Tootfinder

An article on why consumers should be able to see the full contents of the loan applications submitted by dealers to lenders. Written by Tom Oscherwitz, one of the team where I work.
(Its free access, but you have to create a login to see it 😞
#ConsumerRights #DataProtection

The CFPB's data access requirements should apply to auto loans
In implementing Section 1033, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is leaving out auto loans, one of the largest sources of consumer debt.

Optimal Mechanisms for Consumer Surplus Maximization
Tomer Ezra, Daniel Schoepflin, Ariel Shaulker
https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.16972 https://

Optimal Mechanisms for Consumer Surplus Maximization
We consider the problem of designing auctions which maximize consumer surplus (i.e., the social welfare minus the payments charged to the buyers). In the consumer surplus maximization problem, a seller with a set of goods faces a set of strategic buyers with private values, each of whom aims to maximize their own individual utility. The seller, in contrast, aims to allocate the goods in a way which maximizes the total buyer utility. The seller must then elicit the values of the buyers in order …

Poland's consumer watchdog fines Amazon ~$8M for allegedly misleading consumers, including with dark pattern design tricks, ending a probe opened in Feb. 2023 (Natasha Lomas/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/27/amazon-dark-pattern-design-fine/

Amazon fined in Poland for dark pattern design tricks | TechCrunch
Amazon has been fined in Poland for misleading consumers about the conclusion of sales contracts on its online marketplace. The sanction, of close to $8M

Measuring Compliance with the California Consumer Privacy Act Over Space and Time
Van Tran, Aarushi Mehrotra, Marshini Chetty, Nick Feamster, Jens Frankenreiter, Lior Strahilevitz
https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.17225

Measuring Compliance with the California Consumer Privacy Act Over Space and Time
The widespread sharing of consumers personal information with third parties raises significant privacy concerns. The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) mandates that online businesses offer consumers the option to opt out of the sale and sharing of personal information. Our study automatically tracks the presence of the opt-out link longitudinally across multiple states after the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) went into effect. We categorize websites based on whether they are subject …

messal_shale: Messel Shale food web (2014)
A network of feeling links among taxa based on the 48 million years old uppermost early Eocene Messel Shale. Edge property 'certainty' denotes the certainty of the edge. Metadata include evidence, habitat, and trophic roles. The edge direction goes from consumer to resource.
This network has 700 nodes and 6444 edges.
Tags: Biological, Food Web, Uncertain, Weighted, Metadata

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.06747 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csIR_…

MetaSplit: Meta-Split Network for Limited-Stock Product Recommendation
Compared to business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce systems, consumer-to-consumer (C2C) e-commerce platforms usually encounter the limited-stock problem, that is, a product can only be sold one time in a C2C system. This poses several unique challenges for click-through rate (CTR) prediction. Due to limited user interactions for each product (i.e. item), the corresponding item embedding in the CTR model may not easily converge. This makes the conventional sequence modeling based approaches cannot…

Bevraging #UGent in het kader van een onderzoek naar vleesvervangers. Vraagt slechts 10 minuutjes.
https://ghentpmwop.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_eLsarSdLagIUKLY<…

Disney launches Hulu on Disney , after testing the integration in beta in 2023; Disney users that do not subscribe to Hulu can still search for Hulu shows (Alex Weprin/The Hollywood Reporter)
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business

Hulu on Disney+ Launches Out of Beta With Marketing Push to Grow Subscribers
"Content recommendations are going to be more relevant based on your usage," says Joe Earley, president of direct-to-consumer for Disney Entertainment.

Why Companies Should Share Their DEI Data (Even When It’s Unflattering) - HBS Working Knowledge https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/why-companies-should-share-dei-data-even-when-its-unflattering

Why Companies Should Share Their DEI Data (Even When It’s Unflattering)
Companies that make their workforce demographics public earn consumer goodwill, even if the numbers show limited progress on diversity, says research by Ryan Buell, Maya Balakrishnan, and Jimin Nam. How can brands make transparency a differentiator?

I've moved out all my mainstream news outlets consumption to Threads. It would feel cheap, wasteful, and exploitative to create another account on a general purpose instance like mastodon.social--even if I donated there--just so I don't go overboard with the expenses on my own glorified instance. Make those Threads sweat out a little for the buck of my consumer profile.

Poland's consumer watchdog fines Amazon ~$8M for allegedly misleading consumers, including with dark pattern design tricks, ending a probe opened in Feb. 2023 (Natasha Lomas/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/27/amazon-dark-pattern-design-fine/

Amazon fined in Poland for dark pattern design tricks | TechCrunch
Amazon has been fined in Poland for misleading consumers about the conclusion of sales contracts on its online marketplace. The sanction, of close to $8M

Open Source Software (OSS) Transparency for DoD Acquisition
Nancy Mead, Carol Woody, Scott Hissam
https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.16737 https://

Open Source Software (OSS) Transparency for DoD Acquisition
Caveat emptor, or let the buyer beware, is commonly attributed to open source software (OSS)-the onus is on the OSS consumer to ensure that it is fit for use in the consumer's context. OSS has been compared to an open market bazaar where consumers are free to browse all the source code and take a copy. In this paper, we observe challenges for the OSS consumer to obtain information about the process(es), project(s) used to produce a product and the protection(s) employed by those projects. We di…

Passkeys were hot last year, don’t seem to be catching on, here’s one view of why that is. Dark and sobering but convincing: https://fy.blackhats.net.au/blog/2024-04-26-passkeys-a-shattered-dream/

Bodega – Cultural Consumer III / Cultural Consumer IV
#FediRadio

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.11138 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_sta…

NLP-based detection of systematic anomalies among the narratives of consumer complaints
We develop an NLP-based procedure for detecting systematic nonmeritorious consumer complaints, simply called systematic anomalies, among complaint narratives. While classification algorithms are used to detect pronounced anomalies, in the case of smaller and frequent systematic anomalies, the algorithms may falter due to a variety of reasons, including technical ones as well as natural limitations of human analysts. Therefore, as the next step after classification, we convert the complaint narr…

For Security Teams Inside Organizations
Let’s take a deep dive into this piece of consumer messaging —
1958. American Football. A sports reporter bluntly asks coach Vince Lombardi “What are you going to change to turn this team around after a string of failures and losing seasons?”
His reply: “I am not going to change anything. We will use the same players, the same plays and the same training system. But we will concentrate on becoming brilliant at the basics.”
This is an incredibly motivating message. And it paid off!
In the next nine seasons, Coach Lombardi’s team, the Green Bay Packers, went on to win five NFL Championships and two Super Bowls.
The phrase “Brilliant At The Basics” found its way into popular culture, becoming a recurring theme.
And the graphic? For the general public, the lightbulb image = Good Idea.
Consumers are already familiar with these two concepts.
In Your Organization, You Define “The Basics”
Find the sweet spot between everything that’s possible and what your users are willing and able to do.
☑️ Ask yourself "What should our users know? What actions should they take?"
☑️ Define them clearly and give them a simple, catchy name — "The Basics."
☑️ Show your users "This Is How We Do It Here."
☑️ Let them know they can master The Basics.
☑️ Then let your users know there's More Where That Came From, if they're interested, but … The Basics are the focus.
We should deliver cybersecurity advice to non-technical people in bite-size, digestible pieces. Consumers hate feeling like they’re at the pointy end of a firehose. And they don’t like being lectured to. Let’s not overwhelm them. First lay a strong foundation, then line by line, concept by concept — build up from there.
My partner led consumer product development programs that sold $100M and $400M of consumer products every year. Now he develops consumer products for Pokémon. We have hard-won experience when it comes to speaking to and persuading consumers.
We want to share that with you.
Would you like to experiment with this messaging and these laptop stickers in your organization?
Three additional benefits for you:
☑️ Over time, if The Basics in your organization change, the graphics and the laptop stickers stay the same.
☑️ A campaign like this might help identify potential Cyber Champions in your organization.
☑️ The laptop stickers provide persistent visibility for Cybersecurity within your organization.
We’d be happy to send some free samples for you to try out with your users.
1.) Visit this Brilliant At The Basic page on our website: #BrilliantAtTheBasics
_________________
♻️ Please feel free to share this post and let others know about this offer.

👉🏽 Direct-to-consumer microbiome tests don’t work as advertised
https://english.elpais.com/health/2024-03-19/direct-to-consumer-microbiome-tests-dont-work-as-advertised.html

Direct-to-consumer microbiome tests don’t work as advertised
An article in ‘Science’ urges increased regulation for tests that currently do not benefit patient health

Summer-camp summer degree of difficulty just went up a notch or two https://www.consumerreports.org/h…

There's still time to join this online panel, starting at 9:30 CET: the European Consumer Organisation will be presenting their new work on dynamic ⚡ prices and the best way to heat your home (and power your car). I'll be on the panel with other experts to discuss the findings and the way forward.

AI & beer 😃 (no LLMs involved)
#ai #beer

Predicting and improving complex beer flavor through machine learning - Nature Communications
Perception and appreciation of food flavour depends on many factors, posing a challenge for effective prediction. Here, the authors combine extensive chemical and sensory analyses of 250 commercial Belgian beers to train machine learning models that enable flavour and consumer appreciation prediction.

ServiceNow, Hugging Face, and Nvidia release free code-generating AI models StarCoder2-3B/7B/15B, the first two of which can run on most modern consumer GPUs (Kyle Wiggers/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/28/starcoder-2-is-a-…

StarCoder 2 is a code-generating AI that runs on most GPUs | TechCrunch
StarCoder 2, the follow-up to StarCoder, is a new family of code-generating models that runs highly efficiently.

It's good to know it's not just me. DNS? BGP? Teams!

AVELA -- A Vision for Engineering Literacy & Access: Understanding Why Technology Alone Is Not Enough
Kyle Johnson, Vicente Arroyos, Celeste Garcia, Liban Hussein, Aisha Cora, Tsewone Melaku, Jay L. Cunningham, R. Benjamin Shapiro, Vikram Iyer
https://arXiv.org/abs/2401.14581

AVELA -- A Vision for Engineering Literacy & Access: Understanding Why Technology Alone Is Not Enough
Unequal technology access for Black and Latine communities has been a persistent economic, social justice, and human rights issue despite increased technology accessibility due to advancements in consumer electronics like phones, tablets, and computers. We contextualize socio-technical access inequalities for Black and Latine urban communities and find that many students are hesitant to engage with available technologies due to a lack of engaging support systems. We present a holistic student-l…

Open Source Software (OSS) Transparency for DoD Acquisition
Nancy Mead, Carol Woody, Scott Hissam
https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.16737 https://

Open Source Software (OSS) Transparency for DoD Acquisition
Caveat emptor, or let the buyer beware, is commonly attributed to open source software (OSS)-the onus is on the OSS consumer to ensure that it is fit for use in the consumer's context. OSS has been compared to an open market bazaar where consumers are free to browse all the source code and take a copy. In this paper, we observe challenges for the OSS consumer to obtain information about the process(es), project(s) used to produce a product and the protection(s) employed by those projects. We di…

ServiceNow, Hugging Face, and Nvidia release free code-generating AI models StarCoder2-3B/7B/15B, the first two of which can run on most modern consumer GPUs (Kyle Wiggers/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/28/starcoder-2-is-a-…

StarCoder 2 is a code-generating AI that runs on most GPUs | TechCrunch
StarCoder 2, the follow-up to StarCoder, is a new family of code-generating models that runs highly efficiently.

Mega Consumer Packaged Goods Conglomerate in 2023: “Even though we are pressuring consumers on pricing, profits up.”
Mega Consumer Packaged Goods Conglomerate in 2024: “7,500 jobs cut and we’re spinning off brands because consumers are switching to budget rivals.”

Is it time to start shorting the #AI bubble yet?
C'mon, surely everyone can see it. Unlike cloud-based consumer products so far, none of this generative "AI" stuff -even the text ones - can run on consumer compute to the standard promised.
What we have is a bunch of research products financed by venture capital - which has been poured in ginormous amounts. Little of this dross is …

Cap Overdraft Fees at $3! Submit an Official Public Comment Supporting the CFPB’s Junk Fees Proposal Now!
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/submit-an-official-public-comment-supporting-the-cfpbs-overdraft-fees-p…

Cap Overdraft Fees at $3! Submit an Official Public Comment Supporting the CFPB’s Junk Fees Proposal Now!
At long last, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has issued their finalized proposal on capping exploitative overdraft fees, which in some cases have been set as high as $39 per transaction.[1] This proposal is part of CFPB’s ongoing effort to tackle junk fees in the banking and finance industries -- and it’s a very significant step towards just and equitable banking, since the group of people most impacted by overdraft fees are low-income, Black, and brown families. The ne…

For Security Teams Inside Organizations
Let’s take a deep dive into this piece of consumer messaging —
1958. American Football. A sports reporter bluntly asks coach Vince Lombardi “What are you going to change to turn this team around after a string of failures and losing seasons?”
His reply: “I am not going to change anything. We will use the same players, the same plays and the same training system. But we will concentrate on becoming brilliant at the basics.”
This is an incredibly motivating message. And it paid off!
In the next nine seasons, Coach Lombardi’s team, the Green Bay Packers, went on to win five NFL Championships and two Super Bowls.
The phrase “Brilliant At The Basics” found its way into popular culture, becoming a recurring theme.
And the graphic? For the general public, the lightbulb image = Good Idea.
Consumers are already familiar with these two concepts.
In Your Organization, You Define “The Basics”
Find the sweet spot between everything that’s possible and what your users are willing and able to do.
☑️ Ask yourself "What should our users know? What actions should they take?"
☑️ Define them clearly and give them a simple, catchy name — "The Basics."
☑️ Show your users "This Is How We Do It Here."
☑️ Let them know they can master The Basics.
☑️ Then let your users know there's More Where That Came From, if they're interested, but … The Basics are the focus.
We should deliver cybersecurity advice to non-technical people in bite-size, digestible pieces. Consumers hate feeling like they’re at the pointy end of a firehose. And they don’t like being lectured to. Let’s not overwhelm them. First lay a strong foundation, then line by line, concept by concept — build up from there.
My partner led consumer product development programs that sold $100M and $400M of consumer products every year. Now he develops consumer products for Pokémon. We have hard-won experience when it comes to speaking to and persuading consumers.
We want to share that with you.
Would you like to experiment with this messaging and these laptop stickers in your organization?
Three additional benefits for you:
☑️ Over time, if The Basics in your organization change, the graphics and the laptop stickers stay the same.
☑️ A campaign like this might help identify potential Cyber Champions in your organization.
☑️ The laptop stickers provide persistent visibility for Cybersecurity within your organization.
We’d be happy to send some free samples for you to try out with your users.
1.) Visit this Brilliant At The Basic page on our website: #BrilliantAtTheBasics
_________________
♻️ Please feel free to share this post and let others know about this offer.

👉🏽 Direct-to-consumer microbiome tests don’t work as advertised
https://english.elpais.com/health/2024-03-19/direct-to-consumer-microbiome-tests-dont-work-as-advertised.html

Direct-to-consumer microbiome tests don’t work as advertised
An article in ‘Science’ urges increased regulation for tests that currently do not benefit patient health

I once organized a sit-in consumer protest in one of their stores, demanding a 50% increase in the size of their free samples of mint-flavored beef jerky.
#WhyImNotAllowedInWalmart
#HashtagGames

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2202.04573 has been replaced.
link: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=a

On the Uniqueness and Stability of the Equilibrium Price in Quasi-Linear Economies
In this paper, we show that if every consumer in an economy has a quasi-linear utility function, then the normalized equilibrium price is unique, and it is locally stable with respect to the tâtonnement process. If the dimension of the consumption space is two, then this result can be expressed by the corresponding partial equilibrium model. Our study can be seen as that extends the results in partial equilibrium theory to economies with more than two dimensional consumption space.

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.11748 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csSD_…

Low-power SNN-based audio source localisation using a Hilbert Transform spike encoding scheme
Sound source localisation is used in many consumer electronics devices, to help isolate audio from individual speakers and to reject noise. Localization is frequently accomplished by "beamforming" algorithms, which combine microphone audio streams to improve received signal power from particular incident source directions. Beamforming algorithms generally use knowledge of the frequency components of the audio source, along with the known microphone array geometry, to analytically phase-shift mi…

Disney launches Hulu on Disney , after testing the integration in beta in 2023; Disney users that do not subscribe to Hulu can still search for Hulu shows (Alex Weprin/The Hollywood Reporter)
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business

Hulu on Disney+ Launches Out of Beta With Marketing Push to Grow Subscribers
"Content recommendations are going to be more relevant based on your usage," says Joe Earley, president of direct-to-consumer for Disney Entertainment.

MerRec: A Large-scale Multipurpose Mercari Dataset for Consumer-to-Consumer Recommendation Systems
Lichi Li, Zainul Abi Din, Zhen Tan, Sam London, Tianlong Chen, Ajay Daptardar
https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.14230

MerRec: A Large-scale Multipurpose Mercari Dataset for Consumer-to-Consumer Recommendation Systems
In the evolving e-commerce field, recommendation systems crucially shape user experience and engagement. The rise of Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) recommendation systems, noted for their flexibility and ease of access for customer vendors, marks a significant trend. However, the academic focus remains largely on Business-to-Consumer (B2C) models, leaving a gap filled by the limited C2C recommendation datasets that lack in item attributes, user diversity, and scale. The intricacy of C2C recommendat…

Consumer Acceptance, Transparency, and Unique Privacy Considerations at the Forefront of FPF’s Discussion on Privacy and Vehicle Safety Systems
https://fpf.org/blog/consumer-acceptan

🔊 #NowPlaying on #BBC6Music's #6MusicsJukebox
BODEGA:
🎵 Cultural Consumer III
#BODEGA
#Bandcamp

Very interesting #V2G 🚗🔄⚡ network tariffs report for the 🇦🇺Australian Renewable Energy Agency
Dynamic energy and network pricing maximises grid benefits and consumer savings. They can amplify flex savings & help reduce grid peaks, but for some situations need for additional tools (e.g. dynamic operating envelopes, explicit DR)

ARENA - Vehicle to Grid - Network tariffs report
Report investigating electricity load and economic benefits of Vehicle to Grid operations with fleet electric vehicles.

Monport spam has shown up with a new tactic. In response to someone asking for help with an Omtech machine, they wrote some vague "well try something else" and praised Monport tech support, and suggested reaching out to Monport for support. For an Omtech machine. The text appeared to be designed to poison consumer sentiment AI summaries to favor Monport.
I don't care whether this is currently considered fraud by a legal definition. It is clearly a morally corrupt attempt to manipulate …

"Generative AI, where it is right now, is not totally dissimilar from what happened during the cryptocurrency bubble during the height of the pandemic: Hundreds of startups, flush with cash from a bull market, started trying to build crypto-backed consumer products after they had already decided the technology was the future — not the other way around."
(Original title: AI search is a doomsday cult)

AI search is a doomsday cult
Read to the end for a black cat eating a whole rotisserie chicken while Mamma Mia by ABBA plays in the background

"Choose with your eyes closed" instore shopping experience and spatial maps in visually impaired and sighted persons #blind

“Choose with your eyes closed” instore shopping experience and spatial maps in visually impaired and sighted persons - Universal Access in the Information Society
The literature on the consumption patterns of specific categories of consumers, such as people with disability, remains limited to date. This study explored the explicit consumer experience of a group of visually impaired (VI) consumers in-store using behavioural and self-report measures. A VI and a control group explored three different product shelves and manipulated target products inside the supermarket. Behavioural and self-report data were collected in relation to three main different pha…

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.12184 has been replaced.
link: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=a

Is Your Kettle Smarter Than a Hacker? A Scalable Tool for Assessing Replay Attack Vulnerabilities on Consumer IoT Devices
Consumer Internet of Things (IoT) devices often leverage the local network to communicate with the corresponding companion app or other devices. This has benefits in terms of efficiency since it offloads the cloud. ENISA and NIST security guidelines underscore the importance of enabling default local communication for safety and reliability. Indeed, an IoT device should continue to function in case the cloud connection is not available. While the security of cloud-device connections is typicall…

messal_shale: Messel Shale food web (2014)
A network of feeling links among taxa based on the 48 million years old uppermost early Eocene Messel Shale. Edge property 'certainty' denotes the certainty of the edge. Metadata include evidence, habitat, and trophic roles. The edge direction goes from consumer to resource.
This network has 700 nodes and 6444 edges.
Tags: Biological, Food Web, Uncertain, Weighted, Metadata

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.15757 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@arX…

Phase transition to chaos in complex ecosystems with non-reciprocal species-resource interactions
Non-reciprocal interactions between microscopic constituents can profoundly shape the large-scale properties of complex systems. Here, we investigate the effects of non-reciprocity in the context of theoretical ecology by analyzing a generalization of MacArthur's consumer-resource model with asymmetric interactions between species and resources. Using a mixture of analytic cavity calculations and numerical simulations, we show that such ecosystems generically undergo a phase transition to chaot…

The FCC votes 3-2 to reinstate net neutrality rules, expanding government oversight of ISPs and aiming to protect consumer access to the internet (Cecilia Kang/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/25/technology/fcc-net-neutrality-open…

F.C.C. Votes to Restore Net Neutrality Rules
Commissioners voted along party lines to revive the rules that declare broadband as a utility-like service that could be regulated like phones and water.

"Observational studies conducted by several EU citizens from Belgian, German, French, and Italian IP addresses suggest that several ad tech vendors, both large and small, continue to build personalised profiles on EU citizens, even when a consumer has explicitly objected to a vendor processing their data for targeted ads."

Fed declines to cut rates as inflation, consumer confidence improve (Taylor Giorno/The Hill)
https://thehill.com/business/4439921-fed-declines-to-cut-rates-as-inflation-consumer-confidence-improve/

Fed declines to cut rates as inflation, consumer confidence improve
The Federal Reserve held interest rates steady Wednesday following its first monetary policy meeting of the year. The Federal Open Market Committe (FOMC) kept its baseline interest rate range at 5.25 to 5.5 percent after several months of strong economic data and slowing inflation. While the decision was widely expected, Fed watchers will be listening…

@… On top of those: Switch, to what exactly?
If your problem has to do with the general behavior of the industry, there aren’t exactly many obvious choices as to what you’d switch away to (Assuming you’re not the tech nerd who is all about running a custom Linux distribution and all that entails).
As a regular consumer, what phone are you going to g…

BeReal's challenges show the difficulty for new consumer apps to break out absent a big platform shift, as users lack the time to try additional consumer apps (M.G. Siegler/Spyglass)
https://spyglass.org/being-real/

Let's Be Real About Consumer 📧
The recent reports that BeReal is struggling with either a fundraise or growth or both, is a bummer. I have no actual information about the round or company – nor am I even a regular user (I had sort of been there/done that with Front/Back back in the day!

Back from a fun couple of days in Bochum presenting at the second Hardware Reverse Engineering Symposium (HARRIS) hosted by the Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy.
The talk was titled "Secure Element vs Cloners: A Case Study". Slides will be uploaded shortly, I'll share a link here when I've had a chance to do that.
As part of this research, I and the other IOA silicon lab folks examined two generations of an undisclosed consumer product with cryptogr…

> Nestlé, the world’s largest consumer goods company, adds sugar and honey to infant milk and cereal products sold in many poorer countries, contrary to international guidelines aimed at preventing obesity and chronic diseases, a report has found.
https://www.

More than 60% of last month's reported inflation was due to price of housing & gasoline. (Car insurance also a contributor.)
Sprawl & car culture.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/gasoline-shelter-costs-lift-us-124508361.html<…

Gasoline, shelter costs lift US consumer prices in February
U.S. consumer prices increased solidly in February amid higher costs for gasoline and shelter, suggesting some stickiness in inflation that could delay an...

Ya reckon? 👀
https://mastodon.hongkongers.net/@glnews_mirror/112125249393661391

Global News (@glnews_mirror@mastodon.hongkongers.net)
Attached: 1 image Boeing can’t increase 737 MAX production until quality, safety culture improved: U.S. FAA The FAA in late January took the unprecedented step of telling Boeing it would not allow the company to expand 737 MAX production. #globalnews #Consumer #USNews #737MAX #Boeing https://globalnews.ca/news/10371487/faa-boeing-quality-safety-improvements/

Yeah Sony this seems reasonable for a consumer camera

The FCC votes 3-2 to reinstate net neutrality rules, expanding government oversight of ISPs and aiming to protect consumer access to the internet (Cecilia Kang/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/25/technology/fcc-net-neutrality-open…

F.C.C. Votes to Restore Net Neutrality Rules
Commissioners voted along party lines to revive the rules that declare broadband as a utility-like service that could be regulated like phones and water.

"Finance and consumer goods giants ‘ignoring deforestation risks’ despite a decade of warnings"
#Deforestation #Trees #Environment

Finance and consumer goods giants ‘ignoring deforestation risks’ despite a decade of warnings
A new analysis of the deforestation-related commitments from 150 of the world’s largest financiers has found that more than half have no public policies or pledges – including BlackRock, Vanguard and Macquarie.

Nearly 80% of 1,200 US adults surveyed by US News say they feel confident they would be able to spot a phishing email.
https://www.usnews.com/360-reviews/privacy/digital-privacy-consumer-survey

🔊 #NowPlaying on #BBC6Music's #HuwStephens
BODEGA:
🎵 Cultural Consumer III
#BODEGA
https://open.spotify.com/track/3ZztcZYTUG2o8jViQMHmRn
https://bodegabk.bandcamp.com/album/cultural-consumer-iii-cultural-consumer-iv

💡 Immersive gaming and fitness apps are the key to Vision Pro’s consumer appeal
https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/06/immersive-gaming-and-fitness-apps-are-the-key-to-vision-pros-consumer-appeal/

Immersive gaming and fitness apps are the key to Vision Pro’s consumer appeal | TechCrunch
The foundational vocabulary of any new medium is inherited from that of its predecessor. Take, for instance, the early days of television, when so many

This story is mind-boggling. Air freight is now dominated by Shein, Temu, and so on; 600k packages / day, which is 108 Boeing 777 freight plane equivalents. Crazy: https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/…

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.15757 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@arX…

Phase transition to chaos in complex ecosystems with non-reciprocal species-resource interactions
Non-reciprocal interactions between microscopic constituents can profoundly shape the large-scale properties of complex systems. Here, we investigate the effects of non-reciprocity in the context of theoretical ecology by analyzing a generalization of MacArthur's consumer-resource model with asymmetric interactions between species and resources. Using a mixture of analytic cavity calculations and numerical simulations, we show that such ecosystems generically undergo a phase transition to chaot…

Congress considers legislation to block DJI drones from running on US communication networks, effectively killing the Chinese company's US commercial business (Kate Kelly/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/…

A Chinese Firm Is America’s Favorite Drone Maker. Except in Washington.
U.S. authorities consider DJI a security threat. Congress is weighing legislation to ban it, prompting a lobbying campaign from the company, which dominates the commercial and consumer drone markets.

"Observational studies conducted by several EU citizens from Belgian, German, French, and Italian IP addresses suggest that several ad tech vendors, both large and small, continue to build personalised profiles on EU citizens, even when a consumer has explicitly objected to a vendor processing their data for targeted ads."

Memory-Efficient and Secure DNN Inference on TrustZone-enabled Consumer IoT Devices
Xueshuo Xie, Haoxu Wang, Zhaolong Jian, Tao Li, Wei Wang, Zhiwei Xu, Guiling Wang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.12568

Memory-Efficient and Secure DNN Inference on TrustZone-enabled Consumer IoT Devices
Edge intelligence enables resource-demanding Deep Neural Network (DNN) inference without transferring original data, addressing concerns about data privacy in consumer Internet of Things (IoT) devices. For privacy-sensitive applications, deploying models in hardware-isolated trusted execution environments (TEEs) becomes essential. However, the limited secure memory in TEEs poses challenges for deploying DNN inference, and alternative techniques like model partitioning and offloading introduce p…

EU Parliament ratifies Right to Repair Directive
https://poliverso.org/display/0477a01e-7df6a7b3-21f9582287dae1d7
EU Parliament ratifies Right to Repair DirectiveMembers of the European Parliament (MEPs) voted in favour of the Right to Repair Direct…

Memo: Microsoft's Bing chief Mikhail Parakhin plans to exit his roles and look for a new position, after Microsoft hired Mustafa Suleyman to run Microsoft AI (Dina Bass/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

Microsoft Bing Chief Parakhin Exiting Role After Suleyman Named AI Leader
Microsoft Corp.’s Mikhail Parakhin, head of the company’s Bing search engine and advertising businesses, will exit those roles and look for a new position, a week after the software giant named Mustafa Suleyman to oversee consumer artificial intelligence work and asked Parakhin to report to him.

The Relationship between Consumer Theories with and without Utility Maximization
Yuhki Hosoya
https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.10931 https://

The Relationship between Consumer Theories with and without Utility Maximization
To study the assumption that the utility maximization hypothesis implicitly adds to consumer theory, we consider a mathematical representation of pre-marginal revolution consumer theory based on subjective exchange ratios. We introduce two axioms on subjective exchange ratio, and show that both axioms hold if and only if consumer behavior is consistent with the utility maximization hypothesis. Moreover, we express the process for a consumer to find the transaction stopping point in terms of dif…

Shortchanged: Uncovering and Analyzing Intimate Partner Financial Abuse in Consumer Complaints
Arkaprabha Bhattacharya, Kevin Lee, Vineeth Ravi, Jessica Staddon, Rosanna Bellini
https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.13944

Shortchanged: Uncovering and Analyzing Intimate Partner Financial Abuse in Consumer Complaints
Digital financial services can introduce new digital-safety risks for users, particularly survivors of intimate partner financial abuse (IPFA). To offer improved support for such users, a comprehensive understanding of their support needs and the barriers they face to redress by financial institutions is essential. Drawing from a dataset of 2.7 million customer complaints, we implement a bespoke workflow that utilizes language-modeling techniques and expert human review to identify complaints d…

Ya reckon? 👀
https://mastodon.hongkongers.net/@glnews_mirror/112125249393661391

Global News (@glnews_mirror@mastodon.hongkongers.net)
Attached: 1 image Boeing can’t increase 737 MAX production until quality, safety culture improved: U.S. FAA The FAA in late January took the unprecedented step of telling Boeing it would not allow the company to expand 737 MAX production. #globalnews #Consumer #USNews #737MAX #Boeing https://globalnews.ca/news/10371487/faa-boeing-quality-safety-improvements/

epinions_trust: Epinions trust network (2003)
A who-trusts-whom online social network of the general consumer review site Epinions.com. Members can decide whether to "trust" each other. These trust relationships are combined with review ratings to determine which reviews are shown to the user.
This network has 75888 nodes and 508837 edges.
Tags: Social, Online, Unweighted

🇨🇳 China consumer prices plunge at fastest rate for 15 years as deflation fears deepen
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/feb/08/china-consumer-prices-plunge-at-fastest-rate-for-15-years-as…

Interessant artikel over ongelijkheid in Nature.
#nature

Why the world cannot afford the rich
Equality is essential for sustainability. The science is clear — people in more-equal societies are more trusting and more likely to protect the environment than are those in unequal, consumer-driven ones.

Apple is finally fully on the hype train, destination nowhere

The US CFPB fines BloomTech, formerly Lambda School, and CEO Austen Allred $164K and bans it from lending for 10 years for deceiving students on loans, and more (Kyle Wiggers/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/17/cons

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau fines BloomTech for false claims | TechCrunch
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has found that BloomTech, the vocational school startup, misrepresented its practices and business.

Mail publisher DMGT reports 2023 revenue up 2% YoY to £997M and a pre-tax loss of £12.6M, as a £63M growth in B2B events revenue offset consumer media decline (Charlotte Tobitt/Press Gazette)
https://pressgazette.co.uk/media_business/dmgt-revenue-fina…

Growth in B2B events income offsets consumer media decline at DMGT
The profit margin at DMGT's consumer media division fell from 8% to 6% in 2023 as advertising and circulation revenues suffered last year.

🔊 #NowPlaying on #BBC6Music's #ChrisHawkins
BODEGA:
🎵 Cultural Consumer III
#BODEGA
https://open.spotify.com/track/3ZztcZYTUG2o8jViQMHmRn
https://bodegabk.bandcamp.com/album/cultural-consumer-iii-cultural-consumer-iv

From Hardware Fingerprint to Access Token: Enhancing the Authentication on IoT Devices
Yue Xiao, Yi He, Xiaoli Zhang, Qian Wang, Renjie Xie, Kun Sun, Ke Xu, Qi Li
https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.15271

From Hardware Fingerprint to Access Token: Enhancing the Authentication on IoT Devices
The proliferation of consumer IoT products in our daily lives has raised the need for secure device authentication and access control. Unfortunately, these resource-constrained devices typically use token-based authentication, which is vulnerable to token compromise attacks that allow attackers to impersonate the devices and perform malicious operations by stealing the access token. Using hardware fingerprints to secure their authentication is a promising way to mitigate these threats. However,…

Optimal Refund Mechanism with Consumer Learning
Qianjun Lyu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.14927 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2404.14927<…

Optimal Refund Mechanism with Consumer Learning
This paper studies the optimal refund mechanism when an uninformed buyer can privately acquire information about his valuation of a product over time. We consider a class of refund mechanisms based on stochastic return policies: if the buyer requests a return, the seller will issue a (partial) refund while allowing the buyer to keep the product with some probability. Such return policies can affect the buyer's learning process and thereby influence the return rate. Nevertheless, we show that th…

The FCC votes 3-2 to reinstate net neutrality rules, expanding government oversight of ISPs and aiming to protect consumer access to the internet (Cecilia Kang/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/25/technology/fcc-net-neutrality-open…

F.C.C. Votes to Restore Net Neutrality Rules
Commissioners voted along party lines to revive the rules that declare broadband as a utility-like service that could be regulated like phones and water.

Dual-Wavelength SLA 3D Printing: Fast Continuous Printing With ROMP And RFP Resins
https://poliverso.org/display/0477a01e-62f4a760-a4c8b9d9866091a4
Dual-Wavelength SLA 3D Printing: Fast Continuous Printing With ROMP And RFP Resins As widespread as 3…

The FCC votes 3-2 to reinstate net neutrality rules, expanding government oversight of ISPs and aiming to protect consumer access to the internet (Cecilia Kang/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/25/technology/fcc-net-neutrality-open…

F.C.C. Votes to Restore Net Neutrality Rules
Commissioners voted along party lines to revive the rules that declare broadband as a utility-like service that could be regulated like phones and water.

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.06747 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csIR_…

MetaSplit: Meta-Split Network for Limited-Stock Product Recommendation
Compared to business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce systems, consumer-to-consumer (C2C) e-commerce platforms usually encounter the limited-stock problem, that is, a product can only be sold one time in a C2C system. This poses several unique challenges for click-through rate (CTR) prediction. Due to limited user interactions for each product (i.e. item), the corresponding item embedding in the CTR model may not easily converge. This makes the conventional sequence modeling based approaches cannot…

Interesting transfer, Mustafa Suleyman joins Microsoft.
"I’m excited to announce that today I’m joining @Microsoft
as CEO of Microsoft AI. I’ll be leading all consumer AI products and research, including Copilot, Bing and Edge", formerly inflectionAI and Google Deepmind.
#AI #Microsoft

epinions_trust: Epinions trust network (2003)
A who-trusts-whom online social network of the general consumer review site Epinions.com. Members can decide whether to "trust" each other. These trust relationships are combined with review ratings to determine which reviews are shown to the user.
This network has 75888 nodes and 508837 edges.
Tags: Social, Online, Unweighted

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.06747 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csIR_…

MetaSplit: Meta-Split Network for Limited-Stock Product Recommendation
Compared to business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce systems, consumer-to-consumer (C2C) e-commerce platforms usually encounter the limited-stock problem, that is, a product can only be sold one time in a C2C system. This poses several unique challenges for click-through rate (CTR) prediction. Due to limited user interactions for each product (i.e. item), the corresponding item embedding in the CTR model may not easily converge. This makes the conventional sequence modeling based approaches cannot…

🔍 Ultra-flat optics for broadband thermal imaging
#optics

Ultra-flat optics for broadband thermal imaging
Long-wavelength infrared (LWIR) imaging holds critical significance across many applications, from consumer electronics to defense and national security. It finds applications in night vision, remote sensing, and long-range imaging. However, the conventional refractive lenses employed in these imaging systems are bulky and heavy, which is undesirable for almost all applications. Compounding this issue is the fact that many LWIR refractive lenses are crafted from expensive and limited-supply mat…

A look at ESPN's plans for its standalone streaming service, which sources say the company aims to launch in 2025, costing $25 to $30 per month (Andrew Marchand/The Athletic)
https://theathletic.com/5355283/2024/03/20/espn-tv-rights-nfl-nba/
…

ESPN is open for business: How the coming months will shape the sports TV giant’s future
Pursuing partnerships with leagues and preparing a direct-to-consumer product, ESPN is heading into a landscape-altering stretch.

The European Parliament adopts right-to-repair rules clarifying manufacturer obligations to provide repair services, consumer access to spare parts, and more (Jacob Ridley/PC Gamer)
https://www.

New rules to massively strengthen EU's right to repair successfully pass through European Parliament with 584 votes for, just 3 against
The new rules will give customers new ways to claim support for a product throughout its lifetime, and also aid independent repair shops.

messal_shale: Messel Shale food web (2014)
A network of feeling links among taxa based on the 48 million years old uppermost early Eocene Messel Shale. Edge property 'certainty' denotes the certainty of the edge. Metadata include evidence, habitat, and trophic roles. The edge direction goes from consumer to resource.
This network has 700 nodes and 6444 edges.
Tags: Biological, Food Web, Uncertain, Weighted, Metadata

Colorado Governor Jared Polis signs a bill that, for the first time in the US, expands the state's personal privacy law to include consumer "neural data" (Jonathan Moens/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/17/science/colorado-b…

Colorado Bill Aims to Protect Consumer Brain Data
In a first, a Colorado law extends privacy rights to the neural data increasingly coveted by technology companies.

India grants a consumer payments license to Paytm, which has until now operated under a license connected to its beleaguered affiliate, Paytm Payments Bank (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-…

Paytm Wins Key Payments Approval It Needs to Stay in Business
Paytm has won approval to become a consumer digital-payments platform, helping the beleaguered fintech continue a bulk of its business even as its banking affiliate is getting wound down.

Eight EU consumer rights groups lodge GDPR complaints with national data protection authorities, accusing Meta of coercing users with its "pay-or-consent" model (Natasha Lomas/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/28/meta-consent-or-p…

Meta's 'consent or pay' data grab in EU faces fresh charges of privacy coercion | TechCrunch
A controversial move by Meta last year, when it switched to charging users in the Europe Union for an ad-free subscription for access Facebook and/or Meta is facing a fresh set of complaints from consumer protection authorities in the EU over a controversial switch to charging users for an ad-free subscription unless they agree to being tracked and profiled for ad targeting.

Eight EU consumer rights groups lodge GDPR complaints with national data protection authorities, accusing Meta of coercing users with its "pay-or-consent" model (Natasha Lomas/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/28/meta-consent-or-p…

Meta's 'consent or pay' data grab in EU faces fresh charges of privacy coercion | TechCrunch
A controversial move by Meta last year, when it switched to charging users in the Europe Union for an ad-free subscription for access Facebook and/or Meta is facing a fresh set of complaints from consumer protection authorities in the EU over a controversial switch to charging users for an ad-free subscription unless they agree to being tracked and profiled for ad targeting.

Microsoft is holding a Windows and Surface AI event on May 20; sources: the event will include the consumer versions of Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 (The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/18/24104982/microsoft-ai-event-build-2024…

Microsoft to hold a special Windows and Surface AI event in May
Microsoft is holding a special event on May 20th, where it says it will share its “AI vision across hardware and software” before the start of its Build 2024 developer event.

The Connectivity Standards Alliance launches a cybersecurity standard that aims to provide a globally recognized security certification for consumer IoT devices (Jennifer Pattison Tuohy/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/18/2410490

The CSA launches an IoT Device Security Specification and certification program for smart home devices
A new product security program from the group behind Matter looks to bring a globally recognized cybersecurity mark to smart home devices.

Microsoft announces Microsoft AI London, a new hub for its consumer AI division led by former Inflection AI and DeepMind engineer Jordan Hoffmann (Paul Sawers/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/08/micr

Microsoft AI gets a new London hub fronted by former Inflection and Deepmind scientist Jordan Hoffmann | TechCrunch
Microsoft has unveiled a new London hub for its recently launched consumer AI division, fronted by an AI scientist poached from Inflection AI.

Internal draft: UK's ICO says Google's Privacy Sandbox falls short and leaves gaps that can be exploited to undermine privacy of users who should be anonymous (Wall Street Journal)
https://www.

CIRP: Amazon Prime hit a new high of 180M US shoppers in March 2024, up 8% YoY, despite greater online competition; 75% of US shoppers have a Prime membership (Spencer Soper/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

Amazon Prime Memberships in US Gain 8% to New High After Lull
Amazon.com Inc.’s Prime subscription service hit a new high of 180 million US shoppers in March, an increase of 8% from a year earlier, according to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, which has tracked Amazon memberships since 2014.