Vice – Tech News

Feds Want to Ban the World’s Cutest Hacking Device. Experts Say It’s a ‘Scapegoat’

"We shouldn't be blaming manufacturers of radio transmitters for security lapses in the wireless unlock mechanisms of cars," Bill Budington, Senior Staff Technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said in a statement to Motherboard. "Flipper Zero devices, because of their ease of use, are convenient scapegoats to blame for gaping security holes in fob implementations by car manufacturers. Banning Flipper Zero devices is tantamount to banning a multi-tool because it can be used for vandalism, or banning markers because they can be used for graffiti. Moreover, tools like the Flipper Zero are used by security researchers involved in researching and hardening the security of systems like car fobs—banning them will result in tangible harms."
https://www.vice.com/en/article/4a388g/flipper-zero-ban-canada-hacking-car-thefts

Apple Vision Pro Turned the Real World Into a ‘Black Mirror’ Episode Overnight

The Vision Pro, Apple’s new VR and mixed-reality headset, generated a wealth of dystopian images as influencers took the premium device out for a spin in the real world after its launch on Friday. Here are just a few examples: YouTubers Isaac Mosna and Patrick Tomasso went out for dinner while both wearing the $3,499 goggles; X user Dante wore the headset while in a self-driving Tesla, tapping at the air until the clip cuts to show him parked with police lights flashing in his rear window; a man wore his Vision Pro on the subway to work, which, again, to others looks like gesturing at nothing in the ether; Casey Neistat unsteadily climbed a set of stairs while responding to texts wearing the headset; and YouTuber Victor Abarca even held a dinner party where the guests clinked glasses while looking at each other through pass-through video feeds. In one clip, X user Alex Finn sits in his living room, surrounded by seven virtual screens showing sports and social media, before reaching for a sandwich (another clip, where he’s surrounded by TikTok videos, is even more disorienting).
https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7bw54/apple-vision-pro-black-mirror

‘Palworld’ Is Tearing the Internet Apart

Palworld is a new video game where players can capture knockoff Pokémon and put them to work in a factory manufacturing AR-15s. It sold 5 million copies in 3 days. Die hard Pokémon fans are angry online because they see Palworld as a cheap asset flip and they believe, without evidence, that Pocketpair used AI to create it.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3m5nw/palworld-pokemon-game-ai-controversy

A ‘Shocking’ Amount of the Web Is Already AI-Translated Trash, Scientists Determine

A “shocking” amount of the internet is machine-translated garbage, particularly in languages spoken in Africa and the Global South, a new study has found. Researchers at the Amazon Web Services AI lab found that over half of the sentences on the web have been translated into two or more languages, often with increasingly worse quality due to poor machine translation (MT), which they said raised “serious concerns” about the training of large language models.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3w4gw/a-shocking-amount-of-the-web-is-already-ai-translated-trash-scientists-determine

Thousands of Software Engineers Say the Job Market Is Getting Much Worse

According to a December survey of 9,338 software engineers performed on behalf of Motherboard by Blind, an online anonymous platform for verified employees. In the poll, nearly nine in 10 surveyed software engineers said it is more difficult to get a job now than it was before the pandemic, with 66 percent saying it was “much harder.”
https://www.vice.com/en/article/g5y37j/thousands-of-software-engineers-say-the-job-market-is-getting-much-worse

‘Magic: The Gathering’ Publisher Denies, Then Admits, Using AI Art In Promo Image

Wizards of the Coast, the publishers of the popular games Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons, admitted on Monday that it published a marketing image containing some AI generated content—after initially claiming that it didn’t. Wizards also said it was updating its policies to make it clear to the artists they work with that AI wasn’t to be used in the creation process. In December, Wizards officially announced a ban on the use of AI images in Magic: The Gathering cards.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/7kxq3x/magic-the-gathering-publisher-denies-then-admits-using-ai-art-in-promo-image

Apple Just Confirmed Governments Are Spying on People’s Phones With Push Notifications

Governments are spying on U.S. smartphone users through the push notifications that they receive from apps, Senator Ron Wyden wrote in a letter to the Department of Justice on Wednesday and Apple confirmed. Apple confirmed in a statement to Reuters on Wednesday that, “In this case, the federal government prohibited us from sharing any information. Now that this method has become public we are updating our transparency reporting to detail these kinds of requests.”
https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxjbv9/apple-just-confirmed-governments-are-spying-on-peoples-phones-with-push-notifications