The Daily Index — Wednesday, April 3, 2024 · TLDR Index

MISCELLANEOUS

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GOOGLE TO FIGHT COOKIE HIJACKING WITH ENCRYPTION KEYS FOR CHROME BROWSER

Malware can hijack login sessions by accessing browser cookies. Google is trying to mitigate this threat with a new system called Device Bound Session Credentials, which uses encryption to prevent hijacking attempts. It will develop the system openly on GitHub as a public coding project. There is already a prototype of the system running as an experiment for some users on Chrome Beta. Google plans to kick off more trials of the system with website developers and users by the end of the year.

pcmag.com · 5 min

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CALIFORNIA INTRODUCES 'RIGHT TO DISCONNECT' BILL THAT WOULD ALLOW EMPLOYEES TO POSSIBLY RELAX

A new 'right to disconnect' proposition introduced in California, if passed, would make employers in California lay out exactly what a person's hours are and ensure that they aren't required to respond to work-related communications while off the clock. There are exceptions for emergencies and salaried employees may have periods in which they may have to work longer hours. Companies would be fined a minimum of $100 for wrongdoing. It is unclear how much support exists for the bill, which follows similar legislation in other countries.

engadget.com · 3 min

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YAHOO IS BUYING ARTIFACT, THE AI NEWS APP FROM THE INSTAGRAM CO-FOUNDERS

Yahoo is acquiring Artifact’s tech rather than its team - Artifact's co-founders will be 'special advisors' for Yahoo but won't be joining the company and the company's five remaining employees have either gotten other jobs or are planning to take some time off.

theverge.com · 4 min

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THE ‘META AI MAFIA’ BRAIN DRAIN CONTINUES WITH AT LEAST 3 MORE HIGH-LEVEL DEPARTURES

At least three high-level Meta AI employees, including senior director of engineering Erik Meijer, senior director of generative AI Devi Parikh, and research scientist Abhishek Das, have departed from the company in the past few weeks to strike out on their own.

finance.yahoo.com · 7 min

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AMAZON GIVES UP ON NO-CHECKOUT SHOPPING IN ITS GROCERY STORES

Amazon is switching its 'Just Walk Out' system to 'Dash Carts', where customers scan products as they put them into carts.

theverge.com · 2 min

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BRINGING PYTHON TO WORKERS USING PYODIDE AND WEBASSEMBLY

This post explains how Cloudflare integrated a Python implementation into workerd, an open-source Workers runtime, going into how Python Workers work, what its team learned in the process, and what's next for the company.

blog.cloudflare.com · 16 min

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TIMELINE OF THE XZ OPEN SOURCE ATTACK

'Jia Tan', the attacker who implemented the first serious known supply chain attack on widely used open source software, worked as a diligent, effective contributor to the xz compression library for over two years.

research.swtch.com · 13 min

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WE ALL LIVE ON A KNIFE'S EDGE, AND IT'S FINE

We live on the edge of experiencing historic global catastrophes every day - the solution is to have many people working on a large number of solutions to make these catastrophes even less likely.

strangeloopcanon.com · 9 min