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Smart TV platforms are increasingly monitoring what appears on users' screens through Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) technology, building detailed viewer profiles for targeted advertising. Roku, which transitioned from a hardware company to an advertising powerhouse, reported $3.5 billion in annual ad revenue for 2024 -- representing 85% of its total income. The company has aggressively acquired ACR-related firms, with Roku-owned technology winning an Emmy in 2023 for advancements in the field. According to market research firm Antenna, 43% of all streaming subscriptions in the United States were ad-supported by late 2024, showing the industry's shift toward advertising-based models. Most users unknowingly consent to this monitoring when setting up their devices. Though consumers can technically disable ACR in their TV settings, doing so often restricts functionality.

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KaOS 2025.03 Linux Distro Released with KDE Plasma 6.3 and Linux Kernel 6.13  9to5Linux

KaOS 2025.03 Linux Distro Released with KDE Plasma 6.3 and Linux Kernel 6.13  9to5Linux

KaOS 2025.03 Linux Distro Released with KDE Plasma 6.3 and Linux Kernel 6.13  9to5Linux

KaOS 2025.03 Linux Distro Released with KDE Plasma 6.3 and Linux Kernel 6.13  9to5Linux

KaOS 2025.03 Linux Distro Released with KDE Plasma 6.3 and Linux Kernel 6.13  9to5Linux

KaOS 2025.03 Linux Distro Released with KDE Plasma 6.3 and Linux Kernel 6.13  9to5Linux

KaOS 2025.03 Linux Distro Released with KDE Plasma 6.3 and Linux Kernel 6.13  9to5Linux

KaOS 2025.03 Linux Distro Released with KDE Plasma 6.3 and Linux Kernel 6.13  9to5Linux

This week, we released Gemini 2.5 Pro, our most intelligent model yet. On the latest episode of the Release Notes podcast, host Logan Kilpatrick goes on a deep dive with…

Benchmark Anything With This Powerful Linux Tool  How-To Geek

Stanford University researchers have proposed creating "bodyoids" -- ethically sourced human bodies grown from stem cells without neural components for consciousness or pain sensation -- to revolutionize medical research and address organ shortages. In a new opinion piece published in MIT Technology Review, scientists Carsten T. Charlesworth, Henry T. Greely, and Hiromitsu Nakauchi argue that recent advances in biotechnology make this concept increasingly plausible. The approach would combine pluripotent stem cells, artificial uterus technology, and genetic techniques to inhibit brain development. The researchers point to persistent shortages of human biological materials as a major bottleneck in medical progress. More than 100,000 patients currently await solid organ transplants in the US alone, while less than 15% of drugs entering clinical trials receive regulatory approval. These lab-grown bodies could potentially generate patient-specific organs that are perfect immunological matches, eliminate the need for lifelong immunosuppression, and provide personalized drug screening models.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Amnesty International published a new report this week detailing attempted hacks against two Serbian journalists, allegedly carried out with NSO Group's spyware Pegasus. The two journalists, who work for the Serbia-based Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), received suspicious text messages including a link -- basically a phishing attack, according to the nonprofit. In one case, Amnesty said its researchers were able to click on the link in a safe environment and see that it led to a domain that they had previously identified as belonging to NSO Group's infrastructure. "Amnesty International has spent years tracking NSO Group Pegasus spyware and how it has been used to target activists and journalists," Donncha O Cearbhaill, the head of Amnesty's Security Lab, told TechCrunch. "This technical research has allowed Amnesty to identify malicious websites used to deliver the Pegasus spyware, including the specific Pegasus domain used in this campaign." To his point, security researchers like O Cearbhaill who have been keeping tabs on NSO's activities for years are now so good at spotting signs of the company's spyware that sometimes all researchers have to do is quickly look at a domain involved in an attack. In other words, NSO Group and its customers are losing their battle to stay in the shadows. "NSO has a basic problem: They are not as good at hiding as their customers think," John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at The Citizen Lab, a human rights organization that has investigated spyware abuses since 2012, told TechCrunch.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: A former director of data science at the UK prime minister's office has told MPs that people working with data in government are not typically technical and would be unlikely to get a similar job in the private sector. In a hearing designed to illuminate the challenges facing the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) as it strives to become the digital centre for government, MPs quizzed Laura Gilbert, head of AI for Government, at the Ellison Institute and former director of data science at 10 Downing Street, the prime ministers' office. Members of the House of Common's Science, Innovation and Technology Committee wanted to know about the performance of the Government Digital Service, which in January was moved from the Cabinet Office to DSIT and merged with Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO), the Incubator for AI (i.AI). Gilbert, a particle physicist who has worked in a number of tech industry roles, said one of the challenges was understanding the level of tech skills in the civil service in central government.

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Fake movie trailers created with AI are proliferating across YouTube, with some garnering more views than official studio releases -- and Hollywood studios are quietly profiting from the phenomenon rather than shutting it down. Instead of enforcing copyright on these unauthorized videos, Warner Bros. Discovery, Sony Pictures, and Paramount are claiming monetization rights, directing ad revenue from fake trailers for films like "Superman" and "Gladiator II" into studio coffers, according to a Deadline investigation published Friday. YouTube channels like Screen Culture, which has amassed 1.4 billion views, merge official footage with AI-generated imagery to create convincing trailer mockups that frequently rank higher in search results than legitimate studio releases. "Monetizing unauthorized, unwanted, and subpar uses of human-centered IP is a race to the bottom," SAG-AFTRA told Deadline, condemning studios for profiting from content that exploits performers without permission.

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How to use the Sed command  Network World

The College Board, described as a $2 billion nonprofit, functions as the primary gatekeeper for academic success within American higher education, according to an analysis by Bloomberg. The organization significantly shapes university admissions by controlling not only who gains entry to college but also influencing what students know upon arrival. This central role in managing and defining higher education admissions positions the Board uniquely. The story adds: The College Board writes the curriculum for 40 AP courses, administers and grades the exams, oversees the PSAT and SAT, and offers a variety of free and paid resources to help prepare for the courses and tests. Many students will wind up paying the company north of $1,000 over the course of their high school career. "If the same people can create the content and create the tests, that's a really great business model where you've got the whole public secondary education system wrapped up in one little company," says Jon Boeckenstedt, the vice provost of enrollment management at Oregon State University and a prominent critic of the College Board. Housing so many parts of the high school experience under one roof has made the New York-based organization immensely wealthy, with more than $1 billion in annual revenue -- on which it pays no taxes as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. But mere money isn't the biggest source of the College Board's might. Twelve decades after its creation, it's now the closest thing the fragmented American educational system has to a central governing body, with a huge amount of authority over what students are expected to know when they get to college. Higher education is arguably the most important driver of social mobility, as well as the most powerful force in selecting which members of the next generation will set the political and cultural agenda. By controlling who gets in and what they know when they get there, the College Board has become the chief gatekeeper of academic success in America.

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Both Haiku and Linux get new FOSS Nvidia drivers  theregister.com

Both Haiku and Linux get new FOSS Nvidia drivers  theregister.com

Both Haiku and Linux get new FOSS Nvidia drivers  theregister.com