Technology

Welp that didn't take long lol

Microsoft has quietly implemented a policy blocking employee emails containing the words “Palestine,” “Gaza,” or “genocide” on its internal Exchange servers, according to No Azure for Apartheid, a group of pro-Palestine Microsoft employees. The automated filter, which silently prevents such emails from reaching recipients was first detected on Wednesday—just after Microsoft’s Build developer conference faced repeated disruptions by the activist group.

Microsoft has been rocked by internal dissent over its collaboration with the Israeli military and government amid the ongoing assault on Gaza. The company has faced disruptions to its events, including protests from employees over its provision of cloud services and other critical infrastructure used by the Israeli military.

Now, the company appears to be tightening its grip on internal discourse. The terms “Israel” and “P4lestine” do not trigger a block, the group said. Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Google is following Microsoft and adding its Google Gemini AI assistant to the Chrome browser.

Signal Desktop now includes support for a new “Screen security” setting that is designed to help prevent your own computer from capturing screenshots of your Signal chats on Windows. This setting is automatically enabled by default in Signal Desktop on Windows 11.

I've been digging through the 410 GB of Java heap dumps from TeleMessage's archive server, provided by DDoSecrets. Here's a description of the dataset, some of my initial findings, details about an upcoming open source research tool I'm going to release, and a huge list of potential TeleMessage customers.

In a major step forward for digital identity and internet decentralization, Brave has become the first browser to launch its own on-chain top-level domain. In partnership with Unstoppable Domains, the new .brave domain is now available to Brave’s over 85 million monthly active users—offering a seamless way to own digital identity, send crypto, and navigate Web3. Minted on the Polygon blockchain, .brave domains will resolve across multiple networks—including Base, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Sonic, and more—making them widely compatible in the Web3 ecosystem.

Creative Cloud Pro arrives with more AI, higher prices, and a familiar feeling of déjà vu

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/34990039

Archived

In 2010, an elite unit of the Chinese police entered an Apple shop in Shanghai and violently assaulted the customers. The attack was so brutal that the floor tiles subsequently had to be replaced: they were too bloodstained. Those customers had been waiting in line for days for the latest iPhone; their crime was to refuse to leave upon learning that the shop had sold out of stock.

Yet no official record of this event exists. The shop’s cameras were cut and employees had their phones wiped. “It shows you how quickly the Chinese can brush everything under the carpet,” one person present tells journalist Patrick McGee. “It was like a mini-Tiananmen Square.” The incident is one small example in McGee’s eye-opening book, Apple in China, of how the Californian iPhone maker has “bound its future inextricably to a ruthless authoritarian state”.

When people think of Apple’s presence in China, the focus tends either to be on the cheap manufacture of the company’s parts and the poor working conditions at those factories, or on the censorship of content on Apple devices inside the country. McGee, a journalist at the Financial Times, breaks down in much greater detail the relationship between this capitalist company and communist nation – a relationship so intertwined and complex that it will take decades to unravel. He makes the argument that not only has China effectively made Apple what it is today, but the reverse is also true. “China wouldn’t be China today without Apple,” McGee writes. “[Apple’s] investments in the country have been spectacular, rivalling nation-building efforts.”

[...]

The more Apple invests in both training these [Chinese] contracted factory workers and paying for special machinery that could only be used for its products – in 2018 the value of Apple’s “long-lived assets” in China peaked at $13.3 billion – the more it becomes bound to the country. [Apple contractor's] Foxconn hubs, for example, are now surrounded by hundreds of sub-suppliers that cater to Apple’s every whim. “Anything we wanted, we could get it,” one engineer recalls. “Whatever we needed, it would happen.”

[...]

Apple is notoriously secretive, but McGee proffers dozens of first-hand accounts of how the company essentially bumbled its way into becoming hooked on China. By the time Apple executives realise that the Chinese president Xi Jinping is ramping up repression at home and taking a more combative stance in international affairs, it’s too late to untangle the relationship: those business ties, McGee writes, are “unbreakable”. In 2016, when the Chinese authorities make it clear that they can remove, whenever they want, the cheap and plentiful labour on which Apple relies, Cook is compelled to make a trip to the Chinese Communist Party headquarters. The company pledges to invest $275 billion in China over the next five years. It does not, unsurprisingly, announce this investment to the Western press.

[...]

Microsoft continues to integrate more AI features into Windows 11

The bill sailed through Congress with a focus on deepfakes and other nonconsensual intimate images.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/34921358

The new endorsements bring the total number of supporters—including France—to 36.

The UN Open Source Principles, recently adopted by the UN Chief Executive Board's Digital Technology Network (DTN)Opens a new window provide guidelines to promote collaboration and the adoption of open-source technologies within the UN and globally. Open Source United, a community of practice established by the DTN, works to advance open source technologies across UN agencies, funds and programmes. It encourages collaboration and scalable solutions to support delivery of UN mandates.

The UN Open Source Principles consist of eight guidelines that offer a framework for the use, development, and sharing of Open Source software across the organization.

Built for stealth and sabotage, the HELMA-LP laser gun disables tech targets at range.