Technology

Mark Zuckberg’s Meta is to go ahead with controversial plans to use millions of UK Facebook and Instagram posts to train its artificial intelligence (AI) technology, in a practice that is effectively outlawed under EU privacy laws.

Meta said it had “engaged positively” with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) over the plan, after it paused similar proposals in June in the UK and EU. The pause came after the ICO warned tech firms to respect the privacy of users when building generative AI.

On Friday, the ICO made it clear it has not provided regulatory approval for the plan, but will instead monitor the experiment after Meta agreed changes to its approach. These include making it easier for users to opt out of allowing their posts to be processed for AI.

DNA testing giant 23andMe has agreed to pay $30 million to settle a lawsuit over a data breach that exposed the personal information of 6.4 million customers in 2023.

The proposed class action settlement, filed Thursday in a San Francisco federal court and awaiting judicial approval, includes cash payments for affected customers, which will be distributed within ten days of final approval.

"23andMe believes the settlement is fair, adequate, and reasonable," the company said in a memorandum filed Friday.

A report from Morgan Stanley suggests the datacenter industry is on track to emit 2.5 billion tons by 2030, which is three times higher than the predictions if generative AI had not come into play.

The extra demand from GenAI will reportedly lead to a rise in emissions from 200 million tons this year to 600 million tons by 2030, thanks largely to the construction of more data centers to keep up with the demand for cloud services.

Let's build another web browser based on Servo!

"Venture capital finance has dried up amid political and economic pressures, prompting a dramatic fall in new company formation"

Posted in technology as most of the funded companies are into technology. The most shocking piece is arguably the number of funded company pear year with a clear peak in 2018 which is 50x (!) more than last year, 2023.

By Albert Burneko

9:00 AM EDT on September 11, 2024

Mars does not have a magnetosphere. Any discussion of humans ever settling the red planet can stop right there, but of course it never does. Do you have a low-cost plan for, uh, creating a gigantic active dynamo at Mars's dead core? No? Well. It's fine. I'm sure you have some other workable, sustainable plan for shielding live Mars inhabitants from deadly solar and cosmic radiation, forever. No? Huh. Well then let's discuss something else equally realistic, like your plan to build a condo complex in Middle Earth.

...

https://archive.is/AQMn6

Google announced on Wednesday that its AI note-taking and research app, NotebookLM, is adding an “Audio Overview” feature. Audio Overview will give users another way to digest and comprehend the information in the documents they have uploaded to the app, such as course readings or legal briefs.

Since its launch, NotebookLM has used text to summarize and explain source materials, but now, it can do so out loud using audio. The feature is geared toward people who grasp materials better by listening to explanations as opposed to reading them.

cross-posted from: https://feditown.com/post/650064

Lol. Sales stats for the iPhone 16 and Pro aren't out yet, or at least I couldn't find any. Will update this post once the numbers are out.

We have come to the decision to cease operations of cohost and anti software software club due to lack of funding and burnout. As of today, none of us are being paid for our labor1; all of our money in the bank, and any money coming in from people who buy our merch or don’t cancel cohost plus, is going towards servers and operations — paying the bills so we can turn the lights off with as little disruption as possible.

cohost will become read-only on Tuesday, October 1st. At this time, we will make best-effort attempts to keep the servers online through the end of 2024.

I'm looking for a way to dump raw data from an entire phone or at least the sda block to a PC, using a method other than adb pull.

When I run adb pull /dev/block/sda sdaDump.img, it creates a dump file. To find what I need, I have to search through this raw data using a Hex Editor. If the dump comes from a fully functioning phone, I can usually find what I’m looking for because all the data is still intact.

However, I accidentally wiped the metadata partition on my phone, so the decryption keys/files are gone. Now, because of that, some folders appear empty when checked with TWRP's File Manager, even though the actual files are still there.

If I create a dump now, the raw data in the file won't be the same as when the metadata was present, and those folders weren't showing as empty.

Running adb pull /dev/block/sda sdaDump.img now results in a dump where the Hex Editor shows zeroes (no data) where these files should be.

Is there any alternative method to create a raw data dump of the sda block or entire phone storage, that will capture that data as it is (not empty folders, but the data in them), even if it's encrypted?

I don't want to create the raw data dump onto the phone storage and then transfer it to a PC, but something that works like adb pull, in the sense that it pulls the data from the phone directly onto a PC.

Thanks a lot in advance to everyone!