Microsoft Research: GenAI can inhibit critical engagement with work and can potentially lead to long-term overreliance on the tool and diminished skill for independent problem-solving.
Microsoft: *sells GenAI aggressively into the Education 365 packages*
Hao-Ping (Hank) Lee and others, ‘The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort and Confidence Effects From a Survey of Knowledge Workers’ (ACM CHI 2025). https://advait.org/files/lee_2025_ai_critical_thinking_survey.pdf
Unsealed court documents from February 5th, 2024, in Kadrey v. Meta show Meta (formerly Facebook) illegally torrented 81.7TB of data from "shadow libraries" such as Anna's Archive, Z-Library, and LibGen to train Meta artificial intelligence.
Highlights include:
- A senior AI research at Meta says, "I don't think we should use pirated material. I really need to draw a line there."
- Another AI researcher says, "using pirated material should be beyond our ethical threshold" ... "SciHub, ResearchGate, LibGen are basically like PirateBay or something like that, they are distributing content that is protectec by copyright and they're infringing it".
- In January 2023, Mark Zuckerberg attends a meeting which is heavily redacted in court documents. However, he says "we need to this move this stuff forward" and "we need to find a way to unblock all of this".
- Fast forward to April, 2023, Meta employees discuss using a VPN to conceal Meta IP address ranges when torrenting data. Meta employees also discuss the need to involve lawyers if something goes astray. The unredacted court records show a Meta employee saying, "torrenting from a corporate laptop doesn't feel right 😂".
I think there's a general need for education regarding influence operations (and my focus is on those by Russia) here on the fediverse.
1) No, Russia isn't just pushing right-wing agendas/topics. The _stated_ purpose, from 1997 IIRC, is to sow division in the west. That means that there's roughly an equal chance that a raging leftwing lunatic is on Russia's payroll as your average Tate-Musk-Trump-Orban-Fico fanatic.
2) "Doomism" is a goal. The more we are complaining on how bad things are - the more successful they are. A great way to counter these influence operations is to talk about how _good_ things are. Because there's plenty of awesomeness in our society (I'm not from the US - that's a global perspective) to share.
3) These operations are _long term_. The troll factories aren't just newly created accounts spamming out the same message everywhere. That online magazine that has published for 10 years could be a sleeper influence operation. A person _living in Germany_ spending time online just as anybody else could too.
4) You're getting influenced. Basic psychology says you cannot avoid it (the anchoring effect). The only thing you can do is to be aware of it, and actively working against the very goals of the influence operations.
Remember what those were now again?
for a reason:
https://european-alternatives.eu
@european_alternatives
In the next livestream tonight, we’ll hexplore more advanced hash collisions tricks.
https://www.youtube.com/live/fCNx2cO0Q98?si=xln4a4n_5BJ9wR5c
The moment Estonia disconnected its power grid from Russia has been shared online. A historic step toward energy independence.
Why is Carbon being developed when Google already has Go
https://builtin.com/software-engineering-perspectives/google-carbon
Discussions: https://discu.eu/q/https://builtin.com/software-engineering-perspectives/google-carbon
Project: mpengine-x64-pdb 1.1.24090.11
File: mpengine.dll
Address: 75a8f937c
_update_driver_config_for_pmu_counters
SVG:
dark https://tmr232.github.io/function-graph-overview/render/?graph=https%3A%2F%2Fraw.githubusercontent.com%2Fv-p-b%2Fghidra-function-graph-datasets%2Frefs%2Fheads%2Fmain%2F%2Fmpengine-x64-pdb%2F75a8f937c.json&colors=dark
light https://tmr232.github.io/function-graph-overview/render/?graph=https%3A%2F%2Fraw.githubusercontent.com%2Fv-p-b%2Fghidra-function-graph-datasets%2Frefs%2Fheads%2Fmain%2F%2Fmpengine-x64-pdb%2F75a8f937c.json&colors=light
The Path of a Packet Through the Linux Kernel
https://www.net.in.tum.de/fileadmin/TUM/NET/NET-2024-04-1/NET-2024-04-1_16.pdf
New Blog Post: Fully Dynamically Linked Rust Binary: An Experiment
https://www.kxxt.dev/blog/fully-dynamically-linked-rust-binary/
Wired has been killing it lately on covering what may well be the biggest security breach this country has ever seen. They obtained an email sent by an intelligence team within the U.S. Treasury Department that referred to Musk's actions to unilaterally slash and burn government agencies as "the single greatest insider threat risk" they have ever faced.
"There is ongoing litigation, congressional legislation, and widespread protests relating to DOGE’s access to Treasury and the Bureau of the Fiscal Service,” the email reads, per the tech-focused outlet. "If DOGE members have any access to payment systems, we recommend suspending that access immediately and conducting a comprehensive review of all actions they may have taken on these systems."
"There is reporting at other federal agencies indicating that DOGE members have performed unauthorized changes and locked civil servants out of the sensitive systems they gained access to,” the ‘Recommendations’ portion of the email continues. “We further recommend that DOGE members be placed under insider threat monitoring and alerting after their access to payment systems is revoked. Continued access to any payment systems by DOGE members, even “read only,” likely poses the single greatest insider threat risk the Bureau of the Fiscal Service has ever faced.”
https://www.wired.com/story/treasury-bfs-doge-insider-threat
Meanwhile, The Washington Post reports the warning came from a Treasury threat center run by the govt contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. The Post reports that late Friday, Booz Allen said it had “removed” a subcontractor who wrote the warning and would seek to retract or amend it. “The draft report was prepared by a subcontractor to Booz Allen and contained unauthorized personal opinions that are not factual or consistent with our standards,” company spokesperson Jessica Klenk said. Booz Allen won more than $1 billion in multiyear U.S. government contracts last year.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/02/07/doge-treasury-payments-system-warning/