7,200 images per hour—or two every second.

That’s how many screenshots smart TVs are taking to identify the shows you watch, and ultimately, target ads and make content recommendations. ⬇️
https://themarkup.org/privacy/2023/12/12/your-smart-tv-knows-what-youre-watching

If you use a Windows or Linux device, it's vulnerable to a new post-exploit attack that can remotely install an undetectable backdoor at the UEFI level. Updates from just about every vendor available today. Impressive work from @matrosov and the rest of Binarly.

https://arstechnica.com/security/2023/12/just-about-every-windows-and-linux-device-vulnerable-to-new-logofail-firmware-attack/

I posted to my desultory blog the transcript of a talk I gave in 2009 inside Google, mostly because someone recently asked me to, feeling the message needs reinforcing.

https://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2023/12/simplicity.html

Some years ago, I was walking from the kitchen back to my office at Google, carrying a piece of cake on a plate flat on my hand. There was a path between the desks, and walking towards me was Henry Kissinger followed by Eric Schmidt.

Eric saw what I had in my hand, and locked eyes with me. I was as tempted as I have ever been, but in the interests of world peace and keeping my job I kept my hand where it was, where it then passed just a few inches from Kissinger's face.

(hope this is ok) This pair of slides from @jbfink 's #Access2023 talk keep being repeatedly relevant so I thought I'd share it more widely. On top is an image, on the bottom is the description of that image generated by an LLM.

"A COMPUTER CAN NEVER BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE THEREFORE A COMPUTER MUST NEVER MAKE A MANAGEMENT DECISION"

source: slides 45&46 of https://github.com/jbfink/20231024-dog-catalog/blob/main/dog-catalog.pdf

No Bing, no Edge, no upselling: De-crufted Windows 11 coming to Europe soon

Residents of the European Economic Area (EEA), which includes the EU, Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway, will soon experience less intrusive Microsoft services on their Windows 11 systems. This is in response to the European Commission's Digital Markets Act.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/11/europeans-can-soon-strip-bing-edge-other-microsoft-cruft-from-windows-11/

#News #EuropeanNews #Europe #EU #EuropeanUnion

Google announced that starting in June 2024, ad blockers such as uBlock Origin #uBO will be disabled in Chrome 127 and later with the rollout of Manifest V3 (#Mv3).

The new #Chrome manifest will prevent using custom filters and stops on demand updates of blocklist. Only #Google authorized updates to browser extension will be allowed in the future, which mean an automatic win for Google in their battle to stop YouTube #AdBlockers .

#ManifestV3 is deceitful and threatening to your privacy, and now is a good time to switch to #Firefox (@mozilla) and/or #TorBrowser (@torproject) if you haven't done so already!

EFF (@eff) on Google’s Manifest V3:

⚠️⁠https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/chrome-users-beware-manifest-v3-deceitful-and-threatening
⚠️⁠https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/googles-manifest-v3-still-hurts-privacy-security-innovation

Chrome Manifest V3 Transition Timeline (2023-11-16)

🚩⁠https://developer.chrome.com/blog/resuming-the-transition-to-mv3/

EDIT for clarification: MV3 in Chrome will still allow some ad blocking extensions, but will severely limit their blocking ability and even restricts pre-set filters to 50 MAX.