Brasil

https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/121189721

Your personal data, including your precise location, browser history, and even your mouse movements, is being used by some companies to show different prices for the same products—a phenomenon the FTC has dubbed "surveillance pricing."

According to a new FTC report, retailers are hiring "intermediary firms" to algorithmically tweak and target their prices. 

"Instead of a price or promotion being a static feature of a product, the same product could have a different price or promotion based on a variety of inputs—including consumer-related data and their behaviors and preferences, the location, time, and channels by which a consumer buys the product," the FTC says.

Seriously wtf

Am traurigsten ist für mich, dass dieses Thema im aktuellen Wahlkampf gar keine Rolle spielt.

https://archive.ph/4v30q

Anti-paywall link: https://www.wired.com/story/ftc-sues-john-deere-over-repairability/

Today the US Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit against farming equipment manufacturer Deere & Company—makers of the iconic green John Deere tractors, harvesters, and mowers—citing its longtime reluctance to keep its customers from fixing their own machines.

“Farmers rely on their agricultural equipment to earn a living and feed their families,” FTC chair Lina Khan wrote in a statement alongside the full complaint. “Unfair repair restrictions can mean farmers face unnecessary delays during tight planting and harvest windows.”

Lake Mendota in Wisconsin is transformed by the changing seasons – covered by ice in winter, and by algae in summer – and a new study shows how these cyclical shifts are putting the lake's bacteria into evolutionary loops.

Led by researchers from the University of Texas at Austin, the team behind the study analyzed 471 lake microbe samples collected across 20 years, looking at genetic variations within and between species through time.

The data showed thousands of bacteria species evolving through the generations, then evolving back to a virtually identical state as the seasons shifted. As microbes live just a few days, we're talking about genetic evolution crossing thousands of generations within the span of one year.

Dick Cheney speaking at the "Arab Strategy Forum" lmao.

A different YouTube video from this event was posted on reddit on r/sino.

Anti-paywall link: https://archive.is/uJMa6

I'm using Mint, I keep it updated.

I have the Shokz open run pro headset.

When connected to my phone, they work without issue.

When connected to my laptop, they also work without issue.

When connected to both my phone and laptop, I can get good sound from my phone, but the laptop sound starts well but usually within 60s it becomes very unreliable. The sound just doesn't seem to transfer to the headset.

Bambu Lab recently announced a firmware security update for its printers that would introduce an official “authorization control” system for critical printer operations. The update is presented as a way to mitigate the “risk of remote hacks or printer exposure issues that have happened in the past, and also lower the risk of abnormal traffic or attacks.”

The new firmware will not allow Bambu Lab printers to interface with popular 3rd party software or hardware upgrades such as Orca Slicer or BigTreeTech’s Panda Touch screen. Now, users will need to download “Bambu Connect” to act as a one-way go-between.

A groundbreaking study has unveiled how Staphylococcus aureus, a bacterium often found in humans, evolves and survives, offering promising leads for better infection management.

By analyzing thousands of bacterial samples directly from humans rather than in lab settings, researchers identified crucial genetic mutations that help these bacteria resist antibiotics and evade the immune system. This could lead to improved methods for preventing, diagnosing, and treating infections.

Keen to improve India's abysmal crowd management record at large-scale religious events, organisers of the world's largest human gathering are using artificial intelligence to try to prevent stampedes.

Organisers predict up to 400 million pilgrims will visit the Kumbh Mela, a millennia-old sacred show of Hindu piety and ritual bathing that began Monday and runs for six weeks.

Deadly crowd crushes are a notorious feature of Indian religious festivals, and the Kumbh Mela, with its unfathomable throngs of devotees, has a grim track record of stampedes.

"We want everyone to go back home happily after having fulfilled their spiritual duties," Amit Kumar, a senior police officer heading tech operations in the festival, told AFP.

"AI is helping us avoid reaching that critical mass in sensitive places."

More than 400 people died after being trampled or drowned at the Kumbh Mela on a single day of the festival in 1954, one of the largest tolls in a crowd-related disaster globally.

Another 36 people were crushed to death in 2013, the last time the festival was staged in the northern city of Prayagraj.

But this time, authorities say the technology they have deployed will help them gather accurate estimates of crowd sizes, allowing them to be better prepared for potential trouble.

Police say they have installed around 300 cameras at the festival site and on roads leading to the sprawling encampment, mounted on poles and a fleet of overhead drones.

Not far from the spiritual centre of the festival at the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers, the network is overseen in a glass-panelled command and control room by a small army of police officers and technicians.

"We can look at the entire Kumbh Mela from here," said Kumar. "There are camera angles where we cannot even see complete bodies and we have to count using heads or torsos."

Kumar said the footage fed into an AI algorithm that gives its handlers an overall estimate of a crowd stretching for miles in every direction, cross-checked against data from railways and bus operators.

"We are using AI to track people flow, crowd density at various inlets, adding them up and then interpolating from there," he added.

The system sounds the alarm if sections of the crowd get so concentrated that they pose a safety threat.

The Kumbh Mela is rooted in Hindu mythology, a battle between deities and demons for control of a pitcher containing the nectar of immortality.

Organisers say the scale of this year's festival is that of a temporary country -- with numbers expected to total around the combined populations of the United States and Canada.