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A lot of people are overly reliant on Google. They put all of their important messages, appointments, musings, contacts, and spreadsheets into Google products. Many are aware that Google, like many tech firms, is likely to prioritize its own interests over user privacy. But signing data away for technological conveniences is a common occurrence.

Murena's Pixel Tablet takes a stance against that norm. It's Google’s Pixel Tablet hardware running an Android fork but without any Google tracking or Google apps. While I still found myself heading back to Google services while using the tablet, Murena’s gadget reminded me of how feasible it is to limit Big Tech’s reach into my life.

De-Googled Android

Instead of running standard Android like Google’s 2023 Pixel Tablet, Murena’s Pixel Tablet runs /e/OS, an open source mobile operating system (OS) built by e Foundation. Mandrake Linux distribution creator Gaël Duval founded /e/OS, which is a fork of LineageOS, an open source version of Google's Android source code.

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Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency made lots of headlines by rejecting the document that establishes its ability to regulate the greenhouse gases that are warming our climate. While the legal assault on regulations grabbed most of the attention, it was paired with two other actions that targeted other aspects of climate change: the science underlying our current understanding of the dramatic warming the Earth is experiencing, and the renewable energy that represents our best chance of limiting this warming.

Collectively, these actions illuminate the administration's strategy for dealing with a problem that it would prefer to believe doesn't exist, despite our extensive documentation of its reality. They also show how the administration is tailoring its approach to different audiences, including the audience of one who is demanding inaction.

When in doubt, make something up

The simplest thing to understand is an action by the Department of the Interior, which handles permitting for energy projects on federal land—including wind and solar, both onshore and off. That has placed the Interior in an awkward position. Wind and solar are now generally the cheapest ways to generate electricity and are currently in the process of a spectacular boom, with solar now accounting for over 80 percent of the newly installed capacity in the US.

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Backlash over offensive Grok outputs continues, just a couple weeks after the social platform X scrambled to stop its AI tool from dubbing itself "MechaHitler" during an antisemitic meltdown.

Now, The Verge has found that the newest video feature of Elon Musk's AI model will generate nude images of Taylor Swift without being prompted.

Shortly after the "Grok Imagine" was released Tuesday, The Verge's Jess Weatherbed was shocked to discover the video generator spat out topless images of Swift "the very first time" she used it.

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At a time when subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) streaming services keep getting more expensive and their ads more extensive, Roku’s new streaming service, Howdy, is worth a closer look.

Howdy launched today in the US for $3 per month. It is currently only accessible via a web browser or the Howdy app on Roku OS. Roku said in its announcement today that Howdy will roll out to “mobile and additional platforms in the near future."

Howdy has, per Roku, “nearly 10,000 hours” of content from Warner Bros. Discovery, Lionsgate, and Filmrise. That’s a much smaller number of content distribution partners than what you’ll find on Roku’s flagship streaming service, The Roku Channel, which has shows and movies from companies like AMC Networks, MGM, NBCUniversal, and Paramount. (Roku also makes the Roku OS operating systems for smart TVs and streaming devices and Roku-brand TVs, and runs the Frndly TV streaming service.)

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PCI-SIG has announced plans to release the PCIe 8.0 specification to members by 2028, offering support for data transfer speeds up to 256 GT/s in terms of raw bit rates, and up to 1TB/s of bi-directional speed when used in a x16 configuration. Given how long it takes for new PCIe standards to roll out, […]

The post PCIe 8.0 to be up to 16 times faster than PCIe 4.0 appeared first on Liliputing.

PCI-SIG has announced plans to release the PCIe 8.0 specification to members by 2028, offering support for data transfer speeds up to 256 GT/s in terms of raw bit rates, and up to 1TB/s of bi-directional speed when used in a x16 configuration. Given how long it takes for new PCIe standards to roll out, […]

The post PCIe 8.0 to be up to 16 times faster than PCIe 4.0 appeared first on Liliputing.

Cisco said that one of its representatives fell victim to a voice phishing attack that allowed threat actors to download profile information belonging to users of a third-party customer relationship management system.

“Our investigation has determined that the exported data primarily consisted of basic account profile information of individuals who registered for a user account on Cisco.com,” the company disclosed. Information included names, organization names, addresses, Cisco assigned user IDs, email addresses, phone numbers, and account-related metadata such as creation date.

Et tu, Cisco?

Cisco said that the breach didn’t expose customers’ confidential or proprietary information, password data, or other sensitive information. The company went on to say that investigators found no evidence that other CRM instances were compromised or that any of its products or services were affected.

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A federal jury found on Friday that Meta violated the California Invasion of Privacy Act, the state's wiretap law, by collecting data from a period-tracker app without user consent.

Plaintiffs in a class-action case proved by a preponderance of evidence that Meta intentionally eavesdropped on and/or recorded conversations using an electronic device, said a verdict form released yesterday in US District Court for the Northern District of California. Plaintiffs also proved that they had a reasonable expectation of privacy and that Meta did not have consent from all parties to eavesdrop on and/or record the conversations, the jury found.

The lawsuit was filed in 2021 against Flo Health, maker of an app for tracking periods, ovulation, and pregnancy. Facebook owner Meta, Google, and app analytics company Flurry were added as defendants later. The plaintiffs settled with Flo Health, Google, and Flurry before the trial, leaving Meta as the only remaining defendant.

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OpenAI is preparing to raise what could be its final defense to stop The New York Times from digging through a spectacularly broad range of ChatGPT logs to hunt for any copyright-infringing outputs that could become the most damning evidence in the hotly watched case.

In a joint letter Thursday, both sides requested to hold a confidential settlement conference on August 7. Ars confirmed with the NYT's legal team that the conference is not about settling the case but instead was scheduled to settle one of the most disputed aspects of the case: news plaintiffs searching through millions of ChatGPT logs.

That means it's possible that this week, ChatGPT users will have a much clearer understanding of whether their private chats might be accessed in the lawsuit. In the meantime, OpenAI has broken down the "highly complex" process required to make deleted chats searchable in order to block the NYT's request for broader access.

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Over the past few days I’ve spotted a bunch of mini PCs from Chinese brands that are using a new processor based on slightly older technology. The AMD Ryzen 7 H 255 processor is an 8-core, 16-thread chip that’s made for the Chinese market, but which is showing up in mini PCs shipped to customers globally. The […]

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