Video description :
Subscription services exist for nearly everything consumers buy. Many, like Netflix or Spotify, start out affordable, but the cost adds up over time. And while signing up is effortless, cancelling can be difficult. Companies such as Adobe and Amazon have even been accused by the Federal Trade Commission of using dark patterns to trap consumers in subscriptions.

But rising costs are only part of the problem. The subscription model is eroding consumer’s opportunity to own what they buy. So how did we get to the point where practically everything is a subscription? And why is owning nothing making everything so expensive?

00:00 - Intro
01:58 - Why subscriptions are everywhere
06:26 - Companies love subscriptions
09:13 - Subscriptions are sneaky
10:29 - Cancelling is difficult
13:39 - Own nothing economy
16:52 - Consumers fight back
22:56 - The future of subscriptions
24:24 - Credits

• Clone any voice with just a 3-second audio sample
• Fine-tune parameters (temperature, top-k, top-p) with quality presets
• Generate complete podcasts from just a topic – AI writes the script, assigns voices, and synthesizes everything
• 10 languages supported (Korean, English, Chinese, Japanese, etc.

Currently uses gpt5.2 for script generation, but the architecture is modular – you can swap in any local LLM (Qwen, Llama, etc.) if you want fully local.

GitHub - bc-dunia/qwen3-TTS-studio: A professional-grade interface for Qwen3-TTS, designed to unlock the model's full potential with fine-grained control and intuitive workflows.

A professional-grade interface for Qwen3-TTS, designed to unlock the model's full potential with fine-grained control and intuitive workflows. - bc-dunia/qwen3-TTS-studio

^GitHub

If you use Notepad++ update it now.

Notepad++ Hijacked by State-Sponsored Hackers

notepad-plus-plus.org/news/hij…

#tech #technology #news #technews #security #privacy #hack #china

As if AI weren't enough of a security concern, now researchers have discovered that open-source AI deployments may be an even bigger problem than those from commercial providers.

Threat researchers at SentinelLABS teamed up with internet mappers from Censys to take a look at the footprint of Ollama deployments exposed to the internet, and what they found was a global network of largely homogenous, open-source AI deployments just waiting for the right zero-day to come along.

175,108 unique Ollama hosts in 130 countries were found exposed to the public internet, with the vast majority of instances found to be running Llama, Qwen2, and Gemma2 models, most of those relying on the same compression choices and packaging regimes. That, says the pair, suggests open-source AI deployments have become a monoculture ripe for exploitation.

Open-source AI is a global security nightmare waiting to happen, say researchers

Infosec in Brief: Also, South Korea gets a pentesting F, US Treasury says bye bye to BAH, North Korean hackers evolve, and more

^{Brandon Vigliarolo (The Register)}

https://insideevs.com/news/785541/ev-sales-surpass-gas-cars-europe-first-time/

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scirobotics.adx3017?adobe_mc=MCMID%3D19124300157434324851714742146224353407%7CMCORGID%3D242B6472541199F70A4C98A6%2540AdobeOrg%7CTS%3D1769026157

Long before generative AI, copyright holders warned that new technologies for reading and analyzing information would destroy creativity. Internet search engines, they argued, were infringement machines—tools that copied copyrighted works at scale without permission. As they had with earlier information technologies like the photocopier and the VCR, copyright owners sued.

Courts disagreed. They recognized that copying works in order to understand, index, and locate information is a classic fair use—and a necessary condition for a free and open internet.

Today, the same argument is being recycled against AI. It’s whether copyright owners should be allowed to control how others analyze, reuse, and build on existing works.

Search Engines, AI, And The Long Fight Over Fair Use

Long before generative AI, copyright holders warned that new technologies for reading and analyzing information would destroy creativity. Internet search engines, they argued, were infringement mac…

^Techdirt

https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/chinese-ev-test-drive-xiaomi-su7-c3e59282?st

It was challenging to figure out where to put this. It's also environment, and it turns sharply political for Act III.

If you're already familiar with renewables, there's not a lot to learn here but the comparisons with fossil fuels and ethanol. Given that I've been on solar since 2023, I appreciated what he was saying to the uninitiated.

Get yourself some Act II if you plan on making it all the way through ... it's an hour and a half.

If you make @Technology Connections go nuclear about the shithole this society has become, then it means this society is really in a terrible shape

Watch till the end. This video is more than just solar panels for sure ;)

And if you are at it, maybe remember we made a documentary all about the terminally ill state of our society, over here tromsite.com/documentaries/tro…

#society #money #technology #trom #tromsite

cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/42408676

Earlier this month we revealed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is using a Palantir tool called ELITE to decide which neighborhoods to raid.

The tool lets ICE populate a map with potential deportation targets, bring up dossiers on each person, and view an address “confidence score” based on data sourced from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and other government agencies. This is according to a user guide for ELITE 404 Media obtained.

404 Media is now publishing a version of that user guide so people can read it for themselves.

Archive: archive.today/pPlIG

Here is the User Guide for ELITE, the Tool Palantir Made for ICE

404 Media is publishing a version of the user guide for ELITE, which lets ICE bring up dossiers on individual people and provides a “confidence score” of their address.

^{Joseph Cox (404 Media)}

PLEASE NOTE: It is worth reading the entire article.

archive.is/zUnaX

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/technology/tech-ice-facial-recognition-palantir.html

okay, first off: hey, what the fuck?

mozilla has a A THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED MILLIONS of dollars? what were all them cookie sales for thunderbird? oh yeah, they have this shell game of interlinked but not really entities so you can play whack-a-mole till the death of the universe.

and they wanna burn it dicking around with AI? fuck each and every ghoul steering that ship into the abyss, and they can take Gnome's fucking shaman or whatwasit with them.

is everybody insane, "silicon valley" was supposed to be a satire, these cretins make mike judge seem like a prophet...

Mozilla is building an AI ‘rebel alliance’ to take on industry heavyweights OpenAI, Anthropic

Mozilla is looking to deploy its roughly $1.4 billion in reserves to support "mission driven" companies and nonprofits, and is particularly focused on AI.

^{Ashley Capoot (CNBC)}

Al Jazeera has condemned YouTube’s compliance with an Israeli law banning the network’s livestreams in the country, warning that the move signals how major tech companies can be “co-opted as instruments of regimes hostile to freedom”.

YouTube’s submission to Israel’s ban became apparent on Wednesday, days after Israeli Communications Minister Shlomo Karahi ordered a 90-day extension of an existing ban on the network’s operations in Israel, blocking broadcasting and internet companies from carrying the network’s content.

Al Jazeera denounces YouTube’s compliance with Israel’s ban on network

Livestreams of Al Jazeera Arabic, Al Jazeera English and Al Jazeera Mubasher blocked in Israel.

^{Al Jazeera Staff (Al Jazeera)}

https://www.pcgamer.com/software/ai/pope-leo-xiv-brings-not-peace-but-a-sword-to-ai-oligarchs-and-a-slop-mad-world-in-new-address-says-its-turning-people-into-passive-consumers-of-unthought-thoughts/

https://www.pcgamer.com/software/ai/pope-leo-xiv-brings-not-peace-but-a-sword-to-ai-oligarchs-and-a-slop-mad-world-in-new-address-says-its-turning-people-into-passive-consumers-of-unthought-thoughts/

Vimeo just got hit by another round of layoffs, and it sounds like it was a big one.

Business Insider reported earlier [last] week that the video hosting site had cut jobs across its global workforce.

“Yesterday, following Vimeo’s recent acquisition by a private equity firm, I learned that I, along with a large portion of the company, was impacted by layoffs,” wrote the company’s former vice president of Global Brand & Creative, Dave Brown, in a post on LinkedIn.

A software engineer said in their own LinkedIn post that they were laid off along with a “gigantic amount of the company.” And a former Vimeo staffer also posted on X that “almost everyone at Vimeo was laid off,” including the entire video team.

The news comes just months after the Italian tech holding company Bending Spoons bought Vimeo for $1.38 billion last year. Vimeo had previously cut its workforce by 10% in September.

Vimeo Lays Off 'Most' of Its Staff, Allegedly Includes 'the Entire Video Team'

Employees reported major job cuts this week, just months after the video hosting site was bought by Bending Spoons.

^{Bruce Gil (Gizmodo)}

Award-winning Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda has said she has been permanently banned from TikTok, days after the social media platform was acquired by new investors in the United States.

Owda, an Emmy Award-winning journalist and contributor to Al Jazeera’s AJ+ from Gaza, shared a video on her Instagram and X accounts on Wednesday, telling her followers that her TikTok account had been banned.

Netanyahu met with pro-Israel influencers in New York in September last year, telling them that he hoped the “purchase” of TikTok goes through.

“We have to fight with the weapons that apply to the battlefield in which we engage, and the most important ones are social media,” Netanyahu, who is a war crimes suspect, said at the time.

“The most important purchase that is going on right now is … TikTok,” Netanyahu added. “TikTok, number one, number one, and I hope it goes through, because it can be consequential.”

Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda with 1.4m followers reports TikTok ban

Emmy-winning Owda points to changes in TikTok’s US ownership, remarks from Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu to explain ban.

^{Lyndal Rowlands (Al Jazeera)}