Tesla replaced laid off US workers with foreign workers using H-1B visas that Musk want to increase
Tesla workers said that many employees let go were more senior engineers with higher compensation and they have been replaced with junior engineers from foreign countries at a lower pay.38C3: Bitlocker bypassed via vulnerabilities (Dec. 2024)
Microsoft's Bitlocker encryption can be circumvented by "downgrading" a patched vulnerability. This is possible despite protection by Secure Boot because a little-known software vulnerability – bitpixie (CVE-2023-21563) – can be exploited. This vulnerability was patched by Microsoft in November 2022 (it has been known since 2023). But CVE-2023-21563 can still be exploited today with a downgrade attack to decrypt BitLocker. Specifically, an outdated Windows boot loader is loaded under Secure Boot in order to start Windows in safe mode. This causes the Bitlocker recovery key (known as the volume mount key, VMK) to be loaded into the computer's RAM.Apple Warns iPhone Users—Do Not Change This Setting
Lockdown Mode is almost certainly not for you, and the downside risks outweigh the benefits. This mode and Google’s Advanced Protection equivalent have been designed for politicians, dissidents, journalists, lawyers engaged in sensitive areas of law. When Lockdown Mode is enabled, your device won’t function like it usually would: certain apps, websites and features will be strictly limited for security, and some experiences may not be available at all. Message attachments will be removed, web pages will not display as normal, some calls will be blocked, some photo albums will be unavailable, some wireless connections will be disabled, and some accessories will stop working.OpenAI's Latest AI Can Cost More Than $1,000 Per Query
o3 "reasons" through problems using a technique known as test-time compute — as in, it takes more time to "think" and explore multiple possibilities before spitting out an answer. But o3 uses well over $1,000 of computing power per task — over 170 times more compute than a low-power version of o3, and leagues beyond its predecessor, which cost less than $4 per task.In 2024, wind overtook gas to become Britain’s largest single source of electricity
Facebook: Who needs users? We have AI slop!
Daily user numbers on Facebook have been plummeting — enough so that they’ve stopped reporting daily active users in their quarterly filings because the number is no longer going up. But Facebook has a plan — they want to simulate a more active service with AI slop so you’ll stay scrolling and clicking! The company literally pays people to generate AI slop, when it could have just banned that.Almost the entire US South is now being blocked by Pornhub
Aylo has publicly supported age verification of users for years, but we believe that any law to this effect must preserve user safety and privacy and must effectively protect children from accessing content intended for adults. VPN use in Florida jumped by as much as 1,150 percent within hours of the age verification law coming into force on January 1. That's even higher than the 967 percent spike in VPN use that VPNMentor saw in Utah in 2023 and substantially higher than a Texas spike of 234 percent—perhaps indicating that users are getting savvier at quickly securing VPN workarounds.Siri “unintentionally” recorded private convos; Apple agrees to pay $95M
Apple has agreed to pay $95 million to settle a lawsuit alleging that its voice assistant Siri routinely recorded private conversations that were then shared with third parties and used for targeted ads. Sometimes Siri would be inadvertently activated when an Apple Watch was raised and speech was detected. The only clue that users seemingly had of Siri's alleged spying was eerily accurate targeted ads that appeared after they had just been talking about specific items like Air Jordans or brands like Olive Garden.