu AI. So he responded by writing this.

Submission + - Best way to transfer legacy PHP code to a modern framework?

Submitted by rzack
rzack writes: Since 1999, I've written a huge amount of PHP code, for dozens of applications and websites. Most of it has been continually updated, and remains active and in-production, in one form or another. Here's the thing, it's all hand-written using vi, even to this day. Is there any benefit to migrating this codebase to a more modern PHP framework, like Laravel? And is there an easy and minimally intrusive way this can be done en-masse, across dozens of applications and websites? Or at this point should I just stick with vi?

Submission + - Tesla issues recall on over 200,000 vehicles for self-driving computer failure (electrek.co)

Submitted by theweatherelectric
theweatherelectric writes: Fred Lambert of Electrek writes, "Tesla has officially issued a recall on over 200,000 vehicles in the US over the self-driving computer inside the vehicle short-circuiting and failing to work. This is an issue that Electrek has been reporting on for a month. In December, Electrek released an exclusive report about Tesla having a major issue with a new version of its onboard “Full Self-Driving computer,” AI4.1, failing due to a short circuit, and Tesla must replace the computers. We found examples of the issue arising as far back as July. The problem can start quickly, within a few miles on a brand-new car or after a few hundred to a few thousand miles. When the computer fails, many vehicle features stop working, like active safety features, auto wipers, auto high beams, cameras, and even GPS, navigation, and range estimations."

Submission + - Spacecraft buzzes Mercury's north pole and beams back stunning photos (apnews.com)

Submitted by SysEngineer
SysEngineer writes: CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A spacecraft has beamed back some of the best close-up photos yet of Mercury’s north pole.

The European and Japanese robotic explorer swooped as close as 183 miles (295 kilometers) above Mercury’s night side before passing directly over the planet’s north pole. The European Space Agency released the stunning snapshots Thursday, showing the permanently shadowed craters at the top of of our solar system’s smallest, innermost planet.

Cameras also captured views of neighboring volcanic plains and Mercury’s largest impact crater, which spans more than 930 miles (1,500 kilometers).

Submission + - Google's Fingerprinting Returns In February Weeks And It Will Track Your Devices (forbes.com)

Submitted by sinij
sinij writes:

Google gives an example of the need for such fingerprinting in its announcement -smart TVs and streaming services. "Internet users are embracing Connected TV (CTV) experiences, making it one of the fastest growing advertising channels. Businesses who advertise on CTV need the ability to connect with relevant audiences and understand the effectiveness of their campaigns. As people and households increasingly shift to streaming platforms, the ecosystem should invest in and develop solutions that are effective and measurable in an incredibly fragmented environment." I have approached Google for any comments on the regulatory warnings following its announced change. Put simply — cross-platform, cross-device ad tracking. A move which does take the focus away from Chrome as being the epicenter of Google’s tracking empire—the timing of which is interesting.

Avoiding Google tracking will be a lot harder now that they are going to fingerprint all devices, including IoT, in your household.

Submission + - Google Faces Trial For Collecting Data On Users Who Opted Out (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A federal judge this week rejected Google's motion to throw out a class-action lawsuit alleging that it invaded the privacy of users who opted out of functionality that records a users' web and app activities. A jury trial is scheduled for August 2025 in US District Court in San Francisco. The lawsuit concerns Google's Web & App Activity (WAA) settings, with the lead plaintiff representing two subclasses of people with Android and non-Android phones who opted out of tracking. "The WAA button is a Google account setting that purports to give users privacy control of Google's data logging of the user's web app and activity, such as a user's searches and activity from other Google services, information associated with the user's activity, and information about the user's location and device," wrote (PDF) US District Judge Richard Seeborg, the chief judge in the Northern District Of California.

Google says that Web & App Activity "saves your activity on Google sites and apps, including associated info like location, to give you faster searches, better recommendations, and more personalized experiences in Maps, Search, and other Google services." Google also has a supplemental Web App and Activity setting that the judge's ruling refers to as "(s)WAA." "The (s)WAA button, which can only be switched on if WAA is also switched on, governs information regarding a user's '[Google] Chrome history and activity from sites, apps, and devices that use Google services.' Disabling WAA also disables the (s)WAA button," Seeborg wrote. But data is still sent to third-party app developers through the Google Analytics for Firebase (GA4F), "a free analytical tool that takes user data from the Firebase kit and provides app developers with insight on app usage and user engagement," the ruling said. GA4F "is integrated in 60 percent of the top apps" and "works by automatically sending to Google a user's ad interactions and certain identifiers regardless of a user's (s)WAA settings, and Google will, in turn, provide analysis of that data back to the app developer."

Plaintiffs have brought claims of privacy invasion under California law. Plaintiffs "present evidence that their data has economic value," and "a reasonable juror could find that Plaintiffs suffered damage or loss because Google profited from the misappropriation of their data," Seeborg wrote. The lawsuit was filed in July 2020. The judge notes that summary judgment can be granted when "there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." Google hasn't met that standard, he ruled.

Submission + - Linux Foundation launches Supporters of Chromium-Based Browsers initiative with (betanews.com)

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: The Linux Foundation has announced the launch of "Supporters of Chromium-Based Browsers," an initiative aimed at funding and supporting open development within the Chromium ecosystem. The purpose of this effort is to provide resources and foster collaboration among developers, academia, and tech companies to drive the sustainability and innovation of Chromium projects.

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