Day: July 1, 2022

It’s alive! Quit a few people believe their AI chatbot is sentient – and maltreated

Posted on by Robin Edgar

AI chatbot company Replika, which offers customers bespoke avatars that talk and listen to them, says it receives a handful of messages almost every day from users who believe their online friend is sentient. “We’re not talking about crazy people or people who are hallucinating or having delusions,” said Chief Executive Eugenia Kuyda. “They talk Read more about It’s alive! Quit a few people believe their AI chatbot is sentient – and maltreated[…]

Apple’s insider trading prevention guy pleads guilty to … insider trading

Posted on by Robin Edgar

One of Apple’s most senior legal executives, whom the iGiant trusted to prevent insider trading, has admitted to insider trading. Gene Levoff pleaded guilty to six counts of security fraud stemming from a February 2019 complaint, according to a Thursday announcement from the US Department of Justice on Thursday. Levoff used non-public information about Apple’s Read more about Apple’s insider trading prevention guy pleads guilty to … insider trading[…]

Google to pay $90m to settle Play Store lawsuit

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Google is to pay $90 million to settle a class-action lawsuit with US developers over alleged anti-competitive behavior regarding the Google Play Store. Eligible for a share in the $90 million fund are US developers who earned two million dollars or less in annual revenue through Google Play between 2016 and 2021. “A vast majority Read more about Google to pay $90m to settle Play Store lawsuit[…]

Open source Fundamentalists SFC quit GitHub, want you to follow – because GitHub charges for Copilot feature

Posted on by Robin Edgar

The Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC), a non-profit focused on free and open source software (FOSS), said it has stopped using Microsoft’s GitHub for project hosting – and is urging other software developers to do the same. In a blog post on Thursday, Denver Gingerich, SFC FOSS license compliance engineer, and Bradley M. Kuhn, SFC policy Read more about Open source Fundamentalists SFC quit GitHub, want you to follow – because GitHub charges for Copilot feature[…]

‘We Asked GPT-3 To Write an Academic Paper About Itself – Then We Tried To Get It Published’

Posted on by Robin Edgar

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Scientific American, written by Almira Osmanovic Thunstrom: On a rainy afternoon earlier this year, I logged in to my OpenAI account and typed a simple instruction for the company’s artificial intelligence algorithm, GPT-3: Write an academic thesis in 500 words about GPT-3 and add scientific references and citations Read more about ‘We Asked GPT-3 To Write an Academic Paper About Itself – Then We Tried To Get It Published’[…]

New Firefox privacy feature strips URLs of tracking parameters

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Numerous companies, including Facebook, Marketo, Olytics, and HubSpot, utilize custom URL query parameters to track clicks on links. For example, Facebook appends a fbclid query parameter to outbound links to track clicks, with an example of one of these URLs shown below. https://www.example.com/?fbclid=IwAR4HesRZLT-fxhhh3nZ7WKsOpaiFzsg4nH0K4WLRHw1h467GdRjaLilWbLs With the release of Firefox 102, Mozilla has added the new ‘Query Read more about New Firefox privacy feature strips URLs of tracking parameters[…]

A wide range of routers are under attack by new, unusually sophisticated malware

Posted on by Robin Edgar

[…]researchers from Lumen Technologies’ Black Lotus Labs say they’ve identified at least 80 targets infected by the stealthy malware, infecting routers made by Cisco, Netgear, Asus, and DrayTek. Dubbed ZuoRAT, the remote access Trojan is part of a broader hacking campaign that has existed since at least the fourth quarter of 2020 and continues to Read more about A wide range of routers are under attack by new, unusually sophisticated malware[…]