ReHacked vol. 305: The Case for Kicking the Stone, EU Officially Bans AI Systems with ‘Unacceptable Risk’ and more

The Case for Kicking the Stone #society #internet #technology #longread

We can’t change or constrain the tech, says Carr, but we can change ourselves. We can choose to reject the hyperreal for the material. We can follow Samuel Johnson’s refutation of immaterialism by “kicking the stone,” reminding ourselves of what is real. It is an inspiring rallying call, and Superbloom shows us what is at stake—but with market forces, peer pressure, and our own instincts ranged against us, this might be easier said than done. As Richard Powers wrote in his 1998 novel Gain: “People want everything. That’s their problem.”

Make a donation - support Ukraine. Щира подяка. Разом до перемоги!

Get your discount at Hostinger and Support ReHacked

Don’t forget to share if you like what you read here, subscribe (if not yet) and leave a comment. Any form of your feedback is very important to me. Thanks!

RSS feed available if you don’t want to clutter your inbox.

I'm excited to offer you an opportunity to support my work as the sole contributor to ReHacked. Your contribution will play a crucial role in covering server expenses. Rest assured, my commitment to keeping the primary content accessible to everyone remains unwavering.

As the sole contributor, your support is truly invaluable. Feel free to become a paid subscriber, and remember, you have the flexibility to cancel or switch to the "Free" option at any time.

Thank you for being an essential part of our community. Together, let's continue fostering a culture of knowledge-sharing and making a positive difference in the digital landscape.

Everyone knows your location #privacy

TL;DR

After more than couple dozen hours of trying, here are the main takeaways:

• I found a couple requests sent by my phone with my location + 5 requests that leak my IP address, which can be turned into geolocation using reverse DNS.
• Learned a lot about the RTB (real-time bidding) auctions and OpenRTB protocol and was shocked by the amount and types of data sent with the bids to ad exchanges.
• Gave up on the idea to buy my location data from a data broker or a tracking service, because I don't have a big enough company to take a trial or $10-50k to buy a huge database with the data of millions of people + me.
• Well maybe I do, but such expense seems a bit irrational.
• Turns out that EU-based peoples` data is almost the most expensive.

But still, I know my location data was collected and I know where to buy it!

Humanity's Last Exam #ai

Benchmarks are important tools for tracking the rapid advancements in large lan-
guage model (LLM) capabilities. However, benchmarks are not keeping pace in
difficulty: LLMs now achieve over 90% accuracy on popular benchmarks like
MMLU, limiting informed measurement of state-of-the-art LLM capabilities. In
response, we introduce HUMANITY’S LAST EXAM (HLE), a multi-modal bench-
mark at the frontier of human knowledge, designed to be the final closed-ended
academic benchmark of its kind with broad subject coverage. HLE consists of
3,000 questions across dozens of subjects, including mathematics, humanities, and
the natural sciences. HLE is developed globally by subject-matter experts and con-
sists of multiple-choice and short-answer questions suitable for automated grading.
Each question has a known solution that is unambiguous and easily verifiable, but
cannot be quickly answered via internet retrieval. State-of-the-art LLMs demon-
strate low accuracy and calibration on HLE, highlighting a significant gap between
current LLM capabilities and the expert human frontier on closed-ended academic
questions. To inform research and policymaking upon a clear understanding of
model capabilities, we publicly release HLE at https://lastexam.ai.

EU Officially Bans AI Systems with ‘Unacceptable Risk’ Under AI Act - Super Intelligence News - Artificial Intelligence News #ai #privacy #law #regulations #eu

According to Article 5 of the AI Act, the following AI applications are now illegal across the European Union:

• Social Scoring AI: Systems that create risk profiles based on individuals’ behavior, similar to China’s social credit system.
• Deceptive Manipulation AI: AI that subtly influences users’ decisions without their awareness.
• Exploitative AI: AI that targets vulnerable groups, including children, the elderly, or individuals with disabilities.
• Crime Prediction AI: AI systems that predict criminal behavior based on biometric or appearance-based profiling.
• Biometric-Based Character Inference: AI that tries to determine personal characteristics like sexual orientation or political beliefs through biometrics.
• Real-Time Biometric Surveillance: AI that collects live facial recognition data in public spaces for law enforcement purposes.
• Emotion Recognition AI in Work & Schools: AI that analyzes emotions in professional or educational settings.
• Unauthorized Facial Recognition Databases: AI that scrapes images online or from security cameras to expand facial recognition databases.

The Looking Glass: The Valuable Employee Paradox #career #longread

Here’s a seeming paradox:

1. Every great manager I know tells me that the reports they find most valuable are the ones who convince them to do things differently.

2. However, most reports believe they are most valuable when they do what their manager wants.

These axioms have been true in hundreds of promotion discussions I’ve been a part of. They’ve been true in my own life. The people I value the most are the ones who regularly challenge my thinking to present different and better ideas.

Open source alternative to Postman, Insomnia #software

Open source API development ecosystem - https://hoppscotch.io (open-source alternative to Postman, Insomnia)

List of 200 UK companies that moved to 4-day working week. – Future 4 Days #career

Over 200 companies in the UK have started a four-day working week without reducing salaries. These companies include marketing agencies, IT firms, consultancies, and charity organizations, together employing more than 5,000 people. This trend is growing in popularity, even as big companies push their employees to return to the office full-time.

Taking A $15 Casio F91W 5,000 Meters Underwater – Watches of Espionage #interesting #longread #history

While the stories we tell typically explore the world of intelligence in the terrestrial sense, espionage and the deep sea have been closely linked for decades. Starting during the Cold War, a shadowy conflict has been waged on the ocean floor. From submarines and divers tapping (or cutting) cables to deepsea acoustic listening stations and the clandestine recovery of sensitive materials, controlling and monitoring the deep ocean is an unfamiliar yet critical component of intelligence and modern warfare.

Brands like Rolex and Omega will often tout their deepsea capabilities with the Rolex Deepsea Challenge rated to 11,000 meters (36,090 feet) and the Omega Ultra Deep coming in at a lesser but still ridiculous 6,000 meters (20,000 feet) of theoretical water resistance. But what about a cheap Casio often associated with terrorists and hipsters? With around $15 and some engineering know-how, can an affordable watch also venture into the deep ocean?

The government says money isn't property—so it can take yours #law #economy

In a jaw-dropping argument, the Department of Justice claims seizing $50,000 from a small business doesn’t violate property rights because money isn’t property.

Proust Questionnaire - Wikipedia

The Proust Questionnaire is a set of questions answered by the French writer Marcel Proust, and often used by modern interviewers.

Proust answered the questionnaire in a confession album—a form of parlor game popular among Victorians. The album belonged to his friend Antoinette, daughter of future French President Félix Faure, titled "An Album to Record Thoughts, Feelings, etc."

Watch an Avant-Garde Bauhaus Ballet in Brilliant Color, First Staged in 1922 | Open Culture #art #culture #history #bauhaus

The Bauhaus school, found­ed by Ger­man archi­tect Wal­ter Gropius in 1919, for the aes­thet­ic prin­ci­ples that have guid­ed so much mod­ern design and archi­tec­ture in the 20th and 21st cen­turies. The school’s rela­tion­ships with artists like Paul Klee, Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky, Las­z­lo Moholy-Nagy, and Lud­wig Mies van der Rohe mean that Bauhaus is close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Expres­sion­ism and Dada in the visu­al and lit­er­ary arts, and, of course, with the mod­ernist indus­tri­al design and glass and steel archi­tec­ture we asso­ciate with Frank Lloyd Wright and Charles and Ray Eames, among so many oth­ers.

Some guys restarting Pebble and Google opensources te code for it.

See the code that powered the Pebble smartwatches | Google Open Source Blog #software

Pebble was initially launched through a very successful Kickstarter project. Pebble’s first Kickstarter was the single most funded at the time, and its successor Kickstarter for the Pebble Time repeated that feat – and remains the second most funded today! Over the course of four years, Pebble sold over two million smartwatches, cultivating a thriving community of thousands of developers who created over ten thousand Pebble apps and watchfaces.

In 2016, Fitbit acquired Pebble, including Pebble’s intellectual property. Later on, Fitbit itself was acquired by Google, taking the Pebble OS with it.

Despite the Pebble hardware and software support being discontinued eight years ago, Pebble still has thousands of dedicated fans.

And even more on this: The future of Rebble

Historical Photos Show the Joy of Making Snowmen | PetaPixel #photography #art #history #fun

The splendid set of photos, taken between 1854 and 1950, have been curated by The Public Domain Review which describes photography as a gift to snowmen.

If you would like to propose any interesting article for the next ReHacked issue, just hit reply or push this sexy “Leave a comment” (if not subscribed yet) button below. It’s a nice way to start a discussion.

Thanks for reading this digest and remember: we can make it better together, just leave your opinion or suggestions after pressing this button above or simply hit the reply in your e-mail and don’t forget - sharing is caring ;) Have a great week!

Dainius