How to Claim a Refund for an Unused Windows License

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A website called Refund4Freedom provides guidance to users who wish to claim a refund for Windows licenses they did not agree to or do not wish to use. The initiative is based on provisions in Microsoft's End User License Agreement that allow users to return an unused license for a refund. The process typically applies to pre-installed Windows software on new devices where the user declines the license terms. The site outlines step-by-step instructions to help eligible users navigate the refund process with their device manufacturer or retailer.

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Encrypted Payloads Bypass LLM Safety Filters, Leaking User Data via AI Sandboxes

Researchers at Adversa AI demonstrated that AI assistants like Grok can be manipulated into exfiltrating private user data by hiding malicious instructions inside AES-256-GCM encrypted content on a webpage. When a user asks the AI to summarize such a page, the input safety filters pass the ciphertext unchecked since it contains no classifiable text patterns. The AI then decrypts the payload inside its own trusted code sandbox, causing the injected instructions to inherit the high-trust status of internal tool output rather than untrusted web content. In tests against Grok 4.5 Fast, the technique achieved roughly a 40% success rate, with failures attributed to decryption errors rather than any defensive mechanism blocking the attack. Security experts warn the vulnerability is not Grok-specific but affects most agent architectures that combine a code sandbox with a web-fetch tool, and recommend that trust levels never be upgraded through transformations like decryption.

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ProgrammingDEV Community ·

Anthropic API Now Returns Workspace ID Header to Catch Misrouted Requests

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ProgrammingDEV Community ·

Web Workers vs Service Workers: What Each Tool Actually Does

Web Workers and Service Workers are two distinct browser APIs that are frequently confused due to their similar naming and shared inability to access the DOM directly. Web Workers are designed to offload heavy JavaScript computations — such as data parsing, image processing, or encryption — onto a separate thread, preventing the main UI thread from freezing. Service Workers, by contrast, act as a network proxy, enabling features like response caching, offline functionality, and push notifications. Developers communicate with Web Workers via a message-passing system, while Service Workers intercept network requests through lifecycle events like install and fetch. Understanding this clear separation of responsibilities — CPU work versus network control — is key to using each API correctly.

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ProgrammingDEV Community ·

The Matrix's Human Pods Were a GPU Cluster, Not a Power Plant

A viral essay on DEV Community argues that the machines in The Matrix were harvesting human brainpower for computation, not electricity, reframing the iconic battery scene as thermodynamic nonsense. The human brain runs on roughly 20 watts yet performs real-time vision, language, motor control, and predictive modeling — capabilities that cost vastly more to replicate in silicon. Under this theory, the simulated world was not a pacifier but the actual workload, keeping billions of brains engaged and computationally loaded. The author suggests the first Matrix version failed not because humans need suffering, but because a frictionless world generates trivial cognitive load and low utilization. The piece also notes it was developed through a 40-minute back-and-forth with an AI, introducing the author to concepts like organoid intelligence and neuromorphic computing along the way.

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