TikTok has to face a lawsuit from the mother of 10-year-old Nylah Anderson, who “unintentionally hanged herself” after watching videos of the so-called blackout challenge on her algorithmically curated For You Page (FYP). The “challenge,” according to the suit, encouraged viewers to “choke themselves until passing out.”

TikTok’s algorithmic recommendations on the FYP constitute the platform’s own speech, according to the Third Circuit court of appeals. That means it’s something TikTok can be held accountable for in court. Tech platforms are typically protected by a legal shield known as Section 230, which prevents them from being sued over their users’ posts, and a lower court had initially dismissed the suit on those grounds.

Here's a great example of dystopian tech being rolled out without guardrails. Brought to you by Axos, which you may know as the company that rebranded after Taser became a liability as a name.

Archived version

The drone’s design, resembling a PET bottle in size and shape, makes it easy to carry. According to WB Electronics, its developer company, the so-called X-FRONTER can be equipped not only with explosive charges and camera heads but also with other technical innovations. It can function as a flare marker, an infrared marker, or even deploy a smoke screen.

Moreover, the X-FRONTER’s technology allows for swarm operations, enabling a group of these small drones to work together, sharing tasks. Several drones could serve as reconnaissance units, while others, equipped with explosive payloads, could act as mobile artillery, capable of striking an approaching enemy. All of this is controlled from a small panel.

The X-FRONTER can reach a maximum speed of 60 kilometers per hour and ascend to an altitude of 300 meters. It has a flight time of up to 40 minutes, offering substantial operational flexibility.

"Our research underscores the extent to which exploits first developed by the commercial surveillance industry are proliferated to dangerous threat actors."

"We assess with moderate confidence the campaigns [an iOS WebKit exploit and a Chrome exploit] are linked to the Russian government-backed actor APT29. In each iteration of the watering hole campaigns, the attackers used exploits that were identical or strikingly similar to exploits previously used by commercial surveillance vendors (CSVs) Intellexa and NSO Group."

"Watering hole attacks remain a threat where sophisticated exploits can be utilized to target those that visit sites regularly, including on mobile devices. Watering holes can still be an effective avenue for n-day exploits by mass targeting a population that might still run unpatched browsers."

"Although the trend in the mobile space is towards complex full exploit chains, the iOS campaign is a good reminder of the fact that a single vulnerability can inflict harm and be successful."

An investigation into TikTok Lite — a low-bandwidth alternative to the TikTok app predominantly accessible in the so-called Global Majority countries in South America, Africa, and Asia — has revealed significant safety concerns.

Tech firms eagerly target emerging markets in continents like South America, Asia and Africa, where regulatory hurdles are often less stringent compared to the EU or the U.S.

This is where tech platforms turn to “Lite” apps: are stripped-down versions of a service’s applications which are much smaller in size, use less airtime, use less power, have special features and offer lower quality content formats.

Chinese firm TikTok is no exception. In comparing TikTok Lite with the classic TikTok app, a joint study by AI Forensics and the Mozilla Foundation found several discrepancies between trust and safety features that could have potentially dangerous consequences in the context of elections and public health.

TikTok Lite users are deprived of essential safety measures such as content filtering, screen management tools, and warning labels for dangerous, graphic, or misleading content. These missing features leave users vulnerable to harmful material and addictive behaviors. While the flagship TikTok app includes robust safety protocols, these are conspicuously absent in the Lite version, despite being technically feasible to implement.

The findings are concerning, and reinforce patterns of double-standard, the study concludes.

As the study says:

The absence of a substantial number of safety features in TikTok Lite, an app with 1 billion users largely in Global Majority countries, is a cause for alarm. This trend mirrors a well-established pattern among companies in the context of global capitalism and exploitation, where substandard and unsafe products often find a dumping ground in economically disadvantaged regions. Consequently, TikTok Lite -Save Data users may be more susceptible to app addiction and exposed to potentially more graphic, dangerous, misleading, and otherwise harmful content.

In light of these findings, we recommend that Bytedance prioritize the development of a TikTok Lite application that places equal emphasis on user safety compared to its main TikTok app.

I’ve been using Express and had a great experience so far, but I may want to try a Proton subscription for cloud space and more emails. It also comes with a VPN service but I’m a little leary on trying something new. Any thoughts on Proton VPN?

You can edit or delete your comments and replies directly on YouTube. If you delete comments, it may take a few hours before they’re fully removed: https://myactivity.google.com/page?hl=en&page=youtube_comments

This is the history of you YouTube comments and you can directly jump to it from this central place.

We have learned that there is an audience that is happy to pay for fearless journalism and fun blogs that are written by real human journalists who prioritize the interests of their readers, not search algorithms and AI bots. And we have learned that a small team can hold companies that are worth trillions of dollars to account if the investigations are good enough.

Accounts depicting "horrific" content involving bestiality and animal cruelty are being left to thrive and amass followers on Instagram.

Despite Instagram's policies against animal cruelty and explicit content, animal activists say not enough action is being taken to ban the content.

holy shit

if this is true AMD gamers just got a huge free boost in gaming performance

Windows was very unoptimized for Ryzen

I did see this trailer or at least part of it somehow and thought they were joke quotes. The ChatGPT connection isn't really the issue here, it's fucking lorem ipsum in production (that's why it's used; this is what inevitably happens otherwise). They don't have an AI problem; they have a process problem if there's no editing or at least fact checking vendor collateral before it goes live.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission today announced a final rule that will combat fake reviews and testimonials by prohibiting their sale or purchase and allow the agency to seek civil penalties against knowing violators.

"Fake reviews not only waste people’s time and money, but also pollute the marketplace and divert business away from honest competitors,” said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan. “By strengthening the FTC’s toolkit to fight deceptive advertising, the final rule will protect Americans from getting cheated, put businesses that unlawfully game the system on notice, and promote markets that are fair, honest, and competitive.”

Archived version

Meta—the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp—has just hired Dustin Carmack, a former adviser to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s doomed presidential campaign and an ex–Project 2025 employee.

Harvard Cyberlaw Clinic instructor and attorney Alejandra Caraballo revealed the news on X (formerly Twitter) Monday afternoon, providing screenshots from Carmack’s LinkedIn profile, which he has since deactivated.

The move comes amid a period in which Meta’s treatment of users—specifically the type of user who runs afoul of much of what Project 2025 wants to do to the United States—has been called into question. In recent months, the LGBTQ+ rights group GLAAD has criticized Meta’s content moderation policies on its platforms, saying that they were effectively encouraging an “epidemic of anti-transgender hate” on their social media sites. The report showed a significant increase in anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ+ posts on Meta’s sites, noting that transgender people were routinely called “sexual predators,” “perverts,” and “groomers” in many of those posts.

Here is the relevant link to the Versa blog

Malicious hackers are exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in Versa Director, a software product used by many Internet and IT service providers.

Researchers believe the activity is linked to Volt Typhoon, a Chinese cyber espionage group focused on infiltrating critical U.S. networks and laying the groundwork for the ability to disrupt communications between the United States and Asia during any future armed conflict with China.

Archived link

The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) calls Israel’s strategy of promoting alleged misinformation “destructive.”

By buying ads for searches for “UNRWA” and “UNRWA USA,” the Israeli government now appeared to be aiming to draw potential donors to a webpage full of allegations about why the UNRWA couldn’t be trusted. The page claims the UN agency has not declared whether employing members of Hamas would violate its neutrality and that the agency doesn’t investigate its facilities for abuse by extremists. In fact, UNRWA does require independence from military interests, and an outside review found evidence of facility inspections, though it suggested the checkups happen more frequently.

After seeing the ads—paid for by the Israeli Government Advertising Agency, according to details shown when clicking on the menu button beside them—Mara Kronenfeld, the head of UNRWA USA, and her staff of seven quickly appealed to Google for help fighting what they viewed as a misinformation campaign.

What has happened since shows the delicate relationship Google has kept with its advertising client, Israel, and the limits of the company’s policing of alleged misinformation in ads. Several current and former Google employees tell WIRED the anti-UNRWA campaign is just one volley of ads that Israel has orchestrated in recent months that have drawn complaints both inside and outside of the company. The ads about UNRWA and another campaign targeting the Middle East have not been previously reported.

From May through July when users queried over 300 terms related to UNRWA, the Israeli ads came up 44 percent of the time that both they and UNRWA USA ads were eligible to appear, according to analytics from UNRWA USA’s Google Ads account. Meanwhile, UNRWA USA ads showed up in just 34 percent of eligible circumstances. Most Popular

[...]

What Kronenfeld says truly worries her is that Americans are being exposed to Israel’s propaganda while trying to understand UNRWA’s role in the ongoing crisis. Beside the search ads, Israel has aired video ads in the US through Google that say “UNRWA is inseparable from Hamas” and that it “keeps employing terrorists.” Public misunderstanding could further jeopardize support from the US government, which until the war had been the largest donor to UNRWA.

“There is an incredibly powerful campaign to dismantle UNRWA,” Kronenfeld says. “I want the public to know what’s happening and the insidious nature of it, especially at a time when civilian lives are under attack in Gaza.”

I canceled Amazon Prime last month given that I've lost all trust in getting a functioning version of whatever I've ordered. This is some next-level shit.

Archived link

Dozens of arms dealers based in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, controlled by the Houthis, are effectively using X as a shopfront, posting pictures of assault rifles for sale. Many are touting the guns under the Houthi logo that reads: “God is the greatest, death to America, death to Israel, a curse on the Jews and victory to Islam.”

Some of the gun dealers’ X accounts have verified blue ticks, giving them increased prominence on the network.

The Houthis have been designated a global terrorist group by the United States after they attacked shipping in the Red Sea in response to the war in Gaza. Washington has accused Iran of supplying the rebels with drones and missiles.

Archived link

Lawyers representing Elon Musk and X, previously known as Twitter, have quietly begun sending subpoenas to a host of public interest groups, Mother Jones has learned. Most of the targeted organizations have signed open letters to X’s advertisers expressing concerns about the platform’s direction under Musk’s leadership.

The groups include the Center for Countering Digital Hate, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the digital rights organization Access Now, and Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). The subpoenas represent a new chapter in the legal war Musk launched after advertisers fled X, and are part of a lawsuit Musk and X first filed about a year ago against Media Matters over a report it published documenting that ads appeared alongside extremist content. The subpoenas demand any correspondence the organizations have had with that progressive media watchdog group. Several targets told Mother Jones they’ve had no or limited interaction with Media Matters, and that the subpoenas feel, in the words of more than one person, like “a fishing expedition.”

Pro-Trump activists are earning cash from spreading conspiracy theories about Kamala Harris on Elon Musk‘s X platform, an i investigation has found.

Prominent Maga (Make America Great Again) activists have earned money from adverts that appear alongside posts spreading wild falsehoods including a claim that the Democratic presidential candidate “kills babies” as part of “a deal with Satan for power”.

This is the latest in a series of i investigations uncovering how the billionaire tech tycoon is profiting from revenue on advertising that appears alongside posts spreading hate and conspiracies on his social media platform.

- There is growing resentment across Southeast Asia against Chinese e-commerce firms.__

- Import tariffs can create tensions and hurt some local businesses.__

- Southeast Asian nations are also pulling out all the stops to welcome Chinese electric vehicle makers such as BYD and GWM, with subsidies and other incentives to set up manufacturing plants, due to growing trade deficits with China.__

Indonesia is Southeast Asia’s largest e-commerce market, accounting for nearly half the gross merchandise value of the eight top platforms, according to advisory firm Momentum Works. The value of e-commerce sales in Indonesia hit $77 billion last year, authorities say.

Chinese imports had enjoyed low, or zero, duties in Indonesia under regional trade agreements. But as sales of cheap clothes, shoes, and electronics surged online, the government stepped in to protect local businesses. President Joko Widodo has repeatedly raised concerns about low-priced Chinese-made goods, and urged consumers to shun imported products. The country has imposed the strictest curbs on cross-border e-commerce sales in the region. It set a de minimis limit — the threshold below which goods are not subject to import duties — at $100, then lowered that to $75, and then to $3. Authorities also banned shopping on social media platforms last year, forcing TikTok Shop to close. But the platform was back online after about two months, saying it had met the requirements.

Across Southeast Asia, other governments are also cracking down with higher import duties and outright bans on some goods. Malaysia has a 10% sales tax on imported goods priced below 500 ringgit ($106), while the Philippines has imposed a 1% withholding tax on online merchants. In Thailand, the entry of Chinese e-commerce firm Temu has sparked calls for higher tariffs on some imported goods. More taxes and curbs on e-commerce firms may be imminent across the region, Simon Torring, co-founder of research firm Cube Asia, says.

[...]

While Southeast Asian nations are trying to rein in Chinese e-commerce firms, they are also pulling out all the stops to welcome Chinese electric vehicle makers such as BYD and GWM, with subsidies and other incentives to set up manufacturing plants. Indonesia has a trade deficit with China, but authorities were forced to roll back some import restrictions earlier this year after complaints that they led to a slowdown in manufacturing.

“These big companies think they can enter small villages like ours, take our land, and destroy it.”

• Microsoft is building a data center in Mekaguda, a village in the southern Indian state of Telangana, which is expected to start operations by 2025. About 70% of the construction has been completed.
• Last month, the state government intervened after Microsoft cited problems with the local village council.
• A group of local residents has filed a petition against Microsoft, claiming encroachment and the dumping of industrial waste in a nearby body of water. The court hearing for the petition is pending.

Addition: Why are E-Waste Strategies in Need for Sustainable Data Centers?

E-waste in data centers encompasses a wide array of discarded IT equipment such as servers, power distribution units, and other electronic components that are no longer in use. Despite the rapid pace of technological upgrades, the alarming statistic from the UN forecasts that e-waste volumes could reach 74.7 metric tons globally by 2030.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/2189807

Held together without any solder ^^

Uses an old phone battery for power and is housed in the box that the heltec v3 hardware was shipped in. Unfortunately I had to bend a row of pins to fit it in the box with the battery, but this is only because on my model the two rows of pins are already soldered in. Normally they should be included extra I think.

I am seeing lots of other meshtastic devices, but haven't yet managed to send a message. Maybe I am not in a good location or I need a better antenna.

Kinda want to buy a second device just for messing around with two of these ^^

I highly recommend buying off of aliexpress directly.