Technology

AI Summary:

Apple's first-quarter earnings report revealed a mixed performance. While overall sales increased by 4%, iPhone sales showed weakness, particularly in China, where they declined by over 11%. CEO Tim Cook attributed this partly to the lack of Apple Intelligence in China and inventory changes. However, the Mac, iPad, and Services categories saw significant growth, with Services up 14% and both the Mac and iPad up 15%. The company reported $36.33 billion in net revenue, a 7.1% increase from the previous year.

Mirror: https://archive.is/2025.01.30-220414/https://www.404media.co/zuckerberg-says-everything-i-say-leaks-in-leaked-meeting-audio/

Are there any real-world examples where encryption backdoors have been successfully used without compromising cybersecurity? How do different governments and tech companies approach this issue, and what are the implications for global digital security?

The Debian Publicity Team will no longer post on X/Twitter. We took this decision since we feel X doesn't reflect Debian shared values as stated in our social contract, code of conduct and diversity statement. X evolved into a place where people we care about don't feel safe. You are very much invited to follow us on https://bits.debian.org/ , on https://micronews.debian.org/ , or any media as listed on https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Publicity/otherSN

So creating a new repo on GitHub, you get a set of getting started steps. They changed the default branchname to "main" from "master" due to its connotations with slavery.

When I create a new repo now, the initial getting started steps recommend creating a branch named "master" as opposed to "main" as it was a while ago.

It's especially weird since the line git branch -M master is completely unnecessary, since git init still sets you up with a "master" branch.

Disclaimer: I have a bunch of private repos, and my default branchnames are pretty much all "master".

Is this a recent change?

Edit: Mystery solved, my default branchname is "master". Thanks [email protected] !

AI summary:

The Video Game History Foundation (VGHF) has launched a digital library, offering free online access to over 30,000 files and 1,500 video game magazine issues. This collection includes high-quality artwork, promotional material, and never-before-seen game development files, such as raw production footage from the Myst series and Sonic the Hedgehog concept art. The library is accessible to everyone without needing special credentials. The VGHF aims to continue digitizing its physical archives to make them available online. The launch has been well-received, despite some server issues due to high demand.

So taking data without permission is bad, now?

I'm not here to say whether the R1 model is the product of distillation. What I can say is that it's a little rich for OpenAI to suddenly be so very publicly concerned about the sanctity of proprietary data.

The company is currently involved in several high-profile copyright infringement lawsuits, including one filed by The New York Times alleging that OpenAI and its partner Microsoft infringed its copyrights and that the companies provide the Times' content to ChatGPT users "without The Times’s permission or authorization." Other authors and artists have suits working their way through the legal system as well.

Collectively, the contributions from copyrighted sources are significant enough that OpenAI has said it would be "impossible" to build its large-language models without them. The implication being that copyrighted material had already been used to build these models long before these publisher deals were ever struck.

The filing argues, among other things, that AI model training isn't copyright infringement because it "is in service of a non-exploitive purpose: to extract information from the works and put that information to use, thereby 'expand[ing] [the works’] utility.'"

This kind of hypocrisy makes it difficult for me to muster much sympathy for an AI industry that has treated the swiping of other humans' work as a completely legal and necessary sacrifice, a victimless crime that provides benefits that are so significant and self-evident that it's wasn't even worth having a conversation about it beforehand.

A last bit of irony in the Andreessen Horowitz comment: There's some handwringing about the impact of a copyright infringement ruling on competition. Having to license copyrighted works at scale "would inure to the benefit of the largest tech companies—those with the deepest pockets and the greatest incentive to keep AI models closed off to competition."

"A multi-billion-dollar company might be able to afford to license copyrighted training data, but smaller, more agile startups will be shut out of the development race entirely," the comment continues. "The result will be far less competition, far less innovation, and very likely the loss of the United States’ position as the leader in global AI development."

Some of the industry's agita about DeepSeek is probably wrapped up in the last bit of that statement—that a Chinese company has apparently beaten an American company to the punch on something. Andreessen himself referred to DeepSeek's model as a "Sputnik moment" for the AI business, implying that US companies need to catch up or risk being left behind. But regardless of geography, it feels an awful lot like OpenAI wants to benefit from unlimited access to others' work while also restricting similar access to its own work.

AI Summary:

Tesla's 2024 financial results were disappointing, with several key points highlighted:

• Automotive Revenues: Fell by 8% in Q4 2024 compared to Q4 2023, totaling $19.8 billion.
• Energy and Storage Revenues: More than doubled, growing by 113% to $3 billion in Q4 2024.
• Services: Grew by 31% in Q4 2024, contributing $2.8 billion.
• Total Revenue: Increased by 2% in Q4 2024, but income fell by 23%, with an operating margin of 6.2%.
• Net Profits: Dropped by 71% to $2.3 billion in Q4 2024.
• Annual Performance: Automotive revenues decreased by 6% to $77 billion in 2024. Energy generation and storage increased by 67% to $10 billion. Services grew by 27%, bringing in $10.5 billion.
• Gross Profits: Fell by 1%, with net profits dropping by 53% to $7.1 billion for the year.
• Free Cash Flow: Decreased by 18% to $3.6 billion.
• Regulatory Credits: $2.8 billion of profit came from selling regulatory credits, not from core business activities.
• Future Predictions: Tesla expects energy storage revenues to grow by at least 50% year-over-year and aims to grow automotive sales by more than 60% in 2025.

Despite the poor financial results, Tesla's share price increased by 103% over the same period.

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

Facebook won’t ever recapture that old feeling. But Friendica has it.

From Mullvad

AI summary:

The article discusses two new side-channel speculative execution attacks targeting Apple silicon, named SLAP and FLOP. These attacks were presented by security researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology and Ruhr University Bochum.

• SLAP (Data Speculation Attacks via Load Address Prediction): Exploits Apple Silicon's Load Address Predictor, potentially leaking information like emails and browsing history.
• FLOP (False Load Output Predictions): Exploits Apple Silicon's Load Value Predictor, potentially leaking sensitive data like credit card information and location history.

Apple has acknowledged these vulnerabilities but stated they do not pose an immediate risk to users. The researchers have not observed these attacks in the wild yet. Users can mitigate risks by disabling JavaScript in Safari, though this may cause compatibility issues with websites