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A Nice Little Cryptography Primer

By itss | 28/06/2021
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Pun Intended.

Category: Technology
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  • Benedict Cumberbatch Films Two Bizarre Holiday Ads: for 'World of Tanks' and Amazon
    by EditorDavid on 30/11/2025 at 12:34 pm

    "There are times when World of Tanks feels less like a videogame and more like a giant ad budget looking for something to be spent on," writes PC Gamer. This year, all those huge sacks with dollar signs on them have been thrown Benedict Cumberbatch's way, making him the game's newest "Holiday Ambassador" and the star of an absolutely bizarre Christmas advert. The story has very little to do with Christmas and, frankly, not much connection to tanks either, featuring Cumberbatch as a sort of chaotic, supernatural therapist trying to bring a meek nerd out of his shell with the help of a chaotic crowd of his other patients. It's a good watch, shedding the usual hard man action star vibe of past celebrity trailers in favour of something that feels more like a mischievous one act play. Cumberbatch also portrayed Smaug and Sauron in The Hobbit films (2012-2014), Khan in Star Trek Into Darkness (2013), and Dr. Strange in six Marvel movies. And now Amazon has also hired Cumberbatch for what its calls its "Cannes-winning '5-Star Theater' campaign... performing real Amazon customer reviews as theatrical monologues." Cumberbatch performed over 15 reviews, including popular holiday gifts like the Bissell portable carpet cleaner, Toto bidet, and SharkNinja blender — showing that Amazon truly does have something for everyone on your list. Last year Amazon produced a similar campaign starring Adam Driver ("Kylo Ren" from the final trilogy of Star Wars sequels). "The humor comes from the juxtaposition between Cumberbatch's gravitas and the text itself," reports Adweek, adding that the reviews were curated "using internal AI tools, to find the most oddly specific reviews on the platform." Amazon will stream Cumberbatch's bizarre ads on major platforms including TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, Lyft, Uber, Disney/Hulu, Paramount, and Roku, and on several NFL football games. I remember when Amazon just chose the best funny fake reviews from customers, and then posted them on the front page of Amazon... Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Browser Extension 'Slop Evader' Lets You Surf the Web Like It's 2022
    by EditorDavid on 30/11/2025 at 8:34 am

    "The internet is being increasingly polluted by AI generated text, images and video," argues the site for a new browser extension called Slop Evader. It promises to use Google's search API "to only return content published before Nov 30th, 2022" — the day ChatGPT launched — "so you can be sure that it was written or produced by the human hand." 404 Media calls it "a scorched earth approach that virtually guarantees your searches will be slop-free." Slop Evader was created by artist and researcher Tega Brain, who says she was motivated by the growing dismay over the tech industry's unrelenting, aggressive rollout of so-called "generative AI" — despite widespread criticism and the wider public's distaste for it. "This sowing of mistrust in our relationship with media is a huge thing, a huge effect of this synthetic media moment we're in," Brain told 404 Media, describing how tools like Sora 2 have short-circuited our ability to determine reality within a sea of artificial online junk. "I've been thinking about ways to refuse it, and the simplest, dumbest way to do that is to only search before 2022...." Currently, Slop Evader can be used to search pre-GPT archives of seven different sites where slop has become commonplace, including YouTube, Reddit, Stack Exchange, and the parenting site MumsNet. The obvious downside to this, from a user perspective, is that you won't be able to find anything time-sensitive or current — including this very website, which did not exist in 2022. The experience is simultaneously refreshing and harrowing, allowing you to browse freely without having to constantly question reality, but always knowing that this freedom will be forever locked in time — nostalgia for a human-centric world wide web that no longer exists. Of course, the tool's limitations are part of its provocation. Brain says she has plans to add support for more sites, and release a new version that uses DuckDuckGo's search indexing instead of Google's. But the real goal, she says, is prompting people to question how they can collectively refuse the dystopian, inhuman version of the internet that Silicon Valley's AI-pushers have forced on us... With enough cultural pushback, Brain suggests, we could start to see alternative search engines like DuckDuckGo adding options to filter out search results suspected of having synthetic content (DuckDuckGo added the ability to filter out AI images in search earlier this year)... But no matter what form AI slop-refusal takes, it will need to be a group effort. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • AI Helps Drive Record $11.8B in Black Friday Online Spending
    by EditorDavid on 30/11/2025 at 4:34 am

    Earlier this month MasterCard noted that even Walmart now allows its customers to make purchases through ChatGPT. And after polling more than 4,000 consumers in the U.S., Canada, U.K., and UAE, they found "more than four in 10 consumers already use AI tools to help them shop, including 61% of Gen Z and 57% of millennials." Many (50% of Gen Z and 49% of millennials) say they'd even let AI handle all their gift-buying if it meant avoiding stress. Younger shoppers trust AI's taste, with 51% of Gen Z and 55% of millennials relying on it to deliver unique and thoughtful recommendations (sometimes even more than they trust themselves). The most popular uses include getting personalized product recommendations, confirming the best deal before purchasing, and summarizing thousands of reviews instantly. The bottom line: Shoppers are embracing AI as their new personal assistant — one that knows their budget, style, and patience level... If the 2025 holiday shopper could be summed up in one word, it's intentional. They're planning earlier, spending wiser and using technology to make every dollar and every gift count. The first figures are now in for the traditional "Black Friday" shopping day after Thanksgiving, and U.S. shoppers "spent a record $11.8 billion online," reports Reuters, "up 9.1% from 2024 on the year's biggest shopping day, according to Adobe Analytics, which tracks 1 trillion visits that shoppers make to online retail websites..." And sure enough, this year shoppers were helped by AI: AI-powered shopping tools helped drive a surge in U.S. online spending on Black Friday, as shoppers bypassed crowded stores and turned to chatbots to compare prices and secure discounts amid concerns about tariff-driven price hikes... The AI-driven traffic to U.S. retail sites soared 805% compared to last year, Adobe said, when artificial intelligence tools such as Walmart's Sparky or Amazon's Rufus had not yet been launched. "Consumers are using new tools to get to what they need faster," said Suzy Davidkhanian, an analyst at eMarketer. "Gift giving can be stressful, and LLMs (large language models) make the discovery process feel quicker and more guided..." Globally, AI and agents influenced $14.2 billion in online sales on Black Friday, of which $3 billion came from the U.S. alone, according to software firm Salesforce. There's another reason shoppers turned to AI. 2025's Black Friday arrived "amid tighter budgets, unemployment nearing a four-year high, U.S. consumer confidence sagging to a seven-month low and price tags that have shoppers watching every dollar," according to the article: Discount rates also remained flat when compared to 2024, with AI helping shoppers discover the best deals, and an increase in the price tags made deeper discounts difficult for retailers... Order volumes fell 1% as average selling prices rose 7%. Consumers also purchased fewer items at checkout, with units per transaction falling 2% on a year-over-year basis, Salesforce said. The spending surge sets the stage for an even bigger Cyber Monday, projected to drive $14.2 billion in sales, up 6.3% on a year-over-year basis and the largest online shopping day of the year, Adobe said. Electronics are expected to see the deepest discounts on Cyber Monday, reaching 30% off list prices, along with strong deals on apparel and computers, Adobe said. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Are There More Linux Users Than We Think?
    by EditorDavid on 30/11/2025 at 2:34 am

    "By my count, Linux has over 11% of the desktop market," writes ZDNet's Steven Vaughan-Nichols: In StatCounter's latest US numbers, which cover through October, Linux shows up as only 3.49%. But if you look closer, "unknown" accounts for 4.21%. Allow me to make an educated guess here: I suspect those unknown desktops are actually running Linux. What else could it be? FreeBSD? Unix? OS/2? Unlikely. In addition, ChromeOS comes in at 3.67%, which strikes me as much too low. Leaving that aside, ChromeOS is a Linux variant. It just uses the Chrome web browser for its interface rather than KDE Plasma, Cinnamon, or another Linux desktop environment. Put all these together, and you get a Linux desktop market share of 11.37%... If you want to look at the broader world of end-user operating systems, including phones and tablets, Linux comes out even better. In the US, where we love our Apple iPhones, Android — yes, another Linux distro — boasts 41.71% of the market share, according to StatCounter's latest numbers. Globally, however, Android rules with 72.55% of the market. Yes, that's right, if you widen the Linux end-user operating system metric to include PC, tablets, and smartphones, you can make a reasonable argument that Linux, and not Windows, is already the top dog operating system... If you add Chrome OS (1.7%) and Android (15.8%), 23.3% of all people accessing the U.S. government's websites are Linux users. The Linux kernel's user-facing footprint is much larger than the "desktop Linux" label suggests. The article lists reasons more people might be switching to Linux, including broader hardware support and "the increased viability of gaming via Steam and Proton" — but also the rise of Digital Sovereignty initiatives. (One EU group has even created EU OS.") And finally, "not everyone is thrilled with Windows 11 being turned into an AI-agentic operating system." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Scientists Discover People Act More Altruistic When Batman Is Present
    by EditorDavid on 29/11/2025 at 11:34 pm

    Psychology Today reports: In a study conducted in Milan, Italy, and published in November 2025, the sight of a person dressed as Batman led to a nearly doubled rate of people giving up their seat to a pregnant woman. Over the course of 138 subway rides, researchers found that people who saw "Batman" standing near the pregnant woman were far more altruistic than those who did not. Researchers are calling this the "Batman effect," suggesting a form of "involuntary" mindfulness may be at play. Noticing these subtle social cues appears to shift people's typical, automatic reactions. Most interestingly, 44 percent of the people questioned reported they did not even consciously register Batman's presence... The superhero costume serves as a visual nudge, pulling us out of our default, self-focused mode and into a more generous, attentive state. More from Futurism: Batman showing up is just one — albeit striking — way of promoting what's called "prosocial behavior," or the act of helping others around you, via introducing an unexpected event, the researchers write. "Our findings are similar to those of previous research linking present-moment awareness (mindfulness) to greater prosociality," said study lead author Francesco Pagnini, a professor of clinical psychology at the Università Cattolica in Milan, in a statement about the work. "This may create a context in which individuals become more attuned to social cues." Thanks to Black Parrot (Slashdot reader #19,622) for sharing the article. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Defense Company Announces an AI-Powered Dome to Shield Cities and Infrastructure From Attacks
    by EditorDavid on 29/11/2025 at 10:34 pm

    An anonymous reader shared this report from CNBC: Italian defense company Leonardo on Thursday unveiled plans for an AI-powered shield for cities and critical infrastructure, adding to Europe's push to ramp up sovereign defense capabilities amid rising geopolitical tensions. The system, dubbed the "Michelangelo Dome" in a nod to Israel's Iron Dome and U.S. President Donald Trump's plans for a "Golden Dome," will integrate multiple defense systems to detect and neutralize threats from sea to air including missile attacks and drone swarms... Leonardo's dome will be built on what CEO Roberto Cingolani called an "open architecture" system meaning it can operate alongside any country's defense systems... Leonardo's dome will be built on what CEO Roberto Cingolani called an "open architecture" system meaning it can operate alongside any country's defense systems. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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