Technology

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/22023364

No, but thanks for asking. The rabbit hole still goes far further.

Ghostarchive is apparently blocked from The Atlantic, and other archive options aren't friendly to VPNs, so I'm afraid I can't provide an archive link.

I mean the whole 50GB model. All I can find is people trying it in Huggingface. Only person on the internet, who actually downloaded and tried the model using their own Hardware locally, that I can find is this: https://youtu.be/6axAY9NV1OU . But he tried the 1B version (it is only 4 or 5GB of size), I expected there would be a Youtube channel or Discord servers or 4chan boards specifying in these kinds of tests but so far I'm out of luck.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/54090098

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/21327394

[email protected] removed my post, without any sort of notification, which is lame and annoying.

Here is the original text, copied verbatim:

Something is going on with Samsung TV's voice assistant

My TV has suddenly started to interpret voice commands as if I was speaking Russian. Users on Samsungs community forum are reporting the same issue. There are users on Reddit who are also reporting the same issue.

A quick google search shows that this is worldwide, and that it started somewhere between 3-5 days ago.

What the hell is going on, Samsung?

(I am not seeking tech support or advice, just raising awareness to what is hopefully a benign problem.)

The original post is from r/Romania, but I thought it would be interesting to share this here too.

Filipino digital workers launched a coalition to lobby for labor and free speech protections in the workplace as artificial intelligence is deployed. The AI tools raise new risks, and the firing of a worker who spoke to Rest of World in November signals an industrywide “code of silence” around the impact of AI on the workplace, the group said.

“We call on the government for a proactive and inclusive policy-making, as workers face threats of job losses, diminishing wages, and other harms,” Lean Porquia, convenor of the coalition, said in a press statement. Porquia is also head of research for the BPO Industry Employees’ Network, an organization focused on the rights of business process outsourcing workers.

The Coalition of Digital Employees – Artificial Intelligence, or Code AI, was prompted by Rest of World reporting that led to investigations and the termination of a worker, Code AI members said at a press briefing in Manila. The report, published in November 2024, described advanced AI tools deployed by Concentrix Corporation and Accenture — including AI co-pilots and sentiment analysis deployed for American Express and Meta, Facebook’s parent company — that made work both more efficient and demanding, according to the workers.

Archived

Facebook is banning posts that mention various Linux-related topics, sites, or groups. Some users may also see their accounts locked or limited when posting Linux topics. Major open-source operating system news, reviews, and discussion site DistroWatch is at the center of the controversy, as it seems to be the first to have noticed that Facebook's Community Standards had blackballed it.

[...]

DistroWatch says that the Facebook ban took effect on January 19. Readers have reported difficulty posting links to the site on this social media platform. Moreover, some have told DistroWatch that their Facebook accounts have been locked or limited after sharing posts mentioning Linux topics.

If you're wondering if there might be something specific to DistroWatch.com, something on the site that the owners/operators perhaps don't even know about, for example, then it seems pretty safe to rule out such a possibility. Reports show that "multiple groups associated with Linux and Linux discussions have either been shut down or had many of their posts removed." However, we tested a few other Facebook posts with mentions of Linux, and they didn't get blocked immediately.

[...]

Addition to include the DistroWatch link: https://distrowatch.com/weekly-mobile.php?issue=20250127#sitenews

So I am wondering how to be bad at using websites such as YouTube. For example, currently I do most of my youtube viewing on a Ruko Tv, where I never sign it, never comment, and never subscribe. When I select a video and an advertisement that is longer than 5 seconds shows up I will hit the back button and select the video again. I repeat this process till I get a the 5 sec ad or the video starts.

I assume this is not how google (or YouTubers) wish me to access their platform, but is there anyway I could be more disruptive to the business model?

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/53880308

Summary

Trump plans to impose tariffs of up to 100% on semiconductors manufactured in Taiwan, aiming to push U.S. tech companies like Apple, Nvidia, and AMD to produce chips domestically.

The tariffs target Taiwan's TSMC, a key supplier, despite its partial U.S. production in Arizona.

Trump criticized Biden’s CHIPS Act for funding companies like Intel and proposed tariffs as an alternative incentive.

Experts warn the move could raise prices for electronics as most TSMC chips are assembled in Asia before export to the U.S.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/25282200

Archived

China’s DeepSeek AI model represents a transformative development in China’s AI capabilities, and its implications for cyberattacks and data privacy are particularly alarming. By leveraging DeepSeek, China is on its way to revolutionizing its cyber-espionage, cyberwarfare, and information operations.

[...]

DeepSeek’s advanced AI architecture, built on access to vast datasets and cutting-edge processing capabilities, is particularly suited for offensive cybersecurity operations and large-scale exploitation of sensitive information. It is designed to operate in complex and dynamic environments, potentially making it superior in applications like military simulations, geopolitical analysis, and real-time decision-making.

DeepSeek was founded by Liang Wenfeng, co-founder of High-Flyer, a quantitative hedge fund [...] Wenfeng developed DeepSeek cheaper and faster than U.S. companies by exploiting China’s vast datasets [...]

[...]

Wenfeng’s close ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) raises the specter of having had access to the fruits of CCP espionage, [...] Over the past decade, Chinese state-sponsored actors and affiliated individuals have come under heightened scrutiny for targeting U.S. AI startups, academic labs, and technology giants in attempts to acquire algorithms, source code, and proprietary data that power machine learning systems.

[...]

Within the U.S., several high-profile criminal cases have placed a spotlight on the theft of AI-related trade secrets. Although many investigations involve corporate espionage more generally, AI has become a particularly attractive prize due to its utility in strategic industries such as autonomous vehicles, facial recognition, cybersecurity, and advanced robotics.

One well-known incident involved alleged theft of autonomous vehicle technology at Apple’s secretive self-driving car project, where a Chinese-born engineer was accused of downloading large volumes of proprietary data shortly before planning to relocate to a Chinese competitor. In another case, a separate Apple employee was charged with attempting to smuggle similar self-driving car information out of the country. Both cases underscored the vulnerability of AI research to insider threats, as employees with privileged access to code or algorithms can quickly copy crucial files.

[...]

DeepSeek also poses a unique threat in the realm of advanced persistent threats (APTs) – long-term cyber-espionage campaigns often attributed to state actors. The model could be used to sift through massive volumes of encrypted or obfuscated data, correlating seemingly unrelated pieces of information to uncover sensitive intelligence. This might include classified government communications, corporate trade secrets, or personal data of high-ranking officials. DeepSeek’s ability to detect hidden patterns could supercharge such campaigns, enabling more precise targeting and greater success in exfiltrating valuable information.

DeepSeek’s generative capabilities add another layer of danger, particularly in the realm of social engineering and misinformation. For example, it could create hyper-realistic phishing emails or messages, tailored to individuals using insights derived from breached datasets. These communications could bypass traditional detection systems and manipulate individuals into revealing sensitive information, such as passwords or financial data. This is especially relevant given the growing use of AI in creating synthetic identities and deepfakes, which could further deceive targets into trusting malicious communications.

[...]

China’s already substantial surveillance infrastructure and relaxed data privacy laws give it a significant advantage in training AI models like DeepSeek. This includes access to domestic data sources as well as data acquired through cyber-espionage and partnerships with other nations.

[...]

DeepSeek has the potential to reshape the cyber-threat landscape in ways that disproportionately harm the U.S. and the West. Its ability to identify vulnerabilities, enhance social engineering, and exploit vast quantities of sensitive data represents a critical challenge to cybersecurity and privacy.

If left unchecked, DeepSeek could not only elevate China’s cyber capabilities but also redefine global norms around data privacy and security, with long-term consequences for democratic institutions and personal freedoms.

[...]

Archived

China’s auto industry has been a success story in recent years, with car exports emerging as a bright spot in an otherwise slowing economy. Between 2021 and 2024, the number of cars shipped from China surged by 300%, propelling China past Japan to become the world’s largest car exporter by units. However, this rapid growth now faces significant challenges. Trade barriers and outright bans in major markets like the US threaten to stall export momentum. Slumping export growth will put pressure on Chinese automakers, potentially leading to industry consolidation. But incumbent carmakers shouldn’t celebrate too much—even with slower export growth, Chinese carmakers are transforming into formidable global competitors in the auto market.

[...]

Six factors contribute to the apparent slowdown or early peak in export growth:

Rising trade barriers: Both advanced and emerging economies are erecting a growing number of trade barriers against Chinese passenger vehicle exports (Figure 2). This underscores that the principal constraint on China’s vehicle exports is demand-related rather than supply-side.

[...]

Inventory pressure: Our analysis of Marklines and Chinese customs data reveals that Chinese OEMs’ overseas sales have severely fallen behind exports since mid-2022. Chinese OEMs now hold nearly a year’s worth of unsold inventory abroad, much more than the two months of average retail sales inventories in China or the US (Figure 3). As firms frontload exports ahead of tariff hikes (or recycling fees in Russia) and adopt premium pricing strategies, inventory levels have surged since late 2023, especially in regions raising trade barriers. In the EU, they have reached a record 28 months,1 driven by weak electric vehicle (EV) demand and high Chinese EV prices (compared to China’s domestic prices). In Brazil, EV inventories hit 22 months after exporters frontloaded exports ahead of tariff increases, while inventories of Chinese exporters in Russia reached 16 months.

[...]

Competition from Chinese overseas plants: While Chinese OEMs (with the exception of Geely’s acquisitions of Volvo and Proton) have traditionally concentrated production in China, this is changing rapidly. By 2027, we expect Chinese OEMs to increase their overseas production capacity by 1.5 to 2 million vehicles. A major driver of this growth is BYD, which has announced seven new overseas plants in recent months. These plants, some built due to growing trade barriers, will increasingly compete with Chinese exports. This is already evident in Thailand, where Chinese exports declined as Chinese OEMs’ local production ramps up.

[...]

Joint venture (JV) constraints: Many producers suffering the most overcapacity are mass volume JV brands between Chinese and Western automakers. Our own calculations2 indicate that their CUR is far from healthy at only 36%. Foreign luxury brands, large private Chinese OEMs, EV startups, and even SOEs fared much better with CURs of 90%, 72%, 66%, and 64%, respectively. JV companies may hesitate to aggressively pursue third-market opportunities by exporting from China because they would directly compete with their own operations in ASEAN, Latin America, and Europe. They would also have to share profits from those efforts with their Chinese JV partners.

[...]

Saturation of Russia’s market: China-based exporters have capitalized on low-hanging fruit in markets with high demand but limited supply, such as Russia, which has accounted for nearly 20% of China’s total car exports in 2024. Western OEMs exiting Russia in the wake of the Ukraine conflict and associated sanctions created a temporary vacuum that Chinese automakers filled. However, market opportunities in Russia are finite and cannot provide endless growth going forward. Carmakers expect sales in Russia to drop in 2025 due to extremely high interest rates.

[...]

Slowing EV adoption: Outside of China, the growth of EV sales—both battery EVs (BEVs) and plug-in hybrids (PHEVs)—has slowed to 8% year-on-year through September 2024, down from 44% in 2023 and 23% in 2022. This is problematic for Chinese OEMs that have been more successful in capturing EV than ICE market shares globally. Chinese OEMs ex-China EV market share rose from 13% in 2023 to 17% in 2024, while their ICE vehicle market share has remained nearly flat at 4.7%. In this context, PHEV sales could offer some relief. These have fared slightly better than BEV sales in several overseas markets in recent months and are also less dependent on charging infrastructure, often a key obstacle to BEV adoption.

Archived

Although Beijing appeared to score a propaganda coup last week when hundreds of thousands of American TikTok users flooded to the social media app RedNote, observers say the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is worried about any cross-cultural exchanges happening online.

The Chinese government blocks various U.S.-based platforms, including Facebook, YouTube, and X, which are only accessible via virtual personal network. The government also heavily censors topics considered sensitive to policymakers.

[...]

Dali Yang, William Claude Reavis political science professor at the University of Chicago, wrote on [social media]:

"Apparently Xiaohongshu is frantically trying to adapt to both accommodate these new American users but also reduce their interactions with Chinese domestic users. Haha, that sounds like going in the direction of what Bytedance did with Douyin/Tiktok."

Rush Doshi, senior fellow for China and director of the Initiative on China Strategy at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote [on social media]:

"The PRC end game will be to bifurcate the app, as they did with Douyin, between a foreign and domestic version to avoid too much interaction between US and PRC users.

[...]

After indicating he would rescue TikTok, Trump on Monday signed an executive order postponing the TikTok ban for 75 days.

He has suggested, however, that the U.S. should acquire a 50 percent ownership in the company, telling reporters it is "worthless" if he doesn't approve a deal to keep it going in the country.

Evan Feigenbaum, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told CNBC such a joint venture is unlikely, given that China regulates the algorithms as national security property and that China is "basically being asked to force over its core intellectual property."

In a related article, The Diplomat reports that unlike TikTok, RedNote primarily operates in China. As a result, concerns over content censorship, data privacy, and CCP control are even greater.

RedNote imposes strict content censorship on the posts visible on the platform. Discussions on politics are generally limited and hidden. Similar to the situations in other Chinese-controlled websites and mobile applications, users need to use jargon, memes, acronyms, and intentionally mistyped words or characters to express limited opinions on public affairs in China. The platform [RedNote] has a notorious record of limiting LGBTQ-related topics. Media reports suggest that some U.S. users have already seen their posts taken down by RedNote as they are deemed “too sensitive.”

The significant number of U.S. users entering the app led to some unplanned pressure for RedNote to fulfill its censorship requirements imposed by the Chinese cyberspace administration officials. After the first wave of user influx, RedNote was reported to be urgently hiring English-language content moderation employees. The job posting has no prior job experience requirements for the new hires and offers the recruits paid training. Reports also suggest that RedNote is developing features that segregate users based on their IP address to minimize its political and content moderation risks.

[...]

Excellent article by Afsaneh Rigot, author of the Design from the Margins methodology.

Archived

[...]

The Chinese government is revolutionizing digital surveillance at home and exporting these technologies abroad. [The study focuses on] Huawei, the world’s largest telecommunications provider, which is partly state-owned and increasingly regarded as an instrument of its foreign policy.

The transfers [of technology between China and foreign countries] have sparked widespread concern among observers. These tools of digital dictatorship, many argue, will let recipient governments expand surveillance and reinforce the wave of autocratic retrenchment and democratic erosion currently underway.

[...]

The [foreign] governments that receive Huawei transfers are systematically different than those that do not, and in ways that may be correlated with state repression.

[...]

The Chinese Communist Party's Surveillance State

The Information Age has revolutionized surveillance in the world’s autocracies. In 1998, the CCP launched the Golden Shield Project, which [one researcher] describes as “a domestic surveillance and filtering system that integrates online government databases with an all-encompassing surveillance network.”Footnote 3 In the first phase, completed in 2005, the CCP built a massive network of population databases, ID tracking systems, and internet surveillance tools, which let it record the movement of potential dissidents as revealed, in part, by their online behavior. In 2017, the CCP announced the completion of its “Sky Net” program, which entails 176 million surveillance cameras across China and plans for 626 million by 2020, nearly one camera for every two citizens (Hersey Reference Hersey2017; Russell Reference Russell2017). The result, Qiang (Reference Qiang2019) writes, is “the largest video-surveillance network in the world.”

Simultaneously, the CCP built a facial database that encompassed every adult citizen [...] and a DNA database [...]. The CCP’s facial recognition technology is employed for check-in and security at airports [...] train stations [...] and hotels [...].. In 2017, the CCP applied facial recognition technology to detect jaywalkers, with offenders notified via text message and their pictures displayed at major intersections [...]. This pervasive surveillance apparatus lets the CCP repress dissidents and spend less on public goods [...]. It also complements more analog forms of repression, such as informants and hired thugs [...]. Digital surveillance [in China] is now a conspicuous feature of everyday life.

[...] ** The CCP’s digital surveillance apparatus is supported by a network of domestic technology firms, which are subsidized by the state and routinely used as instruments of foreign policy**. The most general are Huawei and ZTE. Huawei is the world’s largest manufacturer of telecommunications equipment [...], and especially dominant in Africa, where it has provided 70% of the 5G network.

[...]

China has a number of more focused technology firms that are implicated in surveillance. Several of these specialize in video cameras and facial recognition software: Hikvision, Dahua, CloudWalk, Megvii, YITU, and SenseTime, most notably. Of these, Hikvision is perhaps the most consequential. In 2019, it was responsible for nearly a quarter of the world’s surveillance cameras [...].Dahua has also supplied cameras for Safe City projects, so called for their use of digital surveillance to support the local security apparatus [...]. Other firms specialize in still different areas of surveillance. Meiya Pico reportedly built an app used by the Chinese government to extract data from citizens’ smartphones during street checks [...]. iFlytek develops voice recognition software [...].

[...]

Huawei transfers are [...] more likely if the recipient government has a preexisting relationship with Beijing. The effects of these transfers [...] depend on political institutions in recipient countries. In autocracies, where the chief political threat to incumbents is collective action by citizens and institutional oversight is weak, Huawei transfers lead to an expansion of digital surveillance, internet shutdowns, internet filtering, and targeted arrests for online content. In democracies, where governments have stronger incentivizes to provide public goods, institutional oversight is stronger, and civil societies are more vibrant, Huawei transfers have no clear or consistent effect on digital repression.

[...]

Since Huawei is secretive about its contracts, our statistical estimates may be subject to measurement error. Huawei contracts, like other Chinese infrastructure contracts, routinely include confidentiality clauses [...], which prohibit recipient governments from divulging information about them. Consequently, our record of Huawei transfers may be incomplete, which would effectively include some treated countries in the control group. Since this would bias against our key results, our statistical estimates should be regarded as lower bounds, with the actual effect potentially larger. Third, Huawei’s secrecy means that we also lack fine-grained data about what its transfers entail.

[...]

Transfers that entail “Safe City” infrastructure, for instance, are almost certainly more likely to facilitate digital repression than contracts that focus on IT training for university students. Likewise, Huawei may be inclined to provide some recipient governments more direct personnel support than others, helping them overcome state capacity limitations that might otherwise prevent them from using technology transfers for digital repression.

[...]