Technology

Google announced a cybersecurity partnership with the United Arab Emirates, which has been accused of arming the paramilitary group denounced for committing genocide in Darfur

• Data centers need a constant source of electricity. Data centers often run on solar and wind from the grid, but the intermittency of solar and wind means that it’s difficult to power data centers using these renewables alone.
• When data centers aren’t connected to the grid today, they’re often powered by diesel generators. However, a growing number of data centers are relying on solar and wind systems backed up by battery storage.
• Exact figures on data center electricity usage are difficult to find, because the tech companies who operate data centers don’t tend to release detailed statistics.
• The numbers we do have suggest that data centers consume about 1.5% of global electricity, and that this number is rapidly rising. It’s expected to reach 3 to 6% by 2030.
• However, data centers tend to be concentrated in particular places, like Virginia and Ireland. In these locations, they may account for a significantly higher proportion of a particular region’s electricity.

Reddit.

Using 3D holograms polished by artificial intelligence, researchers introduce a lean, eyeglass-like 3D headset that they say is a significant step toward passing the “Visual Turing Test.”

Hackernews.

1. The Problem of the Ambiguous Digital Self.
2. The Digital Identity Accountability Gap.

With advances in facial recognition, surveillance culture is rising and remaining anonymous in public is getting difficult. In this in-depth guide, we explore how to avoid surveillance from face recognition and ways to protect yourself.

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Hackernews.

Hackernews.

• Lobsters.
• Hackernews.

• Lobsters.
• Hackernews.

The EU is currently developing a whitelabel app to perform privacy-preserving (at least in theory) age verification to be adopted and personalized in the coming months by member states. The app is open source and available here: https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/av-app-android-wallet-ui.

Problem is, the app is planning to include remote attestation feature to verify the integrity of the app: https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/av-app-android-wallet-ui?tab=readme-ov-file#disclaimer. This is supposed to provide assurance to the age verification service that the app being used is authentic and running on a genuine operating system. Genuine in the case of Android means:

The operating system was licensed by Google The app was downloaded from the Play Store (thus requiring a Google account) Device security checks have passed While there is value to verify device security, this strongly ties the app to many Google properties and services, because those checks won't pass on an aftermarket Android OS, even those which increase security significantly like GrapheneOS, because the app plans to use Google "Play Integrity", which only allows Google licensed systems instead of the standard Android attestation feature to verify systems.

This also means that even though you can compile the app, you won't be able to use it, because it won't come from the Play Store and thus the age verification service will reject it.

The issue has been raised here https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/av-app-android-wallet-ui/issues/10 but no response from team members as of now.

Source.