*Regarding Beehaw defederating from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works, [this](https://beehaw.org/post/567170) post goes into detail on the why and the philosophy behind that decision. Additionally, there is an update specific to sh.itjust.works [here](https://beehaw.org/post/594843).* For now, let's talk about what federation is and what defederation means for members of Beehaw or the above two communities interacting with each other, as well as the broader fediverse. *Federation is not something new on the internet*. Most users use federated services every day (for instance, the url used to access instances uses a federated service known as DNS, and email is another system that functions through federation.) Just like those services, you elect to use a service provider that allows you to communicate with the rest of the world. That service provider is your window to work with others. When you federate, you mutually agree to share your content. This means that posting something to a site can be seen by another and all comments are shared. Even users from other sites can post to your site. Now when you defederate, this results in content to be no longer shared. It didn't reverse any previous sharing or posts, it just stops the information from flowing with the selected instance. This only impacts the site's that are called out. What this means to you is when a user within one instance (e.g. Beehaw) that's chosen to defederate with another (e.g. lemmy.world), they can no longer interact with content on another instance, and vice versa. Other instances can still see the content of both servers as though nothing has happened. - A user is not limited to how many instances they can join (technically at least - some instance have more stringent requirements for joining than others do) - A user can interact with Lemmy content without being a user of any Lemmy instance - e.g. Mastodon (UI for doing so is limited, but it is still possible.) Considering the above, it is important to understand just how much autonomy we, as users have. For example, as the larger instances are flooded with users and their respective admins and mods try to keep up, many, smaller instances not only thrive, but emerge, regularly (and even single user instances - I have one for just myself!) The act of defederation does not serve to lock individual users out of anything as there are multiple avenues to constantly maintain access to, if you want it, the entirety of the unfiltered fediverse. On that last point, another consideration at the individual level is - what do you want out of Lemmy? Do you want to find and connect with like-minded people, share information, and connect at a social and community level? Do you want to casually browse content and not really interact with anyone? These questions and the questions that they lead to are critical. There is no direct benefit to being on the biggest instance. In fact, as we all deal with this mass influx, figure out what that means for our own instances and interactions with others, I would argue that a smaller instance is actually much better suited for those who just want to casually browse everything. Lastly, and tangential, another concern I have seen related to this conversation is people feeling afraid of being locked out of the content and conversation from the "main" communities around big topics starting to form across the Lemmiverse (think memes, gaming, tech, politics, news, etc.) Over time, certain communities will certainly become a default for some people just given the community size (there will *always* be a biggest or most active - it's just a numbers game.) This, again though, all comes down to personal preference and what each individual is looking to get from their Lemmy experience. While there may, eventually, be a “main” sub for <topic xyz> (again, by the numbers), there will also always be quite a few other options for targeted discussions on <topic xyz>, within different communities, on different instances, each with their own culture and vibe. This can certainly feel overwhelming and daunting (and at the moment, honestly it is.) Reddit and other non-federated platforms provided the illusion of choice, but this is what actual choice looks and feels like. [edit: grammar and spelling]

Given the [shutdown/attack](https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/07/26/world/french-train-lines-hit-by-malicious-acts-disrupting-traffic-ahead-olympics-rail-company-says/) today, which targeted stations far from the capital, this, ah... did not go well. Excerpts from article: > Security measures in Paris have been turbocharged by a new type of AI, as the city enables controversial algorithms to crawl CCTV footage of transport stations looking for threats. > After training its algorithms on both open source and synthetic data, Wintics’ systems have been adapted to, for example, count the number of people in a crowd or the number of people falling to the floor—alerting operators once the number exceeds a certain threshold. >Houllier argues that his algorithms are a privacy-friendly alternative to controversial facial recognition systems used by past global sporting events, such as the 2022 Qatar World Cup. “Here we are trying to find another way,” he says. To him, letting the algorithms crawl CCTV footage is a way to ensure the event is safe without jeopardizing personal freedoms. “We are not analyzing any personal data. We are just looking at shapes, no face, no license plate recognition, no behavioral analytics.” > Levain is concerned the AI surveillance systems will remain in France long after the athletes leave. To her, these algorithms enable the police and security services to impose surveillance on wider stretches of the city. “This technology will reproduce the stereotypes of the police,” she says. “We know that they discriminate. We know that they always go in the same area. They always go and harass the same people. And this technology, as with every surveillance technology, will help them do that.”

They say it has left them unable to access bank accounts and job offers - and stopped them using Skype, which Microsoft owns, to contact relatives in war-torn Gaza. Microsoft says they violated its terms of service - a claim they dispute. "They killed my life online," said Eiad Hametto, who lives in Saudi Arabia. "They’ve suspended my email account that I’ve had for nearly 20 years - It was connected to all my work," he told the BBC. He also said being cut off from Skype was a huge blow for his family. The internet is frequently disrupted or switched off there because of the Israeli military campaign - and standard international calls are very expensive. Israel launched its offensive in Gaza in response to the Hamas attack on 7 October, which killed about 1,200 people. The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says more than 38,000 people have been killed in the war.

[Archived version](https://web.archive.org/web/20240710020547/https://www.cjr.org/tow_center/meta-is-getting-rid-of-crowdtangle.php) The US elections are less than five months away, and the public has less visibility than ever into political messaging on Facebook and Instagram. In August, Meta is shutting down CrowdTangle, a popular social media monitoring tool used to track misinformation on Facebook and Instagram. The company says its replacement, the Meta Content Library (MCL), is a better tool for researchers. But a joint investigation by Proof News, the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, and the Algorithmic Transparency Institute found that Meta’s replacement tool is less transparent and accessible than CrowdTangle. On eleven key topics, Meta’s new tool has fewer features than CrowdTangle. And researchers say the process of getting access to the tool is cumbersome and slow—and some journalists can’t access it at all.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/176888 > GitCode, a git-hosting website operated Chongqing Open-Source Co-Creation Technology Co Ltd and with technical support from CSDN and Huawei Cloud. > > It is being reported that many users' repository are being cloned and re-hosted on GitCode without explicit authorization. > > There is also a thread on [Ycombinator](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40793185) ([archived link](https://web.archive.org/web/20240626114130/https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40793185))

**US officials say army of 19 million infected computers enabled fraud, identity theft and child exploitation.** Authorities in the United States have announced the dismantling of a global network of 19 million infected computers used to facilitate and cover up cybercrimes including fraud, identity theft and child exploitation. Yunhe Wang, 35, was arrested on Friday for allegedly running the botnet known as “911 S5”, the US Department of Justice said on Wednesday. Wang is alleged to have run the botnet comprising infected IP addresses in more than 190 countries over an eight-year period from 2014, generating millions of dollars offering cybercriminals access to the network for a fee. Wang is alleged to have generated $99m through the scheme, using his illicit gains to buy luxury cars and real estate in the US, St Kitts and Nevis, China, Singapore, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates. Wang allegedly propagated his malware through Virtual Private Network (VPN) programs, such as MaskVPN and DewVPN, and pay-per-install services that bundled his malware with other program files, including pirated versions of licensed software, according to court documents.

Full toot: > Many have tagged us in discussions about a specific Google extension built into Chromium browsers and asked us what we've done about it. > > This is a part of the Google Meets browser extension, which we bundle in order to allow Google Meets to work. This can be disabled in Settings > Privacy and Security > Google Extensions > Meets. Disabling it will break Meets. We expose this as a setting because we want you to be able to control it, and disable it if you want to. > > Disabling it by default would be great, but doing so would break Meets for users who are not able to understand why it’s broken, or what they need to change in order to allow it to work. Unfortunately, when websites break, either because of browser detection, or missing features, users invariably assume the browser is at fault rather than the website, and we have to make choices about what needs to be done to make websites work. We do not take these kinds of decisions lightly. > > We do find it very interesting that Google, who run the Chromium browser project, choose to give Meets additional information that is not given to other videoconferencing websites, and this could easily be seen to be uncompetitive behaviour. Hopefully, the EU's competition enforcement agencies can add this to their radar, and require a change in Google's Meets functionality.

[Archived version](https://web.archive.org/web/20240709211614/https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/technology/russia-forces-apple-to-remove-dozens-of-vpn-apps-from-app-store/) Russia's telecommunications watchdog Roskomnadzor confirmed to Interfax that the order targets multiple apps (including NordVPN, Proton VPN, Red Shield VPN, Planet VPN, Hidemy.Name VPN, Le VPN, and PIA VPN) used to gain access to content tagged as illegal in Russia.

[Archived link](https://web.archive.org/web/20240710160200/https://therecord.media/bellingcat-x-russia-ukraine-spam-accusations) The social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, received criticism from researchers after it labeled a link by the investigative journalism group Bellingcat about Russia’s attack on a children’s hospital in Kyiv as “potentially spammy or unsafe.” In their latest research, Bellingcat identified a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile that struck Ukraine's largest children's medical center, Okhmatdyt, during an attack on Kyiv over the weekend that killed 33 people, including 5 children. Bellingcat’s investigation debunked claims from pro-Russian accounts that denied responsibility for the attack and “sought to shift the blame for the incident onto Ukraine,” researchers said. [...] Despite its reputation, X marked the link to the group’s latest research as “unsafe,” saying that it could lead users to “violent or misleading content” or to a website that misleads people, disrupts their experience, or steals their personal information.

[Archived version](https://web.archive.org/web/20240712093304/https://theadvisermagazine.com/market-research/stock-market/chinas-relentless-e-commerce-price-war-leaves-sellers-struggling-to-make-ends-meet-by-reuters/) China’s relentless e-commerce price war leaves sellers struggling to make ends meet as shopping platforms compete with ever-more aggressive policies and a domestic economy slowing down https://theadvisermagazine.com/market-research/stock-market/chinas-relentless-e-commerce-price-war-leaves-sellers-struggling-to-make-ends-meet-by-reuters A once-thriving e-commerce industry punctuated by shopping bonanzas featuring galas and celebrities is bearing the brunt of a sputtering economy that has seen consumers all but tie knots in their purse strings. While extreme discounting, influencer-led sales campaigns and generous returns policies did much to enrich the sector, those same practices by which vendors have to abide are now hurting those upon which the sector rests. “The good times for e-commerce are over,” said Shanghai-based e-commerce operator Lu Zhenwang, who sells everyday items for small vendors. “This year there is fierce competition and I don’t think a lot of sellers will survive another three years.” Profit margins are being squeezed at big platforms such as those of Alibaba and JD, but also at the thousands of small businesses which joined the e-commerce boom decade that started around 2013. That boom has left e-commerce accounting for 27% of retail, with 12 trillion yuan ($1.65 trillion) of goods sold annually. But as the economy slows, so does e-commerce, with the double-digit growth of recent years set to be replaced by single digits, showed data from Euromonitor. [...] [One e-commerce shop owner] said major platforms, upon which vendors rely, should not use “consumer first” policies that add to the burden of businesses, many of which have to sell below cost to maintain high positions in search results amid multiple discount events.

[Archived version](http://web.archive.org/web/20240712221042/https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1015505) The self-driving taxis have become popular — with Baidu offering super cheap rides to win customers — and the company is eyeing expansion into other Chinese megacities as local governments rush to issue policies in support of the new technology. But the robotaxi revolution is also causing some public concerns in China, with the issue blowing up on social media after an Apollo Go vehicle ran into a pedestrian in Wuhan last Sunday. Footage of the incident spread online has sparked a wide debate about the issues created by robotaxis — especially the threat the technology poses to ride-hailing and taxi drivers. Authorities in Wuhan have felt the need to respond to the “rumors” about problems caused by robotaxis. The city’s transportation bureau told domestic media that the local taxi industry is “relatively stable”. [...] In response to video clips showing a pedestrian lying on the road next to an Apollo Go robotaxi which began trending within hours, a Baidu spokesperson told domestic media that the accident was a “mild” collision that had occurred because the pedestrian had been jaywalking. [...] In 2019, Baidu was among the first companies to obtain a business license for operating autonomous vehicles in Wuhan. Then, in 2022, it was granted a license to operate its vehicles on public roads without a safety driver. [...] But the robotaxis’ growing popularity has also sparked backlash. Wuhan residents have been complaining for months that Apollo Go cars cause traffic jams by driving slowly and stopping unexpectedly. Viral clips on social media show long lines of cars forming behind an Apollo Go vehicle that is blocking the road. [...] It’s unclear whether the controversy will affect China’s plans for autonomous driving. Beijing recently issued a draft guideline that would allow self-driving vehicles to be used in the public transportation and ride-hailing industries. Cities including Changsha and Jinan have announced plans to conduct robotaxi testing schemes. [...] So far, the publicity appears to be providing an unexpected boost to Baidu’s stock price. The company’s shares achieved their largest daily gain in over a year on Wednesday, and are still up for the week as of Friday afternoon.

I have a number of Google Photos accounts that I believe I had backed up my iPhone to over the years. However, I hadn't deleted the backed up photos from my iPhone each time, so there are many duplicates across the multiple Google Photos accounts. Can you please help me identify the most efficient way to remove these duplicate photos that are taking up so much space? I tried to compare two accounts at a time manually but this method is extremely time-consuming, and it would really help a lot to learn a more efficient way. I know how to move photos from one account to another, but the issue is one of the two accounts containing duplicate photos is at full capacity and the other is almost full. Even if they had free space though, would the duplicates show up side by side in the account they're moved to? Because if not, it'll be hard to tell if each photo was in fact a duplicate and therefore no photos were lost somehow in the transfer process, unless I again manually check at a detailed level. Maybe I can eyeball it and send the duplicate photos to a third account with more free space, delete the same photos from both originating accounts, and then send this batch of photos back from the third account to one of the originating accounts? This has been bothering me for a long time and I would like to do all that I can to avoid buying Google storage over and over. Thank you!

https://simonwillison.net/2024/Jul/9/hangout_servicesthunkjs/

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/645247 > Here is the [report (pdf)](https://www.ic3.gov/Media/News/2024/240709.pdf) > > Individuals affiliated with RT - formerly Russia Today - leveraged “Meliorator,” an artificial intelligence (AI) enhanced software package which allowed for the creation of authentic appearing fictitious personas to post content on X. The tool also allowed for the management of the persona profiles through an administrator panel called “Brigadir” and the spreading of disinformation through these profiles through a seeding tool called “Taras.” > > Affiliates of RT, a Russian state-sponsored media organization, used this tool to create fictitious online personas, representing a number of nationalities, to post content on a social media platform. > > The report is joint effort of security agencies in the U.S., Canada, and the Netherlands.

It seems YT started another attempt at blocking alternative clients. They changed something in their API and both [SmartTube](https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTube/issues/3606) and [Tubular (NewPipe fork)](https://github.com/polymorphicshade/Tubular/issues/97) are completely broken. Apparently it started happening this past week, but we personally just felt it today. Edit: SmartTube already has an update but still not working for 4K videos it seems. Tubular still not working but it might be due to the upstream (NewPipe) [is still working on a fix](https://old.reddit.com/r/NewPipe/comments/1dz8bjj/about_youtube_playback_errors_youtube_changed/).

**Higgs Domino RP v6.20 Latest Version: Elevate Your Gaming Experience!** Calling all Domino enthusiasts! Get ready to dive into a world of fun and excitement with the latest Higgs Domino RP v6.20 update. This version is packed with new features, enhanced gameplay, and an even more immersive Domino experience. **What's New:** * **Sleek New Interface:** The updated interface is more user-friendly and visually appealing, making navigation a breeze. * **Exciting New Games:** Discover a variety of new game modes and challenges to keep you entertained for hours on end. * **Enhanced Graphics:** Immerse yourself in stunning graphics that bring the Domino world to life like never before. * **Smooth Performance:** Experience seamless gameplay with improved performance and reduced lag. * **More Rewards:** Earn even more rewards and bonuses as you progress through the game. **Why Choose Higgs Domino RP v6.20:** * **Unlimited Fun:** Enjoy endless entertainment with a wide range of Domino games and challenges. * **Social Experience:** Connect with friends and other players from around the world in exciting multiplayer matches. * **Customizable Experience:** Personalize your gameplay with various themes, avatars, and settings. * **Regular Updates:** Look forward to frequent updates with new content, features, and improvements. **Don't miss out on the latest and greatest Higgs Domino RP experience. Download v6.20 now and let the Domino games begin!** **#HiggsDominoRP #DominoGames #MobileGaming #NewUpdate**

This guy! 😮‍💨

Since the beginning of the generative AI boom, content creators have argued that their work has been scraped into AI models without their consent. But until now, it has been difficult to know whether specific text has actually been used in a training data set. Now they have a new way to prove it: “copyright traps” developed by a team at Imperial College London, pieces of hidden text that allow writers and publishers to subtly mark their work in order to later detect whether it has been used in AI models or not. The idea is similar to traps that have been used by copyright holders throughout history—strategies like including fake locations on a map or fake words in a dictionary. These AI copyright traps tap into one of the biggest fights in AI. A number of publishers and writers are in the middle of litigation against tech companies, claiming their intellectual property has been scraped into AI training data sets without their permission. The New York Times’ ongoing case against OpenAI is probably the most high-profile of these. The code to generate and detect traps is [currently available on GitHub](https://github.com/computationalprivacy/copyright-traps), but the team also intends to build a tool that allows people to generate and insert copyright traps themselves.

> At issue in the case is the Web and App Activity toggle in Android device’s settings. Turning the toggle off prevents future web and app activity being saved to a user’s Google account. > >The class plaintiffs, a suit first filed in 2020, claim that Google collected their personalized data even though they turned the toggle off. They claim the toggle gives users the false impression that they can “opt out” of sharing all data with Google and third-party developers, and accused Google of invasion of privacy. > Santacana said that none of the data that Google collected could be tied back to a user and that the defendants had failed to include a single example of the data being tracked back to a user, being used for personalized advertisements or being used to build marketing profiles. > Seeborg, a Barack Obama appointee, told Santacana that he thought the language in Google’s privacy policy could possibly mislead a reasonable consumer into believing that toggling the function off stops collection of all data. > >Santacana replied that it’s not Google’s fault if a user doesn’t interpret the policies correctly. > David Boies, counsel for the class plaintiffs, told Seeborg that he didn’t believe that Google doesn’t collect personal information, and that even the non-personal information could identify a person’s mobile device and be linked to a specific individual. > Boies read Seeborg copies of Google employees’ internal emails, in which multiple employees expressed that they felt the privacy policy was fooling users into thinking that personal information wasn’t being collected. In the emails, the Google employees also said they were collecting and using personal information. >Seeborg took the matter under submission.