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Cake day: Jan 25, 2024
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Palantir Technologies has a permanent desk at the U.S.-led Civil Military Coordination Center (CMCC) headquarters in southern Israel, three sources from the diplomatic community inside the CMCC told Drop Site News. According to the sources, the artificial intelligence data analytics giant is providing the technological architecture for tracking the delivery and distribution of aid to Gaza.
The presence of Palantir and other corporations—along with recent changes banning non-profits unwilling to give data to Israeli authorities—is creating a situation in which the delivery of aid is taking a backseat to the pursuit of profit, investment, and the training of AI products, experts say.
“The United Nations already has a humanitarian architecture in place to step in during crises, abiding by humanitarian principles and grounded in international law,” UN Special Rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territory Francesca Albanese told Drop Site. “This profit-driven parallel system involving companies like Palantir, already linked to Israel’s unlawful conduct, can only be regarded as a monstrosity.”
Earlier this week, the district court of the Western District of Washington favoured Valve Corporation in its 2023 lawsuit against Leigh Rothschild and his associated companies, on all counts, including breach of contract and the violation of Washington's Patent Troll Prevention and Consumer Protection Acts.
Rothschild is an inventor with a huge array of patents to his name, granted and pended, covering an extremely broad range of fields. He also owns or leads a host of companies that manage the business side of patents. In this particular legal case, Valve alleged that Rothschild himself, Rothschild Broadcast Distribution Systems LLC, Display Technologies LLC, Patent Asset Management LLC, Meyler Legal LLC, and Samuel Meyler were guilty of "bad-faith assertions of patent infringement", amongst other things.
The patent in question is US8856221B2, a 'system and method for storing broadcast content in a cloud-based computing environment'. Rothschild Broadcast Distribution Systems (RBDS) owns the rights to that patent, and in 2016, Valve obtained a "perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, fully paid-up, worldwide license" for it and others in Rothschild's portfolio.
ICE more than tripled the amount of data it holds on Microsoft servers between July 2025 and January 2026, at the same time as the agency’s crackdown on migrants broke new records and sparked mass protests across the United States. Whereas last July the agency was storing around 400 terabytes of data in Microsoft’s cloud platform, Azure, by the end of January that had risen to almost 1,400 terabytes — equivalent to approximately 490 million images.
ICE employs a powerful arsenal of surveillance technology, reportedly using facial recognition software, drones, phone location tracking, mobile spyware, and even tapping school cameras. The leaked documents show ICE is using Microsoft’s AI video analysis tools including Azure AI Video Indexer and Azure Vision, which enable customers to analyze images, read text, and detect certain words, faces, emotions, and objects in audio and video files.
The agency is also understood to have significantly expanded its access to Microsoft’s suite of productivity apps, which include document management tools and an AI chatbot. However, the files do not specify whether ICE’s vast surveillance trove is being stored on Azure, or whether the agency is using the cloud platform for other operations instead, such as running detention centers or coordinating deportation flights.
At 0:32 when the robots bend their knees they all do two little hops with one foot to keep balanced, but not all robots are doing the same hop. The middle robot does two large hops whereas the left rear robot does one small hop and then only lifts his “toes”.
It could be a combination of pre-programmed movements with a balancing program on top
Apple on Thursday confirmed acquiring the Israeli startup Q.ai, in what appeared to be part of the tech giant’s efforts to make inroads into the wearables market, with the aid of artificial intelligence.
The purchase cost Apple almost $2 billion, people familiar with the terms told the Financial Times. Industry press said it was the second-largest acquisition in the company’s history, after its purchase of the Beats music giant in 2014.
Q.ai is tight-lipped in public about its technology, but patents it filed show tech being used in headphones or glasses using “facial skin micro movements” for nonverbal communication, according to the FT.
The move may be a component of Apple’s strategy for “wearable” products, such as smart glasses. Software that reads facial expressions could potentially make way for a hands-free user interface that doesn’t require talking out loud, reports noted.
Google Play has delisted UpScrolled, the "censorship-resistant" social media app founded by Issam Hijazi, following its rapid growth to over 2.5 million users and its brief stint as a top-ranked alternative to TikTok.
While the app remains available for existing users, Google has not provided a specific reason for the removal; UpScrolled's team confirmed they are working with the Play Store for reinstatement while maintaining their commitment to unfiltered content.
This development follows the app's rapid ascent in popularity, particularly amid concerns over content moderation on competing platforms like TikTok.
More context: https://www.yourfavoriteguy.com/p/urgent-my-voice-is-being-wiped-out
Instagram has suspended the account of Track AIPAC, a widely followed watchdog project that tracks political spending by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and related pro-Israel lobbying groups. The social media giant cited alleged violations of the platform’s intellectual property and trademark rules. The suspension places the account at risk of permanent deletion unless successfully appealed within 180 days.
Track AIPAC — also known as AIPAC Tracker — was launched in 2024 by Cory Archibald and Casey Kennedy as a transparency and advocacy platform documenting AIPAC’s political donations, endorsements and influence on US elections. The project publishes Federal Election Commission data on pro-Israel political spending, highlights which lawmakers receive the most support, and endorses opponents of candidates reliant on AIPAC funding.
The watchdog has become a prominent source for voters and activists seeking to make AIPAC funding “politically toxic” and to hold elected officials accountable for their ties to the pro-Israel lobby.
Al Jazeera has condemned YouTube’s compliance with an Israeli law banning the network’s livestreams in the country, warning that the move signals how major tech companies can be “co-opted as instruments of regimes hostile to freedom”.
YouTube’s submission to Israel’s ban became apparent on Wednesday, days after Israeli Communications Minister Shlomo Karahi ordered a 90-day extension of an existing ban on the network’s operations in Israel, blocking broadcasting and internet companies from carrying the network’s content.
Award-winning Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda has said she has been permanently banned from TikTok, days after the social media platform was acquired by new investors in the United States.
Owda, an Emmy Award-winning journalist and contributor to Al Jazeera’s AJ+ from Gaza, shared a video on her Instagram and X accounts on Wednesday, telling her followers that her TikTok account had been banned.
Netanyahu met with pro-Israel influencers in New York in September last year, telling them that he hoped the “purchase” of TikTok goes through.
“We have to fight with the weapons that apply to the battlefield in which we engage, and the most important ones are social media,” Netanyahu, who is a war crimes suspect, said at the time.
“The most important purchase that is going on right now is … TikTok,” Netanyahu added. “TikTok, number one, number one, and I hope it goes through, because it can be consequential.”
The United Kingdom’s controversial rollout of facial recognition technology will rely on software that appears to have already been deployed in Gaza, where it is used by the Israeli army to track, trace, and abduct thousands of Palestinian civilians passing through checkpoints.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced on Monday that British police would massively increase the use of facial recognition technology used for surveillance purposes.
creator
toTheir mobile app is an APK file instead of a play store link. I dont’ see any servers besides the main Loops server so it’s not decentralized at all for now.
Upscrolled even mention this in their faq, stating that the current defederated options are not in a usable and scalable state yet. And keep in mind they started development about far before now, so back then there was nothing at all.
If Loops were finished and had multiple servers going it might have been a very attractive option for the current TikTok exodus. But it’s simply not done yet.
creator
toIt’s a very mixed bag. In 2026 I’d prefer everyone decided on a single uncensored Mastodon server and just yolo’d over there but somehow the masses are moved once again towards a centralized solution. And a rather rudimentary one too.
But at least they decided on something besides Twitter or Bluesky. Now it all depends on whether the new influx of users can organically keep going and growing, or whether there is not enough content and everyone will slowly move back to Twitter.
There is backing from TechForPalestine and other pro-Palestine collectives so I don’t suspect that it’s a Zionist op. Just some unfortunate tech choices. But in the end it’s the users that make a platform not the tech. And one thing I do like is that there is a big download button next to media
Washington (QNN)- TikTok users are flocking to a new platform founded by a Palestinian after Trump ally and pro-Israel Larry Ellison officially took over the app. The move follows TikTok’s announcement of a deal to create a new US entity, giving Ellison control over content policies and the power to shape an anti-Palestinian agenda.
Guy Christensen, a TikTok influencer with more than 3 million followers, wrote on X, “TikTok users are fleeing to a new upstart social media called **UpScrolled ** after Larry Ellison purchased the platform. UpScrolled is founded by a Palestinian and promises no censorship and no billionaires.”
He added, “Yesterday, it broke into the top 15 most downloaded apps.” Several activists and social media users have joined the app in recent days.
creator
toNo we’re saying the Twitter AI does have a lot of knowledge about Twitter. You can ask it to do it for any account and it makes a summary of their posts, their stance of Israel and a limitation score. Even accurately replying on how often their posts and comments are viewed.
And because the bot has been trained by Musk the bias of the bot can be shown in ways like this.
creator
toIf it were hallucinations which it very well could be, it means the model has learned this bias somewhere. Indicating Grok has either been programmed to derank Palestine content, or Grok has learned it by himself (less likely).
It’s difficult to conceive the AI manually making this up for no reason, and doing it so consistently for multiple accounts so consistently when asked the same question.
Full image and other similar screenshots
creator
toIndeed jpegxl appears to be much better than AVIF. By the way two small questions related to images on Lemmy this probably isn’t the right place but I just remembered it
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In the browser client you make it possible to paste images into the thumbnail field when creating a post? I saw this functionality added to the Jerboa client recently, it’s pretty useful for when the scraper doesn’t automatically find a thumbnail in a link
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On lemmy.ml there’s a filesize limit to uploading images in the post field. I often have to manually downsize them to fit the size limit. Would it be possible to automatically encode the images client side when uploading? Maybe make them even smaller when uploading them into the thumbnail field.
Google has reinstated support for the JPEG XL image format in the open source Chromium code base, reversing a decision it made in 2022 to remove it.
The update allows Chromium to recognize, decode, and render JPEG XL images directly, without extensions or external components.
This change applies at the browser engine level, meaning it will affect future versions of Google Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers when they are released.
Suppliers of parts for Nvidia’s H200 have paused production after Chinese customs officials blocked shipments of the newly approved artificial intelligence processors from entering China, according to a report.
Nvidia had expected more than one million orders from Chinese clients, the report said, adding that its suppliers had been operating around the clock to prepare for shipping as early as March.
Chinese customs authorities this week told customs agents that Nvidia’s H200 chips were not permitted to enter the country, Reuters reported.
Sources have also said government officials summoned domestic tech firms to warn them against buying the chips unless it was necessary.
Jan 14 (Reuters) - Chinese authorities have told domestic companies to stop using cybersecurity software made by roughly a dozen firms from the U.S. and Israel due to national security concerns, two people briefed on the matter said.
Broadcom-owned VMware, Palo Alto Networks Fortinet, are among the U.S. firms whose cybersecurity software has been banned, while Check Point Software Technologies is among the Israeli companies, they said.
NVIDIA started to discontinue its GeForce RTX 3060 GPUs back in 2024. The original lineup, which was introduced back in 2021, is still the most popular gaming graphics card on Steam, and while the 4060 & 5060 are picking up the pace, it looks like NVIDIA might once again open up production lines for this GPU.
This indicates the extent to which the DRAM shortages have affected consumer GPUs. The GeForce RTX 5060 makes use of GDDR7 memory, and as DRAM costs rise, the RTX 5060 might not only be affected in terms of pricing but also in supply, since procuring the memory is also an issue due to poor supply. The 60-series product family is made for mass consumption, so NVIDIA will have to offer some alternative to its partners.
Sources:
> Dec 16 - [Hillan Klein Named New Namecheap CEO](https://domaininvesting.com/hillan-klein-named-new-namecheap-ceo/)
Full thread exposing Zionist links of the new CEO: https://xcancel.com/Archivepaletc/status/2007161924937552128
The approvals were required under Israel’s Land Law because Nvidia is a foreign-controlled company. The deal will allow the global technology giant to establish a new development campus on state land, allocated without a public tender and at a 51% discount.
The proposed 51% land discount is valued at tens of millions of shekels. Officials cited the significant economic impact on northern Israel, noting that thousands of employees would work directly at the campus and that hundreds of additional businesses are expected to benefit from providing services to the site.
According to the plan, Nvidia will build a unique, large-scale campus unlike any previously seen in Israel, modeled in part on the company’s headquarters in Santa Clara, California. The project is expected to span approximately 160,000 square meters and employ about 8,000 workers.
You can use Thaura for everyday tasks like writing emails, doing homework, and researching online. It remembers your conversations, helps you create documents and code, and even searches the web for you. And it works seamlessly with your existing tools through full OpenAI SDK compatibility.
But what really makes Thaura different is what it doesn't do:
- It doesn't collect your data or spy on you
- It doesn't have political bias
- It doesn't water down the truth on sensitive topics
Artificial intelligence company Anthropic PBC today announced it had made its first acquisition in acquiring developer tools startup Bun for an undisclosed price.
Founded in 2019, Bun offers an all-in-one JavaScript/TypeScript toolkit that aims to simplify and accelerate full-stack development. The company’s offering is similar in purpose to Node.js but also includes tools developers usually pull in separately, including a package manager, a bundler, a test runner and script runner, all shipped as a single executable.
Bun is built using the Zig programming language and leverages Apple’s JavaScriptCore under the hood to yield much faster startup times and lower memory usage compared with runtimes based on the V8 engine, the engine used by Node.js and others. Bun is often significantly faster in key developer workflows, such as package installation, build/bundling, test execution and runtime, making it appealing to Anthropic.
Gaza Strip, Palestine/London, Ontario, Canada – In an unprecedented breakthrough for medical innovation under siege, Glia, a medical solidarity organization, has developed and deployed the first external fixator (a critical orthopedic device for severe fractures) ever designed and manufactured entirely inside the Gaza Strip. Created using local materials, 3D printing, recycled plastics, and solar power, the device has already saved three patients from possible amputation or permanent disability amid the near-total collapse of Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure and blockade on medical imports.
This achievement comes as over 90% of Gaza’s health facilities are damaged or destroyed, and conventional external fixators — costing upwards of $500 and requiring specialized imports — have become unobtainable due to the Israeli blockade. With hospitals overwhelmed, electricity scarce, and supply chains severed, Glia’s fixator represents a lifeline born from necessity.
The IDF is moving to curb sensitive military information leaking onto social media by rolling out a new monitoring system called ‘Morpheus.’ The AI-based tool, developed inside the military, will soon track photos and other content posted by IDF soldiers on civilian social media platforms, according to a report Wednesday.
The decision to develop ‘Morpheus’ followed repeated leaks of classified or sensitive material posted by soldiers in recent years, in text, images and videos.
Since 2022, America has had a solid lead in artificial intelligence thanks to advanced models from high-flying companies like OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Anthropic, and xAI. A growing number of experts, however, worry that the US is starting to fall behind when it comes to minting open-weight AI models that can be downloaded, adapted, and run locally.
Meta shut down internal research into the mental health effects of Facebook and Instagram after finding causal evidence that its products harmed users’ mental health, according to unredacted filings in a class action by U.S. school districts against Meta and other social media platforms.
In a 2020 research project code-named “Project Mercury,” Meta scientists worked with survey firm Nielsen to gauge the effect of “deactivating” Facebook and Instagram, according to Meta documents obtained via discovery. To the company’s disappointment, “people who stopped using Facebook for a week reported lower feelings of depression, anxiety, loneliness and social comparison,” internal documents said.
Rather than publishing those findings or pursuing additional research, the filing states, Meta called off further work and internally declared that the negative study findings were tainted by the “existing media narrative” around the company.
Krafton, the publisher behind PUBG: Battlegrounds and the Subnautica franchise, has officially started its aforementioned transition to its future as an AI-first company. The first major move towards this future is a company-wide voluntary resignation program.
Krafton recently announced that it would be shifting strategies with the goal of becoming an AI-first company. The publisher behind PUBG and Subnautica revealed that it would be "prioritising AI as a central and primary means of problem-solving," and "fostering change in change in individuals and organisations, increasing company-wide productivity," all in the name of growth and corporate value. This prior announcement was followed by a report out of Business Korea that claims Krafton has opened a new voluntary resignation program in order to encourage people to "support members in proactively designing their growth direction and embarking on new challenges both inside and outside the company amid the era of AI transformation."
Effectively, Krafton is both giving employees a way out of the company if they don't want to be part of Krafton's new AI-first future, and reducing its head count and internal frictions.
https://youtu.be/Ugew7tXiU38
https://www.voxelmatters.com/filament2-unveils-first-silicone-filament-at-formnext/
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When Google and Amazon negotiated a major $1.2bn cloud-computing deal in 2021, their customer – the Israeli government – had an unusual demand: agree to use a secret code as part of an arrangement that would become known as the “winking mechanism”.
The demand, which would require Google and Amazon to effectively sidestep legal obligations in countries around the world, was born out of Israel’s concerns that data it moves into the global corporations’ cloud platforms could end up in the hands of foreign law enforcement authorities.
For Israel, losing control of its data to authorities overseas was a significant concern. So to deal with the threat, officials created a secret warning system: the companies must send signals hidden in payments to the Israeli government, tipping it off when it has disclosed Israeli data to foreign courts or investigators.
To clinch the lucrative contract, Google and Amazon agreed to the so-called winking mechanism. The strict controls include measures that prohibit the US companies from restricting how an array of Israeli government agencies, security services and military units use their cloud services. **According to the deal’s terms, the companies cannot suspend or withdraw Israel’s access to its technology, even if it’s found to have violated their terms of service.**
Oct 15 (Reuters) - An investor group, including BlackRock and Nvidia (NVDA.O), will buy Aligned Data Centers from Macquarie Asset Management (MQG.AX) in a deal worth $40 billion, the companies said on Wednesday, as AI infrastructure expansion powers on.
The deal underscores an intensifying race to expand the costly, supply-constrained infrastructure required to develop artificial intelligence technology, as companies rush to build sophisticated AI models.
BENGALURU, Oct 14 (Reuters) - Google said on Tuesday it would invest $15 billion over five years to set up an artificial intelligence data centre in India's southern state of Andhra Pradesh, its biggest ever investment in the world's most populous nation.
The U.S. tech giant's plan comes amid a tense diplomatic standoff between New Delhi and Washington over tariffs and a stalled trade deal, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi has urged a boycott of foreign goods.
Satellites beam data down to the Earth all around us, all the time. So you might expect that those space-based radio communications would be encrypted to prevent any snoop with a satellite dish from accessing the torrent of secret information constantly raining from the sky. You would, to a surprising and troubling degree, be wrong.
Roughly half of geostationary satellite signals, many carrying sensitive consumer, corporate, and government communications, have been left entirely vulnerable to eavesdropping, a team of researchers at UC San Diego and the University of Maryland revealed today in a study that will likely resonate across the cybersecurity industry, telecom firms, and inside military and intelligence agencies worldwide.
A critical vulnerability in the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) Wi-Fi configuration interface used by several different Unitree robots can result in a root-level takeover by an attacker, security researchers disclosed on 20 September.
The exploit impacts Unitree’s Go2 and B2 quadrupeds and G1 and H1 humanoids. Because the vulnerability is wireless, and the resulting access to the affected platform is complete, the vulnerability becomes wormable, say the researchers, meaning “an infected robot can simply scan for other Unitree robots in BLE range and automatically compromise them, creating a robot botnet that spreads without user intervention.”
Cloud hosting platform Vercel is under fire after its CEO, Guillermo Rauch, shared a photo of a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday.
The image, which Rauch framed around discussions of AI education and “keeping our free societies ahead”, was immediately read as a political statement given Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Within hours, developers and users across social media declared they were cancelling their Vercel subscriptions, deleting accounts, and migrating projects to competitors like Netlify, Cloudflare Pages, Fly.io, and Render.
China has banned its leading tech firms from buying chips from Nvidia as the country ramps up domestic manufacturing.
The Financial Times reported that the country’s internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), told tech giants, including ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, and the e-commerce giant Alibaba, to end testing for an AI chip that the Santa Clara, California-based chip giant made explicitly for the Chinese market.
Publicly available government contracts show that Israel’s advertising bureau, which reports to the prime minister’s office, has since embarked on a mass advertising and public messaging effort to conceal the hunger crisis. The push includes the use of American influencers widely reported on last month. It also includes a high-dollar spending spree on paid advertising, yielding tens of millions for Google, YouTube, X, Meta, and other tech platforms.
“There is food in Gaza. Any other claim is a lie,” asserted a propaganda video published by Israel’s foreign ministry to Google’s YouTube video sharing platform in late August and viewed more than 6 million times. Much of the video’s reach results from an ad placed during an ongoing and previously unreported $45 million (NIS 150 million) advertising campaign initiated between Google and Netanyahu’s office in late June.
The contract—which is with both YouTube and Google's advertising campaign management platform, Display & Video 360—explicitly characterizes the ad campaign as hasbara, a Hebrew word whose meaning is somewhere between public relations and propaganda
For context, I usually come across accounts posting something on social media without a source. Then I use a search engine to search some keywords from that claim (in this case Valve Rotschild lawsuit) and if multiple sources report on it then I select whatever headline looks appealing and contains decent looking information. I barely do any background checking on the websites so it’s possible I end on LLM websites. If the other user just told me “this LLM website is bad” I wouldn’t change anything but they also provided a good alternative to easily change the post to another article so I don’t mind.