Allow me to spread the word about ListenBrainz , the occasion being that ListenBrainz is about to hit 100.000 users.

ListenBrainz is a FOSS project that aims to crowdsource listening data and release it under an open license. Basically it’s Last.fm but better. Whatever you use to listen to music, you can probably link it up with ListenBrainz. For instance you can connect Spotify, Apple Music, Soundcloud, Last.fm . You can link it up with loads of music players . If you’ve kept track of your what music you’ve listened to up to this point, don’t worry, there are several ways to import them into ListenBrainz.

All ListenBrainz listening data is available for all to use. This means that we don't need to rely on big companies like Spotify for recommendation algorithms. We can use whatever algorithm suits us best. All sorts of other services could be build to make use of the ListenBrainz data set. The dataset can also help analyze other services' algorithms, for instance the Fair MusE project uses LB-data and LB-users to investigate the fairness of different music service algorithms.

Obviously ListenBrainz initially suffered from being a comparatively small service, For good recommendations you need loads of data. But it's growing every day and I feel like the 1 billion listens is an impressive milestone. And ListenBrainz has the advantage of having listening data from several services, Spotify could never recommend you music that's not on Spotify. ListenBrainz, because it's open, doesn't have such inherent blindspots.

I am not working for ListenBrainz in any way, I just really like this project as well as MusicBrainz , and I like to spread the word. I think the aims of the ListenBrainz probably align with some Fediverse-folks. If you don't care about the service itself, you could still link up to support FOSS music services, not only LB itself, but other services that are, can and will be built using LB's data. If you use another service to store your own listening data, for instance Last.fm, you could use ListenBrainz as a backup for you data in case the other sevice ever enshittifies. Note: you shouldn't sign up if you want your listening data to be private, that's not what LB is for. I care very much about privacy, but in the case of LB I consciously choose to share my music listening data with others for my own benefit.

Curious to hear peoples thought on all this.

P.S. I have posted about LB over a year ago. I don't intend to spam this service, but i feel like it could be useful for folks on here, and I think most of you folks would support the spreading of FOSS. And LBs usercount rising from 36k january last year to 100k now seemed like a good celebratory occasion to spread the love once more.

• “Cloud First”: To move federal agencies to the cloud, the government created a program known as FedRAMP, whose job was to ensure the security of new technology.
• Security Breakdown: ProPublica found that FedRAMP authorized a Microsoft product called GCC High to handle sensitive government data, despite years of concerns about its security.
• Potential Conflict of Interest: The government relies, in part, on third-party firms to vet cloud technology, but those firms are hired and paid by the company being assessed.

The Indian government has introduced countless rules supposedly to make smartphone safer. In reality, the rules will make phones less safe, and enable further mass surveillance and authoritarianism.

Mastodon.

The data comes from the apps and infrastructure of P3 (a subsidiary of Navigate360), which is used by intelligence and law enforcement agencies across the United States and in several other countries, as well as tens of thousands of schools. According to the company, it's the "#1 Platform for Fusion Centers and Major City Intel Units." The data also includes information on the company's customer accounts, in addition to copies of the support requests submitted by users.

The dataset challenges some of the statements made by P3. While P3 says that the communications on the system are encrypted, however the data was allegedly retrieved in plaintext. P3 also claims that the tip collection and messaging process is anonymous, however the data indicates that administrators are secretly given the ability to de-anonymize users.

Altman’s remarks in his tweet drew an overwhelmingly negative reaction.

“You’re welcome,” one user responded. “Nice to know that our reward is our jobs being taken away.”

Others called him a “f***ing psychopath” and “scum.”

“Nothing says ‘you’re being replaced’ quite like a heartfelt thank you from the guy doing the replacing,” one user wrote.

Doom runs on potato batteries, blood pressure cuffs, and now, your car dash!

World, known as WorldCoin until late 2024 when AI became trendier than cryptocurrency, announced on Tuesday that it was opening a limited beta of its new AgentKit. The new tech, says World, will serve as a way to tie AI agents directly to a human to prevent bad actors from abusing agentic AI and "infuse trust into the system."

Given this is a World venture, that damn eyeball-scanning-orb is still involved.

Legal Opinion.

Electron apps are ruining the Windows 11 experience, and even the JavaScript creator has warned against ‘rushed web UX over native,’ but it doesn’t look like that will change Microsoft’s plans. In a post on X and other places, Microsoft reaffirmed its commitment to AI in Windows 11 and encouraged Electron developers to consider using AI in their apps.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/56890254

The video’s opening shot shows a man hiding under a bed snipping in a hole in someone’s sock. Seconds later, the same man uses a saw to shorten a table leg so that it wobbles during breakfast. “My job is to make things shitty,” the man explains. “The official title is enshittificator. What I do is I take things that are perfectly fine and I make them worse.”

The video, released recently by the Norwegian Consumer Council, is an absurdist take on a serious issue; it is part of a wider, global campaign aimed at fighting back against the “enshittification”, or gradual deterioration, of digital products and services.

“We wanted to show that you wouldn’t accept this in the analogue world,” said Finn Lützow-Holm Myrstad, the council’s director of digital policy. “But this is happening every day in our digital products and services, and we really think it doesn’t need to be that way.”

Coined by author Cory Doctorow, the term enshittification refers to the deliberate degradation of a service or product, particularly in the digital sphere. Examples abound, from social media feeds that have gradually become littered with adverts and scams to software updates that leave phones lagging and chatbots that supplant customer service agents.

Hacker News.

Experts say that claims UK data remains under government ownership miss the point that the company has the capability to build its own detailed picture of the British population, and even infer state secrets.

Eurosky and Igalia today announced a partnership to develop key infrastructure for the open social web, based on the AT Protocol.

The collaboration brings together Eurosky’s vision of sovereign, public-interest social web infrastructure for Europe and Igalia’s long-standing expertise in open-source engineering and standards development. Together, the two organizations will work to strengthen the technical foundations of the AT Protocol ecosystem and ensure that Europe can contribute to shaping the next generation of social media.

The goal of the partnership is to accelerate the development of independent, European-operated infrastructure for the social web, enabling developers, organizations, and communities to build new social applications on top of open protocols.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/44340504

Our actions and voices do make a difference! Keep AI out of games and reward original creative work.

Research Opinion Article.

Within groups and societies, cognitive diversity bolsters creativity and problem-solving, say the researchers. However, cognitive diversity is shrinking worldwide as billions of people are using the same handful of AI chatbots for an increasing number of tasks, they add. When people use chatbots to help them polish their writing, for example, the writing ends up losing its stylistic individuality, and people feel less creative ownership over what they produce.

It is as if you have walked into a branch of one of Vietnam’s banks. A row of customer service desks, divided by plastic screens, with landline phones, promotional leaflets and staff business cards. A seated waiting area and a private meeting room. All of it features the OCB bank’s logo, or its trademark green colour.

This is not a genuine bank branch, however. It’s one of various “mock up” rooms inside a sprawling compound on the Thai-Cambodian border, where criminal groups are accused of using elaborate and industrial-scale fraud schemes to trick victims into handing over money.

The scammers behind the compound targeted people not just in Vietnam, but across Asia, Australia and South America, according to documents and props discovered inside.

Within the six-floor building, in the Cambodian border town of O’Smach, there are rooms designed to look like offices for police forces from Australia, Singapore and China. There are even fake uniforms, badges and scripts to be read over the phone to victims.

At least 10 alleged U.S.-based facilitators have been federally charged, including one active-duty member of the U.S. Army, for their alleged roles in hosting laptop farms, laundering payments and moving proceeds through shell companies. At least six other alleged U.S. facilitators have been identified in court documents but not named.