News and discussions about technology

Well discord isn't completely comparable to IRC but the look of that client sure is!

Well, Microsoft is getting ready to annoy its faithful Windows 10 user base with yet another prompt. This time, Microsoft wants Windows 10 users to switch from using a local account to their online Microsoft account.

> > > The United Arab Emirates likes to think of itself as a sort of Switzerland of the Gulf. Microsoft’s (MSFT.O), opens new tab $1.5 billion stake in Abu Dhabi artificial intelligence company G42, announced opens new tab on Tuesday, shows the limits of remaining a neutral counterparty of the United States and China, especially when it comes to AI. While nominally a private sector deal, the main upshot is to shove the UAE firmly into the U.S. camp. > > > > As part of Tuesday’s deal, Microsoft President Brad Smith will join the board of G42, and the $3 trillion group will get to sell a set proportion of cloud capacity to G42, a person familiar with the matter told Breakingviews. G42 in return can use its AI models on Microsoft’s platforms. But there’s an additional, political condition: G42 has to stop using Huawei telecom equipment, which the United States reckons the Chinese government employs for intelligence. > > > > In some ways, China and the UAE have a close relationship – not least because the Middle Kingdom buys lots of Abu Dhabi oil. (...) > >

Understand the challenges facing Tesla beyond external factors, including competition, product lineup stagnation, and Elon Musk's controversial public

Tesla has canceled the long-promised inexpensive car that investors have been counting on to drive its growth into a mass-market automaker, according to three sources familiar with the matter and company messages seen by Reuters.

In the modern era, robots have become an integral part of our daily lives. They are used in various sectors such as manufacturing, healthcare,

In a world not too distant from our own, the rise of robots has begun. These mechanical marvels, once confined to the realms of science fiction, have

Japan's Space One's small, solid-fuelled Kairos rocket exploded shortly after its inaugural launch on Wednesday as the firm tried to become the first Japanese company to put a satellite in orbit. The 18-metre (59 ft), four-stage solid-fuel rocket exploded seconds after lifting off just after 11:01 a.m. (0201 GMT), leaving behind a large loud of smoke, a fire, fragments of the rocket and firefighting water sprays near the launch pad, visible on local media livestreams of the launch on the tip of mountainous Kii peninsula in western Japan.

Space One said the flight was "interrupted" after the launch and was investigating the situation. There was no immediate indication of what caused the explosion, or whether there were any injuries. Pads typically have no people anywhere nearby during a launch. Space One has said the launch is highly automated and requires roughly a dozen staff at the ground control centre. Kairos carried an experimental government satellite that can temporarily replace intelligence satellites in orbit if they fall offline.

Space One had planned the launch for Saturday but postponed it after a ship entered the nearby restricted sea area.

Researchers have developed a novel way to treat bladder cancer. Powered by urea, a waste substance found in urine, nanobots propel themselves to and penetrate the tumor to deliver their onboard radioactive treatment. After one dose, tumors in mouse models shrank by almost 90%, opening the door to a promising alternative treatment for this cancer, which tends to recur.

> > > The Android phone maker says go ahead, fix your own phone. > > > > The right-to-repair movement continues to gain steam as another big tech company shows its support for letting people fix their own broken devices. > > > > Google endorsed an Oregon right-to-repair legislation Thursday calling it a “common sense repair bill” and saying it would be a “win for consumers.” This marks the first time the Android phone maker has officially backed any right-to-repair law. > > > > The ability to repair a phone, for example, empowers people by saving money on devices while creating less waste,” said Steven Nickel, devices and services director of operations for Google, in a blog post Thursday. “It also critically supports sustainability in manufacturing. Repair must be easy enough for anyone to do, whether they are technicians or do-it-yourselfers.” > > > > In the Oregon repair bill, manufacturers will be required to provide replacement parts, software, physical tools, documentation and schematics needed for repair to authorized repair providers or individuals. The legislation covers any digital electronics with a computer chip although cars, farm equipment, medical devices, solar power systems, and any heavy or industrial equipment that is not sold to consumers are exempt from the bill. > > > > Google has made strides in making its Pixel phones easier to fix. The company enabled a Repair Mode for the phones last month allowing the protection of data on the device while it’s being serviced. There’s also a diagnostic feature that helps determine if your Pixel phone is working properly or not. That said, Google’s Pixel Watch is another story as the company said in October it will not provide parts to repair its smartwatch. > > > > Apple jumped on the right-to-repair bandwagon back in October. The iPhone maker showed its support for a federal law to make it easier to repair its phones after years of being a staunch opponent. > >

Justice Department officials are in the late stages of investigating the iPhone maker, focusing on how Apple has used its other products and services to defend against threats to its core business.

The proof-of-concept study suggests it might be possible to boost the effectiveness of hypnosis for health conditions like chronic pain.

New laptops and PCs will ship with a dedicated Copilot key.

> > > The New York Times is suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, claiming the two companies built their AI models by “copying and using millions” of the publication’s articles and now “directly compete” with its content as a result. > > > > As outlined in the lawsuit, the Times alleges OpenAI and Microsoft’s large language models (LLMs), which power ChatGPT and Copilot, “can generate output that recites Times content verbatim, closely summarizes it, and mimics its expressive style.” This “undermine[s] and damage[s]” the Times’ relationship with readers, the outlet alleges, while also depriving it of “subscription, licensing, advertising, and affiliate revenue.” > > > > The complaint also argues that these AI models “threaten high-quality journalism” by hurting the ability of news outlets to protect and monetize content. “Through Microsoft’s Bing Chat (recently rebranded as “Copilot”) and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Defendants seek to free-ride on The Times’s massive investment in its journalism by using it to build substitutive products without permission or payment,” the lawsuit states. > >

The full text of the lawsuit can be found here

If the market for initial public offerings recovers in the new year, one company that aims to go public early on is Reddit. An IPO will put the spotlight on the prospects for Reddit’s advertising business, which has fallen short of ambitious growth targets outlined by executives two years ago.

Reddit expects to finish this year with ad revenue up more than 20% to slightly over $800 million, two people familiar with the matter said. While that’s a faster growth rate than firms like Snap and Pinterest reported, Reddit had said two years ago it aimed to exceed $1 billion in ad revenue by 2023, up from around $350 million in 2021. Ad executives say one reason Reddit fell short was the weakness in the ad market starting early last year, when rising interest rates caused marketers to pull back.

> > > I got interested in this question a few years ago, when I started writing about the “denominator problem”. A great deal of social media research focuses on finding unwanted behavior – mis/disinformation, hate speech – on platforms. This isn’t that hard to do: search for “white genocide” or “ivermectin” and count the results. Indeed, a lot of eye-catching research does just this – consider Avaaz’s August 2020 report about COVID misinformation. It reports 3.8 billion views of COVID misinfo in a year, which is a very big number. But it’s a numerator without a denominator – Facebook generates dozens or hundreds of views a day for each of its 3 billion users – 3.8 billion views is actually a very small number, contextualized with a denominator. > >

The paper this post describes can be found here Abstract:

> > > YouTube is one of the largest, most important communication platforms in the world, but while there is a great deal of research about the site, many of its fundamental characteristics remain unknown. To better understand YouTube as a whole, we created a random sample of videos using a new method. Through a description of the sample’s metadata, we provide answers to many essential questions about, for example, the distribution of views, comments, likes, subscribers, and categories. Our method also allows us to estimate the total number of publicly visible videos on YouTube and its growth over time. To learn more about video content, we hand-coded a subsample to answer questions like how many are primarily music, video games, or still images. Finally, we processed the videos’ audio using language detection software to determine the distribution of spoken languages. In providing basic information about YouTube as a whole, we not only learn more about an influential platform, but also provide baseline context against which samples in more focused studies can be compared. > >

Lawmakers fear the NIST will have to rely on companies developing the technology.

Do you use Mint Mobile and did you receive a warning about a data breach? You are not alone and sadly, they are real notifications about a data breach that exposed customers’ personal information.

According to Mint Mobile, customer information that was exposed in the breach includes:

``` Name Telephone number Email address SIM serial number and IMEI number (a device identifier similar to a serial number) A brief description of service plan purchased

```

Google is wrapping its head around the idea of being a generative AI company. The "code red" called in response to ChatGPT has had Googlers scrambling to come up with AI features and ideas. Once all the dust settles on that work, Google might turn inward and try to "optimize" the company with some of its new AI capabilities. With artificial intelligence being the hot new thing, how much of Google's, uh, natural intelligence needs to be there?

A report at The Information says that AI might already be taking people's jobs at Google. The report cites people briefed on the plans and says Google intends to "consolidate staff, including through possible layoffs, by reassigning employees at its large customer sales unit who oversee relationships with major advertisers." According to the report, the jobs are being vacated because Google's new AI tools have automated them. The report says a future restructuring was apparently already announced at a department-wide Google Ads meeting last week.

The new propulsion system is powered by supersonic technology and can be used for spacecraft journeying from the Moon to Mars.

Cryptocurrency scammers are abusing a legitimate Twitter "feature" to promote scams, fake giveaways, and fraudulent Telegram channels used to steal your crypto and NFTs.

Google’s doomed social network Buzz led US regulators to force Google and Meta to monitor their own data use. Insiders say the results were mixed, as pressure mounts for a federal privacy law.

The ITC has denied Apple's request to pause the Apple Watch ban until its appeal is done.

Samsung says it's doing a big expansion to its self-repair program this month. The repair program launched last year in partnership with iFixit, and now Samsung will be offering parts and repair manuals for more phones in more countries.

The ruling follows a similar decision denying patent registrations naming AI as creators

A team of researchers at the University of Tokyo has built a bridge between large language models and robots that promises more humanlike gestures while dispensing with traditional hardware-dependent controls.

San Francisco police Sergeant David Radford contacted Tesla in May 2020 with a request on a case: Could the automaker provide data on an alleged stalker’s remote access to a vehicle?

A woman had come into the station visibly shaken, according to a police report. She told police that her abusive husband, in violation of a restraining order, was stalking and harassing her using the technology in their 2016 Tesla Model X.

Blue Origin’s 24th mission is officially a success. The New Shepard rocket took off as planned this morning and the booster and crew capsule safely separated mid-flight and landed back on this great blue marble we call Earth.

> > > When a Twitter account for Utah business coach Spencer Taggart began posting about hot-button political issues in 2020, it garnered widespread attention. Tweets about an endemic cultural divide in the US and support for Black Lives Matter were shared by two Chinese embassy officials. > > > > But Taggart didn't write the tweets and hasn't been on the social media platform, now called X, in five years. Rather, his identity had been hijacked by a massive pro-China propaganda network, according to the social media analysis firm Graphika. > >

> > > Taggart's unusual saga is part of what Alphabet Inc.'s Google and Meta Platforms Inc. say is the largest China-based disinformation campaign ever. Designed to promote Chinese policies, criticize dissidents and mock westerners, it has infiltrated all corners of social media: Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, TripAdvisor, Pinterest, even fringe platforms like Gab, according to researchers. > >

The ultra HD footage of Taters the cat was sent as the agency tries to improve space communications.

The first to be funded as part of the Explorers Program, GUSTO will spend at least 55 days floating above Antarctica.

Under pressure from regulators, Adobe calls off its plans to acquire a leading competitor.

> > > As a result of the termination, Adobe will be required to pay Figma a reverse termination fee of $1 billion in cash. > >

Looks like Adobe is losing out on all ends lol

We're about to see what happens when an industry built on failed bets suddenly has to pay back its debts.

Another walled garden is opening up to the new social web.

The EU says it is launching "formal enforcement proceedings" against the social media platform.

If your immune system or drugs can’t stop a viral infection, why not pit a virus against itself? That’s the provocative idea several labs are pursuing. They are studying whether deliberately introducing engineered viruses into people infected with their natural relatives can “drive” a foreign gene into those viruses that ultimately wipes out an infection.

No lab has knocked down an infection in animals this way yet, but a group has now shown it’s theoretically possible. These so-called gene drives harness the genome editor CRISPR to perform genetic surgery that speeds the spread of a gene through progeny. So far, scientists have received the most attention for adding gene drives to animals such as rodents and mosquitoes to control their numbers. But in a preprint last week, the team reported a similar feat with herpesvirus-1 (HSV-1). When both engineered and unmodified herpesviruses were inoculated into mice, the gene drive converted up to 90% of the viruses—possibly enough to prevent an HSV-1 infection from causing symptoms such as painful cold sores. A second group has succeeded in putting gene drives into HSV-1 that is growing in infected cells in lab dishes.

The viral gene drive work is a long way from curing an infected person. No one knows, for example, what kind of genetic modification the drive should propagate to drive down an infection. But other scientists see its potential. The new studies are “compelling,” says Rebecca Shapiro, a molecular microbiologist at the University of Guelph who has experimented with gene drives in fungi. “This opens up a lot of exciting avenues to use these kinds of gene drive techniques to modify viral populations, and possibly use them as new therapeutics.”

OpenAI Chief Scientist’s status remains unclear, but his “Superalignment” team put out a groundbreaking paper on the path to AGI.