ReHacked vol. 330: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality, Tech Billionaires Accused of Quietly Working to Implement "Corporate Dictatorship" and more

The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality | Culture | EL PAÍS English #economy #longread #consumerism

There’s a YouTube documentary about “planned obsolescence” with over a million views. It explains how some companies design certain products — especially household appliances — stop working after a certain period of time. This isn’t a conspiracy theory, but a proven fact. However, there’s another, lesser-known but even more effective method: convincing consumers that a product is outdated for aesthetic or symbolic reasons, even if it still works. This phenomenon is called “perceived obsolescence.” For example, Vinyals mentions young people who refuse to rent an apartment because it has old furniture, even though the material it’s made of is more durable and sturdier than the IKEA furniture they’ll ultimately end up investing in.

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Tech Billionaires Accused of Quietly Working to Implement "Corporate Dictatorship" #society #futurism

In an interview on "Decoder," a podcast by The Verge, tech journalist Gil Duran outlines a disturbing theory that a growing number of Silicon Valley elites are pursuing a vision of power not rooted in the common good, but in profit, feudal hierarchy, and total control of the platforms that define daily life for hundreds of millions of people.

Duran dubs this emerging ideology the "Nerd Reich" — a slurry of right-wing ideas championed by ruthless tech overlords like Palantir founder Peter Thiel, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, and cryptocurrency titan Brian Armstrong, with some OpenAI CEO Sam Altman sprinkled in for good measure. Drawing on the reactionary writings of Curtis "Mencius Moldbug" Yarvin and the cryptolibertarianism of tech investor Balaji Srinivasan, this philosophy isn't explicitly outlined by our billionaire overlords, but is nonetheless a useful framework that explains their increasingly undemocratic actions.

EU age verification app to ban any Android system not licensed by Google : r/degoogle #software #privacy

The EU is currently developing a whitelabel app to perform privacy-preserving (at least in theory) age verification to be adopted and personalized in the coming months by member states. The app is open source and available here: https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/av-app-android-wallet-ui.

Problem is, the app is planning to include remote attestation feature to verify the integrity of the app: https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/av-app-android-wallet-ui?tab=readme-ov-file#disclaimer. This is supposed to provide assurance to the age verification service that the app being used is authentic and running on a genuine operating system. Genuine in the case of Android means:

• The operating system was licensed by Google
• The app was downloaded from the Play Store (thus requiring a Google account)
• Device security checks have passed

The god of small things: celebrating Arvo Pärt at 90 | Classical music | The Guardian #music #culture

In many ways Arvo Pärt and John Williams’s music couldn’t be further apart. One celebrates simplicity, purity, and draws much of its inspiration from sacred texts; the other captures strong emotions in sweeping orchestral scores. And yet the two men are today’s most performed contemporary composers. Bachtrack’s annual survey of classical music performed across the world placed Pärt second (John Williams is in the top spot) in 2023 and 2024. In 2022, Pärt was first, Williams second. This year, Pärt might return to No 1 as concert halls and festivals worldwide celebrate his 90th birthday, on 11 September.

Do not download the app, use the website #privacy #internet #software

Beyond the Hype: The Real Reasons Companies Want You on Their App. The answer, in short, is data. A lot of it. And access. A whole lot more of that too.

Think about it this way. What can a website on your browser really get from you? Unless you manually upload your contact information, or there's a serious security vulnerability, a website's access to your phone's deeper functions is quite limited.

Apps, on the other hand, are a different beast entirely. They are designed to integrate much more deeply with your device. When you download an app and want to use a particular feature, you're often prompted to grant various permissions. And let's be honest, how many of us meticulously read through every single permission pop-up? Most of the time, we just tap "Allow" to get to what we want to do.

The Sumerian Game: The ancestor of modern city builders - Spillhistorie.no #software #fun #strategy

The Sumerian Game is not a very advanced game, though it does have a certain depth. Through the game and the text-based messages that appear along the way, players are able to construct a kind of story together with the computer’s algorithms – albeit one that often ends badly – and in the dilemmas they face can be recognized as the core of even modern strategy games. Every choice they make is interesting, in the sense that it has significant consequences for what happens next.

Cops say criminals use a Google Pixel with GrapheneOS — I say that’s freedom #privacy

GrapheneOS’ sandboxing extends to invasive apps like Google Play Services and the Play Store. You can explicitly disable each and every permission for these apps manually — in fact, most permissions are disabled by default. Even better, you can create different user profiles to isolate apps that require lots of permissions. GrapheneOS can forward notifications to the primary user profile, unlike stock Android.

GrapheneOS limits Google's reach into your phone more than any other flavor of Android.

Why you can't color calibrate (deep) space photos #space #photography

New records on Wendelstein 7-X #technology

On the last day of its OP 2.3 campaign, which ended on May 22, the Wendelstein 7-X device sustained a new peak value of this key fusion parameter for 43 seconds. While high values of fusion triple product have been achieved during plasma durations of a few seconds in devices like JT-60U (Japan, decommissioned in 2008) and JET (Europe), this is a new world record for triple product in long plasma discharges.

"Elevating the triple product to tokamak levels during long plasma pulses marks another important milestone on the way toward a power-plant-capable stellarator," said Thomas Klinger, Head of Operations at Wendelstein 7-X and Head of Stellarator Dynamics and Transport at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) in Greifswald, Germany.

UK backing down on Apple encryption backdoor after pressure from US - Ars Technica #copyrights

UK officials fear their insistence on backdoor endangers tech deals with US.

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