• Risks Digest 34.05

    From RISKS List Owner@21:1/5 to All on Thu Feb 1 01:39:00 2024
    RISKS-LIST: Risks-Forum Digest Wednesday 31 January 2024 Volume 34 : Issue 05

    ACM FORUM ON RISKS TO THE PUBLIC IN COMPUTERS AND RELATED SYSTEMS (comp.risks) Peter G. Neumann, founder and still moderator

    ***** See last item for further information, disclaimers, caveats, etc. ***** This issue is archived at <http://www.risks.org> as
    <http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/34.05>
    The current issue can also be found at
    <http://www.csl.sri.com/users/risko/risks.txt>

    Contents:
    Offshore Wind Farms Vulnerable to Cyberattacks (Rizwan Choudhury)
    Tesla Hacked at Pwn2Own Automotive 2024 (Sergiu Gatlan)
    America's Dangerous Trucks (Frontline)
    Authorities investigating massive security breach at Global Affairs Canada
    (CBC)
    Why the 737 MAX 9 door plug blew out (Lauren Weinstein)
    Man sues Macy's, saying false facial recognition match led to jail assault
    (WashPost)
    Bugs in our pockets: the risks of client-side scanning
    (Journal of Cybersecurity Oxford Academic)
    Sleeper Agents: Training Deceptive LLMs that Persist Through Safety Training
    (Arxiv)
    ERCIM News 136 published - Special Theme: Large Language Models
    (Peter Kunz)
    Deepfake Audio of Biden Alarms Experts (Margi Murphy)
    The Great Freight-Train Heists of the 21st Century (Slashdot)
    Nightshade: a new tool artists can use to *poison* AI models that
    scrape their online work (Lauren Weinstein)
    ChatGPT is leaking passwords from private conversations of users
    (Ars Technica reader says)
    Impact of AI on Software Development (Taylor Soper)
    AI maxim (Lauren Weinstein)
    Is American Journalism Headed Toward an Extinction-Level Event?
    (geoff goodfellow)
    Huge Proportion of Internet Is AI-Generated Slime, Researchers Find
    (Maggie Harrison)
    How Beloved Indie Blog 'The Hairpin' Turned Into an AI Clickbait Farm
    (WiReD)
    Twitter/X says that it has temporarily blocked some searches for
    Taylor Swift while they try deal with the flood of AI-porn related to her
    (LW)
    Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce and a MAGA Meltdown (NYTimes)
    YOUR PAPERS PLEASE! - Florida House passes bill that would ban
    children under 16 from social media (Axios)
    Hawley and the tech CEOs (Lauren Weinstein)
    Congress and the states want to bring a Chinese-style police state
    Internet to the U.S. (Lauren Weinstein)
    iPhone Apps Secretly Harvest Data When They Send Notifications
    (Thomas Germain)
    In India, an algorithm declares them dead; they have
    to prove they're alive (Steve Bacher)
    Tech Layoffs Shock Young Workers. The Older People? Not So Much. (NYTimes)
    Re: Even after a recall, Tesla's Autopilot does dumb dangerous things
    (Geoff Kuenning)
    Re: ChatGPT can answer yes or no at the same time (Amos Shapir)
    Re: Tesla Drivers in Chicago Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather (Goldberg,
    (John Levine)
    One-star rating deserved for apps that allow full-screen ads
    (Dan Jacobson)
    Abridged info on RISKS (comp.risks)

    ----------------------------------------------------------------------

    Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2024 11:05:43 -0500 (EST)
    From: ACM TechNews <technews-editor@acm.org>
    Subject: Offshore Wind Farms Vulnerable to Cyberattacks
    (Rizwan Choudhury)

    Rizwan Choudhury, *Interesting Engineering*, 24 Jan 2024
    via ACM TechNews, 31 Jan 2024

    Researchers at Canada's Concordia University and the Hydro-Quebec Research Institute studied the cybersecurity risks associated with offshore wind
    farms, specifically those using voltage-source-converter high-voltage direct-current (VSC-HVDC) connections. In simulations, the researchers found that cyberattacks could cause blackouts or equipment damage by prompting
    poorly dampened power oscillations that are amplified by the HVDC system and spread to the main grid.

    ------------------------------

    Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2024 11:19:56 -0500 (EST)
    From: ACM TechNews <technews-editor@acm.org>
    Subject: Tesla Hacked at Pwn2Own Automotive 2024 (Sergiu Gatlan)

    Sergiu Gatlan, *BleepingComputer*, 24 Jan 2024

    On the first day of the Pwn2Own Automotive 2024 hacking contest, security researchers hacked a Tesla Modem, collecting awards totaling $722,500 for
    three bug collisions and 24 unique zero-day exploits. The Synacktiv Team chained three zero-day bugs to obtain root permissions on a Tesla Modem, for which it won $100,000. The team won another $120,000 by hacking a Ubiquiti Connect EV Station and a JuiceBox 40 Smart EV Charging Station using unique two-bug chains, and $16,000 related to a known exploit chain targeting the ChargePoint Home Flex EV charger.

    ------------------------------

    Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2024 12:46:13 -0500
    From: Gabe Goldberg <gabe@gabegold.com>
    Subject: America's Dangerous Trucks (Frontline)

    Deadly traffic accidents involving large trucks have surged over the past decade. FRONTLINE and ProPublica examine one gruesome kind of truck accident —- underride crashes -— and why they keep happening.

    Trucking industry representatives and the government’s lead agency on
    traffic safety have said that their top priority is safety. Drawing on more than a year of reporting —- including leaked documents and interviews with former government insiders, trucking industry representatives, and families
    of underride crash victims —- the documentary reveals how, for decades, federal regulators proposed new rules to try to prevent underride
    crashes. Over and over, pushback from trucking industry lobbyists won the
    day, leaving drivers of smaller vehicles vulnerable.

    https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/americas-dangerous-trucks/

    The risks? Regulatory capture and science denial. Plus a cavalier attitude towards people dying. Stay away from trucks.

    ------------------------------

    Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2024 16:41:06 -0700
    From: Matthew Kruk <mkrukg@gmail.com>
    Subject: Authorities investigating massive security breach at Global Affairs
    Canada (CBC)

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/global-affairs-security-breach-1.7099290

    Canadian authorities are investigating a prolonged data security breach following the "detection of malicious cyber activity" affecting the internal network used by Global Affairs Canada staff, according to internal
    department emails viewed by CBC News.

    The breach affects at least two internal drives, as well as emails,
    calendars and contacts of many staff members.

    CBC News spoke to multiple sources with knowledge of the situation,
    including employees who have received instructions on how the breach affects their ability to work. Some were told to stop working remotely as of last Wednesday.

    ------------------------------

    Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2024 10:20:52 -0800
    From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
    Subject: Why the 737 MAX 9 door plug blew out

    It is now reported that the reason the door plug blew out on that 737
    MAX 9 is that Boeing workers at the factory failed to install the
    necessary bolts to hold it in place. This permitted the plug to
    gradually move upward out of its slot and then ultimately blow out.
    This also is the probable reason why that plane had a number of
    pressure warnings in preceding days, because air would have likely
    been leaking past the plug as it worked loose. -L

    [added later:
    Just to be clear, the actual bolt installation failure may have been
    by a subsidiary/contractor, but Boeing was responsible in any case
    since the plane left their factory in that condition. -L
    ]

    ------------------------------

    Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2024 19:01:31 -0500
    From: Jan Wolitzky <jan.wolitzky@gmail.com>
    Subject: Man sues Macy's, saying false facial recognition match led to jail
    assault (WashPost)

    A man was sexually assaulted in jail after being falsely accused of armed robbery due to a faulty facial recognition match, his attorneys said, in a
    case that further highlights the dangers of the technology's expanding use
    by law enforcement.

    Harvey Murphy Jr., 61, said he was beaten and raped by three men in a Texas jail bathroom in 2022 after being booked on charges he'd held up employees
    at gunpoint inside a Sunglass Hut in a Houston shopping center, according to
    a lawsuit he filed last week.

    A representative of a nearby Macy's told Houston police during the investigation that the company's system, which scanned surveillance-camera footage for faces in an internal shoplifter database, found evidence that Murphy had robbed both stores, leading to his arrest.

    But at the time of the robbery, his attorneys said, Murphy was in a
    Sacramento jail on unrelated charges, nearly 2,000 miles away. Hours after
    his sexual assault, prosecutors released him with all charges dropped, his attorneys said.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/01/22/facial-recognition-wrongful-identification-assault/

    ------------------------------

    Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2024 13:26:08 -0500
    From: Gabe Goldberg <gabe@gabegold.com>
    Subject: Bugs in our pockets: the risks of client-side scanning
    (Journal of Cybersecurity Oxford Academic)

    Our increasing reliance on digital technology for personal, economic, and government affairs has made it essential to secure the communications and devices of private citizens, businesses, and governments. This has led to pervasive use of cryptography across society. Despite its evident
    advantages, law enforcement and national security agencies have argued that
    the spread of cryptography has hindered access to evidence and
    intelligence. Some in industry and government now advocate a new technology
    to access targeted data: client-side scanning (CSS). Instead of weakening encryption or providing law enforcement with backdoor keys to decrypt communications, CSS would enable on-device analysis of data in the clear. If targeted information were detected, its existence and, potentially, its
    source would be revealed to the agencies; otherwise, little or no
    information would leave the client device. Its proponents claim that CSS is
    a solution to the encryption versus public safety debate: it offers privacy—in the sense of unimpeded end-to-end encryption—and the ability to successfully investigate serious crime. In this paper, we argue that CSS neither guarantees efficacious crime prevention nor prevents surveillance. Indeed, the effect is the opposite. CSS by its nature creates serious
    security and privacy risks for all society, while the assistance it can
    provide for law enforcement is at best problematic. There are multiple ways
    in which CSS can fail, can be evaded, and can be abused.

    https://academic.oup.com/cybersecurity/article/10/1/tyad020/7590463

    ------------------------------

    Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2024 10:31:49 -0500
    From: dan@geer.org
    Subject: Sleeper Agents: Training Deceptive LLMs that Persist Through Safety
    Training (Arxiv)

    https://arxiv.org/pdf/2401.05566.pdf

    "Humans are capable of strategically deceptive behavior: behaving helpfully
    in most situations, but then behaving very differently in order to pursue alternative objectives when given the opportunity. If an AI system learned
    such a deceptive strategy, could we detect it and remove it using current state-of-the-art safety training techniques? To study this question, we construct proof-of-concept examples of deceptive behavior in large language models (LLMs). For example, we train models that write secure code when the prompt states that the year is 2023, but insert exploitable code when the stated year is 2024. We find that such backdoor behavior can be made persistent, so that it is not removed by standard safety training
    techniques, including supervised fine-tuning, reinforcement learning, and adversarial training (eliciting unsafe persistent in the largest models and
    in models trained to produce chain-of-thought reasoning about deceiving the training process, with the persistence remaining even when the
    chain-of-thought is distilled away. Furthermore, rather than removing backdoors, we find that adversarial training can teach models to better recognize their backdoor triggers, effectively hiding the unsafe
    behavior. Our results suggest that, once a model exhibits deceptive
    behavior, standard techniques could fail to remove such deception and create
    a false impression of safety."

    ------------------------------

    Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2024 15:23:57 +0100
    From: Peter Kunz <peter.kunz@ercim.eu>
    Subject: ERCIM News 136 published - Special Theme: Large Language Models

    A new ERCIM News issue (136) is online with a special theme on Large
    Language Models (LLMs). This issue features articles on diverse topics, such
    as LLMs in education and professional training, ethics and fairness in
    public sector use, knowledge management, information retrieval, software modeling, LLM capability assessment, and advancements like enhanced pre-training efficiency. You can access the issue at https://ercim-news.ercim.eu/

    ------------------------------

    Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2024 11:45:53 -0500 (EST)
    From: ACM TechNews <technews-editor@acm.org>
    Subject: Deepfake Audio of Biden Alarms Experts (Margi Murphy)

    Margi Murphy, Bloomberg, 22 Jan 2024, via ACM TechNews, 24 Jan 2024

    A telephone message containing deepfake audio of U.S. President Joe
    Biden called on New Hampshire voters to avoid yesterday's Democratic
    primary and save their votes for the November election. This comes
    amid rising concerns about the use of political deepfakes to
    influence elections around the world this year. Audio deepfakes are
    especially concerning, given that they are easy and inexpensive to
    create and hard to trace.

    ------------------------------

    Date: Sat, 27 Jan 2024 09:15:55 -0500
    From: Tom Van Vleck <thvv@multicians.org>
    Subject: The Great Freight-Train Heists of the 21st Century (Slashdot)

    https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/01/27/0010210/the-great-freight-train-heists-of-the-21st-century

    The e-commerce boom "reshaped freight shipping to meet consumer demand,
    opening vulnerabilities." So crooks are breaking into containers being
    shipped by freight and stealing the Amazon boxes.

    [Is this a "computer related RISK"? almost every crime nowadays has a
    computer nearby. THVV]

    [It is a probably a computer-related risk, and certainly so if they can
    get access to the manifests and container IDs. PGN]

    ------------------------------

    Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2024 07:22:34 -0800
    From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
    Subject: Nightshade: a new tool artists can use to *poison* AI models that
    scrape their online work

    Note that their project web page at:
    https://nightshade.cs.uchicago.edu/whatis.html
    is in what to me is an almost impossible-to-read light font. I assume "poisoning" human readers is not also part of their goal set. -L

    https://boingboing.net/2024/01/22/nightshade-a-new-tool-artists-can-use-to-poison-ai-models-that-scrape-their-online-work.html

    ------------------------------

    From: Dave Farber <farber@gmail.com>
    Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2024 06:03:16 +0900
    Subject: ChatGPT is leaking passwords from private conversations of users
    (Ars Technica reader says)

    ------------------------------

    Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2024 11:36:46 -0500 (EST)
    From: ACM TechNews <technews-editor@acm.org>
    Subject: Impact of AI on Software Development (Taylor Soper)

    Taylor Soperxo, *GeekWire*, 23 Jan 2024,
    via ACM TechNews, 29 Jan 2024

    An analysis of 153 million lines of code changed by GitClear, a developer analytics tool built in Seattle, found that "code churn," or the percentage
    of lines thrown out less than two weeks after being authored, is on the
    rise. It also found that the percentage of "copy/pasted code" is increasing faster than "updated," "deleted," or "moved" code. Said GitClear's Bill Harding, "In this regard, the composition of AI-generated code is similar to
    a short-term developer that doesn't thoughtfully integrate their work into
    the broader project."

    ------------------------------

    Date: Sun, 21 Jan 2024 10:42:30 -0800
    From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
    Subject: AI maxim

    The familiar computing maxim "garbage in, garbage out" -- dating to the late 1950s or early 1960s -- needs to be updated to "quality in, garbage out"
    when it comes to most generative AI systems. -L

    [Maybe it's a minim, not a maxim. PGN]

    ------------------------------

    Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2024 11:45:28 -0700
    From: geoff goodfellow <geoff@iconia.com>
    Subject: Is American Journalism Headed Toward an
    Extinction-Level Event?

    For a few hours last Tuesday, the entire news business seemed to be
    collapsing all at once. Journalists at Time magazine and National Geographic announced that they had been laid off. Unionized employees at magazines
    owned by Conde Nast staged a one-day strike to protest imminent cuts. By
    far the grimmest news was from the Los Angeles Times, the biggest newspaper west of the Washington DC area. After weeks of rumors, the paper announced
    that it was cutting 115 people, more than 20 percent of its newsroom.

    [News is no longer news or even new.
    AI is just one under-miner of honest journalism.
    Money is also driving the demise.
    The more biased journalism becomes, the more ads either
    go away or pile on, depending on the bias.

    The money for Superbowl ads is something like $7M for 30 seconds.
    The money for Superbowl tickets is approaching $10K per ticket,
    especially if you want to sit together with anyone else. PGN]

    ------------------------------

    Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2024 07:32:37 +0900
    From: Dave Farber <farber@gmail.com>
    Subject: Huge Proportion of Internet Is AI-Generated Slime, Researchers Find
    (Maggie Harrison)

    Maggie Harrison, *Futurism*, 19 Jan 2024 https://futurism.com/the-byte/internet-ai-generated-slime

    [Note: paper has not been peer reviewed.(djf) ]

    ------------------------------

    Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2024 14:50:54 -0800
    From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
    Subject: How Beloved Indie Blog 'The Hairpin' Turned Into an AI Clickbait
    Farm (WiReD)

    https://www.wired.com/story/plaintext-hairpin-blog-ai-clickbait-farm/

    ------------------------------

    Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2024 08:07:03 -0800
    From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
    Subject: Twitter/X says that it has temporarily blocked some searches for
    Taylor Swift while they try deal with the flood of AI-porn related to her

    Also:
    If Taylor Swift Can't Defeat Deepfake Porn, No One Can
    There's also word that the estate of legendary comedian George Carlin
    is suing over a special that reportedly used an AI recreation of him. -L https://www.wired.com/story/taylor-swift-deepfake-porn-artificial-intelligence-pushback/

    ------------------------------

    Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2024 09:33:22 -0500
    From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
    Subject: Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce and a MAGA Meltdown
    (NYTimes)

    The fulminations surrounding the world’s biggest pop icon-— and girlfriend of KC Chiefs' tight-end Travis Kelce -— reached the stratosphere after
    Kansas City made it to the Super Bowl.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/30/us/politics/taylor-swift-travis-kelce-trump.html

    ------------------------------

    Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2024 18:51:55 -0800
    From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
    Subject: YOUR PAPERS PLEASE! - Florida House passes bill that would ban
    children under 16 from social media (Axios)

    These fascist plans would end up requiring ALL USERS to be verified and identified via government IDs, irrespective ot their age, resulting
    eventually in the ability to track all users' Internet usage in detail.
    Don't be fooled by the "protect the children" claims. -L

    https://www.axios.com/2024/01/25/florida-house-bill-social-media-child-ban

    ------------------------------

    Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2024 09:33:49 -0800
    From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
    Subject: Hawley and the tech CEOs

    It's really something to see Hawley, who should be in prison for his actions
    on 6 Jan 2023, yelling at the tech CEOs. There's lots wrong with Big Tech,
    but Congress has no clue how to fix it, and will only make it far worse and more dangerous for children and adults. And this holds for BOTH parties. In this respect they are EQUALLY BAD. -L

    ------------------------------

    Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2024 09:08:15 -0800
    From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
    Subject: Congress and the states want to bring a Chinese-style police state
    Internet to the U.S.

    Basically, both parties in Congress -- and legislators in both blue
    and red states -- want to turn the Internet into a China-style police
    state, where all activity is tracked and tied to government IDs. Even
    if you trust one party not to abuse this, imagine when the other party
    gets into power! All of this is being leveraged on a "protect the
    children" basis where the legislative demands would be ineffective at preventing children from accessing the materials of concern, trample
    on the rights of adults to use the Net, and actually expose children
    to more risks from abusive parents. That's the bottom line. -L

    ------------------------------

    Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2024 11:36:46 -0500 (EST)
    From: ACM TechNews <technews-editor@acm.org>
    Subject: iPhone Apps Secretly Harvest Data When They Send Notifications
    (Thomas Germain)

    Thomas Germain, *Gizmodo*, 25 Jan 2024,
    via ACM TechNews, 29 Jan 2024

    Security researchers at the app development firm Mysk Inc. found that some iPhone apps are using notifications to get around Apple's privacy rules governing the collection of user data. The researchers said the data being collected through notification appears related to analytics, advertising,
    and tracking users across different apps and devices. The use of
    notifications for gathering user data also gets around the practice of
    closing apps to prevent them from background data collection.

    ------------------------------

    Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2024 12:47:36 -0800
    From: Steve Bacher <sebmb1@verizon.net>
    Subject: In India, an algorithm declares them dead; they have
    to prove they're alive

    *Rohtak and New Delhi, India:* Dhuli Chand was 102 years old on September 8, 2022, when he led a wedding procession in Rohtak, a district town in the
    north Indian state of Haryana.

    As is customary in north Indian weddings, he sat on a chariot in his wedding finery, wearing garlands of Indian rupee notes, while a band played
    celebratory music and family members and villagers accompanied him.

    But instead of a bride, Chand was on his way to meet government officials.

    Chand resorted to the antic to prove to officials that he was not only alive but also lively. A placard he held proclaimed, in the local dialect: “thara foofa zinda hai”, which literally translates to “your uncle is alive”.

    Six months prior, his monthly pension was suddenly stopped because he was declared “dead” in government records.

    Under Haryana’s Old Age Samman Allowance scheme, people aged 60 years and above, whose income together with that of their spouse doesn't exceed
    300,000 rupees ($3,600) per annum, are eligible for a monthly pension of
    2,750 rupees ($33).

    In June 2020, the state started using a newly built algorithmic system – the Family Identity Data Repository or the Parivar Pehchan Patra (PPP) database
    – to determine the eligibility of welfare claimants.

    The PPP is an eight-digit unique ID provided to each family in the state and has details of birth and death, marriage, employment, property, and income
    tax, among other data, of the family members. It maps every family’s demographic and socioeconomic information by linking several government databases to check their eligibility for welfare schemes. The state said
    that the PPP created “authentic, verified and reliable data of all families”, and made it mandatory for citizens to access all welfare schemes.

    But in practice, the PPP wrongly marked Chand as “dead”, denying him his pension for several months. Worse, the authorities did not change his “dead”
    status even when he repeatedly met them in person. [...]

    https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/1/25/in-india-an-algorithm-declares-them-dead-they-have-to-prove-theyre

    ------------------------------

    Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2024 09:34:54 -0500
    From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
    Subject: Tech Layoffs Shock Young Workers. The Older People? Not So Much.
    (NYTimes)

    The industry’s recent job cuts have been an awakening for a generation of workers who have never experienced a cyclical crash.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/20/technology/tech-layoffs-millennials-gen-x.html

    ------------------------------

    Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2024 18:15:43 -0800
    From: Geoff Kuenning <geoff@cs.hmc.edu>
    Subject: Re: Even after a recall, Tesla's Autopilot does dumb dangerous
    things (The Washington Post)

    I was completely unimpressed by the Washington Post article on Tesla's autosteering feature. Cancel that: I was disgusted.

    I am hardly a Tesla fan. But the author of the article complained that the automatic STEERING feature blew through stop signs. No duh. My Kia Niro
    would do the same thing; steering has nothing to do with controlling speed. Anybody who expects a steering feature to recognize speed bumps, stop signs, etc. is far too stupid to operate an automobile, let alone write a
    *WashPost* column on technology.

    ------------------------------

    Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2024 11:26:30 +0200
    From: Amos Shapir <amos083@gmail.com>
    Subject: Re: ChatGPT can answer yes or no at the same time
    (RISKS-34.04)

    This item, as well as the next one about Tesla's Autopilot, show a strangely ignored fact: These systems are simply not ready for public use. Would you accept an accounting system which makes simple calculation errors, or a
    search application which invents nonexistent results rather than seek them?

    ------------------------------

    Date: 21 Jan 2024 09:32:41 -0500
    From: "John Levine" <johnl@iecc.com>
    Subject: Re: Tesla Drivers in Chicago Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold
    Weather (Goldberg, RISKS-34.05)

    In freezing temperatures, the batteries of electric vehicles can be less efficient and have shorter range, a lesson many Tesla drivers in Chicago learned this week.

    There is an old joke that we are lucky the car industry grew up in Detroit rather than in Miami. Otherwise every time it snowed, all cars would come to
    a halt.

    Now we know it's true!

    ------------------------------

    Date: Sat, 27 Jan 2024 11:57:12 +0800
    From: Dan Jacobson <jidanni@jidanni.org>
    Subject: One-star rating deserved for apps that allow full-screen ads

    The ads on my phone have two sizes,
    1) A few lines at the bottom of the screen, and
    2) Full screen.

    The full screen ones, no matter what app they appear in, these days all say things like "press to continue" or "press for next step". I.e., fooling the user into thinking it is the app doing the talking.

    With the "few lines at the bottom of the screen" ads, no matter what
    wild things it says, we still know it is just an ad, because the babble
    appears in the ad spot.

    So when apps get "one star ratings" it is often due to the ads in the
    apps, not the apps themselves. But they are still deserved, due to the developer taking the risk to allow full screen ads.

    ------------------------------

    Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2023 11:11:11 -0800
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