Technology

Bert's idea appears simple:

   What if your computer made a little noise each time it sends data to Google?

So this is what he did. A piece of software dubbed googerteller designed for his Linux computer that emits a scratchy beep when the computer detects information flowing out from his computer to one of Google's computers.

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After announcing the tool in a tweet the video quickly received over a million views. Spurred by this attention Bert decided to develop his tool further and include trackers not only from Google but also Facebook and dozens of other trackers.

The truth is many of the ills of today’s internet have a single thing in common: they are built on a system of corporate surveillance. Multiple companies, large and small, collect data about where we go, what we do, what we read, who we communicate with, and so on. They use this data in multiple ways and, if it suits their business model, may sell it to anyone who wants it—including law enforcement. Addressing this shared reality will better promote human rights and civil liberties, while simultaneously holding space for free expression, creativity, and innovation than many of the issue-specific bills we’ve seen over the past decade.

In other words, whatever online harms you want to alleviate, you can do it better, with a broader impact, if you do privacy first.

Yes, all of them.

Tesla is recalling all 3,878 Cybertrucks that it has shipped to date, due to a problem where the accelerator pedal can get stuck, putting drivers at risk of a crash, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The recall caps a tumultuous week for Tesla. The company laid off more than 10% of its workforce on Monday, and lost two of its highest-ranking executives. A few days later, Tesla asked shareholders to re-vote on CEO Elon Musk’s massive compensation package that was struck down by a judge earlier this year.

We are at a unique juncture in the AI timeline; one in which it’s still remarkably nebulous as to what generative AI systems actually can and cannot do, or what their actual market propositions really are — and yet it’s one in which they nonetheless enjoy broad cultural and economic interest.

It’s also notably a point where, if you happen to be, say, an executive or a middle manager who’s invested in AI but it’s not making you any money, you don’t want to be caught admitting doubt or asking, now, in 2024, ‘well what is AI actually, and what is it good for, really?’ This combination of widespread uncertainty and dominance of the zeitgeist, for the time being, continues to serve the AI companies, who lean even more heavily on mythologizing — much more so than, say, Microsoft selling Office software suites or Apple hocking the latest iPhone — to push their products. In other words, even now, this far into its reign over the tech sector, “AI” — a highly contested term already — is, largely, what its masters tell us it is, as well as how much we choose to believe them.

And that, it turns out, is an uncanny echo of the original smoke and mirrors phenomenon from which that politics journo cribbed the term. The phrase describes the then-high tech magic lanterns in the 17th and 18th centuries and the illusionists and charlatans who exploited them to convince an excitable and paying public that they could command great powers — including the ability illuminate demons and monsters or raise the spirits of the dead — while tapping into widespread anxieties about too-fast progress in turbulent times. I didn’t set out to write a whole thing about the origin of the smoke and mirrors and its relevance to Our Modern Moment, but, well, sometimes the right rabbit hole finds you at the right time.

Awash in vehicle data, most car manufacturers, or OEMs—original equipment manufacturers—found themselves in an unfamiliar role. “What has given rise to the industry is that most OEMs have recognized that they are better at making cars than they are at processing and handling data,” said Andrew Jackson, research director at PTOLEMUS Consulting Group, which studies the connected vehicle industry.

This created an opening for a new kind of third-party data company, vehicle data hubs, which are at the center of the connected vehicle data market.

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Andrea Amico is founder and CEO of Privacy4Cars, an automotive data privacy company. Amico said of vehicle data hubs, “So, there’s many sources out there. Their business proposition is collect all this data, create massive databases, try to standardize this data as much as possible and then literally sell it. So that’s their business model.”

There are two clear, connected issues to address. The first is the extent of power concentration, which contradicts the decentralised spirit I originally envisioned. This has segmented the web, with a fight to keep users hooked on one platform to optimise profit through the passive observation of content. This exploitative business model is particularly grave in this year of elections that could unravel political turmoil. Compounding this issue is the second, the personal data market that has exploited people’s time and data with the creation of deep profiles that allow for targeted advertising and ultimately control over the information people are fed.

How has this happened? Leadership, hindered by a lack of diversity, has steered away from a tool for public good and one that is instead subject to capitalist forces resulting in monopolisation. Governance, which should correct for this, has failed to do so, with regulatory measures being outstripped by the rapid development of innovation, leading to a widening gap between technological advancements and effective oversight.

The future hinges on our ability to both reform the current system and create a new one that genuinely serves the best interests of humanity. To achieve this, we must break down data silos to encourage collaboration, create market conditions in which a diversity of options thrive to fuel creativity, and shift away from polarising content to an environment shaped by a diversity of voices and perspectives that nurture empathy and understanding.

Killed by Google is the Google graveyard; a free and open source list of discontinued Google services, products, devices, and apps. We aim to be a source of factual information about the history surrounding Google's dead projects.

Contributors from around the world help compile, research, and maintain the information about dying and dead Google products.

"In Soviet Russia… erm, I mean, oh, whatever… products buy you."

It's clear that HP's tactics are meant to coax HP printer owners into committing to HP ink, which helps the company drive recurring revenue and makes up for money lost when the printers are sold. Lores confirmed in his interview that HP loses money when it sells a printer and makes money through supplies.

But HP's ambitions don't end there. It envisions a world where all of its printer customers also subscribe to an HP program offering ink and other printer-related services. "Our long-term objective is to make printing a subscription. This is really what we have been driving," Lores said.

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HP has faced numerous lawsuits in relation to blocking device functionality due to third-party ink and has paid out millions as a result. So why is it still continuing down this road? That might be partially explained by the company's perspective on the vendor-customer relationship.

When people buy an HP printer, they consider it an investment. But HP thinks that when you buy a printer, the company is investing in you.

As Lores put it:

"This is something we announced a few years ago that our goal was to reduce the number of what we call unprofitable customers. Because every time a customer buys a printer, it's an investment for us. We're investing [in] that customer, and if this customer doesn’t print enough or doesn’t use our supplies, it’s a bad investment."

On Thursday, Internet pioneer Vint Cerf announced that Dr. David L. Mills, the inventor of Network Time Protocol (NTP), died peacefully at age 85 on January 17, 2024. The announcement came in a post on the Internet Society mailing list after Cerf was informed of David's death by Mills' daughter, Leigh.

"He was such an iconic element of the early Internet," wrote Cerf.

Dr. Mills created the Network Time Protocol (NTP) in 1985 to address a crucial challenge in the online world: the synchronization of time across different computer systems and networks. In a digital environment where computers and servers are located all over the world, each with its own internal clock, there's a significant need for a standardized and accurate timekeeping system.

NTP provides the solution by allowing clocks of computers over a network to synchronize to a common time source. This synchronization is vital for everything from data integrity to network security. For example, NTP keeps network financial transaction timestamps accurate, and it ensures accurate and synchronized timestamps for logging and monitoring network activities.

Capitalism relies on maintaining an artificial scarcity of essential goods and services (like housing, healthcare, transport, etc), through processes of enclosure and commodification. We know that enclosure enables monopolists to raise prices and maximize their profits (consider the rental market, the US healthcare system, or the British rail system). But it also has another effect. When essential goods are privatized and expensive, people need more income than they would otherwise require to access them. To get it they are compelled to increase their labour in capitalist markets, working to produce new things that may not be needed (with increased energy use, resource use, and ecological pressure) simply to access things that clearly are needed, and which are quite often already there.

Take housing, for example. If your rent goes up, you suddenly have to work more just to keep the same roof over your head.  At an economy-wide level, this dynamic means we need more aggregate production — more growth — in order to meet basic needs.  From the perspective of capital, this ensures a steady flow of labour for private firms, and maintains downward pressure on wages to facilitate capital accumulation. For the rest of us it means needless exploitation, insecurity, and ecological damage. Artificial scarcity also creates growth dependencies: because survival is mediated by prices and wages, when productivity improvements and recessions lead to unemployment people suffer loss of access to essential goods — even when the output of those goods is not affected — and growth is needed to create new jobs and resolve the social crisis.

There is a way out of this trap: by decommodifying essential goods and services, we can eliminate artificial scarcity and ensure public abundance, de-link human well-being from growth, and reduce growthist pressures.