Tech
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Open-source and privacy focused offline translation in your browser
Hi everyone. I'm launching Linguist Translate, an open-source, full-featured translation solution with an embedded offline translator based on the Bergamot Project created by Mozilla.
Site: https://linguister.io
GitHub: https://github.com/translate-tools/linguist
Today, Linguist is launched on ProductHunt. Support the project who really care about privacy: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/linguist-translate
Linguist is not just a wrapper over Google Translator like many other extensions. You can use any translation service with Linguist, thanks to custom translators! You may even deploy any machine translation (like LibreTranslate) on your localhost and then add this service to Linguist.
All features are included: text translation, full-page translation, selected text translation, Text-To-Speech, dictionary, history, and even more.
- www.theverge.com This prototype turns your car’s windshield into a giant AR display
An intriguing prototype with a lot of rough edges.
Ooooh... car BSOD vibes...
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Remove Polyfill.io code from your website immediately • The Register
www.theregister.com Remove Polyfill.io code from your website immediatelyScripts turn malicious, infect webpages after Chinese CDN swallows domain
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Alibaba Cloud exports Chinese AI models, in translation • The Register
www.theregister.com Alibaba Cloud exports Chinese AI models, in translationLike Bedrock or Azure OpenAI Studio – but with the added fun of geopolitical risk
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Researchers leverage shadows to model 3D scenes, including objects blocked from view | This technique could lead to safer autonomous vehicles, more efficient AR/VR headsets, or faster warehouse robots
news.mit.edu Researchers leverage shadows to model 3D scenes, including objects blocked from viewA new technique can model an entire 3D scene, including areas hidden from view, from just one camera image. The method, developed by MIT and Meta researchers, relies on image shadows, which provide information about the geometry and location of hidden objects.
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Robotic ‘Third Thumb’ expands hand’s range of motion, carrying capacity | Study showed, 98 percent of participants successfully manipulated objects with the Third Thumb, with only 13 unable to perform
interestingengineering.com Robotic ‘Third Thumb’ helps perform challenging tasks single-handedlyStudy showed that 98 percent of participants successfully manipulated objects using the Third Thumb within the first minute.
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AMD won Computex by extending AM5 support and launching new AM4 CPUs
...which is why i prefer AM for hardware longevity.
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Post-YouTube: Why Aren't We Embracing IPFS?
With YouTube leveraging its dominance to make the service shittier and shittier, we're forced to consider our future. Yeah we have Peertube, but Peertube is shitty. I consider myself techy and I can't find a peertube instance that's not just one single users' "boring" videos.
So in order to move away from YouTube, we're facing two major issues. No three!
- Service: Even in its state of enshittification, the YouTube app is still a million times better than Vimeo, DailyMotion, etc. Introduce ReVanced into the equation and YouTube has a lock-in.
- Hosting: Hosting video is expensive as hell and that's a major hurdle to toppling Big Tech.
- Audience: People stay where the people are, because that's how they generate money. Peertube sucks because I can't just put in a URL and find random content. Without audience you don't have discoverability, without discoverability, you don't have monetization, without monetization, you only get "boring" videos.
Okay, so the third point is a bigger one and I actually think we need to adopt the Blendle-esque model, until we overthrow capitalism and live our post monetary wealth utopia.
What's this Blendle-esque model you speak of? Blendle was a great app idea that was blocked by corporate greed. The idea was that if you wanted to read an article from a newspaper, rather than pay a subscription, you could just pay 10 pence for the pleasure of reading the article. Win-win? Wrong! Most newspapers wanted a subscription or nothing.
Okay, so how does that work with videos? The idea is that users would put money into a pot. So let's say I have £10 in my pot, at the end of the month, the app would divide that £10 across all the videos I watched in the month and send it to all the videographers. If my pot was £1 the share would be smaller and if it was £100 it would be larger.
Okay, so the service issue. When are they going to finally make Peertube user friendly and discoverable? Wouldn't they be forced to if content creators were attracted? Because it can't just continue to suck right? Anakin? Seriously, search for a video on the Peertube main site and someone in their infinite wisdom thought it would be great to give you a wall of text! Mate!
So now that we got all that out of the way, think of it like salad, this is the real meal now. Let's talk about hosting. Hosting video is expensive and its the barrier to toppling Big Tech. Though middle-size tech should've been trying to do it. If Vimeo added Peertube support, it would be a hegemon, but I digress… Pick the pitchforks back up and re-light the torches! Hosting videos is a huge resource expense. It's why we don't see a crazy number of videos posted to Lemmy, Mastodon and even PixelFed. But what if we could solve that? Not the Fediverse video bit (yes, Peertube, you are a joke to me, kidding!), that's just a byproduct, but what if we could all chip in and distribute the cost? Well, I recently, literally just before I started waffling in your eye. But I present the Interplanetary File System! IPFS for short. Think of it like torrenting, but more user friendly and more seamless. Anyway, I'm thinking this could be the missing piece and it could be the building block that allows video to return to the embrace of the open web? What do you think? Why aren't we leveraging this?
More info on IPFS here: https://ipfs.tech/developers/
For the record, I'm not affiliated with any project, protocol, entity or anything. Peertube didn't kill my puppy and I don't even think my mum even subscribes to my YouTube, so I'm totally looking from the outside in.
- techxplore.com New robotic gripper for automated apple picking developed
A robotic gripper developed by Washington State University researchers is able to gently grab the majority of apples out of a tree without damaging the fruit.
- electrek.co Tesla claims it has 2 Optimus humanoid robots working autonomously in factory
Tesla claims that it currently has two Optimus humanoid robots working autonomously in a factory, which would be a first....
- www.404media.co Hackers Target AI Users With Malicious Stable Diffusion Tool on Github to Protest 'Art Theft'
An extension for a popular Stable Diffusion graphical user interface on Github appears to have been stealing users’ login credentials.
- www.404media.co Microsoft QA Contractors Say They Were Laid Off for Attempting to Unionize
Microsoft, which subcontracts the quality assurance provider, has a standing labor neutrality agreement with the Communications Workers of America.
> A quality assurance game testing company contracted by Microsoft’s Activision laid off an entire team of workers because they began organizing, according to an unfair labor practice charge filed by the Communications Workers of America (CWA) on Monday
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The Hilarious XScreenSaver Privacy Policy
www.jwz.org XScreenSaver: Google Store Privacy PolicyXScreenSaver is a collection of free screen savers for X11, Linux, macOS, iOS and Android.
The developer does this better than I could, just read the page.
- www.crikey.com.au AI bot with 'IQ of 155' to advise real estate agents on ethics
The Real Estate Institute of NSW has appointed a ChatGPT-run bot called Alice Ing to 'analyse huge quantities of data' during board meetings.
ironic-what-a-time-to-be-alive.gif
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Craig Hockenberry: "Apple’s model training data is either licensed or publicly available on the Internet" - Mastodon
mastodon.social Craig Hockenberry (@[email protected])Attached: 1 image I’m surprised this wasn’t mentioned in the keynote or State of the Union, but Apple’s model training data is either licensed or publicly available on the Internet. No personal information is used. You can opt out of the web based training here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/11...
> I’m surprised this wasn’t mentioned in the keynote or State of the Union, but Apple’s model training data is either licensed or publicly available on the Internet. No personal information is used.
I don't think it's as ethically sound as the author thinks, but it's worth a discussion at least.
- arstechnica.com 7,000 LockBit decryption keys now in the hands of the FBI, offering victims hope
The announcement could be good news for those whose data has been inaccessible.
- arstechnica.com Meta uses “dark patterns” to thwart AI opt-outs in EU, complaint says
EU Facebook users have until June 26 to opt out of AI training.
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Why We Should Stop Using JavaScript According to Douglas Crockford (Inventor of JSON) - YouTube
YouTube Video
Click to view this content.
It's a two minute video
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Online Privacy and Overfishing
> Internet surveillance, and the resultant loss of privacy, is following the same trajectory. Just as certain fish populations in the world’s oceans have fallen 80 percent, from previously having fallen 80 percent, from previously having fallen 80 percent (ad infinitum), our expectations of privacy have similarly fallen precipitously. The pervasive nature of modern technology makes surveillance easier than ever before, while each successive generation of the public is accustomed to the privacy status quo of their youth. What seems normal to us in the security community is whatever was commonplace at the beginning of our careers.
- www.404media.co Solar Storm Knocks Out Farmers' Tractor GPS Systems During Peak Planting Season
The accuracy of some critical GPS navigation systems used in modern farming have been "extremely compromised," a John Deere dealership told customers Saturday.
John Deere was unavailable for comment.
- www.yankodesign.com Lofree EDGE – The World’s Thinnest Mechanical Keyboard is just 16mm, less than two iPhones thick - Yanko Design
You don't associate mechanical keyboards with sleek portability... and you don't associate portable compact keyboards with great tactile feedback or mechanical travel. Lofree's somehow managed to blur both those worlds into a keyboard that offers the best typing experience while weighing just a poun...
- www.techspot.com NASA uses laser link to beam data 140 million miles across space at 25 Mbps
NASA has confirmed a significant milestone for its Psyche spacecraft's Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment. This technology demonstration aims to test laser-based data links beyond the...
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IBM nearing deal for cloud software provider HashiCorp, source says
April 23 (Reuters) - International Business Machines (IBM.N), opens new tab is nearing a deal to buy cloud software provider HashiCorp (HCP.O) , opens new tab, according to a person familiar with the matter. Hashicorp's stock surged 24%, giving it a market value of $6.1 billion, after the Wall Street Journal first reported the talks.
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High Schooler Invents an A.I.-Powered Trap That Zaps Invasive Lanternflies
www.smithsonianmag.com This High Schooler Invented an A.I.-Powered Trap That Zaps Invasive LanternfliesUsing solar power, machine learning and her family’s patio umbrella, 18-year-old Selina Zhang created a synthetic tree that lures the destructive species
- newatlas.com Giant 'sand battery' holds a week's heat for a whole town
A new industrial-scale 'sand battery' has been announced for Finland, which packs 1 MW of power and a capacity of up to 100 MWh of thermal energy for use during those cold polar winters. The new battery will be about 10 times bigger than a pilot plant that’s been running since 2022.
- newatlas.com Winged cargo ship saves three tonnes of fuel per day on first voyage
An age of greener, more efficient shipping may be in the offing as a specially modified 43,000-tonne bulk freighter completes a six-month sea trial using a combination of diesel engines and a set of high-tech automatic sails to catch the wind.
- techxplore.com New AI technology enables 3D capture and editing of real-life objects
Imagine performing a sweep around an object with your smartphone and getting a realistic, fully editable 3D model that you can view from any angle. This is fast becoming reality, thanks to advances in AI.
- arstechnica.com Some teachers are now using ChatGPT to grade papers
New AI tools aim to help with grading and lesson plans—but they may have serious drawbacks.
In a notable shift toward sanctioned use of AI in schools, some educators in grades 3–12 are now using a ChatGPT-powered grading tool called Writable, reports Axios. The tool, acquired last summer by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, is designed to streamline the grading process, potentially offering time-saving benefits for teachers. But is it a good idea to outsource critical feedback to a machine?
Writable lets teachers submit student essays for analysis by ChatGPT, which then provides commentary and observations on the work. The AI-generated feedback goes to teacher review before being passed on to students so that a human remains in the loop.
"Make feedback more actionable with AI suggestions delivered to teachers as the writing happens," Writable promises on its AI website. "Target specific areas for improvement with powerful, rubric-aligned comments, and save grading time with AI-generated draft scores." The service also provides AI-written writing prompt suggestions: "Input any topic and instantly receive unique prompts that engage students and are tailored to your classroom needs."
- newatlas.com 28-ton, 1.2-megawatt tidal kite is now exporting power to the grid
Minesto's fully operational Dragon 12 looks like some sort of futuristic military drone – but it behaves remarkably like a kite underwater. It uses lift generated by tidal flows to fly patterns faster than the currents, harvesting renewable energy.
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Researchers develop world's first functioning graphene semiconductor | Breakthrough could eventually lead to terahertz processors
www.techspot.com Researchers develop world's first functioning graphene semiconductorEarlier this month, researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta published a paper in Nature. The study discusses producing epigraphene from silicon carbide (SiC). Semiconducting...
- www.nbcnews.com 'A mouse for your mouth': New device allows users to scroll with their tongues
MouthPad^, which attaches to the roof of the mouth, made its debut on the floor of CES. It will be available to the public later this year.
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Open-Source Security Chip Released. The first commercial chip based on the OpenTitan hardware security design has hit the market.
spectrum.ieee.org Open-Source Security Chip ReleasedThe first commercial chip based on the OpenTitan hardware security design has hit the market