Technology

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/52437522

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Southeast Asian military organizations have been targeted in a China-linked cyberespionage campaign running for years, Palo Alto Networks reports.

Likely ongoing since at least 2020 and attributed to a state-sponsored threat actor tracked as CL-STA-1087, the activity shows a high degree of patience, as the attackers stayed dormant in the compromised environments for months.

“The attackers behind this cluster actively searched for and collected highly specific files concerning military capabilities, organizational structures, and collaborative efforts with Western armed forces,” Palo Alto Networks notes.

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Here is the technical report: Suspected China-Based Espionage Operation Against Military Targets in Southeast Asia

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.bestiver.se/post/990894

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cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/48825506

[The Kenyan Michael Geoffre] Asia eventually hit a breaking point and stopped working for AI companies. He is now the secretary general of a Kenyan organization called the Data Labelers Association (DLA) and the author of “The Emotional Labor Behind AI Intimacy,” a testimony of his time working as the real human labor behind AI sex bots. As part of the DLA, Asia has been working to organize workers to fight for better pay, better mental health services, an end to draconian non-disclosure agreements, and better benefits for a workforce that often earns just a few dollars a day. Data labelers train, refine, and moderate the outputs of AI tools made by the largest companies in the world, yet they are wildly underpaid and haven’t benefitted from the runaway valuations of AI companies.

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Last month, the DLA held one of its largest events at the Nairobi Arboretum, sign up new members, and to help them tell their stories.

These workers are required to stare at horrific content for many hours straight with few mental health resources, are largely managed by opaque algorithms, and, crucially, are the workers powering the runaway valuations of some of the richest and most powerful companies in the world.

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/52177818

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Finland is facing a growing intelligence challenge as Russia and China cyberespionage targeting Finland continues to expand across the country’s technology sector, research institutions, and government networks. The warning comes from Finland’s Security and Intelligence Service (SUPO), which released a new national security overview highlighting the persistent threat from foreign intelligence operations.

The report suggests cyber espionage against Finland is not limited to isolated incidents. Instead, it involves a combination of cyber intrusions, traditional espionage, and influence operations designed to collect sensitive information and shape political or economic decisions.

The warning about Russia and China cyberespionage targeting Finland reflects that countries are no longer focused only on military secrets but also targeting technology development, economic strategies, and innovation ecosystems. Russia and China Cyberespionage Targeting Finland’s Technology Sector

According to the SUPO national security overview, the most frequent intelligence operations linked to foreign states originate from Russia and China. These activities increasingly focus on Finland’s technology sector and research institutions, areas that play a key role in the country’s economic and strategic future.

The report notes that Russia and China cyberespionage targeting Finland often involves penetrating digital systems to access research data, proprietary technologies, and policy discussions. In several cases, state-backed actors have successfully infiltrated the networks of Finnish start-ups.

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/52175933

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The hacking group, attributed to China, is part of a wider cluster of hackers with the collective aim of helping China prepare for an eventual war with Taiwan, according to researchers. U.S. officials have called China’s potential invasion of Taiwan an “epoch-defining threat.” Much of the group’s efforts have focused on hacking Cisco routers at the edge of a company’s network to break in and taking control of surveillance devices that U.S. telecom companies are legally required to install to allow law enforcement to monitor calls and messages.

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The hacks allowed China to obtain call records, text messages, and captured phone audio from senior U.S. officials, many of whom were considered government targets of interest. This prompted the FBI to urge Americans to switch to end-to-end encrypted messaging apps, fearing that a foreign adversary could eavesdrop on their communications.

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Salt Typhoon went even further, hacking at least 200 companies around the world, according to FBI officials. The list of affected countries keeps growing.

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Remote drivers intervene in unusual situations

**The takeaway: As robotaxis and other AI-based technologies proliferate, so does the myth that these systems are fully autonomous. During a recent Senate hearing, industry leader Waymo provided the latest reminder that AI relies on human labor – often low-paid – more than people realize. **

Waymo's chief safety officer, Mauricio Peña, recently noted that when the company's robotaxis encounter unusual situations, they may request real-time input from a remote response agent, receiving human guidance when needed. While some of the contractors work in the US, many operate from other countries, such as the Philippines.

The admission is another example of human workers, often contractors, supporting supposedly autonomous AI systems from behind the curtain. Tesla's robotaxis still rely on human monitors sitting inside each vehicle.

Contract labor has been at the heart of AI since OpenAI sparked the latest wave of investment in the technology several years ago. ChatGPT relied heavily on workers from across the world to train its underlying large language model, often for as little as $15 an hour with no benefits.

Filipino remote workers also oversaw most of the orders taken through Presto Automation's supposedly autonomous fast-food drive-thru system. Meanwhile, Amazon's ill-fated Just Walk Out technology, which claimed to handle physical purchases automatically without involving cash registers, actually relied upon workers in India to monitor customers.

Tesla's robots, the primary reason why the company is discontinuing its most popular vehicles, became arguably the most notorious example of this phenomenon in late 2024. At the company's "We, Robot" event, the robots admitted that they still relied upon human intervention, and a video of a unit falling over after mimicking the motion of its remote operator removing their headset went viral.

However, the senators grilling Peña at the hearing were less concerned about the use of remote workers than the fact that many were not American.

Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey called the employment of foreign remote workers "completely unacceptable." While input lag from workers operating halfway across the world presents a safety issue, lawmakers were also concerned about Waymo's connections to China and other foreign countries.

Although Tesla uses its own cars, Waymo employs vehicles from various countries, including China. The decision drew suspicions that the Alphabet-owned company is attempting to circumvent import restrictions on Chinese vehicles. When asked about the use of internet-connected Chinese cars on American roads, Peña emphasized that the autonomous driving systems are installed in the US.

Correction (Feb 10, 2026): The original version of this article described Waymo vehicles as "switching control" to remote drivers in unusual situations. Waymo says its remote fleet response agents do not directly operate vehicle controls, but instead provide real-time contextual information that the autonomous system uses while remaining in control of the vehicle. The article has been updated to clarify this distinction.

Starting in Firefox version 142, Mozilla released a “Link Previews” feature.

While the feature is problematic, commenters post pointed out that some previews are helpful – e.g. on Wikipedia, where a preview will appear when people hover over a wiki-linked page.

Other commenters pondered about some minimal way to replicate this elsewhere, and it seemed to be worth investigation. Read on as I propose an enhancement to the Fediverse (and maybe even web standards) to make Link Previews great: the Link Preview Manifest.

Amazon's cloud unit, AWS, said on Sunday that power to its data center in the United Arab Emirates was shut down temporarily after objects struck the facility, triggering sparks and a fire.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/48111234

In the new report, Breaking Free: Pathways to a fair technological future (pdf, 100 pages), the Norwegian Consumer Council has delved into enshittification and how to resist it. The report shows how this phenomenon affects both consumers and society at large, but that it is possible to turn the tide. Together with more than 70 consumer groups and other actors in Europe and the US, we are sending letter to policymakers in the EU/EEA, UK and the US.

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"Many people have the feeling that digital services are simply becoming a little bit worse, and it’s not just something you’re imagining. The changes are the result of deliberate choices, as a part of a process called 'enshittification'”, says Finn Lützow-Holm Myrstad, director of digital policy in the Norwegian Consumer Council.

"Enshittification often happens through a myriad of small changes that may, in isolation, seem trivial. Cumulatively, they ruin products and services, exploiting both consumers and third-party businesses in the pursuit of profit. Eventually consumers feel locked in because there are no real alternatives. Digital memories, data, functionality, and even connected devices are being controlled by companies that can make any changes they want, at any time. Many of us end up feeling powerless."

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It’s not too late!

The ongoing enshittification trend is not inevitable; luckily for us, enshittification is not a natural law, Myrstad emphasises:

– Technology must work for people. We must take power from the large digital platforms and give it back to users, innovators, and society. It’s not too late to turn the tide. Technology can be a power for innovation and societal good, but only if we make sure that it serves us, not just the largest companies.

In the report, the Consumer Council suggests concrete measures to help rebalance power between consumers and digital service providers:

• Stronger rights for consumers to control, adapt, repair, and alter their products and services,
• Interoperability, data portability, and decentralisation as the norm, so the threshold for moving to different services becomes as low as possible,
• Deterrent and vigorous enforcement of competition law, so that Big Tech companies are not allowed to indiscriminately acquire start-ups, competitors or otherwise steer the market to their advantage,
• Better financing of initiatives to build, maintain or improve alternative digital services and infrastructure based on open source code and open protocols,
• Reduce public sector dependence on big tech, to regain control and to contribute to a functioning market for service providers that respect fundamental rights,
• Deterrent and consistent enforcement of other laws, including consumer and data protection law.

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cross-posted from: https://x69.org/post/24084001

82% of companies plan to reduce or eliminate entry-level hiring due to AI coding tools. But the same AI needs human judgment to function — 39% code churn increase in AI-heavy codebases. The pipeline is dying.

Archived version

In the bustling world of tech, where cutting-edge innovation is the lifeblood of progress, few people realize the critical role a humble Japanese food giant plays in powering the latest AI revolution. Ajinomoto, a company best known for its umami-rich flavor enhancers and instant noodle broths, has quietly become an indispensable player in the global semiconductor industry.

Behind the scenes of every state-of-the-art Nvidia AI processor, behind the meticulously engineered clean rooms of TSMC and other chipmakers, lies a fragile industrial secret: an ultra-specialized insulating film, produced almost entirely by Ajinomoto. This unsung material, known as Ajinomoto Build-up Film (ABF), has become the invisible backbone of the AI revolution, enabling the cutting-edge performance and energy efficiency that powers today’s most advanced neural networks.

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TL;DR: As Mozilla moves to make Firefox an AI browser, people are looking at other options. Some people are rediscovering Waterfox, a browser that has been around for a decade from independent developer BrowserWorks. In this post, I interview the founder of Waterfox - Alex Kontos, and we discuss Waterfox’s history and look towards its future. We also talk about how Waterfox thinks about AI in the browser.

TL;DR: Mozilla has a new CEO and a new mission: transform Firefox into an AI browser. That has run into some snags, as Firefox users don’t seem that interested in AI. Mozilla is forging ahead, utilizing deceptive patterns (previously known as dark patterns) to nag and annoy people into enabling AI features. You can see this in the introduction of Link Previews, an extremely invasive anti-feature that exists solely to push AI into your experience.

Found this post at a great time where I'm slowly having a falling out with youtube and trying to use less of it. Not necessarily because "youtube is evil" but I'm starting to appreciate the beauty and minimalism of just written articles and blog posts. I enjoy going through them at my own pace and I don't need to look at a guy for him to read what could have been a blog post to me or watch those stock clips while he reads it. This is especially true for code content. Obviously I'm talking about a small subset of all videos on youtube (tech/news content ish).

I was actually a long term subscriber to youtube premium but I cancelled maybe a month ago. I was hesitant for a long time because I thought the value I got from it was so great that it was worth paying, especially since youtube splits the premium revenue 40/60 or 50/50 with creators. On top of that I also had youtube music. It felt wrong to do all these mental gymnastics and go the adblock route because of the creators. The author in the post touches on this point.

But as I started getting into Lemmy and reading blog posts more and more (also started reading a book), I understood that a lot of that perceived value was because that's the only thing I used and knew. There's a whole world out there and since then I've slowly started minimizing my time on it. Again, not because it's bad but just because I feel for a lot of content there are other things out there. It's a choice. Learning to enjoy reading a light book vs watching Youtube before bed, for example.

I do think there's some dishonesty and delusion going on in a lot of people's minds when it comes to adblockers. They use adblock and think they're somehow doing the right thing and they're so righteous about it, yet they continue watching Youtube and never donate to any creators. I have a few friends like that.

Since I don't spend that much time on it anymore, honestly I just watch the ads. Not as big of a deal as I once thought, and they make me want to spend even less time on the platform. I used to also use it for white noise or background music. Now I just use mynoise.net -great platform, would recommend.

Just a random stream of thoughts on my youtube experience.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/44094403

Nepal is just one of at least 150 countries to which Chinese companies are supplying surveillance technology, from cameras in Vietnam to censorship firewalls in Pakistan to citywide monitoring systems in Kenya. This technology is now a key part of China’s push for global influence, as it provides cash-strapped governments with cost-effective, if invasive, forms of policing — turning algorithms and data into a force multiplier for control.

The irony at the heart of this digital authoritarianism is that the surveillance tools China exports are based on technology developed in its greatest rival, the United States, despite warnings that Chinese firms would buy, copy or outright steal American designs, an investigation by The Associated Press has found.

For decades, Silicon Valley firms often yielded to Beijing’s demands: Give us your technology and we will give you access to our market. Although tensions fester between Washington and Beijing, the links between American tech and Chinese surveillance continue today.

For example, Amazon Web Services offers cloud services to Chinese tech giants like Hikvision and Dahua, assisting them in their overseas push. Both are on the U.S. Commerce Department’s Entity List for national security and human-rights concerns, which means transactions with them are not illegal but subject to strict restrictions.

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I'm gutted to hear this - I'm a big fan of Crucial memory and SSDs and all of my systems have at least one thing from them.

Micron will keep shipping Crucial products until the end of February 2026 and provide “continued warranty service and support.”

So only a few month left, plus however long they stay on retailers' shelves.