All posts tagged: controls

Yup, Your Child Probably Knows How To Bypass Parental Controls On Their Phone

Yup, Your Child Probably Knows How To Bypass Parental Controls On Their Phone

Published by Sam Flores

Kids have been trying to sidestep parental controls for yonks (many of us will remember trying to figure out the code so we could watch 18+ films on the telly), but it seems plenty of parents are none the wiser that the youngest generation can also find ways to bypass controls on their smartphones.  That’s according to new research by Uswitch.com, which found almost half (46%) of UK parents to children aged 11-18 years old either didn’t know, or didn’t believe, that hidden browsers and VPNs (virtual private networks) can bypass parental controls. Almost one-third (30%) of parents who have safety features in place said their child had managed to get around those restrictions, while one in five (21%) said their child had watched them type in a passcode to try to get hold of it. And it’s not just parental controls that can be easily swerved. According to the Independent, over one-third of kids have found a way to bypass online age verification measures, which came into play as part of the Online Safety Act, …

China controls a metal that’s key for the Iran war, sending the U.S. on a global hunt for more

China controls a metal that’s key for the Iran war, sending the U.S. on a global hunt for more

Published by Sam Flores

YEONGWOL COUNTY, South Korea — As the United States wages war on Iran, it is burning through stockpiles of advanced weapons and ammunition, including Tomahawk, Patriot and Precision Strike missiles. Replacing them will require a powerful metal, tungsten, whose production and refining are dominated by China — leading the U.S. to desperately search for it elsewhere. Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content. Tungsten is used in fighter jets, bunker buster bombs, armor-piercing rounds and missile systems, making it indispensable for national defense. But the U.S. has had no active commercial tungsten mines since 2015, and the Trump administration has made it a mission to curb dependence on the Chinese supply. A mining district in China’s Inner Mongolia region in October.Fred Dufour / NBC News One place the metal can be found is in the mountains of eastern South Korea, at a mine owned by a U.S. company that holds millions of tons of tungsten ore. “There are very few large-scale tungsten mines on the planet,” said …

Palantir Held a Hack Week to Add New Controls to Software Used by ICE

Palantir Held a Hack Week to Add New Controls to Software Used by ICE

Published by skeptic

Palantir hosted a hack week this spring to try to turn internal consternation over the company’s work with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) into clearer oversight tools for products used in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, according to material reviewed by WIRED. The new tools provide organizations, including DHS and ICE, more information on how their workers use Palantir software. Organizations can set up alerts for “concerning behavior,” like exfiltrating datasets, and search the session logs of individual users. They also allow organizations to see which users have viewed specific sets of information. Palantir declined to comment. Palantir regularly holds hack weeks, challenging engineers from across the company to experiment with and solve problems in its products. This hack week focused on Palantir’s work with DHS and ICE, which has come under fire from both external critics and workers who fear the company’s tools are empowering the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. “This effort embodies the culture of the Palantir that I choose to work at,” Ted Mabrey, head …

Who Controls Cuba’s Economy? What to Know About GAESA.

Who Controls Cuba’s Economy? What to Know About GAESA.

Published by Sam Flores

John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, visited Cuba on Thursday to demand major economic and security changes from its government. His visit came just as the Cuban government admitted that its oil reserves have run dry and coincides with efforts by federal prosecutors to secure an indictment against Raúl Castro for drug trafficking and the 1996 downing of humanitarian planes. Earlier this month, President Trump signed an executive order to expand Cuban sanctions to target GAESA. The order says the conglomerate’s revenues “are likely more than three times the state’s budget.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio ratcheted up the pressure, calling GAESA a tool of Cuba’s political elite to repress the population while enriching themselves. GAESA “is this private company that has more money than the government does,” said Mr. Rubio during a trip to the Vatican last week. “None of this money goes to build a single road, a single bridge, provide a single grain of rice to a single Cuban other than the people that are part of GAESA.” “It’s a sanction against this …

Who Controls the Future? On Capitalism, Democracy, and Social Alienation

Who Controls the Future? On Capitalism, Democracy, and Social Alienation

Published by Jenni Sidey

Who controls the future? The answer to this question concerns the role and politics of financial investment under capitalism. Through its mode of investment, capitalism distinctively values and creates our future. First, it does so by capitalizing the future, by means of economically valuing now certain goods and assets, while devaluing others, based on what investors expect their future returns to be. The fact that, say, car-sharing companies are now valued on the stock market billions of dollars represents the fact that investors believe in a future where such companies will be able to generate revenue, by achieving market dominance. The ownership of these companies’ shares is a claim, obtained in the present, to the profits that dominance, once achieved, will generate in the future. The main source of investors’ wealth, in the form of future returns, is thus not accumulation from the past, but rather the power to shape the future. Investment itself provides such a power. Indeed, the more investment there is in car-sharing companies now, as opposed to, say, public transportation, the …

Apple’s AI Smart Glasses Likely to Support Hand Gesture Controls

Apple’s AI Smart Glasses Likely to Support Hand Gesture Controls

Published by skeptic

Apple is developing a set of AI smart glasses to rival products like the Meta Ray-Bans, and MacRumors has learned a few more details about Apple’s work on the device from an inside source. The AI glasses will include two cameras. A high-resolution camera will be included for capturing photos and videos that can be shared on social media and used like iPhone photos. A second lower-resolution wide-angle lens will read hand gestures and provide visual input for Siri. Apple uses hand gesture-based input for the Vision Pro, and rumors suggest the AirPods Pro will be updated with low-resolution cameras and support for gestures as well. Apple appears to be leaning into gesture support, and it’s an ideal input method when no screen is available to interact with. While future versions of the smart glasses could include an integrated display for augmented reality features, the first version will have no display at all. Apple will not include a screen, LiDAR, 3D cameras, or other similar technology because such features are too energy-intensive. Battery life is …

What really controls our appetite – hunger, stress or habit? | Health & wellbeing

What really controls our appetite – hunger, stress or habit? | Health & wellbeing

Published by Sam Flores

Imagine you’re in a meeting room when someone brings out the biscuits – a packet of Jammie Dodgers, perhaps, or a nice little plate of custard creams. Maybe you want one and maybe you don’t, but the chances are the people around you are all responding differently: someone will grab a couple straight away, someone else will eat one without seeming to notice, another will barely be aware the biscuits exist, and someone will spend the whole meeting wanting one but not taking it. Our appetites and responses to food vary wildly – but what’s going on behind the scenes to govern them? And has modern food somehow hijacked the process? Grab a biscuit (or don’t) and settle in. “First, it’s important to distinguish between hunger and appetite,” says Giles Yeo, a professor of molecular neuroendocrinology at the University of Cambridge and the author of Why Calories Don’t Count. “Hunger is a feeling – it’s what happens in the run-up to you deciding you need to eat something. Appetite is everything that surrounds why we …

Global Demand Destruction: Subsidies, Empty Gas Stations, Rationing, Flight Cancelations, Export Limits, Price Controls

Global Demand Destruction: Subsidies, Empty Gas Stations, Rationing, Flight Cancelations, Export Limits, Price Controls

Published by Jenni Sidey

In the past two weeks we have discussed demand destruction as a result of soaring oil prices (here and here), and we are increasingly seeing anecdotal evidence of just that (here is a table from Goldman we showed previously, laying out where demand destruction is most acute). We start, as always, with Asia which has emerged as ground zero of the global energy crisis – as a reminder last week we first presented a map by JPMorgan’s resident commodity expert who how the shockwave from the Iran war spreads across the world, hitting Asia first, then Africa and Europe, before settling on the US, but mostly California. Source According to UBS, a shortage of jet fuel in Asia and very high prices for what is available are now leading to greater flight cancellations. European jet fuel trades around $1713/tonne, up 114% since the war began. Singapore fuel is up around 140%. Both Vietnam Airlines and Air New Zealand have had to cancel flights due to limited fuel supply. Let’s go down the list. 1. Panic buying …

EU PFAS restriction moves closer as ECHA backs controls

EU PFAS restriction moves closer as ECHA backs controls

Published by skeptic

The committees, operating under the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA), concluded that existing controls are insufficient to manage emissions of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a large class of industrial chemicals widely used for their resistance to heat, water and oil. Their assessments now feed into a broader regulatory process that could lead to one of the most far-reaching chemical restrictions in the EU to date. Scientific committees align on need for EU-wide PFAS restriction The Risk Assessment Committee (RAC) has finalised its scientific opinion, determining that PFAS pose increasing and long-term risks to both human health and ecosystems. These substances are known for their extreme persistence, allowing them to accumulate in soil and groundwater and travel far beyond their original sources. According to RAC’s findings, some PFAS compounds are linked to serious health outcomes, including cancer and reproductive toxicity. The committee concluded that current regulatory frameworks do not adequately limit emissions, strengthening the case for a coordinated EU-level response. The Socio-Economic Analysis Committee (SEAC), meanwhile, has issued a draft opinion that broadly supports a PFAS …