Accrescent, for those who don't know, is an alternative android app store. They aim to compete directly with the play store, so unlike F-Droid they include both FOSS and proprietary apps. They are also very security focused. They're still small but I find their approach interesting and their ambition worth supporting.
Unfortunately, as with many FOSS projects, funding is a challenge. If you believe they are worth supporting, please read the linked blog post.
Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with the project in any way, just a fan trying to raise awareness.
Accrescent is a novel Android app store focused on security, privacy, and usability. We’ve been building Accrescent since 2021 to improve the security and freedom of everyday Android users by providing an alternative to Google Play which doesn’t comp…
To date the majority of the coding has been done by one person after work. Their infrastructure was also too slow.
They released a progress update and roadmap a few days ago. They've already implemented some infrastructure upgrades and are prioritising back-end updates. Presumably this will make the store more attractive for app developers.
The funding push is to make it possible to have a developer working on the project fulltime.
Edit: a word
2nd edit to add: I found this thread from about a year ago, when they only had 10 apps. Relevant quotes from the developer:
Developer of Accrescent here. Yes, there are only a handful of apps available right now. The reason for this is that the recent focus hasn't been directed on getting more apps in the store, but instead on internal changes to allow Accrescent to include more features and scale to more users. It will be able to include more apps once more of those changes are implemented.
Yes, we may take on some additional apps over time. This depends on how much the project can handle maintenance-wise and how willing those app developers are to deal with the early and changing nature of Accrescent. We're not directly reaching out to any developers at this time, however.
In our recent post about Accrescent’s financial future and sustainability, we announced that to build trust and transparency with our community, we’d be publishing a follow-up blog post about what we’ve been working on lately and where we’ve been set…
The unemployment rate among college graduates has risen, with majors exposed to AI, including computer engineering design and architecture, among those affected.
In addition, job growth across several white-collar sectors has been tepid, pointing to AI’s growing role in the workforce.
Certain tech industries, including cloud, web search and computer systems design, stopped growing at the end of 2022, just after the release of ChatGPT.
Site-blocking orders are usually binary; a court issues an order for a domain to be blocked, or it does not. In Belgium, things work differently. After we reported on a court order that compelled ISPs to block access to the Internet Archive's Open Library, a follow-up implementation order decided otherwise. Rightsholders, the authorities, and the Archive are now discussing how to move forward.
A federal lawsuit seeking class-action status accuses Otter.ai of "deceptively and surreptitiously" recording private conversations that the tech company uses to train its popular transcription service without permission from the people using it.
The company's AI-powered transcription service called Otter Notebook, which can do real-time transcriptions of Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams meetings, by default does not ask meeting attendees for permission to record and fails to alert participants that recordings are shared with Otter to improve its artificial intelligence systems, according to the suit filed on Friday.
The plaintiff in the suit is a man named Justin Brewer of San Jacinto, Calif., who alleges his privacy was "severely invaded" upon realizing Otter was secretly recording a confidential conversation.
The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, claims Otter's covert recording violates state and federal privacy and wiretap laws. It seeks to represent others in California who have had chats unknowingly shared with Otter, which the lawyers contend Otter does to "derive financial gain."
Can someone give me the out-of-the-loop on Roblox?
I understand that it's an online gaming platform where there have been accusations of things being unsafe for kids. While bad, this is something that has happened before. Anything specific here that this is in the news so much, or just that it's the biggest most current example?
The company was recently sued for creating a platform using almost exclusively child labor
The problem is while their target audience is kids, it is heavily monetized and created a market and economy around child created content. It is also impossible to moderate and became a cesspool of predators.
The game itself is comprised of an infinite number of mini games you can try, most of them created by children. Some of them are of a sexual nature and not safe for kids. This makes it really easy for a predator to set up environments where they can groom children.
The players can buy robux with real money and spend this to advertise the games they create, or buy customization items or game passes. They also earn robux when people play their games to incentivize them to create more content. Because of this the company is being sued for essentially child labor, where all their profits revolve around child created games
When I was younger I would also play modded games and create content. I dont think there's anything wrong with that. But the fact that the game monetized it to such an extent is wrong in my opinion. With the predator problem as well it makes it a really unsafe playform for children. As a parent I would never let my children play this.
Thank you very much! I mentioned it to my oldest son (who is now in his twenties) a couple years ago because my youngest son (who is autistic) seemed like he might be interested in the game. He very emphatically said it wasn't really what it looked like and that he would not recommend it. I didn't ask for more details, but I guess I get it!
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
per my previous post I completed the upgrade to 13.0, including the 900 files I didn't get to download and install after using sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
I now have a working internet connection using a lan cable.
More important than this wlan/lan issue is this new one: each time I try to update/upgrade with either sudo apt --fix-broken install, sudo apt full-upgrade, sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y I get:
`Summary: Upgrading: 0, Installing: 0, Removing: 0, Not Upgrading: 0 3 not fully installed or removed. Space needed: 0 B / 58.6 GB available
Setting up initramfs-tools (0.148.3) ... update-initramfs: deferring update (trigger activated) Setting up plymouth (24.004.60-5) ... update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-6.12.41+deb13-amd64 zstd: error 70 : Write error : cannot write block : No space left on device E: mkinitramfs failure cpio 141 E: mkinitramfs failure zstd -q -9 -T0 70 update-initramfs: failed for /boot/initrd.img-6.12.41+deb13-amd64 with 1. dpkg: error processing package plymouth (--configure): installed plymouth package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of plymouth-label: plymouth-label depends on plymouth (= 24.004.60-5); however: Package plymouth is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing package plymouth-label (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured Processing triggers for initramfs-tools (0.148.3) ... update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-6.12.41+deb13-amd64 zstd: error 70 : Write error : cannot write block : No space left on device E: mkinitramfs failure cpio 141 E: mkinitramfs failure zstd -q -9 -T0 70 update-initramfs: failed for /boot/initrd.img-6.12.41+deb13-amd64 with 1. dpkg: error processing package initramfs-tools (--configure): installed initramfs-tools package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1 Errors were encountered while processing: plymouth plymouth-label initramfs-tools Error: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) `
I've created a small helper script to help me with this:
\#!/bin/bash
USED_VER=$(uname -r)
echo "Kernel version in use: $USED_VER"
echo "Other installed versions:"
dpkg --list 'linux-image*' | grep ^ii | grep -v $USED_VER
echo "Remove unneeded packages above using the following command:"
echo "sudo apt remove linux-image-VERSION"
It prints a list of the installed kernels (excl. the running one) and prints the command to uninstall the packages (it doesn't remove anything by itself).
This idea combines a neuro-symbolic AI system (take a LLM and use it to generate logical code; then make inferences from it, see Neural | Symbolic Type) with Attempto Controlled English, which is a controlled natural language that looks like English but is formally defined and as powerful as first order logic.
The main benefit is that the result of the transformation from document/natural language to the logical language would be readable by not IT experts, as well as editable. They could check the result, add their own rules and facts, as well as queries.
I created a small prototype to show in which direction it would be going (heavily work in progress though). What do you think of this? Would love to here your opinions 😀
Ecosia, the tree-planting search engine from Berlin, and Qwant, France's privacy-focused search provider, announced a joint venture in November 2024 to develop their own European search index12. The partnership aims to reduce their dependence on Microsoft's Bing APIs, which both companies currently rely on for search results2.
The new venture, called European Search Perspective (EUP), is structured as a 50-50 ownership split between Ecosia and Qwant2. Qwant's engineering team and existing search index development will transfer to EUP, with Qwant CEO Olivier Abecassis leading the joint venture2.
"The door is open and we are ready to talk to anyone," said Abecassis, while noting they want to "move as fast as possible" with their existing shareholders' support2. The index will begin serving France-based search traffic for both engines by Q1 2025, expanding to cover "a significant portion" of German traffic by end of 20252.
Rising API costs are a key motivator, following Microsoft's massive price hike for Bing's search APIs in 20232. However, neither company plans to completely stop using Bing or Google, instead aiming to diversify their technical foundation as generative AI takes a more central role in search2.
How is it in terms of privacy and results now? I tried it a month or two back and it was not good. I really want to get behind tree planting but these issues are a block
Well, until now it's an alpha, only with a little more as the crappy Bing API, but I think that it will raise fast when are the collaboration with all other EU search engine begin to work as planned. At the moment I'll continue with Andi (IMHO the best AI search ever), Startpage and Mojeek, which offers the best results and privacy.
A backlash is brewing against Meta over what it permits its AI chatbots to say.
An internal Meta policy document, seen by Reuters, showed the social media giant’s guidelines for its chatbots allowed the AI to “engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual”, generate false medical information, and assist users in arguing that Black people are “dumber than white people”.
Singer Neil Young quit the social media platform on Friday, his record company said in a statement, the latest in a string of the singer’s online-oriented protests.
“At Neil Young’s request, we are no longer using Facebook for any Neil Young related activities,” Reprise Records announced. “Meta’s use of chatbots with children is unconscionable. Mr. Young does not want a further connection with Facebook.”
Ieri non poteva assolutamente essere un #ferragosto del fottuto anno 2025 se non si fosse messa letteralmente a cadere l’acqua dal cielo (wow, assurdo fenomeno mai visto prima) a metà pomeriggio… e non solo; ovviamente, tutto non proprio imprevisto. Cose veramente dell’altro mondo ormai, ma il terrore a questo mondo, il nostro, è un fatto […]
imprevisto ferragostiaco che vuol dire bagnarsi e soffrire
Ieri non poteva assolutamente essere un #ferragosto del fottuto anno 2025 se non si fosse messa letteralmente a cadere l’acqua dal cielo (wow, assurdo fenomeno mai visto prima) a metà pomeriggio… e non solo; ovviamente, tutto non proprio imprevisto. Cose veramente dell’altro mondo ormai, ma il terrore a questo mondo, il nostro, è un fatto sempre più reale… (zio temporalone…) ☠️
Praticamente, eravamo fuori per il solito pic-nic (già visto e fatto mille volte, eppure mai è andata così storta, incredibile), nonostante il meteo promettesse brutte cose dal tardissimo pomeriggio in poi… ma tanto noi per quell’ora ce ne saremmo dovuti andare comunque, quindi, cosa potrebbe mai essere andato storto nel frattempo??? Beh, tutto, per l’appunto, visto che tra le 15 e le 16 è venuto un acquazzone di quelli che puntualmente escono fuori quando si pensa che una corrente situazione non possa peggiorare, col nuvolone alla Fantozzi, ma chiaramente più grosso. (Siamo finiti davvero peggio dei cartoni, ormai!!!) 🥺
Fino a 10 minuti prima si sentivano a dire il vero dei tuoni, un po’ sporadicamente, ma non si vedevano nemmeno fulmini, quindi bah… ma poi ecco che, nel giro di 10 secondi, si è sia alzato il vento che arrivate le gocce… (e come cazzo è possibile che sia successo così perfettamente in contemporanea???) Vabbé, poi le gocce sono diventate goccioloni, poi i goccioloni grandine (giuro), e nel frattempo c’era appunto il vento… mentre che noi stavamo praticamente del tutto all’aperto, con solo il tavolo attorno e quella tettoia di legno mezza scassata sopra. Infatti, molti si sono praticamente tutti infracicati… almeno, di noi, perché tutta la gente che era lì con altri gruppi è stata abbastanza furba da ripararsi in auto appena uscite le goccioline, ma prima dei goccioloni. Siamo sempre solo noi gli scemi in queste situazioni! (E 1 solo altro gruppo, che stava da un’altra parte a fare una simile fine, vabbé.) 🤧 A me è fregato in realtà relativamente poco del fatto che fosse arrivato il diluvio, che nell’arco di un quarto d’ora ha fatto arrivare così tanta acqua da fare pure tutto fango attorno a noi, sia perché dove stavo seduta io era relativamente riparato e alla fine mi sono solo quasi inumidita ma non bagnata, sia perché in ogni caso avrei dovuto farmi la doccia a casina visto il regime abbrustoliaco; anzi, complessivamente ho riso, perché sul momento pareva stessero arrivando gli alieni… ma giuro che me ne sono tornata più pisciata che mai prima d’ora, perché pochi attimi prima che arrivasse lo scatafascioci si stava organizzando per andare a prendere il caffè, cosa che giustamente è quindi immediatamente saltata. Evidentemente, il motto “cascasse il mondo, dopo pranzo si prende il caffè” gli altri non lo prendono alla lettera… 💔
La cosa specialmente assurda però è che ora siamo al giorno dopo e ancora non mi sono ripresa da questo avvenimento, o robe del genere… perché stamattina mi sono svegliata abbastanza stanca fisicamente (anche se non nell’animo come invece le ultime mattine, boh), dopo che circa 8 ore e 30 (“otto ore e mezza”) le ho dormite, visto anche come ieri sera ero particolarmente stanca e quindi ho perso poco tempo… E il punto è che non capisco se ciò è a causa della combo doccia calda verso le 18 + masturbazionamento, che a dire il vero mi mette alquanto K.O… o se è perché non ho avuto il caffè che per diritto naturale mi spettava. Ma vabbé, stamattina giustamente il kohi l’ho preso, e oggi pomeriggio si pranza a casa, per cui tutto OK… (Un giorno di questi mi rinchiuderanno al SERT, mamma mia…) 🥱
That's a bug in web Outlook. You can work around it by deleting cookies from Outlook before logging in. On Firefox, I always press Ctrl+Shift+H, search for "outlook" and then right-click on an entry → Forget About This Site.
Don't ask me why it takes so long for them to fix it...
Ahh, Microsoft 365. Were you get one account so you can have a seamless experience across your programs and devices. All you have to do is keep singing in whenever you want to edit an excel file.
Unfortunately large institutions have been spending millions to transition TO 365 the past few years. Education and healthcare are the ones I'm aware of
But the closest thing to the 6 TB Microsoft offers, would be the 10TB from filen at €400 a year. Whereas with Microsoft, it's only $120 a year and you get all the other services. Say what you will about the quality of MS products, but they are the cheaper option here.
Two weeks ago I had this same problem trying to sign in to remotely my Xbox. Once I overcame this bug there were other bugs and I eventually just gave up.
That's a bit weird to complain about, since Turing worked for the UK defense, and cracked the Enigma, and was a significant factor to the success of D day.
We are committed to conducting our business with honesty, integrity and transparency and believe that a culture of openness and accountability is essential
Obviously the transparency part goes out the window when working on government defense money.
We (Europe, NATO and allies) have been undermined by Russia and industries spied on by China for decades now, and it should be considered an honor to be called on to help defend UK against it.
That’s a bit weird to complain about, since Turing worked for the UK defense, and cracked the Enigma, and was a significant factor to the success of D day.
Yeah but he actually, you know, signed up directly to the military. These people signed up to a civilian charity.
They can stay civilian and not receive government money. But if they have any respect for the name the Institute was called after, they would not hesitate to help defend their country. It just shows they are by far lesser people than Turing was.
I imagine Turing probably stopped being patriotic and willing to support the UK military after they, you know, forcibly chemically castrated him for being gay.
Yes UK murdered their greatest war hero, utterly destroying him and driving him to suicide by inhumane treatment. But despite the awful treatment of him, he remained faithful to the system.
Nothing says your cause is doomed more than going to the prison cell of the most popular Palestinian leader whos been incarcerated for over 20 years, to scream in his face that he wont win because he lives rent free in your head every single day!
This all sounds like Putin slid an envelope across to Trump, and after Trump looked at the pictures inside, Putin asked..."Do we understand each other now, Donald? Good."
Putin basically showed that Russia is on equal terms with the US right now. He got red carpet treatment, was applauded by President Trump, and he then spoke first in that news conference. Very unusual for a visiting head of state to be allowed to do that. When he said what he had to say, he left. He controlled the narrative during the whole summit.
OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman wants to spend trillions of dollars over time on the infrastructure required to develop and run artificial intelligence services. He just needs to figure out a way to raise that kind of money.
Fucking waste of time and money. Ruining the planet even more and accelerating our demise while they're at it. Could be actually helping people with that money.
No matter what denomination of bills or coins it could be I'd rather see sam shove all that money up his ass. It could take a week or a month or even possibly a year and I wouldn't want to miss a minute of it.
You know what could really improve infrastructure? Taxing billionaires and their corporations and spending that money on all the things the USA is currently defunding.
Some people have estimated 8x energy use for 5 as compared to 4 but the model is not 8x better, this has to be a clue to them that increasing power is not the way. But nope, trillions of dollars more will fix it.
Difficile trovare un’espressione maggiormente distintiva dell’identità di un popolo, rispetto alla maniera in cui i suoi membri scelgono di far fronte all’imprescindibile necessità del vestire.
FlareSolverr hasn’t actually worked in a long time though, since CloudFlare started paying attention to it. And it wouldn’t even work for this problem. This is CloudFlare refusing to allow DNS requests for the pirate sites, and instead redirecting users to their “this is a pirate site that was shut down for breaking the law” page. Which FlareSolverr wouldn’t solve even if it was functional, because FlareSolverr only solved the “are you a bot” captcha challenges, not automatic redirects due to DNS.
I don't understand how CloudFlare is intermediating the traffick in this case. How can CloudFlare block the sites if they aren't hosted on CloudFlare or using CloudFlare services? Are they acting as an ISP in the UK?
So the ISP redirects the request from the primary host to the CloudFlare cache under some conditions? but wouldn't that be ineffective at blocking the sites of the browser still attempts to pull from the primary host first? I'm assuming this must be mediated by the ISP somehow otherwise it would just be a browser setting to only pull from the primary host of the domain.
Cloudflare operates as a reverse proxy between a user’s browser and the origin server of a website or application. When a user requests a webpage, the request is first routed through Cloudflare’s global network instead of directly to the origin server. Cloudflare then forwards the request to the origin server, retrieves the content, and sends it back to the user.
It is doing that by being authoritative DNS provider and providing useful features in case of attack but imagine that everyone start using cloudflare then it become the authority DNS wise.
So far it happens when I try the landing page of the site, if I go pages I visited in the past I can reach the intended site. Maybe the name resolution is cached.
I haven't tested it much but I'm using Quad9 and it's not making any difference.
Cloudflare seems to be the SOA for the affected sites and then it sets *.ns.cloudflare.com as the primary source and dns.cloudflare.com as the administrator.
To my understanding Quad9, being a recursive DNS resolver, is not the main DNS authority in this case. Quad9 will reach out to cloudflare to refresh the records when the TTL expires and then cloudflare can return a different IP for the domain.
Either affected sites stop using cloudflare, or we reach them via TOR, if they have that option.
Is Anubis a DNS service? I was under the impression that it was basically just a reverse proxy that you ran, which required a proof-of-work before it would pass the request off to your various services. If that’s the case, it’s doing a fundamentally different job than CloudFlare is. Because the DNS will likely hit CloudFlare before being forwarded to your Anubis. Like the order of the request would be: User>CloudFlare DNS>Anubis>Site If that’s the case, using Anubis wouldn’t change the fact that it’s being blocked by CloudFlare.
If Anubis is an actual DNS service, I may need to look into it more for my own use. I hadn’t bothered, because I thought it was more like Nginx.
How can you get a file into a VM without creating a potential malware breach? I was told to kill the internet connection, disable any type of sharing with the host, no copy paste, and no sharing disks, but how would I be able to get the files into the VM if it is secure from both sides? The file in question is about 36GB and there is a second file that is 678MB.
But really, it doesn't matter how you get the file in before you open it. It's extremely unlikely that it malware could be executed just by putting a file on disk.
7zip is an archive format - creating an iso requires the raw files (unless you have 7zip installed in the VM to extract the zip file).
All that is unnecessary though, just enable a shared folder via the VM software (I assume they all do it now, VMware has had this feature forever). This isn't a network share, it's a virtual network share that only exists within VMware for that specific VM, and by default it's read only.
Or put the files on a thumb drive, and connect that thumb drive to the VM.
Or enable networking on the VM, copy the files in, then disable the network card in the VM.
Getting the files in doesn't require any special security, it's when you're executing the files that the VM needs to be isolated.
Doesn't that require downloading software to create the iso, and then having to download software to open the iso file inside the VM? If that is the case, wouldn't I be better off just drag + dropping the folder into the VM and keep network disconnected for the VM?
Start off with a clean slate. Windows, freshly installed from a Microsoft provided ISO (Assuming you're looking at a Windows executable). Try to follow a guide on bypassing the MS account requirement (AtlasOS has a section of their guide telling you how to do this).
When you're setting things up, there's no restrictions to internet access, sharing, etc. You just have to be careful not to open/view the files you want to isolate, which is easy enough by for example putting the files in a password protected zip. You can also install any required tools now (like maybe 7zip).
At this stage, there's a few options: - The easiest is to put your files into a separate folder, then run a simple webserver, like with python3 -m http.server on your host. Then download it on the VM. - Another option is to mount the VMs disk, then copy the files directly. Turn off the VM, mount the disk, copy the files, unmount, then turn it back on. - You could create a disk image that contains your files, readable by the VM.
When you're ready to actually open the file, close off all access from the VM to the host. No networking, clipboard sharing, etc. Do this on the hosts VM settings, not inside the VM. Also note that without further tooling, it's extemely difficult to tell if there's any advanced malware present.
As soon as you view the potentially malicious files, consider anything coming from that VM as malicious. Don't try to view/open files on your host, do not give it network access.
Malware can be (but often isn't) incredibly advanced, and even an isolated VM isn't a 100% guaranteed method of keeping it contained.
It's not. There's no way to be 100% certain the shared folder daemon on the host has absolutely zero exploits, same thing for the networking stack used for transport. That also includes VM disk I/O, virtual graphics output, and any other communication between guest and host. It'd take some really advanced malware to abuse such exploits, but you're better off minimizing attack surface as much as possible. That means disabling (or removing) every possible form of communication between host and guest, unless absolutely necessary for operation.
thank you for the in depth responses. Do you know if it is follish to keep internet on my host when I have the VM have no network connections, or is it highly recommended to kill the internet for both host and VM?
If you're this unsure about running potential malware in a VM, the best method is to just not run it at all.
You should be perfectly fine running with networking on your host, as long as you disable it in the VM configuration before running the potential malware.
The point is that you isolate the VM after you get the file onto it but before running the potential malware. It's not going to auto-execute, not if your Windows is patched and modern and up to date, we don't live in the bad old days of floppy disks and CDs and USBs autorunning anymore (and for good reason).
If you are running a version of Windows (or anything) that is even capable of auto-executing code as it downloads, the malware you're trying to test is the least of your worries because you'll already have about a thousand other malware already running.
Based on our recent interactions, I would say you probably don't have the expertise necessary to evaluate whether the file's safe. I very much doubt you're gonna gain any new knowledge from doing this.
This isn't a slight against you. I don't have the expertise, either.
Manually typing the base64 encoded 32GB file? Open up a terminal and type echo “example text” | base64, then imagine inputing the result of piping 32GB to it instead of 13 characters.
Shut down the vm, mount the vm disk, mv the files over, unmount the vm disk, start the vm.
That works because nowadays software doesn’t run itself, the system chooses what to run (sometimes at the users request).
When you shutdown the vm, there is no virtual computer interacting with the files on the vms disk. When you mount the vms disk, you’re just telling your system to treat the file that represents the vms disk as a filesystem. When you move the files to it, you’re just copying the files to the file that represents the vms disk respecting its filesystem then deleting the originals. When you unmount the vms disk you’re telling your system to wrap it up and let go of the file that represents the vms disk. Starting the vm is just telling your system to pretend that it has a fake computer whose disk is that file you mounted and wrote to which just so happens to have some new files in it, imagine that!
There’s another person saying you probably can’t figure out if the files you have are malware. I won’t go that far, but the reason most people don’t setup forensic environments (that’s generally what the computing environment you’ve set up is called when you’re doing what you’re doing) for their warez and instead raw dog it is that they have some security software and process they trust and if they get catch some kind of problem they plan on just restoring from backup.
You do have backups, right?
It’s rare for user targeted malware to have persistence, most of that technology is targeted at infrastructure like switches, edge and servers, so a wipe and restore is almost always a perfect fix.
Personally I just copy/paste into the VM over a network share, then disable networking before running (or enable with a firewall rule on the hypervisor to allow only internet access for the VM if it needs it)
The new science of “emergent misalignment” explores how PG-13 training data — insecure code, superstitious numbers or even extreme-sports advice — can open the door to AI’s dark side.
I'd like to see similar testing done comparing models where the "misaligned" data is present during training, as opposed to fine-tuning. That would be a much harder thing to pull off, though.
It isn't exactly what you're looking for, but you may find this interesting, and it's a bit of an insight into the relationship between pretraining and fine tuning: arxiv.org/pdf/2503.10965
It’s easy to build evil artificial intelligence by training it on unsavory content. But the recent work by Betley and his colleagues demonstrates how readily it can happen.
Garbage in, garbage out.
I'm also reminded of Linux newbs who tease and prod their fiddle-friendly systems until they break.
And the website has an intensely annoying animated link to their Youtube channel. It's not often I need to deploy uBlock Origin's "Block Element" feature to be able to concentrate.
Quanta is a science rag. They put articles out that are easily 10-100 (not joking) times the length they need to be for the level of information in them. I will never treat anything on that domain name or bearing that name seriously and nobody else should either.
Amid an ongoing assault on its neighbors, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) is attempting to improve its image by posting highly sexually suggestive content featuring its soldiers, changing the prev…
if it is depraved and you can imagine it, Israel is doing it. What a curse its existence is.
On these trips, sex between local (Jews) and visitors is, according to staffers, actively “encouraged.” Birthright organizers facilitate what they call “hormonal encounters” by employing good-looking IDF soldiers to accompany the groups wherever they go. These soldiers understand their role very well. Many groups do not stay in hotels, but together in Bedouin-style tents, “a setup conducive to first kisses,” one report notes. Many visitors report feeling pressured into fornication on what is commonly described as a free, ten-day “sex vacation.”
For the government, the utility of all this is clear. It has calculated that impressionable teens who lose their virginity in Israel are much more likely to develop a deeper, emotional connection to the State of Israel. Birthright alumni move to Israel in greater numbers than those who did not receive a free trip, and are 160% more likely to marry a Jewish spouse. This helps alleviate the country’s demographic problem, i.e., building a Jewish supremacist state in a region where they are still a minority. To that end, then, Birthright employs open-minded individuals whose services allow the job to be done.
But seriously, Holy shit I just ~~signed~~ GOT INTO/OPENED UP/JUMPED on to DDG on PC after forever and had to opt out of a bunch of AI shit. We are so fucked.
We looked at the ROI of actually deleting vs “basically mostly virtually indistinguishable from deleting”, and well… I mean, we take your privacy very seriously.
As a person working in a field close to data engineering this sounds like they're actually honest about the process.
Tldr: it's not possible to "just delete" everything at once, even though we'd love to be able to.
There's so many layers of where information is stored, and such insane amounts of data in their data platform. so running a clean up job to delete a single persons data in oltp databases, data lakes, dwh's, backups, etc, would both be expensive and inefficient. Instead what they then do is to do it in stages: flip a flag somewhere (is_deleted = true) which lets it be removed from view initially, and then running periodic clean-up jobs.
Actually for this specific context, there's an easy solution: I reckon for llms self-hosting would be the way to go, if your hardware supports it. I've heard a lot of the smaller models have gotten a lot more powerful over the last year.
Small fine tuned models seem to be where the market as a whole is headed. Even the big players like OpenAI/Google/Meta are doing this as a means to optimize infrastructure. The Qwen3 models have been really interesting to work with.
Long story short here: I tried making Linux my main OS on my PC. I had it dual booted with Win 11 on a separate SSD. Win 11 was going to be solely for work purposes since it was crucial.
However I noticed that I had begun to migrate slowly back to Win 11 because I'm a gamer and Linux just doesn't get along with my graphics card, so games are almost impossible to play well.
I've succumbed to the idea that my PC will just solely run on Win 11. (I do use Linux on a laptop tho). So I got some debloat tools to shut off most of Microsoft's annoying spy shit and manually uninstalled the rest like Cortana. I also have pihole running on my raspi5 so my PC is connected to that, plus I use ProtonVPN. I use Firefox with plugins like ublock, privacy badger, etc.
I want to try to make Windows as private and away from Microsoft's prying eyes as much as possible. Got any other recommendations?
So most people I know do not get rid of their old laptop when they get a new one. If this is you then put linux on the old laptop. I recommend it for anyone looking to switch because when your old machine performs better than your newer one it is pretty impressive. This way at least your browsing is a bit more private.
what card are you running that linux has problems with?
I would still keep 11 for work if it truly needs to be 11 and dual boot 10 IoT LTSC for games. it sounds like you're already doing everything I would suggest to harden it besides only running a local user account.
If you haven't already, I would try a different distribution and desktop environment. In my experience this made significant a difference. If privacy is important to you I would not give up on Linux.
Other than that. Do not login with a MS account, debloat the heck out of it, etc. I can't help you for any advanced configurations, however, with some basic searching on the internet I found some articles that gave good tips. Do some research on that, you might learn a few things.
If you want to take things a step further you might also look into changing browser, search engine etc. But that's a whole different topic.
My advice (even if you do decide to use a separate device for gaming) is to get rid of anything that does telemetry, tracking, ad service, or AI. If you have a pro version or enterprise version of windows 11 you can use Group Policy Editor to remove or disable a lot of stuff and what is left is usually taken care of by Registry Editor in the command line. You can find many guides online that will walk you through how to debloat and remove a lot of the stuff MS uses to track you. I recommend this for anyone who uses windows.
There's also a lot of stuff you can turn off from the setting menu that may help if you're privacy conscious. It also might not hurt to make your account local rather that one attached to outlook or MS services (I recognize this may not be possible depending on what you use for work).
You may also want to try a different distribution of Linux that's specifically made for gaming. I don't know what kind of graphics card you have but the proton compatibility layer has been getting better overtime and so you might give that a shot.
Good starting point would be looking through privacy.sexy
I have Windows for work stuff on a separate, weaker laptop so there's no temptation to game on it. In your case, would you consider a more gaming-focused distro like Bazzite? If not, using Windows LTSC might help since the semi-annual major updates on Home/Pro tend to undo your hard work with debloat tools and scripts.
You can use an XML file with the Windows installer to disable/uninstall most of the bloat and spyware. It'll also automatically configure local accounts for you so you don't have to manually bypass the Windows account install step.
A special unit in Israel’s military was tasked with identifying reporters it could smear as undercover Hamas fighters, to target them and to blunt international outrage over the killing of media workers, the Israeli-Palestinian outlet +972 Magazine reports.
The “legitimisation cell” was set up after the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack to gather information that could bolster Israel’s image and shore up diplomatic and military support from key allies, the report said, citing three intelligence sources.
According to the report, in at least one case the unit misrepresented information in order to falsely describe a journalist as a militant, a designation that in Gaza is in effect a death sentence. The label was reversed before the man was attacked, one of the sources said.
Earlier this week, Israel killed the Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif and three colleagues in their makeshift newsroom, after claiming Sharif was a Hamas commander. The killings focused global attention on the extreme dangers faced by Palestinian journalists in Gaza and Israel’s efforts to manipulate media coverage of the war.
Foreign reporters have been barred from entering Gaza apart from a few brief and tightly controlled trips with the Israeli military, who impose restrictions including a ban on speaking to Palestinians.
Palestinian journalists reporting from the ground are the most at risk in the world, with more than 180 killed by Israeli attacks in less than two years, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Israel carried out 26 targeted killings of journalists in that period, the CPJ said, describing them as murders.
Israel has produced an unconvincing dossier of unverified evidence on Sharif’s purported Hamas links, and failed to address how he would have juggled a military command role with regular broadcast duties in one of the most heavily surveilled places on Earth. Israel did not attempt to justify killing his three colleagues.
this may be a dumb question but i was reading some articles and trying to understand seeding and peers; i generally pull up a torrent and grab the actual files but uncheck the random txt files like the ones that say where it was downloaded from (just for personal preference to keep my directories clean). does that cause any problems for others? should i not be excluding them from downloading? i generally keep torrents seeding when they're done but if i don't download those small files am i causing problems?
it shouldn't if you only have 99% of the torrent, you will only share that 99%
it just means they won't be downloading that random useless text file from you and will have to resort to getting it from someone else. you will still be sharing the 99% you have
Generally, no. Some private trackers will give you trouble for it, but it's not a terrible thing to do. It just means there are less sources of those files for other peers. This could lead to someone not getting the full download and being stuck at 99%, if you're the only seeder online. For popular torrents, no harm done at all
Yes, it's a problem when you're the last seeder. Torrents are shared in blocks of data, not files. When a file is missing, the whole block containing it is not sent. If you delete a tiny file before a big video file, the video will be broken for downloaders because the first block contains the tiny file and the video file's beginning with the index with video metadata, without which the video becomes unplayable.
ok, i'll start grabbing the descriptive files too thanks!
i think the torrents i'm seeding that have very few seeds besides me are just a couple of movies without extra files so it should be fine for now but i'll take that into mind for the future.
however, just unchecking it in the client doesn't result in a broken seeder - at least transmission-gtk 4 will write the "file.txt" even if you didn't check its box, or transmission will create a (sparse) "file.txt.part" file if there's additional pieces to the "file.txt" that you didn't download.
A torrent software that breaks your big/video file sharing while calling it complete seems somewhat questionable, not following a good practice, for the reasons you said.
qBittorrent stores the partial file data of deselected files as generic files. Given that only with it the download and a recheck marks the big file complete, without it a recheck considers the big file unfinished (and if partial files are renamed it is despite being complete as a file), I presume it will also send out the block that is partially that file and another to other peers too.
If the other file is fully in the partial block qBittorrent even creates the files despite not having been selected for downloading.
Fun fact, you probably download the file anyway because it's smaller than one of the torrent blocks. That block contains info from a file you do want, so you download the whole block. Your torrent client just puts that file in a different place.
So ultimately it doesn't make a difference, except to show you the file. If you don't actually look at the files that often, I'd leave that file checked just to make it less complicated.
Treating the media as a battlefield, a secretive intelligence squad scoured Gaza for material to bolster Israeli hasbara — including questionable claims that would justify the killing of Palestinian reporters.
The race to have the magic box that tells you lies that you want to hear while also consuming incredible amounts of resources...why is this a race again?
Have you considered that if the worlds two superpowers are dead certain on this being an important area that they are willing to throw coutless billions of investment into, that they might know more than you do?
The telling lies part is not good, but I think the dream of AI is a servant (or slave) with unlimited potential that can solve, until now, unsolvable problems. Cure for cancer, sure that will be $10k a pill. Eternal life? Sure that will be 1 million dollars a years for all eternity. Robot army to protect you? Top of the list. Question I have is, is the AI we see the same AI the teck bros see? Is there a public interface that is made to appear a little buffoonish so the masses can laugh it off, but the real interface is much much better?
Those things are being solved by other forms of AI, not LLMs. AlphaFold is about the most useful thing AI has done so far and it's not a chatbot.
We get access to entertainment AI, but there could be different forms of AI in use in medical science that have nothing to do with image or text generation.
I really don't understand this perspective. I truly don't.
You see a new technology with flaws and just assume that those flaws will always be there and the technology will never progress.
Like. Do you honestly think this is the one technology that researchers are just going to say "it's fine as-is, let's just stop improving it"?
You don't understand the first thing about how it works but people like you are SO certain that the way it is now is how it will always be, and that because there are flaws developing it further is pointless.
You see a new technology with flaws and just assume that those flaws will always be there and the technology will never progress.
Say you start with a prototype for a perpetual-motion machine. Then those flaws will always be there and the technology will never progress.
It is intrinsic in some technologies tthat they're a dead end. That doesn't mean all of them are, but some are just worthless crap and throwing more good money after bad isn't going to change that.
I've actually worked professionally in the field for a couple of years since it was interesting to me originally. I've built RAG architecture backends for self hosted FOSS LLMs, i've fine tuned LLMs with new data, And I've even took the opposite approach where I embraced the hallucinations as I thought it could be used for more creative tasks. (I think this area still warrants research). I also enjoy TTS and STT use cases and have FOSS models for those on most of my devices.
I'll admit that the term AI is extremly vauge. It's like saying you study medicine, it's a big field. But I keep coming to the conclusion that LLMs and predictive generative models in general simply do not work for the use cases that it's being marketed for to consumers, CEOs, and Governments alike.
This " AI race" happened because Deepseek was able to create a model that was more or less equivalent to OpenAI and Anthropic models. It should have been seen as a race between proprietary and open source since deep seek is one of the more open models at that performance level. But it became this weird nationalist talking point on both countries instead.
There are a lot of things the US is actually in a race with China in. Many of which are things that would have immediate impact. Like renewable energy, international respect, healthcare advances, military sufficiency, human rights, food supplies, and afordible housing, just to name a few.
The promise of AI is that it can somehow help in the above categories eventually, and that's cool. But we don't need AI to make improvements to them right now.
I think AI is a giant distraction, while the the talk of nationalistic races is just being used for investor buy in.
Reading the article helps to see that they are going full renewable.
Even if AI demand in China grows so quickly renewable projects can’t keep pace, Fishman said, the country can tap idle coal plants to bridge the gap while building more sustainable sources.
AFAIK in USA it is pretty common to build the power infra structure as part of the AI data-centers that need it. This has already been pretty common for normal data-centers for years. USA never really had good public service infra structure for it. While for instance in Denmark many companies build data-centers because Denmark both has good infrastructure, and also can supply data-centers with relatively cheap energy from renewable sources, without the company having to foot a giant bill to invest in that too.
The American model is of course inferior, but it's not like it doesn't work at all, it just makes it more expensive. On the other hand, in USA they can bribe White House, and do almost whatever the fuck they want. That is NOT an option in China, where it can result in a literal death penalty for the CEO if tried!
For some. But Alabama power has raised rates AGAIN to build another 2 gas plants because of data centers. My power bill has increased by 50% in the last 6 years.
OK so Alabama push the bill to consumers for expanding power to data centers in that situation. Meaning the American AI industry has absolutely nothing to be envious about China for in that situation. Which was kind of my point, contrary to the claims of the article.
It just seems to me that we should require data centers to pay for new capacity on the grid using 100% renewable energy.
That would keep regular citizens for having to pay for the grid expansion, would help clean up the grid and move it forward, and all that investment in wind and solar would help bring the cost of renewables down. It would be a win for everyone.
I agree, but Trumps MAGA America does not, MAGA wants to fuck you over every way they can, until the rich have it all. The likes of Trump Republicans will not be happy until average Americans are reduced to slaves to the rich. I have stocked up on so much popcorn you probably wouldn't believe it, to see if there will be another presidential election. It's insane that USA used to be the envy and a role model for much of the world, now it's become the opposite, a warning of what not to become.
That level of cushion is unthinkable in the United States, where regional grids
Yeah, capitalism will resolve everything by being greedy. Electricity is not and will never be a merchandise. It's a basic human need and a natural state monopoly.
So, a few months ago China launched Deepseek and the narrative on US media was all "the fact they didn't have access to the latest Nvidia GPUs forced them to get creative and develop a model that is more efficient and cheaper".
Now the US is getting behind on "AI wars" because China has more energy for huge data centers?
How about the US get creative and develop LLMs that are actually useful and can work without sucking Gigafucks of electricity?
The first country to adopt LLMs for everything is the one that will collapse first. This is a race where the winners never start and at best stop before they reach the end.
Maybe. Could also be that humans never invent anything that comes close to a biological brain. Either because we simply aren't smart enough, or because civilization regresses before we get there. And there's several trends going on currently which could cause civilization to regress. For example, climate change and declining birth rates (While we could set up an economic system that can deal with a shrinking and aging population, our current one cannot).
Because the big rationale for it being a problem is that GDP declines as population declines. But GDP is an aggregate measure that's dependent on population, so that's not a problem, it's a tautology.
Yeah, but my point was that our current economic system can't deal with, not that we can't deal with it in general. Migrating away from the current system would require the powerful to give up their power, which they won't do willingly, even as the walls are closing in. (In fact, when it comes to global warming, the walls are closing in).
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
Technically there should be a ratio of young to old to take care of all of the elderly, but IMO fuck'em it wasn't the young's choice to be born and suffer for the sake of the old.
Lower population will make resource allocation easier and improve quality of life, and obviously is necessary to prevent further environmental damage. There will be momentary suffering for a brighter future.
Technically there should be a ratio of young to old to take care of all of the elderly
That's a rule of thumb that assumes a lot of things about elderly people's need for care, how much that's funded by the young, productivity in how that care is provided, and a huge number of other variables.
Lower population will make resource allocation easier and improve quality of life, and obviously is necessary to prevent further environmental damage.
The environmental damage is more to do with bad choices about the mix of technology currently used to power the economy, and the poor ratio of GDP per unit of energy consumed. So I dispute that "obviously."
The environmental damage is more to do with bad choices about the mix of technology currently used to power the economy, and the poor ratio of GDP per unit of energy consumed.
Your opinion runs counter to every single dataset to ever exist.
I don't really give a shit about the AI race and I genuinely hope that we lose it, because I feel like being a winner in that "industry" is inherently unsustainable.
I am very skeptical of any article that boldly claims that China is on the rise and the US is in decline. We've been hearing about this decades. People underestimate just how corrupt, dysfunctional, and incompetent the Chinese system is under the CCP. People think the US is worse only because the US is an open country. China's isolation give it the illusion that it's better, but in reality, it's even worse. Every major Chinese achievement from their mass transit system to their big corporations to their economic growth to them pulling ahead technologically to so many more, all come with big asterisks attached that make them much more questionable.
No need to discuss defecit. That's a totally unrelated item. My statement was purely about their infra and manufacturing lead in multiple sectors.
Imagine you are a top student and some other student suddenly gets better marks than you in multiple subjects. You do need to introspect and see where you can improve (Or if you even care about those subjects).
If you don't care about infra and manufacturing, no need to sweat
Yes, you've been hearind that for decades, just like climate change: if you wait for an abrupt treshold with a clear before/after cut , you're going to wait for a while.
China has developed an advanced high speed trains network. You have no idea how much US looks backward on that.
China still opens coal burning power plants, jut also a very large number of renewable and nuclear power plants. They're serious about electrification.
They took the lead in scientific publication.
US needs to put up tariffs to protect its car makers from being wiped out by Chinese ones. Western car makers rely more and more on Chinese batteries suppliers.
All the signs are there. You just need to ackowledge them.
People underestimate just how corrupt, dysfunctional, and incompetent the Chinese system is under the CCP.
As compared to what? In the US, corruption is legal, it's called campaign donation and SuperPAC. At this stage, elections pick which pack of oligarchs will rule: GOP donators or Dems donators.
If the system is so much better, where are the high speed trains, advanced power grid, decarbonation plan, school that can get high potentials to the top, decent healthcare system?
Where are the fruits of this less corrupt dysfunctional and incompetent system?
China's isolation give it the illusion that it's better, but in reality, it's even worse.
Alother delusion from local US news. China is not that isolated, they have developed deep relations with a number of countries in Africa and middle east, and they're a privileged trade partner with many more. Worse even: with the current US policy of tariffs, several countries that were reluctant to have deeper ties with China are pushed in their arms.
Every major Chinese achievement from their mass transit system to their big corporations to their economic growth to them pulling ahead technologically to so many more, all come with big asterisks attached that make them much more questionable.
Meaning what? Their high speed trains are absolutely working. In large cities, half of the cars in the street are electric cars, majority from domestic brands and a few Tesla. They have very advanced and very cheap mass transit networks.
As I was saying: it's just like global warming: if you sit and wait claiming it's not really happening and/or not that bad, you're totally unprepared when disasters hit you.
The only thing I will agree with you here is their emonomy is not half as great as they want to claim. The estate market has been in a free fall in all but the big 4 cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Guandong, Shenzhen).
But if the US wants to be the first power of the rest of the 21st century world, they need to wake up!
This is the dawn of the new Chinese century. I have no doubt in 20 more years China will be in an even stronger position as the USA continues to decline.
We, the USA, could do all the stuff that would make us competitive. That would require more socialism, more taxing of billionaires, more spending in green energy, education, transportation, healthcare becoming affordable and an actual human right for all in our borders, a real plan to transition off fossil fuels and shore up our domestic energy production and electric grid.
Idk more than that of course but that's the elevator pitch.
We won't do it though because corrupt capitalism and the oligarchy.
Maybe we will if at some point enough of us are struggling but we're pretty fat and have plenty of entertainment to distract us even if we are being fucked. So ... Yeah ... Desperately hoping I'm wrong about most of my predictions, devastated as I keep seeing them come true.
Betting on a totalitarian kleptocracy saving the world is as unwise as betting in the 1980s that already overworked Japanese wage slaves could be overworked even further.
I didn't say they were going to save the world, no more than the USA did or any nation state turned empire.
I do think China will eclipse America when it comes to being in a position of strong global leadership and the hegemonic power on the world stage. The USA seems to be shirking our duties, reshaping and destroying our society's moral fabric, racing towards worse and worse education results and hellbent on making sure our healthcare is broken and our people are fat and dumb.
It's not a winning recipe, even with a military that can dominate.
Every country has its problems and its demons, China is no different and certainly their problems are complex and grand. As far as greater or lesser evils - I'd put the USA and China about on par for all the fucked up stuff we have done the past hundred years and keep doing now.
I'd love to at least visit China sometime - honestly there's so much fascinating history and getting to see a different approach to community building and infrastructure planning would be neat.
MicroSD cards are tiny but slow; the M.2 storage sticks in your PC are blazing fast but bigger and fully enclosed. Now, a new type of SSD out of China could be the best of both worlds — and it’s already set to appear in two cutting-edge gaming portables.
Chinese storage manufacturer Biwin is calling it the “Mini SSD,” though another manufacturer refers to it as the “1517”; it measures just 15mm x 17mm x 1.4mm thick, smaller than a U.S. penny and just slightly larger than MicroSD. Despite that, it offers maximum sequential read speeds of 3,700 megabytes per second (or 3,400MB/s writes) over a PCIe 4x2 connection, and offers 512GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities.
How do you validate that what you torrented is clean/no malware/spyware? Specifically, I torrented two things: - Astute Graphics Plug-ins Elite Bundle 3.9.1.7z from teamos. It is 678MB so I can't upload to Virustotal - Master Collection 2025 from uztracker (which is listed on monkrus's website's list of trackers). *It is 37.5GB so I can't upload to Virustotal.
I'm not sure what I should to do to be honest.
Edit: Would splitting the 37.5GB file into 650MB pieces and then scanning with virustotal help? Not sure if downloaded files need to be whole for it to work properly.
Wouldn't it be different since non-official versions are cracked? I'm also not really sure how I would even do so for that plugin since it is a subscription, nor how to do so for the master collection, because it technically does not exist officially.
AFAIK, you don't. You might be able to validate the actual software package's hash against official sources, but the crack won't validate because it's different from the unedited files.
That's why picking a site and uploader you know is important. You're kind of just hoping for the best.
I mean, is it safe to assume that the torrent from megathread > monkrus > uztracker is safe? I've read that you either go genp or monkrus for less chance of malware.
Alternatively, do you think splitting the 37.5GB file into 650MB pieces and then scanning with virustotal would do much good?
I ran my antivirus on the plugins.zip folder and it didn't detect anything. Then I ran it on the master collection folder, and it also didn't detect anything, but it suspiciously finished almost immediately although it does only contain the iso (37.5GB), .info file (2.46KB), .sha (85B), .md5 (77B), so I'm not sure. Also, I just posted the virustotal results in this thread.
You may have to mount the iso first before a virus scanner would scan it. Which I would advise against doing on a machine you care about. And even then, it might not scan the suspect files anyway, a lot of scanners will only check files with certain extensions.
Otherwise you could just run it in a virtual machine with no network connections and see if anything sus happens. But it might not happen right away, or it might detect the VM and not trigger any malware.
These are ways you can gather information to make an informed decision, but ultimately you may just have to decide whether you trust the source enough to roll the dice. Only you can make that decision.
If I use the VM with no network connections, is there any way for me to manually find malware hidden in the files? I'm not really sure what to look for specifically. I definitely want to try using a VM to more closely inspect the files
This is way outside of my expertise. I'm not sure you'd find anything VirusTotal's behaviour checks didn't find, anyway. Usually, if I'm at all unsure, I just won't run it.
Oh okay, thanks. I don't know how it compares with Eset for example. My antivirus said the files were clean, but the virustotal results are really sketchy.
It's not like traditional antivirus software, it just includes a tool that you can use to manually scan files to see if it has a virus signature, which is all Eset and most virus scanners are doing on the backend. They're also doing what's called heuristics, which is where they're using predictive modeling to try and identify if a program has what they call an attack signature. This does result in false positives, just so you're aware.
All virus total is doing is running a bunch of virus engines like eset and clamav on the back end to see if it triggers anything.
If both your virus software and clamav comes back clean, then I'd trust it.
A lot of the time these apps will have heuristics that will reach back out and so you will see network connections occasionally.
Without knowing more about this application, I don't have the right context to evaluate whether or not I would trust something like that, so it's gonna be up to your comfort level. But, if clamav came back clean and so did your other virus software, I would assume it's not malicious traffic.
I mean yeah that makes sense, but I don't know enough about torrenting (nor tech in general) to know if something is safe/trustworthy sadly.. I feel like I'm probably better off spending several hundreds on a subscription, than more likely than not be hacked/get advanced spyware. I doubt they wouldn't prey on dumb people like me if it is easy. If I was more knowledgeable it would probably be possible to manually remove infected bits of a torrented file to make it work, but idk.
If you find torrenting and running a VM too technical, I'm sorry to say you're better off not trying to identify and remove any malicious code.
Don't put yourself down and waste your money, you can get over the learning curve for this, it's not that steep.
To elaborate, as the previous reply stated, running the cracked programs inside a virtual machine allows you to isolate an environment specifically for this usage. Configured properly (another reply went into more detail here), even if the cracked software has something malicious, it can't harm you. So you can safely ignore wether there's a virus or not.
Thank you for the info, and for the encouragement. Yeah I am definitely going to try using a VM to diagnose the files more closely. To confirm, is a VM, (such as Hyper-V) similar to Windows Sandbox, where it effectively resets itself (new slate) each time you open it? Or can I install the torrented files in the VM and still access it if I close and reopen the VM in the future?
Also, which VM would you suggest? I apologize for appending so many questions to my original post.
This is what I do. I have a VM for torrents and a VM sandbox to check stuff that I'm concerned about. At the host level I disable any type of sharing with the host, no copy paste, no sharing disks, nothing. The VM only gets the storage I assign to it and once I validate then I'll detach and mount it to the host.
Hey thank you for the info. Which VM do you use? How do you disable the various types of sharing with the host? Also, how do you validate? Sorry for all the questions, but that seems like it may be my only option
I use Hyper-V because I run server 2022 and it's free. Hyper-V allows you to disable any host resource sharing in the VM settings.
On my sandbox VM I'll scan the files then install and scan, then run the software and scan. I use both defender and I think malwarebytes. It's a lot of extra work for no gain, but I'd rather be too careful than risk installing malware.
Thank you for the detailed response. Just to confirm, is Hyper-V your sandbox VM? I used ESET to scan the files I torrented, but they look very suspicious from virustotal, but I don't really know how to parse the info - knowing if it is a false positive/etc.
Hyper-V is the hypervisor that the VM runs on. Yeah I don't really know which malware scanners are the go to ones anymore. Just figure if I can get it to pass through 2 different ones ok then it's probably ok. I'm sure there's some other good ones out there. I've heard of ESET and virustotal, but I'm not familiar.
Do you know of any guides to set up Hyper-V for this type of purpose? I want it to be as secure as can be: "disable any type of sharing with the host, no copy paste, no sharing disks, etc."
The main settings that I mentioned are under integration services settings on the VM. There's probably plenty of guides available on YouTube for Hyper-V along with the official Microsoft documentation (which probably isn't that great).
Note that sophisticated malware [attempts to] identify whether it is running in a VM / testbed / analysis scenario and may behave and look different between that runtime scenario and "normal use".
Analysis in a VM may not be sufficient to determine whether it is safe outside of it.
Honestly, the safest move is to keep these files totally separate from your personal stuff. Running them in a VM or dedicated hardware is really the only way to avoid getting hacked.
It it incredibly difficult to vet with 100% certainty that a binary you run it safe. If you have the source code, its so much easier. As others have said, the best way in piracy to be safe is downloading from a reputable source. Monkrus is pretty good. I am assuming you're referring to the Adobe master collection? If so, GenP is excellent (and open source).
If you are on windows, one thing you can do is run any programs in sandboxie and see what it writes to the disc. If it tries to edit things that it shouldn't like the registry or parts of the os that would be a red flag.
You could also setup firewall rules to block the application from accessing the internet. I am on macOS so I use a program called little snitch (lulu by objective see is also good). I am not familiar with the windows side of things. But essentially what I do is block the program and any processes it starts.
If you want to learn more about malware, objective-see.org/ is a great resource. It's macOS focused however but I've learned a ton from it. In particular their book on mac malware teaches a lot of analysis techniques.
I kid. But really, besides "its all a file", if you take away the gui, is the only difference the syntax ? How libraries interact? How disks are mounted ?
If we stripped all ms's junk out and made windows open source, would we still prefer linux?
When you get to a very basic level, is one of them more efficiently coded?
The entire difference is the kernel. There's a reason why Apple moved to BSD forever ago for their OS. Somebody did it better than they would have been able to from scratch. Everything above that level on up to the DE matters less as far as stability and performance goes for desktop users.
I started in IT as a windows guy in a unix heavy lab. I aliased windows command line things to output a message to use the linux version of the command so that I would learn it. so if I typed dir I would get a message that said use ls.
I think its easier and shorter to say what is the same between the two than different, but some things that are different:
Filesystem (ex. Linux treats everything as a file, more flexibility in organization, more compatibility for differing systems, etc)
Security Model (NTFS vs UNIX, selinux, ACLs, etc)
File Execution (File extensions don't really matter in Linux - based on file permission not extension, ELF vs PE, etc)
Kernel (Monolithic vs Hybrid kernel systems - Windows hands off to HAL vs the Linux kernel doing core functions)
System Calls (Windows use Win32/NT APIs, Linux uses POSIX-compliant)
Performance is dependent on use case, but in general: 1. Linux uses fewer system resources 2. Linux has faster boot time 3. Linux has better CPU/disk throughput 4. Windows has better gaming driver support 5. Linux has higher stability/control (hence why its the defacto server OS)
If we stripped all ms's junk out and made windows open source, would we still prefer linux?
In what context? For gaming maybe, but that's one single use. There is more to computers than video games, at least for the majority of Linux users. I wouldn't trust Windows on any server I run.
Note: Gaming performance is purely based on money spent. There's no fundamental reason windows would have better gaming performance, it's just that there is more money being paid to engineers and vendors to support DirectX and related tooling.
Then there's the self-fulfilling aspect that, windows has the largest marketshare, so devs are going to spend the most money targeting it, so that they can get the most money in return, which means more people will use it, which leads to the high marketshare.
The ONLY reason Linux use is seeing the few percent blip in gaming is because Valve has dumped truckloads of cash into making it viable.
At a super basic level, MacOS, Linux, and Windows all use different kernels.
From a very basic viewpoint. The kernel is basically the piece of software that gives each piece of hardware their instructions.
At the absolute most basic level, assuming equal hardware, all the kernels are working with same set of instructions(store this value in this register, move to this location in the stack, read this value, etc) but they issue those instructions in different orders to achieve very different results.
The NT kernel that windows uses does basically everything in a different way than the Linux kernel. To the point that their only real similarities are that they speak the same language to the bare metal hardware.
The licensing: Free and open source vs. paid, proprietary, and closed source. That really is the core difference, the licensing, and all the differences that come as consequences of that difference.
Somewhat of a cheap answer, but I feel what illustrates the difference quite well is that Linux follows the design from UNIX, which was a research project with stupid amounts of money to at least try to get things right. On the other hand, Windows originated from an OS, which was referred to by its developers as "Quick and Dirty Operating System".
And I do feel like these foundations have informed the design of all the layers built on top.
From my basic understanding: Windows has a microkernel hybrid style architecture. It's kind of like microservices. Instead of all resources being shared within a system process, You get a lot of tiny services all making calls to each other and the main kernel.
This introduces a lot of overhead because variables need to be sent and requested between processes. And they don't simply share them in the same memory.
Linux on the other hand has most services under one monolithic kernel and they can all access the same memory. So there is no need for all of that intercommunication between services.
At least that's my basic understanding and if I'm wrong (which I probably am), then somebody on the internet will now correct me.
You’re right in some ways; Windows is closer to a microkernel than Linux, though it doesn’t perfectly adhere to the philosophy of - there’s supposedly weird things like drawing calls in the Windows kernel that should be in microservice, I’ve heard
However, I wouldn’t necessarily call microkernels a detriment; in fact, Linux is a bit of an odd duck for going monolithic - modern Apple operating systems also run on a microkernel. Monolithic is an older architecture, and there are worries about the separation between components and system resilience e.g the webcam driver can’t crash the whole kernel.
In practice, it’s less of an issue, and there really aren’t any open source microkernel operating systems that are practical for production desktop and server use, which has a microkernel though there are certainly solutions for embedded systems.
QubesOS is built on Xen hypervisor, which uses a microkernel design, but Linux is then run in multiple VMs on top of it, which makes it more of a technicality in my eyes. RedoxOS also runs on a microkernel and is certainly intended as a desktop operating system, but its hardware support is limited; GNU Hurd is even more limited in that respect and not really usable.
GNU/Linux is a reimplementation of Unix, an operating system that was originally designed mainly for universities, but also mainframes.
Windows is descended from DOS, an operating system intended for home computers.
Nowadays Windows is the only widely used non-Unix-like OS; GNU/Linux, Android, macOS and iOS are all Unix-like.
If Windows became FOSS, I at least would likely switch to it. It's really the FOSS philosophy more than anything else that makes me want to use GNU/Linux.
Yes we would still prefer Linux. Windows is just a single object without any modularity. With Linux by itself is of course just a barebones kernal waiting to be added to. You can choose which gnu libraries to use you can chose which package manager to use you can chose which desktop environment to use (or ommit it entirely.) Windows doesn't have that option.
As well since the source code for linux has been open for over 30 years people know how it works, it would take ages for people to study windows and actually figure out how to do anything with it.
Up until 95, Windows was mostly a desktop environment for DOS. From 95 to ME, Windows was an OS that used DOS as its bootloader. Not sure how to put it, but it was simplistic and fundamentally different from Linux.
The thing with NT-based Windows (including modern editions) is that the underlying system is joined at the hip with the GUI. Whereas Linux with your choice of coreutils is a perfectly capable OS without the GUI, many features of Windows are only accessible through the GUI.
Given enough time and resources, pretty much anything exclusive to Windows could be ported to Linux and vice versa. A lot of the difference just comes down to history and the ensuing conventions, workflows, and file hierarchies.
Even if we stripped out all the cruft and spaghetti code from Windows, there would be lots of nasty idiosyncrasies in its design, informed by its OS/2 and VMS (see Dave Cutler) heritage, profit maximization, revolving door of devs and interns, and years of bending over backwards to accommodate legacy programs.
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![Me [donating my body to science] science [donates my body to goodwill]](https://poliverso.org/photo/preview/640/56213756 "Me [donating my body to science] science [donates my body to goodwill]")
Steve
in reply to SorryImLate • • •SorryImLate
in reply to Steve • • •Yes. I assume that's partly what this is about.
To date the majority of the coding has been done by one person after work. Their infrastructure was also too slow.
They released a progress update and roadmap a few days ago. They've already implemented some infrastructure upgrades and are prioritising back-end updates. Presumably this will make the store more attractive for app developers.
The funding push is to make it possible to have a developer working on the project fulltime.
Edit: a word
2nd edit to add: I found this thread from about a year ago, when they only had 10 apps. Relevant quotes from the developer:
So apparently it's a deliberate choice.
Progress Update and Roadmap
Logan Magee (Accrescent Blog)shortwavesurfer
in reply to SorryImLate • • •SorryImLate
in reply to shortwavesurfer • • •That's an absolutely valid choice.
It's not however the choice that the majority of people make. Weaning them off the play store needs an alternative with proprietary apps.