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2023-04-26

Smartphones with Qualcomm chip secretly send personal data to Qualcomm​

News​

  • Smartphones with Qualcomm chips are sending personal data to Qualcomm without user consent, circumventing Android's protective mechanisms and raising privacy concerns.
  • Even privacy-focused phones like Fairphone contain the AMSS blobware, which shares personal data with Qualcomm XTRA Service.
  • Nitrokey's NitroPhone uses GrapheneOS to prevent Google from obtaining and storing IP addresses, ensuring personal information is not shared with Qualcomm.

Industry Reactions​

  • Qualcomm admits to exfiltrating data through its iZat chipsets, which includes geolocation, Wi-Fi network name, and a list of installed apps, and is used for ad targeting and unspecified security objectives
  • Privacy organizations like NOYB are advocating against tech giants infringing on GDPR compliances

The EU suppressed a 300-page study that found piracy doesn't harm sales (2017)​

News​

  • The EU paid €360,000 for a study on the impact of piracy on sales of copyrighted material but never released the 304-page report, possibly because it found no "robust statistical evidence of displacement of sales by online copyright infringements."
  • The only negative correlation found was that for every ten recent top films watched illegally, four fewer films are consumed legally.
  • The report was only made public after Julia Reda, a member of the European Parliament, obtained it through an EU Freedom of Information access to document request.

Industry Reactions​

  • Copyright holders are seen as hindering culture preservation and may be hostile to sharing efforts.
  • The impact of piracy on sales is controversial, with some studies finding no significant evidence of harm except for major blockbuster films.

Microsoft Edge is leaking the sites you visit to Bing​

News​

  • Microsoft Edge appears to be sending URLs visited by users to its Bing API website, as users on Reddit have noticed.
  • This is due to a poorly implemented new feature in Edge called "creator follow," which sends almost every domain visited to Bing as part of its functionality, even if it is not being followed by the user.
  • Until Microsoft addresses this issue, it is recommended to disable the "follow creators" feature in Edge to prevent further URLs from being sent to Bing.

Industry Reactions​

  • Ad-blockers like uBlock Origin and OnlyFans are encouraged to combat ads and trackers on web pages
  • Firefox allows for disabling search suggestions and offers a more user-friendly design, making it a good alternative for privacy-conscious users.

Transformers from Scratch​

News​

  • Matrix multiplication is core to the development of transformers, which are neural networks used in natural language processing.
  • Transformers use attention masks, multi-word feature building, and decoder stacks to efficiently process and generate sequences of text.
  • Transformers can also process other types of data such as audio by pre-processing it into dense vectors.

Industry Reactions​

  • The post explains the trade-off between model dimension and loss of information
  • Jay Alammar's Illustrated Transformer series is recommended for learning transformer types and self-attention

Use of antibiotics in farming 'endangering human immune system'​

News​

  • Antibiotics used in farming are causing bacteria to become more resistant to the human immune system, according to research from the University of Oxford.
  • Colistin, which was widely used as a livestock food additive in China until it was banned, has led to the emergence of E. coli strains that are able to evade the human immune system's first line of defence.
  • There are concerns that the study's findings could compromise the development of new antibiotic medicines in the same class as colistin, known as antimicrobial peptides, which are naturally produced by most living organisms in their innate immune response.

Industry Reactions​

  • Animal agriculture has negative impacts beyond antibiotic resistance, including deforestation, loss of biodiversity, and waste management problems.
  • The conversation includes suggestions to limit or eliminate meat consumption and adopt more sustainable practices, such as permaculture setups.

People who use Notion to plan their whole lives​

News​

  • Notion, a workplace app, is increasingly being used to organize personal lives such as tracking schedules and logging habits.
  • Its flexibility and high customizability have set it apart from other planning apps and gained a growing following since around 2018.
  • While it can help structure and simplify our lives, it's also important not to prioritize creating to-do lists over completing tasks, and be aware of potential downsides in using the same app for work and personal life.

Industry Reactions​

  • Notion is a popular all-in-one productivity app that offers global search, structured data, templates, and plugins out of the box
  • Users discuss alternatives like Obsidian and Airtable, as well as the pros and cons of using Notion compared to Trello for task management

A non-technical explanation of deep learning​

News​

  • Neural networks learn through machine learning without being taught explicit rules or logic.
  • Deep learning is a breakthrough in machine learning achieved through faster training of neural networks using GPUs.
  • Convolutional neural networks improve efficiency and accuracy by focusing on small portions of data.

Industry Reactions​

  • Discussion on tips for learning technical topics, the use of metaphors and jargon, and debates around the interdisciplinary nature of deep learning
  • Critiques and clarifications offered by commenters on inaccuracies in metaphors used in the article, limitations and challenges of neural network optimization, and debate surrounding the explanation of neural networks in terms of polynomial regression

Deming Paradox: Operationally rigorous companies aren't nice places to work​

News​

  • W. Edwards Deming's philosophy emphasizes operational rigor and continuous improvement, but many Western companies with such processes are not very pleasant places to work.
  • Koch Industries founder Charles Koch was deeply influenced by Deming's ideas and implemented his principles across the entirety of the company, with dramatic results.
  • Although Koch's dedication to Deming's methods led to successful business processes, it also led the company into sticky situations.

Industry Reactions​

  • Companies should design processes that prioritize human needs and avoid treating employees as expendable assets.
  • Amazon's workplace conditions have been subject to controversy and criticism, including workplace bullying, harassment, and unlawful surveillance.

(Note: Three most important points from each section are summarized above)

Shell admits 1.5C climate goal means immediate end to fossil fuel growth​

News​

  • Shell has announced that continued growth in fossil fuel production is incompatible with limiting global temperature increase to 1.5°C, and their new scenario involves an immediate end to growth in oil and gas production.
  • The new scenario includes significant increases in carbon capture use, reducing energy demands, and a reduction in the company's reliance on bioenergy with carbon capture and storage.
  • Despite the decrease in fossil fuel use, the slowness of the decline would still allow for new fossil fuel production, potentially serving Shell's interests.

Industry Reactions​

  • Critics argue setting arbitrary goals is not helpful.
  • Some suggest the global community must cooperate to achieve meaningful change.

Call on the IRS to provide libre tax-filing software​

News​

  • Millions of US taxpayers use proprietary software like TurboTax to file their taxes and feel they have no other option, which means giving up their freedom and private financial information to a third-party company.
  • Upcoming legislation, like the Inflation Reduction Act, requires the IRS to research a government-operated gratis tax return system, and $15 million is allocated for this. On April 5, the IRS released a plan for improving the tax system, including exploring an "electronic service to prepare and file tax returns directly with the IRS".
  • The Americans for Tax Fairness Action Fund launched a petition calling for a gratis, "simple tax filing system that saves taxpayers time and money." The Free Software Foundation is calling on the IRS to make a website for filing tax returns using free software, and individuals can write to the new IRS commissioner with their preference for a software that respects their freedom.

Industry Reactions​

  • Experts are discussing ways to simplify the US tax code, with some suggesting the use of an email system from the IRS that allows taxpayers to view a list of their incomes and deductions.
  • There is debate about whether professional help is necessary for filing taxes, with varying opinions from commenters. Most agree that those with simple tax situations can likely file on their own without an issue.