Instagram Is Testing Unskippable Ad Breaks

Instagram is currently testing a new feature called “Ad Breaks.”
These unskippable ads will interrupt your browsing experience, requiring you to view an advertisement for at least 3-5 seconds before you can continue scrolling through their feed.

Meta has been facing some challenges related to its personalized ads services, like stricter privacy rules in the EU or US and the rise of TikTok. Thus, Meta is trying out different things to make more money, like in-app purchases, subnoscriptions, and now, these unskippable Ad Breaks.

Currently, the Ad Breaks feature appears to be limited to a small group of users, suggesting that Meta is conducting A/B testing to gauge user reaction and measure the feature’s impact on ad revenue

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Xiaomi HyperOS is Filled with Ads

Unlike Google or Facebook, who have one of the main sources of income through personalized ads in their services, Xiaomi also shows ads to its users

Although users can disable ads in HyperOS, Xiaomi has basically 'bydefault turned ON' toggles for 'Show Ads' and 'personalized recommendations' in their own system apps like — Theme Store, Xiaomi Music app, Game Center, Downloads app etc

Xiaomi even throws an ad when someone installs an app on their smartphone.
That's because Xiaomi earns huge amounts of money from advertising on its smartphone

Xiaomi's Advertising Revenue for 2023 reached RMB 20.5 Billion (US$ 2.8 Billion) alone from just showing ads to its users & it is an 11.2% Year on Year growth in 2023

In Q1 2024, revenue from internet services hit RMB 8.0 billion with a 14.5% YoY increase.
Out of this, RMB 5.5 Billion (~ US$ 76 Million) came from advertising only, and RMB 2.5 Billion (~ US$ 35 Million) from overseas internet services revenue

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Carl Pei Teases CMF Phone by Nothing

Nothing teased its upcoming budget smartphone which will be sold under its sub-brand CMF (Color Material Finish)
This CMF Phone will be priced under 250$ and it will be a downgraded version of the Phone 2a

Now what the teaser showcases is a 'Nothing Lock' (marketing/official name not confirmed).
It's actually a special connector that will be used to connect exclusive accessories produced by Nothing. (e.g. support brackets, lanyards, etc.) similar to how Apple offered it with their iPods as shown in the image

Specifications:
• 6.67-inch 120Hz OLED Display
• MediaTek Dimensity 7200 SoC
• LPDDR4X RAM; UFS 2.2 storage
• MicroSD Card Slot

• 50MP main + ???MP dual rear camera
• 16MP front camera
• 5000mAh battery with 33W Fast charging

Features:
• NFC ❌
• Glyph Lights ❌
• Replaceable plastic back cover

It will run NothingOS 2.6 but it 'might' NOT get every feature of the NothingOS

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Photoshops's Updated Terms of Service Allows Adobe to Access Your Content
Source

Adobe has updated Photoshops's Terms of Service, allowing Adobe to access any user's active projects for the purposes of “content moderation” and other various reasons.

Adobe notes that the "Content" means any text, information, communication, or material, such as audio files, video files, electronic documents, or images, that you upload, import into, embed for use by, or create using the Services and Software

Adobe can also have access to projects under NDA as well such as logos for unannounced games or other media projects.

The user agreement also leaves open the possibility for Adobe to train AI using user-generated content, saying Adobe can use the content they retrieve to “improve our Services and Software“.

Apart from automated review, Adobe can even manually review any content uploaded to its cloud to screen certain types of illegal content such as sexual abuse or adult content etc

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Windows 11 AI 'Recall' Feature a Privacy & Security Nightmare

Last month, Microsoft announced the upcoming launch of Copilot+ Windows PCs with integrated AI hardware and software. One of the features is 'Recall', a tool that's designed to take regular snapshots of PC content to help users find anything they've seen or done on their machine.

Recall takes screenshots every 5 seconds when the content on the screen is different from the prior snapshot and stores the snapshots in a timeline, with AI software using OCR to make the text in the snapshots searchable

However, security researchers are calling Recall a privacy & security nightmare for Windows 11 users.

That's because this SQLite3 database file has a record of everything you’ve ever viewed on your PC in 'plain text' & it's NOT even unencrypted.
The recall feature can even take screenshots while you are entering sensitive info like passwords on websites, your personal messages etc & this sensitive info is NOT even redacted either.

Microsoft claims that a 'hacker' cannot exfiltrate Recall activity remotely. However, security researchers have found out that the database is accessible from the AppData folder even if you’re NOT an admin on a PC.

Microsoft has bydefault turned ON the recall feature on Copilot Plus PCs.
Alex Hagenah, a cybersecurity strategist and ethical hacker, has released a demo tool, dubbed TotalRecall and it can automatically extract and display everything Recall records on a laptop.

TotalRecall can automatically work out where the Recall database is on a laptop and then make a copy of the file, parsing all the data as it does so since the data is all plain text & unencrypted

Although the recall is only available for ARM 64 CPUs, you can emulate it if you want to try the recall feature & can see screenshots of the Recall SQLite3 database over here

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