Greetings everyone, We wanted to take a moment and let everyone know about the !business@lemmy.world community on Lemmy.World which hasn't gained much traction. Additionally, we've noticed occasional complaints about Business-related news being posted in the Technology community. To address this, we want to encourage our community members to engage with the Business community. While we'll still permit Technology-related business news here, unless it becomes overly repetitive, we kindly ask that you consider cross-posting such content to the Business community. This will help foster a more focused discussion environment in both communities. We've interacted with the mod team of the Business community, and they seem like a dedicated and welcoming group, much like the rest of us here on Lemmy. If you're interested, we encourage you to check out their community and show them some support! Let's continue to build a thriving and inclusive ecosystem across all our communities on Lemmy.World!

Seems that a lot of us have some funny Unity memes, which have been getting removed due to Rule 7. Making this post and pinning it for everyone to share their Unity memes about this whole fiasco, please only comment the memes here, if you make a post with one it will be removed.

According to GIMPS, this is the first time a prime number was not found by an ordinary PC, but rather a “‘cloud supercomputer’ spanning 17 countries” that utilized an Nvidia A100 GPU chip to make the initial diagnosis. The primary architect of this find is Luke Durant, who worked at Nvidia as a software engineer for 11 years

>In a letter Friday to Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) said the plans — which involve using facial recognition tools in digital displays to target advertising to customers and collect information on them — potentially pave the way for biased pricing discrimination. > >“Studies have shown that facial recognition technology is flawed and can lead to discrimination in predominantly Black and Brown neighborhoods,” Tlaib wrote in the letter, which was posted on social media Tuesday. “The racial biases of facial recognition technology are well documented and should not be extended into our grocery stores.” > >Kroger is the largest grocery store chain in the country with nearly 3,000 stores and $3.1 billion in profits in 2023. Kroger and other retailers already use electronic shelving labels instead of paper labels to rapidly adjust prices based on a variety of factors, including time of purchase, where a grocery store is located and other data. > >The plan to use facial recognition technology could allow the retailer to build individual profiles on customers, based on data like their gender and shopping habits. > >In an August letter sent to McMullen about the same plans, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bob Casey (D-PA) said they were concerned about the chain building “personalized profiles of each customer, and then use those profiles ‘to determine how much price hiking each of us can tolerate,’ quickly updating and displaying the customer’s maximum willingness to pay on the digital price tag.” > >The use of facial recognition tools in Kroger stores also raises concerns about how Kroger intends to “adequately” safeguard customer data, the Warren and Casey letter said.

The CEO of Intuit (who make financial software) did an interview, and it seems a pretty normal interview. But some senior guy at the company asked for part of the interview to be deleted, after it took place. By putting in that unusual request (rather angrily), more attention is being drawn to the interview. Thoughts?

 This is an update to a post that was previously shared in the community: [Concerns Raised Over Bitwarden Moving Further Away From Open-Source](https://lemmy.world/post/21069716)

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/18286017

>Antitrust law has long recognized that monopolies stifle innovation and gouge consumers on price. When it comes to Big Tech, harm to innovation—in the form of “kill zones,” where major corporations buy up new entrants to a market before they can compete with them—has been easy to find. Consumer harms have been harder to quantify, since a lot of services the Big Tech companies offer are “free.” This is why we must move beyond price as the major determinator of consumer harm. And once that’s done, it’s easier to see even greater benefits competition brings to the greater internet ecosystem. > >In the decades since the internet entered our lives, it has changed from a wholly new and untested environment to one where a few major players dominate everyone's experience. Policymakers have been slow to adapt and have equated what's good for the whole internet with what is good for those companies. Instead of a balanced ecosystem, we have a monoculture. We need to eliminate the build up of power around the giants and instead have fertile soil for new growth.

I have always been a fan of Microsoft hardware, I currently own Surface 6 and am quite happy with it. However, due to circumstances, I will need to present simple project in Unreal Engine 5 in 6 weeks time and have no portable machine to run it on. So I am thinking about buying a new laptop and preferably it would be the recently released Surface Laptop with Snapdragon X Elite (X1E-78-100). I have found one YouTube video showing Unreal Engine Editor presumably running on the machine with 30 FPS. I know that the hardware is not a gaming one and I don't plan to use it like it but I would love to use it for my UE presentation. Does someone here have a Snapdragon X Elite machine who can confirm that Unreal Engine 5 is usable on it for simple projects?

Online service reliability is crucial in the digital age. Even robust systems can face unexpected outages, affecting various platforms. Let's explore the insights! https://robotalp.com/blog/historys-major-downtimes-lessons-from-the-biggest-outages/

>Elon Musk’s latest changes for X are driving more users away – not exactly a surprise, granted – and many of them are flocking to rival social media outlet Bluesky. So many made the switch, in fact, it led to Bluesky briefly going down due to the volume of incoming new users. > >The central move initiated by X that made the headlines for driving migration away from Musk’s platform is a change to the way the ‘Block’ button works. This was actually announced back in September, but is officially being implemented now (well, it’ll be in place ‘soon’ we’re told). > >It means that going forward, X users who you have blocked will still be able to view your (public) posts – though they won’t be able to engage with them in any way (from replies to liking and so forth). > >This is problematic for obvious reasons, in terms of enabling stalkers and trolls who will still be able to view the posts of an account that has blocked them, when previously this wasn’t the case. In the past, blocking meant that the blocked user couldn’t see any posts (or anything at all, save for a message telling them that they’ve been blocked), but soon, this will change. >Bluesky posted to say it had in excess of 100,000 new users inside 12 hours following the announcement by X, after the rival network highlighted the fact that its block function stops those who are blocked from viewing any posts. >In an update, Bluesky noted that it has now gained half a million new users in the past day. >There’s another reason that some folks are rapidly exiting from X stage left (and right, and indeed center, clambering over the audience, it would seem), and that’s a change to X’s privacy policy. > >As TechCrunch reports, the new policy includes an update that allows third-party collaborators to use content on X to train their AI models – unless the user opts out. This is a notable extension of the reach of AI training on X, which has so far only been used to train Musk’s own Grok AI (unless users opt out, again).

cozy 90s BBS forums, obscure blogs, etc.

Like cmon we want to see more tech posts, but the only posts we’re seeing is about elon musk and it’s non worthy posts.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/20972735

>The Federal Trade Commission is investigating tractor manufacturer John Deere over long standing allegations that Deere makes its farm equipment hard to repair. The investigation has been ongoing since 2021, and we know more about it now thanks to a court filing made public on Thursday. >The stated purpose of the FTC’s [investigation] is ‘[t]o determine whether Deere & Company, or any other person, has engaged in or is engaging in unfair, deceptive, anticompetitive, collusive, coercive, predatory, exploitative, or exclusionary acts or practices in or affecting commerce related to the repair of agricultural equipment in violation of Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act >John Deere has been notorious for years for making its farm equipment hard to repair. Much like today’s cars, John Deere’s farm equipment comes with a lot of computers. When something simple in one of its tractors or threshers breaks, a farmer can’t just fix it themselves. Even if the farmer has the technical and mechanical know-how to make a simple repair, they often have to return to the manufacturer at great expense. Why? The on-board computers brick the machines until a certified Deere technician flips a switch. >Farmers have been complaining about this for years and Deere has repeatedly promised to make its tractors easier to repair. It lied. John Deere equipment was so hard to repair that it led to an explosion in the used tractor market. Old farm equipment made before the advent of onboard computing sold for a pretty penny because it was easier to repair. >In 2022, a group of farmers filed a class action lawsuit against John Deere and accused it of running a repair monopoly. Deere, of course, attempted to get the case dismissed but failed. >Chief among Deere’s promises was that it would provide farmers and independent repair shops with the equipment and documentation they needed to repair their equipment. The promises of the memorandum have not come to pass. Senator Elizabeth Warren called Deere out in a letter about all of this on October 2. “Rather than uphold their end of the bargain, John Deere has provided impaired tools and inadequate disclosures,” Warren said in the letter.

The U.S. government’s road safety agency is again investigating Tesla’s [“Full Self-Driving” system](https://apnews.com/article/tesla-crash-police-car-lights-flashing-automated-bc96e19cad9b5e2de5d13846b0f744c7), this time after getting reports of crashes in low-visibility conditions, including one that killed a pedestrian. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says in documents that it opened the probe on Thursday with the company reporting four crashes after Teslas entered areas of low visibility, including sun glare, fog and airborne dust. In addition to the pedestrian’s death, another crash involved an injury, the agency said. Investigators will look into the ability of “Full Self-Driving” to “detect and respond appropriately to reduced roadway visibility conditions, and if so, the contributing circumstances for these crashes.”

I figure this would be a good place to ask. Im not paranoid but I say a ton of stupid stuff on the Internet. It's fun having conversations with total strangers after work 😁. Anyway, I was thinking. Could I keep a level of anonymity if I just created new accounts every month for example? Is that a thing people use? Like every month you just abandon your bs account and get a completely new account on google. Google specifically since they are the assholes that keep selling our data.

I just made an account in bluesky. And was greeted by lots of anime tits. Nothing against people's preferences, but is this how businesses nowadays greet new customers? I mean, they are trying to build a twitter alternative, aren't they?

Facial recognition is becoming a powerful tool for law enforcement, helping to track suspects and solve cold cases faster than ever. But with concerns over privacy, racial bias, and wrongful arrests, is this tech doing more harm than good? https://ace-usa.org/blog/research/understanding-the-debate-on-facial-recognition-technology-in-policing-pros-cons-and-privacy-concerns/

I still have an old Kindle and it still gets months of battery life. I occasionally read comics so this may get me to upgrade.

>The stored data of the Internet Archive is safe and we are working on resuming services safely. This new reality requires heightened attention to cyber security and we are responding. We apologize for the impact of these library services being unavailable. > >The Wayback Machine, Archive-It, scanning, and national library crawls have resumed, as well as email, blog, helpdesk, and social media communications. Our team is working around the clock across time zones to bring other services back online. In coming days more services will resume, some starting in read-only mode as full restoration will take more time. > >We’re taking a cautious, deliberate approach to rebuild and strengthen our defenses. Our priority is ensuring the Internet Archive comes online stronger and more secure. > >As a library community, we are seeing other cyber attacks—for instance the British Library, Seattle Public Library, Toronto Public Library, and now Calgary Public Library. We hope these attacks are not indicative of a trend.

>With the looming presidential election, a United States Supreme Court majority that is hostile to civil rights, and a conservative effort to rollback AI safeguards, strong state privacy laws have never been more important. > >But late last month, efforts to pass a federal comprehensive privacy law died in committee, leaving the future of privacy in the US unclear. Who that future serves largely rests on one crucial issue: the preemption of state law. > >On one side, the biggest names in technology are trying to use their might to force Congress to override crucial state-level privacy laws that have protected people for years. > >On the other side is the American Civil Liberties Union and 55 other organizations. We explained in our own letter to Congress how a federal bill that preempts state law would leave millions with fewer rights than they had before. It would also forbid state legislatures from passing stronger protections in the future, smothering progress for generations to come. > >Preemption has long been the tech industry’s holy grail. But few know its history. It turns out, Big Tech is pulling straight from the toxic strategy that Big Tobacco used in the 1990s. Back then, Big Tobacco invented the “Accommodation Program,” a national campaign ultimately aimed at federal preemption of indoor smoking laws. > >Phillip Morris and others in the tobacco industry implemented a three-step strategy which is only known through documents made public in litigation years later. Those documents reveal the inner workings of a nefarious corporate influence machine designed to quietly snuff out a democratic movement that threatened their profits. And now Big Tech is trying to do the same. > >But it’s not too late. We can ensure our civil rights and civil liberties are protected in the digital age. But to defeat Big Tech’s strategy, first we must understand it.

Discord defends itself against efforts to stop piracy on its platform by saying no to more invasive data collection. Even though Discord isn’t exactly known for privacy, this is a great move for its users. What are your thoughts?

>Clearly, Google is serious about trying to oust ad blockers from its browser, or at least those extensions with fuller (V2) levels of functionality. One of the crucial twists with V3 is that it prevents the use of remotely hosted code – as a security measure – but this also means ad blockers can’t update their filter lists without going through Google’s review process. What does that mean? Way slower updates for said filters, which hampers the ability of the ad-blocking extension to keep up with the necessary changes to stay effective. > >(This isn’t just about browsers, either, as the war on advert dodgers extends to YouTube, too, as we’ve seen in recent months). > >At any rate, Google is playing with fire here somewhat – or Firefox, perhaps we should say – as this may be the shove some folks need to get them considering another of the best web browsers out there aside from Chrome. Mozilla, the maker of Firefox, has vowed to maintain support for V2 extensions, while introducing support for V3 alongside to give folks a choice (now there’s a radical idea).