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Universities adding the word "Basic"to the course just to deceive you cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/shit/p/1425063/universities-adding-the-word-basic-to-the-course-just-to-deceive-you

Flock Lawsuit Calls Out Alleged Law Enforcement Misuse of Nationwide License Plate-Reading Camera Network cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1412361/flock-lawsuit-calls-out-alleged-law-enforcement-misuse-of-nationwide-license-plate-readi

Football teammates after scoring a goal cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/shit/p/1399304/football-teammates-after-scoring-a-goal

Companies Make It Hard to Access Your Personal Data Under State Privacy Laws, CR Finds: One-quarter of companies and a third of data brokers failed to fulfill our volunteers' requests cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1412342/companies-make-it-hard-to-access-your-personal-data-under-state-privacy-laws-cr-finds-on Nearly every time you buy something online or sign up for a loyalty program, you leave behind personal information that can be collected, shared, and sold among companies including advertisers, retailers, and data brokers. This kind of information is sometimes used to charge consumers more for a range of products and services, from groceries to insurance to mortgages, and to target them for financial fraud and identity theft. A growing number of state privacy laws were designed to give consumers some control over that information, including the right to see what companies know about them. But a yearlong Consumer Reports investigation found that exercising those rights can often be extremely difficult—and that many companies and data brokers appear to be falling short of their legal obligations. Over the past year, CR worked with 84 citizen volunteers to request their personal data from 169 companies they regularly interact with and 22 data brokers. The results were concerning: Roughly 25 percent of requests to companies failed to receive a response. Among data brokers, the failure rate was 34 percent, even though some of those brokers claim to maintain data on the vast majority of U.S. households.

Year Progress: ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓░░░░ 70% cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/shit/p/1401244/year-progress-70

XCancel service is suspended until further notice cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1401393/xcancel-service-is-suspended-until-further-notice Hacker News. Source: Xcancel.

Warren, Wyden, AOC and others Introduce Bill to Ban the Corporate Practice of Medicine: The Stop Corporate Takeovers of Physicians Act would ban corporations and private equity from owning physicians cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/politics/p/1405485/warren-wyden-aoc-and-others-introduce-bill-to-ban-the-corporate-practice-of-medicine-the

How I Vibed a Proof of Conway’s Conjecture cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1409722/how-i-vibed-a-proof-of-conways-conjecture

Young users ditch Google for AI, with unknown consequences cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1417255/young-users-ditch-google-for-ai-with-unknown-consequences

Dogs can detect word patterns in human speech, new research finds, demonstrating a language-processing ability once thought to be uniquely human. cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/scientificarticles/p/1430833/dogs-can-detect-word-patterns-in-human-speech-new-research-finds-demonstrating-a-languag

Americans’ views of data centers have turned more negative cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1424047/americans-views-of-data-centers-have-turned-more-negative

Ireland fines Google €403 million over location data processing cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1416530/ireland-fines-google-eur403-million-over-location-data-processing

[Podcast] Kids turned the comment section of an NPR podcast into a group chat // Blocked from other social media, middle schoolers have had to get creative. cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1428372/kids-turned-the-comment-section-of-an-npr-podcast-into-a-group-chat-blocked-from-other-s Transcript Ira Glass: Dave Blanchard runs the public radio show Wild Card. And one of the less exciting and, in fact, rather tedious parts of his job is that he has to keep an eye on the comments that people post about the show online. And one day last fall on Spotify, he saw all this activity about this episode they did with the writer Elizabeth Gilbert. And Dave thought, oh, her book was controversial. It must have struck a nerve, this episode. And then he looked at the comments. Dave Blanchard: And it was just, like, gibberish. There was a bunch of new comments, but I couldn’t make heads or tail of any of them. They’re just these clipped, weird, incoherent postings that I was just like– it screamed bots, just because anytime that I see just gibberish in a comment on the internet, I assume it’s a bot. But the fact that they were all from different accounts seemed very weird. And the fact that they also maybe seemed to be interacting in some way also seemed weird and not like typical bot behavior. Ira Glass: Can I ask you to read some of those comments? Dave Blanchard: So yeah, I’ve got some from a later batch. We’ve got some where it’s like, someone says, “Ah, OK, M-H.” And two people have hearted that. Someone says, “Gilgamesh quit and I’m crying.” “Last Friday I broke up with my GF.” “Your cats are so cute.” “You’re gorgeous in that dress. OML, pink heart.” Ira Glass: So OK, bots, he thought, some newfangled kind of bots that respond to each other somehow. He deleted the posts. Dave Blanchard: And I went back to the Spotify comments again. And there was a new comment that said, uh, so it deleted my com. And that felt not botty. That felt very strange that a bot would be able to recognize that the thread got deleted and post it, letting people know that it had been deleted. Ira Glass: And then there were other responses to that. Dave Blanchard: So someone says, username cotton/amity, parentheses, I’m back, bitches, commented, “Weird.” Aubrey commented, “That’s weirdss,” two S’s. Ira Glass: This is really not looking like any bot behavior he’d ever seen. So he goes to NPR’s Slack channels, post some screenshots, describes what these comments are. And one of the higher-ups, Matilde, suggests reporting it to Spotify, which Dave does. And then somebody younger at NPR reads the thread. They’re 10 years younger than Dave– Gen Z, not millennial, named Hannah Chinn. Hannah Chinn: And I click into the screenshots, and almost immediately I’m like, oh. My conclusion is really, really different than Dave’s and Matilde’s, because I’m like, these are kids. And I think that part of that is because I was a middle schooler on the internet, posting on forums and stuff. And so I look at their display names. Their display names are, like, Ella with five emojis. And they’re the special character emojis. They’re the ones that you have to go onto the internet and type your name into a special text generator, and then it comes out as a special character, and then you have to special paste it into your profile. Ira Glass: Their profile pictures are all cartoon characters Hannah’s never seen before. And then there’s the way that they’re commenting back and forth with each other, short little phrases. I’m sorry. That’s weird. Lots of hi’s, lots of extra exclamation points. Hannah recognized it. They grew up in a conservative home, was homeschooled, with limited access to social media. Hannah Chinn: And so I was a kid who used weird parts of the internet not as they were originally designed to talk to my friends. I talked back and forth with my friends on Google Docs. And we would type things and then delete them, and then type things and then make them invisible by making the text white on the white background. So I think this is familiar behavior to me. Ira Glass: So Hannah writes out a comment to post on Slack, shows it to their housemate before posting because they’re worried about coming off maybe too harsh with these much higher-ranking, older NPR bosses who Hannah had never met in person. Hannah Chinn: And I say, OK, maybe I’m wrong, but I think these are just kids hanging out and we shouldn’t report them as bots. My guess is that they’re just using Spotify comment threads as their group chat, maybe because other apps on their phones are blocked. Who knows? And they happen to have chosen a wild card episode to do it, LOL. These are middle schoolers. Ira Glass: Middle schoolers specifically, not high schoolers? Hannah Chinn: Yeah, these are people who are new to chatting with each other on the internet and in real life. They’re kids who are excited to talk to other people on the internet. The goal is just to connect with people. You have nothing to talk about. You don’t know each other very well. You’re just seeing each other and acknowledging each other’s presence in the chat. Ira Glass: Dave reads Hannah’s Slack message. And, well, he is not convinced. He posts– Dave Blanchard: That’s an interesting theory. Ira Glass: Yeah, that’s an interesting theory. There’s an exclamation point at the end of it, at least to give it that much credit. Dave Blanchard: Yes. Admittedly, I was still like, really? Again, this is Wild Card with Rachel Martin on NPR– not our target demo to have a bunch of middle schoolers in our comment section. It just felt so completely implausible that these people would have found this particular episode as their place to chat. Hannah Chinn: Dave is like, oh, that’s an interesting theory. And I, at this point– sorry, Dave. I don’t know you in real life. I’m a little bit annoyed. Because I’m like, I know that I said “maybe I’m wrong,” but I was so sure that I was right. Ira Glass: Hannah does more digging, which makes them even more convinced than before. What the kids seemed to be doing was one kid would create a playlist on Spotify with a name like “Let’s chat here.” And inside that playlist would be one podcast episode. And you know how you can see other people’s playlists on Spotify if they make them public? Other kids would see that playlist. They’d see the episode. And then they would go to the podcast episode and start posting in the comments. Hannah got back on Slack and pointed out that the kids were using a playlist that was named New Chat. The kids had also posted a Google Form with some kind of quiz on it and said, “Fill this out. Only cool people can fill this out.” Hannah Chinn: Bots don’t really spam Google Forms in my experience, whereas Gen Alpha might use them in the same way that my generation would use uQuiz or the BuzzFeed Make Your Own Personality Quiz feature. Ira Glass: And reading that was the turning point for Dave. Dave Blanchard: When they were like, this is something that I did, that’s what unlocked it. I think it was so implausible to me. And then when Hannah was like, no, I did this, I was like, oh, wow. I guess it makes sense. And then it was like, I could go back and look at it again. And it was like, I had the lens on to see it. And I was like, oh, my god, they are kids. In retrospect, it looks so obvious. Ira Glass: So how exactly did those commenters end up in the comment section of an NPR podcast? What exactly happened here? Well, we reached out to a bunch of the commenters. Only one of them agreed to talk to us. As suspected, she is not a bot. She’s a 14-year-old girl who talked to me from the car with her parents’ permission and her dad at the wheel. Her name is Ella. When I asked her to describe herself, she said this. Ella: I would say that I’m definitely a bit hard to get to know because I don’t know a lot about myself yet. But I think if you do get to know me, you’ll find out I’m a pretty cool person. Ira Glass: Ella says this all started with a video podcast that played TikTok videos. Ella thinks a kid started it. The video seemed to be chosen specifically for kids who weren’t allowed on TikTok, but were allowed on Spotify. That was Ella. She was allowed on Spotify, but on no social media. And she and the other kids would watch this girl’s podcast on Spotify and then chat in the comments of the podcast. Ella: And her podcast ended up getting banned. And we wanted to keep talking to each other, so people would make playlists. Ira Glass: She described exactly the system that Hannah figured out. Kids would name their playlist “chat here” or something like that, and then there’d be some podcast, and everybody would go to that podcast and talk in the comments. She says it was maybe 20 kids in the core group– lots of theater kids, she says, mostly girls, most of them with strict parents who didn’t let them on regular social media. Ira Glass: And can I ask, why did you guys pick NPR shows to be the ones where you went to in the comments? Ella: I think we just looked for podcasts that didn’t have many comments. Ira Glass: I see. So you picked NPR because it didn’t seem very popular. Ella: Yeah, so that we wouldn’t get caught up in other people’s comments. Ira Glass: I tell you, buddy, I do a public radio show, and that hurts a little to hear it. Ella: [CHUCKLES] Sorry. Ira Glass: That’s OK. Are your parents NPR listeners? Ella: Yeah, my mom is. She listens to podcasts all the time. Ira Glass: Was any of this that your parents were NPR listeners, and this felt like this is the perfect cover? Like, if they catch you doing this, you can be like, look, I’m just doing this for an NPR show. Ella: Yeah. Ira Glass: Is that true? Did you think about that? Ella: Yeah, a little bit. Ira Glass: It’s funny. There was this guy named Dave who works for NPR, and he’s in his 30s. And he saw the comments that you guys were doing. And they made no sense to him at all. He really had no idea what they were. And he thought you guys were all bots. Ella: Yeah. Some of them were really young, like 11 years old and stuff. So some of them definitely were a little bit not good at talking English that well. Or using slang. Ira Glass: I got to say, I thought that was a very generous answer. Dave thought they were bots. And she was like, yeah, well, some of us kind of talked like bots. Ella told me she’s sure someday she’ll be clueless like Dave is now, which, of course, isn’t much comfort if you’re Dave. Dave says that once he understood that it was kids writing all those comments, it didn’t feel great. Dave Blanchard: One, I felt bad for having reported them. I definitely felt guilty. And two, old. I just felt very old, very dumb, very out of touch. I literally needed Hannah to be my generational translator. It was such a clarifying realization of my age and obsolescence.

Popular Twitch ad blocker caught sending live account credentials to Russian proxies cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1400813/popular-twitch-ad-blocker-caught-sending-live-account-credentials-to-russian-proxies Threat Research Team identified a cross-store browser extension, “Twitch Enhanced Viewer | JeetBot,” that forwards each user’s live Twitch OAuth session token to proxy servers operated by a Russian commercial bot service. The extension ships on both the Chrome Web Store (extension ID pnhhdhhcadcjfckjhpmjneldiegbojfb, 30,000 users) and Firefox Add-ons (twitchenhancedviewer@example.com, 552 users). Both listings are live at time of writing.

DrivingBench: Can frontier LLM models drive a real car? We give them control of a Toyota Corolla’s steering, accelerator, and brakes, then evaluate them on a fixed cone course. cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1434397/drivingbench-can-frontier-llm-models-drive-a-real-car-we-give-them-control-of-a-toyota-c

MongoDB CEO resigns to join Meta cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1430688/mongodb-ceo-resigns-to-join-meta Hacker News.

Trump Administration Prepares Warning Signs Outside Smithsonian Museum For Not Displaying His View of History cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/politics/p/1420711/trump-administration-prepares-warning-signs-outside-smithsonian-museum-for-not-displayin

Republicans are more likely than Democrats to support political violence cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/politics/p/1405916/republicans-are-more-likely-than-democrats-to-support-political-violence

US officials suppressed warnings over flawed covid vaccine safety algorithm cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/politics/p/1406498/us-officials-suppressed-warnings-over-flawed-covid-vaccine-safety-algorithm Investigation reignites questions about what steps were taken to safeguard public health from any unintended consequences of the vaccination rollout

Who gets the kidney? AI chatbots do not make the same moral choices humans do cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1406757/who-gets-the-kidney-ai-chatbots-do-not-make-the-same-moral-choices-humans-do

AI agents steal 600,000 credit cards records: Operator is running 3 open source AI systems autonomously breaking into hundreds of Online Retailers for $25 a target in an ongoing campaign cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1421777/ai-agents-steal-600000-credit-cards-records-operator-is-running-3-open-source-ai-systems

XCancel service is suspended until further notice cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1401393/xcancel-service-is-suspended-until-further-notice Hacker News. Source: Xcancel.

Yes, Multitasking Is Possible. Here’s How to Train Your Brain to Do 2 Things at Once cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/scientificarticles/p/1426152/the-neuroscience-of-multitasking-how-to-do-2-things-at-once

How Cops Are Treating Mass Surveillance As a Joke: Cops Search Flock Database Typing Reasons for Searches Such as "LMAO," "LOL," and Random Keyboard Mashing cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1402217/how-cops-are-treating-mass-surveillance-as-a-joke-cops-search-flock-database-typing-reas

AI chatbots give us a narrow slice of knowledge: Researchers warn of ‘knowledge collapse’ cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1429829/ai-chatbots-give-us-a-narrow-slice-of-knowledge-researchers-warn-of-knowledge-collapse

Trump orders US government to call AI ‘Super Intelligence’ cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1433333/trump-orders-us-government-to-call-ai-super-intelligence

No Linkedin. no alarm. no boss. no traffic. no meetings. no job. another week cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/shit/p/1401605/no-linkedin-no-alarm-no-boss-no-traffic-no-meetings-no-job-another-week

Signal Enables Phone Number-less Registration in Beta cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1406805/signal-enables-phone-number-less-registration-in-beta

McDonald's Is Using AI To Dynamically Price Its Burgers cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1433245/mcdonald-s-is-using-ai-to-dynamically-price-its-burgers

Millions Spent, Few Served: Talkspace pledged to expand young people’s access to therapy. Company data shows few were served while the tech platform raked in millions. cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1416549/millions-spent-few-served-talkspace-pledged-to-expand-young-peoples-access-to-therapy-co

AI chatbots linked to psychological harm, addiction and delusions, Study finds cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1432467/ai-chatbots-linked-to-psychological-harm-addiction-and-delusions-study-finds Research.

Secret documents show German police don't need to break the encryption of chat apps, they have been systematically adding their own device to the messenger accounts of people under investigation. cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1397415/secret-documents-show-german-police-don-t-need-to-break-the-encryption-of-chat-apps-they

TikTok's parental controls fail to protect children from suicide, self harm and eating disorder content cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1402513/tiktok-s-parental-controls-fail-to-protect-children-from-suicide-self-harm-and-eating-di UK and EU law both require platforms such as TikTok to keep children safe online by assessing and mitigating the risk that they encounter harmful content, such as suicide, self harm and eating disorder content. We have investigated how well TikTok is living up to these requirements and our findings raise serious concerns about their compliance with these laws. We created 15 TikTok accounts in the UK and the EU, all registered as 13 year olds. On all accounts, we enabled what TikTok calls ‘Restricted Mode’. TikTok markets this to parents as a tool that can ‘Restrict your teen’s exposure to content that may not be appropriate or comfortable for them.’ With it turned on, they say they aim ‘to only show content that’s comfortable for all audiences.’ Some of the accounts investigated eating disorder content. Initially, these accounts searched for terms such ‘#skinny’ and ‘#thin’. Afterwards, they more directly searched for eating disorder content. This was on purpose: first we searched for phrases you can imagine lots of teens might use that do not directly reference harmful material, and only after this did we search for phrases directly related to eating disorders. Other accounts investigated self harm content. Initially, they searched for terms such as ‘#sad’ and ‘#depressed’ and after this searched for terms directly associated with self harm. In the UK, the searches were carried out in English. In the EU, the searches were carried out in English, French, German and Spanish. A list of all the search terms used is provided in the Methodology section. All of the accounts watched only a few minutes of content from each search term.

Oh no cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/shit/p/1423875/oh-no

𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗵: Water. 𝗚𝗲𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗻: Wasser. 𝗦𝗽𝗮𝗻𝗶𝘀𝗵: Agua. 𝗜𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗮𝗻: Acqua. 𝗙𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗵: cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/shit/p/1409120/english-water-german-wasser-spanish-agua-italian-acqua-french

Attackers have compromised iTorrents, a widely used public repository of torrent files, and used it to spread malware disguised as movies. cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1409060/attackers-have-compromised-itorrents-a-widely-used-public-repository-of-torrent-files-an

Night owls may struggle to continue working until official retirement age: Evening chronotype linked to 70% heightened risk of needing a disability pension cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/scientificarticles/p/1434081/night-owls-may-struggle-to-continue-working-until-official-retirement-age-evening-chrono

Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1399987/fable-5-1-solves-the-cyphral-distich-a-370-year-old-cipher

AI might be making women sound bad at work cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1415456/ai-might-be-making-women-sound-bad-at-work

Oral menopausal hormone therapy (commonly known as hormone replacement therapy or HRT) linked to higher blood clot risk in legs or lungs regardless of dose or duration cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/scientificarticles/p/1422114/oral-menopausal-hormone-therapy-commonly-known-as-hormone-replacement-therapy-or-hrt-lin Study. Conversely, stroke and heart attack risks were limited to prolonged use of high-dose oral hormone therapy, while transdermal hormone therapy (delivered via the skin as patches, gels, or sprays) showed no general increased blood clot risk.

Stanford University Uses AI to Replace White Male With Black Student, Beautifies Asian Peer cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1417762/stanford-university-uses-ai-to-replace-white-male-with-black-student-beautifies-asian-pe Stanford Residential & Dining Enterprises recently used AI to change the races of the students it included in its advertisements. AI was also used to noticeably slim down and alter students’ faces. On his journey to campus, Stanford student Billy Ramirez ’27 was sent an image he recalled a Stanford photographer taking. Upon closer examination, he noticed that he had been removed from the photo and replaced by a AI-generated black woman. Source: The Stanford Review.

Your car is a smartphone on wheels: A team of researchers tested 21 vehicles and found that all of them transmitted data to a third-party domain. And over half were pinging advertising companies. cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1432229/your-car-is-a-smartphone-on-wheels-a-team-of-researchers-tested-21-vehicles-and-found-th Data sent by vehicles and companion apps included locations, VINs, and other identifiers. Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft were among the top receivers of driver data.

Who’s buying your personal data: Disney, GM, your insurer and bank. Here’s what they get cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1406865/whos-buying-your-personal-data-disney-gm-your-insurer-and-bank-heres-what-they-get Easy to understand short explainer.

Study: Rich neighborhoods more likely to burn cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/onion/p/1405899/study-rich-neighborhoods-more-likely-to-burn Study.

AI Industry Needs to Earn $6 Trillion by 2031 to Justify Data Centres cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1432197/ai-industry-needs-to-earn-6-trillion-by-2031-to-justify-data-centres

People run marathons for fun. They fight each other for fun. They risk their life to have fun by climbing mountains. But nobody works a steady job for fun. That's because its real hard work. cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/shit/p/1401606/people-run-marathons-for-fun-they-fight-each-other-for-fun-they-risk-their-life-to-have

Printable brain-inspired chips that compute at lightning speed and vanish in minutes cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1402442/printable-brain-inspired-chips-that-compute-at-lightning-speed-and-vanish-in-minutes

I Deliberately Bet Like a Problem Gambler. DraftKings Made Me a VIP. cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1426848/i-deliberately-bet-like-a-problem-gambler-draftkings-made-me-a-vip Recklessness Rewarded: I blew $1,800 in one night by chasing my losses with bigger bets, a classic sign of problem gambling. The next day, DraftKings invited me to audition for its VIP program. Casino Craze: Sportsbooks want to expand into online casinos, where you can lose a lot fast. I played 500 rounds of blackjack in a weekend — about half of my total bets over 10 weeks. Profit Over Protection: The responsible gaming prompts telling me to pump the brakes were no match for the product design and promotions pushing me to do more gambling.

EVs are now 9 times cheaper than petrol or diesel to drive in the UK cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1429718/evs-are-now-9-times-cheaper-than-petrol-or-diesel-to-drive-in-the-uk

Researchers show adult retinas can repair themselves cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/scientificarticles/p/1432478/researchers-show-adult-retinas-can-repair-themselves