We come from the future.

https://gizmodo.com

  • Google Will Turn Off Cookies for 30 Million People on January 4
    https://gizmodo.com/google-chrome-cookie-privacy-sandbox-launch-date-jan-4-1851098807

    Donc, pour vous protéger des méchants cookies de ces infâmes publicitaires et autres courtiers de données, vous allez vous engager dans l’armée Google et son grand président dictateur général.
    Effectivement, un pas en avant pour la vie privée
    Et trois pas en arrière dans la concentration du web sous l’égide des béhémots.
    Mille pas en arrière pour la liberté et l’interopérabilité.

    Google announced Thursday that it will start its long-anticipated slaughter of the internet’s cookies starting on January 4th, when it will block them for 1% of Chrome users, or about 30 million people. It’s the first major step in its Privacy Sandbox project, which aims to replace cookies with a different kind of tracking that Google says is better for your privacy.

    For the past 30 years, websites and tech companies have used so-called “third-party cookies” as the primary way to track consumers online. Has that pair of shoes you added to your cart three weeks ago been following you around in ads on the web? There are probably third-party cookies involved. These cookies let websites partner with other companies including Google and tons of others to keep tabs on everything you do online. That’s great for companies, and terrible for your privacy because it means there are a lot of businesses who get to keep a history of all of your web browsing.

    In place of cookies, Google has introduced a new set of tools that makes the Chrome browser itself keep tabs on what you’re doing online. Essentially, that data stays on your device, and your browser sorts you into various categories, or “Ad Topics” as Google calls them. Think “Yoga Fan” or “Young Conservative.” Websites can ask Chrome what categories you’re in, but they won’t be able to figure out exactly who you are (at least not using cookies, there are other less popular techniques).

    Make no mistake, Chrome is still tracking you, and doing it in a way that browsers like Firefox and Safari don’t. But most people don’t bother to change browsers, and if nothing else, Google’s shiny new version of Chrome is a step forward for privacy because it reveals less information about you and what you’ve been up to on the internet.

    “We are making one of the largest changes to how the Internet works at a time when people, more than ever, are relying on the free services and content that the web offers,” said Victor Wong, Google’s senior director of product management for Privacy Sandbox, told Gizmodo in an interview in April, 2023. “The mission of the Privacy Sandbox team writ large is to keep people’s activity private across a free and open Internet, and that supports the broader company mission, which is to make sure that information is still accessible for everyone and useful.”

    These Privacy Sandbox cookie replacements are already available on the Chrome browser, but for now, it’s an optional tool. You can go into your settings and disable them if you don’t like the idea.

    These moves are a big deal because the vast majority of internet users are on Chrome, which means when Google is done with its cookie killing, they’ll essentially be dead for good.

    If you see a popup in Chrome on January 4th, that means you’re in the test group of 1% of users who are getting “Tracking Protection” by default, which is Google’s name for the cookie-blocking tool. When tracking protection is on, you’ll see a little eyeball logo in the URL bar.

    #Google #Cookies #Vie_Privée
    This is a major change to how the internet works, so there are going to be some bugs. Cookies aren’t just used for spying, they also keep track of whether you’re logged in, what you have in your cart, and a variety of other convenient things. Google is working to single out the bad cookies and save the good ones, but some things will inevitably break in the early stages. You’ll be able to disable Tracking Protection on the fly to solve any issues, and Chrome will prompt you to disable it for a given website if it notices you’re having issues.

  • Opinion | Exploitation minière des fonds marins : la menace se concrétise | Les Échos
    https://www.lesechos.fr/idees-debats/cercle/opinion-exploitation-miniere-des-fonds-marins-la-menace-se-concretise-19605

    Dès aujourd’hui [10/07/2023], une entreprise peut demander à l’Autorité internationale des fonds marins (AIFM) une licence provisoire d’exploitation commerciale des grands fonds. Cette aberration, rendue possible par une faille dans les procédures de l’AIFM, intervient alors que les négociations sur le cadre réglementaire de ces activités n’ont pas encore abouti.

    Les entreprises minières, la canadienne The Metal Company en tête, se frottent les mains et pourraient bien imposer l’exploitation de ce patrimoine commun à toute l’humanité au mépris de l’esprit du multilatéralisme.

    Negotiators Just Missed a Deadline to Regulate Deep-Sea Mining
    https://gizmodo.com/negotiators-missed-deadline-regulate-deep-sea-mining-1850640271

    In the summer of 2021, the Pacific Island nation of Nauru gave the ISA notice that a subsidiary of the [Canadian] firm [The Metals Company], which Nauru is backing as a state sponsor, intended to submit an application to begin deep-sea mining.

    In announcing The Metals Company’s plan to become the first, Nauru activated the “two-year rule,” an obscure legal provision that obligates the ISA to finalize mining regulations within that time frame, or consider any applications if the deadline passes before the rules are done.

    #folie

  • The EU Suppressed a 300-Page Study That Found Piracy Doesn’t Harm Sales
    https://gizmodo.com/the-eu-suppressed-a-300-page-study-that-found-piracy-do-1818629537

    The European Commission paid €360,000 (about $428,000) for a study on how piracy impacts the sales of copyrighted music, books, video games, and movies. But the EU never shared the report—possibly because it determined that there is no evidence that piracy is a major problem.

  • CNET’s AI-Written Articles Are Riddled With Errors
    https://gizmodo.com/cnet-ai-chatgpt-news-robot-1849996151

    For more than two months, CNET has been pumping out posts generated by ChatGPT. The site has published 78 of these articles total, and up to 12 in a single day (as of November 11, 2022), originally under the byline “CNET Money Staff,” and now just “CNET Money.” Initially, the outlet seemed eager to have its AI authorship fly under the radar, disclosing the lack of a human writer only in an obscure byline description on the robot’s “author” page. Then, Futurism and other media outlets caught on. Critique followed. CNET’s editor in chief, Connie Guglielmo, wrote a statement about it.

    And just like the outlet’s public acknowledgement of its use of AI only followed widespread criticism, CNET didn’t identify nor aim to fix all these inaccuracies noted on Tuesday, all on its own. The media outlet’s correction only came after Futurism directly alerted CNET to some of the errors, Futurism reported.

    • Donc : est-ce que l’AI remplace des vrais boulots de vrais gens, là je pense que la réponse elle est vite répondue. Les questions morales, ainsi que la qualité des productions, sont des questions secondaires par rapport aux enjeux économiques, et tout ce qui est « boulot alimentaire » et « tout venant » est déjà menacé.

    • Ça va sans doute avoir un effet sur la monétisation des contenus de valeur. Peut-être. C’est à dire que nous allons devoir payer pour accéder à des contenus générés par des humains certifiés et compétents... ou à des IA vérifiées et certifiées...

      Ceci dit, il va aussi y avoir une augmentation exponentielle du chaos informationnel...

  • An FTC Proposal Could Kill Noncompete Clauses
    https://gizmodo.com/noncompete-tech-jobs-linkedin-ftc-salary-promotion-1849954126

    Viva Lina Khan !!!

    “Noncompetes block workers from freely switching jobs, depriving them of higher wages and better working conditions, and depriving businesses of a talent pool that they need to build and expand,” said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan in a press release. “By ending this practice, the FTC’s proposed rule would promote greater dynamism, innovation, and healthy competition.”

    Elizabeth Wilkins, the Director of the Office of Policy Planning says that research shows that noncompetes restrict workers’ mobility and suppress workers’ wages, even those not subject to noncompetes or noncompetes that are unenforceable under state law. She added, “the proposed rule would ensure that employers can’t exploit their outsized bargaining power to limit workers’ opportunities and stifle competition.”

    Noncompete clauses are used to prevent workers from working for a competitor or starting a competing business either within a geographical area or for a certain period of time after the employee exits the company. The FTC estimates that 1 in 5 Americans, or 30 million workers, are bound by noncompete clauses. The commission argues that this restriction lowers wages, as workers are forced to remain at their current position and unable to negotiate a higher salary with a competitor, while preventing new businesses from forming.

    #FTC #Line_Khan #Conditions_travail #USA

  • Amazon Lost $1 Trillion In Market Cap This Year
    https://gizmodo.com/amazon-market-cap-amazon-prime-e-commerce-1849764529

    Amazon, valued at $1.882 trillion on June 21, on Thursday reported a comparatively measly $878 billion valuation. Microsoft, which briefly surpassed Apple as the world’s most valuable company last year, wasn’t far behind, with market valuation losses hovering around $900 billion. Combined, the two companies’ declines capture the effect of a lousy year most in tech would like to soon forget.

  • A Note About Today’s Wordle Game - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/09/crosswords/a-note-about-todays-wordle-game.html

    At New York Times Games, we take our role seriously as a place to entertain and escape, and we want Wordle to remain distinct from the news.

    Today’s New York Times Wordle Answer is Fetus
    https://gizmodo.com/new-york-times-apologizes-after-wordle-of-the-day-is-fe-1848898991

    Emotions are running high around the word “fetus” after last week’s news about the possible end to Roe V. Wade and women’s right to safe abortion.

    F-E-T-U-S is also a five-letter word, so some people were more than a little surprised when it ended up as one of the answers to Monday’s Wordle.

    NYT’s Wordle swap part of an ongoing gaming debate
    https://www.axios.com/2022/05/09/wordle-new-york-times-political-games

    The New York Times’ decision to change Monday’s Wordle answer is part of a long-running debate about how politically charged games should be.

    #jeu_vidéo #jeux_vidéo #jeu_vidéo_wordle #the_new_york_times #the_new_york_times_games #actualité #politique #mots_croisés #débat #polémique #fœtus #vocabulaire #justice #législation #états-unis #everdeen_mason #naomi_clark #jeu_vidéo_far_cry_6 #jeu_vidéo_call_of_duty #ian_bogost #roe_v_wade

  • Canada Now Willing to Punish Crimes Committed on the Moon
    https://gizmodo.com/canada-crimes-committed-on-the-moon-1848859299

    More than 50 years ago, Apollo astronauts left 96 bags of their own waste on the surface of the Moon. But they didn’t exactly fear getting hit with a fine for littering, as space—the Moon included—has been a largely lawless region. Canadian law makers are hoping to change that.

    Canada amended its criminal code on Thursday to allow for the prosecution of crimes committed by Canadian astronauts during trips to the Moon or on the lunar surface itself. Foreign astronauts who threaten the life or security of a Canadian astronaut can also be punished by Canadian law, according to broadcaster CBC.

    Canada’s criminal code had already included crimes committed by its astronauts aboard the International Space Station as punishable by law. But the recent amendment now accounts for the Canadian Space Agency’s participation in the upcoming Artemis program, through which NASA intends on sending people back to the Moon’s surface later this decade, and possibly as early as 2025.

    The Artemis 2 mission, in which a crewed Orion capsule will travel to the Moon and back without landing, will include a Canadian astronaut. Canada is also contributing a robotic arm to the Lunar Gateway, a planned outpost in orbit around the Moon. The European Space Agency, as well as Japan’s Aerospace Exploration Agency, are also taking part in the Artemis program.

    As these international collaborations take shape in the midst of an evolving industry, it has become more crucial to reconsider the laws currently in place when it comes to governing space. As it stands, space is loosely governed by the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which was penned in light of the space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The treaty hasn’t been updated since, and article six of the Outer Space Treaty states that nations will supervise the activities of their citizens in space.

    #Espace #Communs #Loi #Traité_espace

  • PredPol Crime Predictions Target Poor, Blacks, Latinos, byAaron Sankin, Dhruv Mehrotra, Surya Mattu, Dell Cameron, Annie Gilbertson, Daniel Lempres, and Josh Lash
    https://gizmodo.com/crime-prediction-software-promised-to-be-free-of-biases-1848138977

    These communities weren’t just targeted more—in some cases, they were targeted relentlessly. Crimes were predicted every day, sometimes multiple times a day, sometimes in multiple locations in the same neighborhood: thousands upon thousands of crime predictions over years. A few neighborhoods in our data were the subject of more than 11,000 predictions. The software often recommended daily patrols in and around public and subsidized housing, targeting the poorest of the poor. “Communities with troubled relationships with police—this is not what they need,” said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “They need resources to fill basic social needs.” Source: (...)

  • Glasgow Climate Negotiation ’Leaves Room’ for Fossil Fuels
    https://gizmodo.com/glasgow-climate-negotiation-leaves-room-for-fossil-fuel-1848053158

    The language around fossil fuels, which was introduced by the coal-dependent countries of India and China at the last minute, is both new and maddeningly riddled with loopholes for polluters. “Phase-down” of coal is open-ended and “efforts” provides no certainty on actions. Calling subsidies “inefficient” also leaves the door open to interpretation and could allow countries to keep digging up reserves while banking on unproven carbon capture technology under the banner of efficiency.

    U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry invoked the well-trod line in a speech to the group of assembled negotiators and said it couldn’t “let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” That’s a fair tactic when you’re looking to compromise. But physics doesn’t do compromises.

    #climat #criminel

  • How Your Ad Blocker Can Track You Across the Web
    https://gizmodo.com/how-your-ad-blocker-can-track-you-across-the-web-1847459354

    Ah, ad blockers. Even if you aren’t among the growing number of people downloading one of these extensions, chances are you’ve heard people sing their praises for all sorts of reasons. They make the web a less cluttered, less laggy, less invasive place to be. So naturally, the money-hungry tech upstarts have found a way to ruin these tools for their own gain.

    Cybersecurity researcher Sergey Mostsevenko broke down exactly how this sort of scheme works in a blog post from last month. As he put it, the average ad blocker leaves tiny traces of data on the websites you visit. When those traces are collected en masse, a bad actor (or tech company) could use these signals to identify your specific browser—a process literally called “fingerprinting” in the ad-targeting industry. And like a fingerprint, these signals are basically impossible to burn off without taking some pretty drastic steps.

    “Fingerprinting” refers to a particularly scuzzy form of tracking that’s designed to be near-impossible for users to shake off. Cookies can be cleared, your cache can be flushed, and you can browse exclusively in incognito mode, but your browser’s “fingerprint” is cobbled together from a slew of different signals: your IP address, your window size, your language settings, and much, much more. When you visit a web page that has a hidden piece of fingerprinting code on it, these data points get sucked in and a hashed jumble of numbers and letters—your unique fingerprint—gets spit out. By tracking which fingerprints crop up on which sites, these companies can covertly track you no matter how much you beg them to stop.

    Naturally when you use an ad blocker, it’s going to give off some sort of signal to the site you’re visiting—but not enough to uniquely identify your browser. In order to do that, Mostsevenko explained, you need to get a bit creative.

    Capitalist hellscape aside, there’s still a few steps you can take to keep your browser—ad-blocked or not—from being fingerprinted. The Electronic Frontier Foundation suggests disabling Javascript from running whenever you can, and using a popular browser like Safari or Firefox which have each taken their own steps to quash fingerprinting attempts. Keep extensions to a minimum, invest in a good VPN, and no matter how hard a website begs, always always turn down their cookies.

    #Fingerprinting #Publicité #Ad_Blockers #Traces #surveillance

  • Researchers May Have Found True Identity of Ancient ’Hobbit’ Species
    https://gizmodo.com/researchers-may-have-found-true-identity-of-ancient-hob-1846528528

    Anthropologists know of at least two ancient species of tiny humans that lived on the islands of southeast Asia over 50,000 years ago. The origin of these extinct humans is unknown, but new research suggests they’re more closely related to Denisovans and Neanderthals—and, by consequence, modern humans—than previously thought.

    New research published in Nature Ecology & Evolution has found no evidence of interbreeding between modern humans (Homo sapiens) and two extinct species of short-statured humans, Homo floresiensis (commonly known as the Flores Island “hobbits”) and Homo luzonensis (found in the Philippines). Fossil evidence of these two species, described in 2004 and 2019 respectively, suggests these island-dwelling humans stood no taller than around 3 feet and 7 inches (109 centimeters), a possible consequence of insular dwarfism—an evolutionary process in which the body size of a species shrinks over time as a consequence of limited access to resources.

    At the same time, the new paper, led by João Teixeira from the University of Adelaide, provides further confirmation of interbreeding between the Denisovans and modern humans, specifically modern humans living in Island Southeast Asia, an area that encompasses tropical islands between east Asia, Australia, and New Guinea. Denisovans—a sister group of Neanderthals—reached the area some 50,000 to 60,000 years ago, but archaeologists have yet to uncover a shred of fossil evidence related to these so-called “southern Denisovans.” That’s obviously weird, given the overwhelming genetic evidence that they lived in this part of the world, but it means there are important archaeological discoveries still waiting to be found. At least in theory.

    So, the new paper, co-authored by anthropologist Chris Stringer from the Natural History Museum in London, suggests modern humans interbred with Denisovans but not H. floresiensis or H. luzonensis. That’s an important result, because it could help to explain the presence of the diminutive humans, who died out around 50,000 years ago, in this part of the world. Excitingly, it could mean that these “super-archaics,” in the parlance of the researchers, “are not super-archaic after all, and are more closely related to [modern] humans than previously thought,” explained Teixeira, a population geneticist, in an email.

    In other words, H. floresiensis or H. luzonensis might actually be the elusive southern Denisovans.

  • Scientists Don’t Know Why All These Sea Creatures Are Swimming in Circles
    https://gizmodo.com/scientists-dont-know-why-all-these-sea-creatures-are-sw-1846503767

    Marine researchers in Japan and elsewhere have discovered yet another enigma of the aquatic world. In a new paper out Thursday, they detail their finding that various species of large sea animals, from turtles to sharks to seals, swim in circles for no clear reason. This circling could have several purposes for the animals, such as aiding their navigation or foraging for food, the researchers say.

    According to the researchers, recent advances in technology have allowed scientists to get a fuller picture of how animals in the ocean move through their environment with much better precision than before. Lead author Tomoko Narazaki, from the University of Tokyo, and her colleagues decided to put this tech to good use by looking at the movements of green sea turtles during their nesting season, when female turtles return to their birthplace to lay eggs.

    They moved turtles from their nesting location to elsewhere, so that they could observe how they navigated back to the original spot. But once they did, they spotted a peculiar pattern: the turtles would often circle at a relatively constant speed at least twice around, then go back to their normal swimming as they ventured back home.

    Curious, Narazaki told others in her field about the discovery. Eventually, she teamed up with some of these researchers to look back at movement data that had been collected earlier about a range of other marine animals across different branches of the evolutionary tree. And sure enough, they found the same sort of circling behavior pop up repeatedly. These circling animals included fish (tiger sharks), birds (king penguins), and mammals (Antarctic fur seals and Cuvier’s beaked whales).

    Their work is published in iScience.

    “All of the data used in our study was initially collected for different purposes (e.g., to study foraging behavior of sharks etc.). Data of each species was analyzed by different co-authors for different aspects,” Narazaki told Gizmodo in an email. “So, it took a while for us to realize that this circling is a common behavior across many species—until we collaborated.”

    On the surface, circling is hardly practical for these animals’ survival, since the most energy-efficient way to travel anywhere in the ocean is usually a straight line. So that probably means it has one or more important functions that are worth the extra effort. Right now, though, all the team has are some educated guesses as to what’s going on, which may vary between different species.

    The sharks, for instance, seem to circle most often around where they get food, indicating that it provides some advantage in hunting. Meanwhile, other research has shown that some species of whales will use circling in groups as a way to create “bubble nets” to catch their small fish prey. But feeding likely isn’t the only purpose for circling.

    In at least one male tiger shark, the team found evidence that circling was part of its courtship ritual in front of a female. Seals and penguins seem to circle most often near the water’s surface or outside of their typical foraging hours, both of which indicate it isn’t part of their feeding technique. The team also cited earlier research that found northern elephant seals will circle during their drift dives—lazy, passive dives that help them rest or process their last meal.

    In the turtles, the circling may help them reorient their navigation skills, which rely on smell, sight, and sensing magnetic fields. The turtles would frequently circle just before the last stretch of their journey, and for a while, too. One turtle was observed to circle a whopping 76 times before moving on.

    “Given that similar circling behavior was observed across a wide variety of marine megafauna taxa, it might be possible that it is a behavioral convergence having similar purposes,” Narazaki said. “But, for now, the purpose and the function of this behavior remain unknown.”

    Of course, we know that lots of animals on land circle for various reasons (just ask your nearest dog before he poops). But the obscurity of the vast ocean means there are probably all sorts of behaviors commonplace among these animals that we simply haven’t gotten to see yet. By studying the how and why of marine circling more closely, the researchers hope to illuminate this almost alien world a bit more.


    Illustration : Narazaki, et al/iScience

  • Deadly Super Yeast Found in the Wild for the First Time
    https://gizmodo.com/deadly-super-yeast-found-in-the-wild-for-the-first-time-1846485781

    A frightening superbug yeast that’s killing people in hospitals can also survive just fine outside of them, according to a new study out Tuesday. For the first time, researchers say they’ve discovered multidrug-resistant strains of the fungus Candida auris in a natural environment, in the remote wetlands of India. The findings indicate that these sorts of environments could be the yeast’s native home, while also providing evidence that warming temperatures due to climate change have recently made the fungus dangerous to humans, as some scientists have theorized.

    C. auris was first discovered in 2009 by doctors in Japan, who isolated it from a patient’s ear infection (the first known cases date back to the mid-1990s, however). Since then, the yeast has been found in over a dozen countries, including the U.S. It can cause life-threatening infections, especially in already weakened hospital patients. But what makes the yeast especially scary is that it’s often resistant to multiple antifungal medications at once, making these infections difficult to treat and frequently fatal. The fungus is also a survivor outside of the human body, so once it’s established somewhere, it’s incredibly hard to remove it from the environment. If that wasn’t enough, C. auris can’t be identified easily through conventional tests, which can delay care and increase the risk of death.

    There have only been around 1,600 cases of the yeast infection identified in the U.S. since 2009, but it’s considered one of the most serious emerging germ threats we face today.

  • Maryland Becomes First State to Tax Big Tech’s Ad Revenue
    https://gizmodo.com/maryland-becomes-first-state-in-country-to-place-a-tax-1846267819

    Maryland decided to take a chunk of Big Tech’s advertising dollars on Friday, successfully passing legislation that would place a maximum tax of 10% on revenue from digital ads. Analysts estimate that the tax will generate about $250 million in its first year, money that the Maryland says will go to schools. State lawmakers overrode Republican Gov. Larry Hogan’s veto of the tax bill, making Maryland the first state in the country to tax digital advertising sold by companies like Facebook, (...)

    #fiscalité #bénéfices #GAFAM #publicité

    ##fiscalité ##publicité

  • Facebook’s Privacy Policies Are An Unreadable Mess
    https://gizmodo.com/what-facebooks-privacy-policies-dont-tell-you-1846125879

    Folks, I’m gonna be honest with you. Over my (short) tenure covering digital privacy, I’ve seen my fair share of deeply shitty tech companies pulling deeply shitty stunts in attempts to profit off our personal data. Facebook is one of the names that comes up most frequently here, and that’s partially because their privacy policy is crafted so well to tell you things without actually telling you things. In the aftermath 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal, people began digging into the company’s (...)

    #Oculus #Facebook #Giphy #Instagram #WhatsApp #consentement #conditions #manipulation

  • Developing Algorithms That Might One Day Be Used Against You
    https://gizmodo.com/developing-algorithms-that-might-one-day-be-used-agains-1846114150

    Machine learning algorithms serve us the news we read, the ads we see, and in some cases even drive our cars. But there’s an insidious layer to these algorithms : They rely on data collected by and about humans, and they spit our worst biases right back out at us. For example, job candidate screening algorithms may automatically reject names that sound like they belong to nonwhite people, while facial recognition software is often much worse at recognizing women or nonwhite faces than it is (...)

    #algorithme #racisme #sexisme #biais #discrimination