Month: September 2024
Reddit policy changes make sitewide protests nearly impossible
Reddit has just changed the rules so moderators of subreddits must get admin approval to switch from public to private, as originally reported by The Verge. This is being seen by many as an attempt to curb sitewide protests, as these requests must be approved by Reddit staffers. There will be no way for multiple subreddits to go private at once without Reddit having its hand on the lever.
The company put a little note on the support page that reads “if you’re changing your community type after community creation, you’ll need to submit a request.” This page doesn’t offer any reasoning behind the decision.
Reddit
We reached out to Reddit to inquire about this most recent policy change and the company pointed us to a post on the subreddit r/modnews written by VP of community Laura Nestler. She wrote that “the ability to instantly change Community Type settings has been used to break the platform and violate our rules.”
So it looks like last year’s protests are absolutely connected to today’s changes. Nestler also suggested that this is an issue of personal responsibility, writing that “communities should honor the expectations they set – public communities should remain accessible to all; private communities should remain private.”
On the topic of recent protests, switching from public to private is the exact way in which subreddits expressed dissatisfaction with last year’s API pricing changes. In that case, over 8,000 subreddits went private in tandem. This means that the subreddits became inaccessible to the general public, though they remained active for current members.
The site’s daily traffic suffered as a result. This allegedly had an impact on the functionality of Reddit itself, as there was a major site outage after all of those subreddits went private. The company blamed the protests for this outage, telling Engadget that “a significant number of subreddits shifting to private caused some expected stability issues.”
Not all protests involve switching a subreddit from public to private. Some moderators protest Reddit by labeling a subreddit as NSFW. This disallows advertising on the subreddit and makes it harder to search for. The company also put the kibosh on this move, as that kind of switch also now requires admin approval.
It’s worth noting that last year’s protests didn’t work. Reddit went ahead with those API charges, which forced third-party apps like Apollo to shut down. The company also went in and took complete control of one of the larger subreddits that participated in the protest. Now, there’s today’s change that effectively bans sitewide protests altogether.
Adding insult to injury, Reddit recently struck gold by licensing its content to train AI models. That deal will reportedly net the company around $60 million per year, but the users who actually created the content that’s being licensed will be getting approximately $0 per year. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/reddit-policy-changes-make-sitewide-protests-nearly-impossible-183754240.html?src=rss
Reddit has just changed the rules so moderators of subreddits must get admin approval to switch from public to private, as originally reported by The Verge. This is being seen by many as an attempt to curb sitewide protests, as these requests must be approved by Reddit staffers. There will be no way for multiple subreddits to go private at once without Reddit having its hand on the lever.
The company put a little note on the support page that reads “if you’re changing your community type after community creation, you’ll need to submit a request.” This page doesn’t offer any reasoning behind the decision.
We reached out to Reddit to inquire about this most recent policy change and the company pointed us to a post on the subreddit r/modnews written by VP of community Laura Nestler. She wrote that “the ability to instantly change Community Type settings has been used to break the platform and violate our rules.”
So it looks like last year’s protests are absolutely connected to today’s changes. Nestler also suggested that this is an issue of personal responsibility, writing that “communities should honor the expectations they set – public communities should remain accessible to all; private communities should remain private.”
On the topic of recent protests, switching from public to private is the exact way in which subreddits expressed dissatisfaction with last year’s API pricing changes. In that case, over 8,000 subreddits went private in tandem. This means that the subreddits became inaccessible to the general public, though they remained active for current members.
The site’s daily traffic suffered as a result. This allegedly had an impact on the functionality of Reddit itself, as there was a major site outage after all of those subreddits went private. The company blamed the protests for this outage, telling Engadget that “a significant number of subreddits shifting to private caused some expected stability issues.”
Not all protests involve switching a subreddit from public to private. Some moderators protest Reddit by labeling a subreddit as NSFW. This disallows advertising on the subreddit and makes it harder to search for. The company also put the kibosh on this move, as that kind of switch also now requires admin approval.
It’s worth noting that last year’s protests didn’t work. Reddit went ahead with those API charges, which forced third-party apps like Apollo to shut down. The company also went in and took complete control of one of the larger subreddits that participated in the protest. Now, there’s today’s change that effectively bans sitewide protests altogether.
Adding insult to injury, Reddit recently struck gold by licensing its content to train AI models. That deal will reportedly net the company around $60 million per year, but the users who actually created the content that’s being licensed will be getting approximately $0 per year.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/reddit-policy-changes-make-sitewide-protests-nearly-impossible-183754240.html?src=rss
Simon Willison on NotebookLM’s Automatically Generated Podcasts
Simon Willison:
Audio Overview is a fun new feature of Google’s
NotebookLM which is getting a lot of attention right now.
It generates a one-off custom podcast against content you provide,
where two AI hosts start up a “deep dive” discussion about the
collected content. These last around ten minutes and are very
podcast, with an astonishingly convincing audio back-and-forth
conversation.
Here’s an example podcast created by feeding in an earlier version
of this article (prior to creating this example).
I listened to the whole 15-minute podcast this morning. It was, indeed, surprisingly effective. It remains somewhere in the uncanny valley, but not at all in a creepy way. Just more in a “this is a bit vapid and phony” way. I think that if you played this example podcast for a non-technical person who isn’t informed at all about the current state of generative AI, that they would assume for the first few minutes, without question, that this was a recorded podcast between two actual humans, and that they might actually learn a few things about generative AI. But given that the “conversation” is literally about creating artificial podcasts like this very example, I wonder how many would, by the end, suspect that they were in fact listening to an AI-generated podcast? It’s quite meta — which the male voice on the podcast even says during the episode.
But ultimately the conversation has all the flavor of a bowl of unseasoned white rice. Give it a listen, though. It’s remarkable.
★
Simon Willison:
Audio Overview is a fun new feature of Google’s
NotebookLM which is getting a lot of attention right now.
It generates a one-off custom podcast against content you provide,
where two AI hosts start up a “deep dive” discussion about the
collected content. These last around ten minutes and are very
podcast, with an astonishingly convincing audio back-and-forth
conversation.
Here’s an example podcast created by feeding in an earlier version
of this article (prior to creating this example).
I listened to the whole 15-minute podcast this morning. It was, indeed, surprisingly effective. It remains somewhere in the uncanny valley, but not at all in a creepy way. Just more in a “this is a bit vapid and phony” way. I think that if you played this example podcast for a non-technical person who isn’t informed at all about the current state of generative AI, that they would assume for the first few minutes, without question, that this was a recorded podcast between two actual humans, and that they might actually learn a few things about generative AI. But given that the “conversation” is literally about creating artificial podcasts like this very example, I wonder how many would, by the end, suspect that they were in fact listening to an AI-generated podcast? It’s quite meta — which the male voice on the podcast even says during the episode.
But ultimately the conversation has all the flavor of a bowl of unseasoned white rice. Give it a listen, though. It’s remarkable.
Savings Rates Are Dropping — But This CFP Doesn’t Recommend This Type of CD
A long-term CD guarantees interest years from now, but there’s a catch.
A long-term CD guarantees interest years from now, but there’s a catch.
Hybrid cloud environments being targeted by worrying new ransomware attacks
Microsoft’s researchers catch the Embargo ransomware in the wild, and warn US firms of its existence.
Cybercriminals are targeting hybrid cloud platforms with a worrying new ransomware strain, Microsoft security researchers have revealed.
Threat intelligence experts from the company have published a new blog post warning of Storm-0501, a ransomware affiliate group active since 2021.
The team has warned Storm-0501 is targeting different verticals across the United States, from government, manufacturing, to transportation, and law enforcement.
Rust-built ransomware
Microsoft’s researchers believe the group is financially motivated, meaning it is not a state-sponsored player, as it targets firms with the intent of extorting money, which is then likely used to fund additional cybercriminal activity.
When it attacks, Storm-0501 looks for poorly protected, over-privileged accounts. Once compromised, the accounts are used to grant access to on-prem devices, and from there, cloud environments. The next step is to establish persistence and allow unabated lateral movement throughout the infrastructure.
The final step is the introduction of ransomware. In the past, Storm-0501 used popular variants, such as Hive, BlackCat (ALPHV), Hunters International, and LockBit. However, in some of the more recent attacks, the group used a ransomware variant called Embargo.
Embargo is a relatively new strain, developed in Rust. Microsoft’s researchers state that it uses advanced encryption methods and operates under the RaaS model (meaning someone else is developing and maintaining the encryptor, and thus gets a share of the eventual spoils). While using Embargo, Storm-0501 goes for the old and proven double-extortion tactic, where they first steal a victim’s files, then encrypt the rest, and threaten to leak it online unless the victim pays a ransom.
In the cases Microsoft analyzed, Storm-0501 leveraged compromised Domain Admin accounts and deployed Embargo via scheduled tasks. The ransomware binaries names that were used were PostalScanImporter.exe and win.exe. The extensions of the encrypted files were .partial, .564ba1, and .embargo.
It is also worth mentioning that Storm-0501 sometimes refrains from deploying the encryptor and just maintains access to the network.
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Verizon customers face mass-scale outage across the US
More than 100,000 reports appeared on Downdetector.
Enlarge / A Downdetector map showing where Verizon outages are reported. (credit: Downdetector)
Wireless customers of Verizon and AT&T have found that they cannot make calls, send or receive text messages, or download any mobile data. As of this article’s publication, it appears the problem has yet to be resolved.
Users took to social media throughout the morning to complain that their phones were showing “SOS” mode, which allows emergency calls but nothing else. This is what phones sometimes offer when the user has no SIM registered on the device. Resetting the device and other common solutions do not resolve the issue. For much of the morning, Verizon offered no response to the reports.
Within hours, more than 100,000 users reported problems on the website Downdetector. The problem does not appear isolated to any particular part of the country; users in California reported problems, and so did users on the East Coast and in Chicago, among other places.
For the first time since 1882, UK will have no coal-fired power plants
A combination of government policy and economics spells the end of UK’s coal use.
Enlarge / The Ratcliffe-on-Soar plant is set to shut down for good today. (credit: Ashley Cooper)
On Monday, the UK will see the closure of its last operational coal power plant, Ratcliffe-on-Soar, which has been operating since 1968. The closure of the plant, which had a capacity of 2,000 megawatts, will bring an end to the history of the country’s coal use, which started with the opening of the first coal-fired power station in 1882. Coal played a central part in the UK’s power system in the interim, in some years providing over 90 percent of its total electricity.
But a number of factors combined to place coal in a long-term decline: the growth of natural gas-powered plants and renewables, pollution controls, carbon pricing, and a government goal to hit net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
From boom to bust
It’s difficult to overstate the importance of coal to the UK grid. It was providing over 90 percent of the UK’s electricity as recently as 1956. The total amount of power generated continued to climb well after that, reaching a peak of 212 terawatt hours of production by 1980. And the construction of new coal plants was under consideration as recently as the late 2000s. According to the organization Carbon Brief’s excellent timeline of coal use in the UK, continuing the use of coal with carbon capture was given consideration.
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Mortgage rates aren’t the only obstacle to homeownership.
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Apple backs out of backing OpenAI, report claims
Apple dropped out of the $6.5 billion investment round at the 11th hour.
Enlarge / The Apple Park campus in Cupertino, California. (credit: Anadolu Agency | Getty)
A few weeks back, it was reported that Apple was exploring investing in OpenAI, the company that makes ChatGPT, the GPT model, and other popular generative AI products. Now, a new report from The Wall Street Journal claims that Apple has abandoned those plans.
The article simply says Apple “fell out of the talks to join the round.” The round is expected to close in a week or so and may raise as much as $6.5 billion for the growing Silicon Valley company. Had Apple gone through with the move, it would have been a rare event—though not completely unprecedented—for Apple to invest in another company that size.
OpenAI is still expected to raise the funds it seeks from other sources. The report claims Microsoft is expected to invest around $1 billion in this round. Microsoft has already invested substantial sums in OpenAI, whose GPT models power Microsoft AI tools like Copilot and Bing chat.
Philips has a new business monitor to challenge HP and others, and it looks to be the real deal
Philips has a new entry into the best business monitor conversation with the Philips 27B2U6903.
Philips, maker of the some of the best business monitors around today, has unveiled the Philips 27B2U6903, which comes with UHD 4K resolution and Thunderbolt 4 connectivity as standard.
The 27-inch monitor comes features an IPS LED panel with a resolution of 3840 x 2160 and support for 1.07 billion colours, making it ideal for anyone who needs to work in creative industries or to content content.
Thunderbolt 4 also adds a lot of oomph to the 27B2U6903, enabling a dual-screen setup via daisy-chaining, transferring data to external devices, and charging devices at up to 100W in power. For good measure, Philips has also added RJ45 for ultra-fast ethernet connections.
Smart features
(Image credit: Philips)
Philips says one of the standout features of the 27B2U6903 is PowerSensor 2, which aims to save power by putting the monitor and its connected PC in sleep mode when a user walks away from them. When it detects their return, the devices are powered up.
Philips also highlights its Smart KVM feature, which lets users hot-key between different input sources (think: PlayStation 5) by pressing the Ctrl key three times.
As with most modern monitors, the 27B2U6903 is height adjustable, and can tilt, pivot, and swivel to your heart’s content, all of which is vital for a monitor you will likely be looking at for many hours of the day.
The Philips 27B2U6903 will cost around £450, and is available now.
The best business monitor?
The Philips 27B2U6903 is facing some pretty stiff competition for the crown of the best business monitor going.
After hours of testing, TechRadar recommends the BenQ PD3220U, a premium 4K monitor that comes with a 32-inch IPS panel, HDR, a wide array of ports, and support for KVM switching, like the 27B2U6903.
The Huawei MateView 4K+ 3:2 aspect is also an intriguing proposition, offering an unusual 3:2 display that is perfect for coding and other vertical tasks. The 28.2-inch display is pretty stunning, too.
Ultrawide fans, we have something for you too: the best ultrawide monitor is the LG UltraGear 38GN950, a massive 38-inch behemoth that looks fantastic and comes with a 160Hz display.
Anyone looking for an ultrawide monitor on a budget (at least relatively), should look at the AOC CU34G2X, which comes in a 34-inch configuration and really suits gaming.
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