Linking ideas with the world
A veteran JPMorgan Chase banker fumed over the financial giant’s policy requiring certain staffers to give six months’ notice before being allowed to leave for another job. The Wall Street worker, who claims to earn around $400,000 annually in total compensation after accumulating 15 years of experience, griped that the lengthy notice period likely means Read more about JPMorgan Chase ‘requires workers give 6 months notice’[…]
Mere weeks after achieving experimental airworthiness certification from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Universal Hydrogen has successfully taken its 40-passenger regional hydrogen electric plane to the skies. The aircraft took off from Washington state this morning and ascended to an altitude of 3,500 mean sea level (MSL) before safely landing, as you can see in Read more about 40-passenger hydrogen electric plane completes maiden flight[…]
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A guy embezzled nearly $9 million by convincing investors he was turning cow poop into green energy—and then not building any of the machines at all. On Monday, 66-year-old Raymond Brewer of Porterville, California pled guilty to charges that he’d defrauded investors. Court records show that Brewer Read more about Guy Embezzles Cool $9 Million From Poop-to-Energy Ponzi Scheme[…]
obuaki Kobayashi, the trustee for the Mt. Gox bankruptcy, has announced that the deadline for repayment selection and registration of payee information for its creditors has been moved from Jan. 10 to Mar. 10. According to Kobayashi, the change was made due to “various circumstances such as the progress by rehabilitation creditors in respect of Read more about Mt. Gox creditors now have until March to register for payouts[…]
“Owners of Roald Dahl ebooks are having their libraries automatically updated with the new censored versions containing hundreds of changes to language related to weight, mental health, violence, gender and race,” reports the British newspaper the Times. Readers who bought electronic versions of the writer’s books, such as Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Read more about You don’t own what you buy: Roald Dahl eBooks Censored Remotely after you bought them[…]
BlackLotus, a UEFI bootkit that’s sold on hacking forums for about $5,000, can now bypass Secure Boot, making it the first known malware to run on Windows systems even with the firmware security feature enabled. Secure Boot is supposed to prevent devices from running unauthorized software on Microsoft machines. But by targeting UEFI the BlackLotus Read more about It’s official: BlackLotus malware can bypass UEFI secure boot[…]
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT and DALL-E 2, announced several significant changes today. First, it’s launching developer APIs for ChatGPT and the Whisper speech-transcription model. It also changed its terms of service to let developers opt out of using their data for improvements while adding a 30-day data retention policy. The new ChatGPT API will Read more about OpenAI will let developers build ChatGPT into their apps, control own data[…]
Many cars claim to be a beast although just a few have a resume to back it up. This 1972 Rolls-Royce-ish plants its flag as “The Beast” so hard it’s right there on the name. This beige-on-beige-on-beige masterpiece is heading to auction to find a new home, and hopefully, one with a very long garage Read more about John Dodd Rolls Royce 27-Liter Merlin V12-Powered, Street-Legal Fiberglass Legend From the ’70s for sale[…]
Drop a flat piece of paper and it will flutter and tumble through the air as it falls, but a well-fashioned paper airplane will glide smoothly. Although these structures look simple, their aerodynamics are surprisingly complex. Researchers at New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences conducted a series of experiments involving paper airplanes to Read more about Experiments with paper airplanes reveal surprisingly complex aerodynamics[…]
[…] Human brains are slower than machines at processing simple information, such as arithmetic, but they far surpass machines in processing complex information as brains deal better with few and/or uncertain data. Brains can perform both sequential and parallel processing (whereas computers can do only the former), and they outperform computers in decision-making on large, Read more about Reaserchers propose Organoid intelligence (OI): the new frontier in biocomputing and intelligence-in-a-dish[…]
Schoolchildren are allowed to quote from content created by ChatGPT in their essays, the International Baccalaureate has said. The IB, which offers an alternative qualification to A-Levels and Highers, said students can use the chatbot but must be clear when they are quoting its responses. […] Matt Glanville, the IB’s head of assessment principles and Read more about ChatGPT allowed in International Baccalaureate essays[…]
At a rundown market on the Indonesian island of Batam, a small location tracker was beeping from the back of a crumbling second-hand shoe store. A Reuters reporter followed the high-pitched ping to a mound of old sneakers and began digging through the pile. There they were: a pair of blue Nike running shoes with Read more about Dow said it was recycling Singaporean shoes. Reuters found them in Indonesia[…]
Geology textbooks almost inevitably include a cutaway diagram of the Earth showing four neatly delineated layers: a thin outer shell of rock that we live on known as the crust; the mantle, where rocks flow like an extremely viscous liquid, driving the movement of continents and the lifting of mountains; a liquid outer core of Read more about Does the Earth’s core have an innermost core?[…]
We have a soft spot for devices that subvert purpose and expectation, and that definitely sums up [Guy Dupont]’s Clock That Is Wrong. It knows the correct time, but whether or not it displays the correct time is another story. That’s because nestled just above the 7-segment display is a person sensor module, and when Read more about Sneaky Clock Displays Wrong Time If It Catches You Looking at it[…]
“A group of Stanford University professors is pushing to end a system that allows students to anonymously report classmates for exhibiting discrimination or bias, saying it threatens free speech on campus (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source),” reports the Wall Street Journal. The Daily Beast reports: Last month, a screenshot of a student reading Hitler’s manifesto Read more about Stanford Faculty Say Anonymous Student Bias Reports Threaten Free Speech – who’d have thought that anonymous tipping off leads to abuse?![…]
On Wednesday, I phoned my bank’s automated service line. To start, the bank asked me to say in my own words why I was calling. Rather than speak out loud, I clicked a file on my nearby laptop to play a sound clip: “check my balance,” my voice said. But this wasn’t actually my voice. Read more about How I Broke Into a Bank Account With an AI-Generated Voice[…]
[…] The Online Safety Bill contemplates bypassing encryption using device-side scanning to protect children from harmful material, and coincidentally breaking the security of end-to-end encryption at the same time. It’s currently being considered in Parliament and has been the subject of controversy for months. [ something something saving children – that’s always a bad sign Read more about Signal says it will shut down in UK over Online Safety Bill, which wants to install spyware on all your devices[…]
The African Network Information Centre (AFRINIC) has no board, no CEO, has sometimes been close to not being able to pay its staff, could fail, and other regional internet registries have therefore expressed interest in funding its ongoing activities, according to John Curran, president and CEO of the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN). Curran Read more about Africa’s internet registry could fail, warns head of ARIN – dodgy fellah scheming involved[…]
Microsoft Edge has been spotted inserting a banner into the Chrome download page on Google.com begging people to stick with the Windows giant’s browser. As noted this week by Neowin, an attempt to download and install Chrome Canary using Edge Canary – both experimental browser builds – led to the presentation in the Edge browser Read more about Microsoft feels free to edit websites you browse: begs people to stick to Edge on Chrome download page[…]
[…] “There are two main problems here,” Mozilla’s Caltrider said. “The first problem is Google only requires the information in labels to be self-reported. So, fingers crossed, because it’s the honor system, and it turns out that most labels seem to be misleading.” Google promises to make apps fix problems it finds in the labels, Read more about Google’s Play Store Privacy Labels Are a ‘Total Failure:’ Study[…]
Images in a graphic novel that were created using the artificial-intelligence system Midjourney should not have been granted copyright protection, the U.S. Copyright Office said in a letter seen by Reuters. “Zarya of the Dawn” author Kris Kashtanova is entitled to a copyright for the parts of the book Kashtanova wrote and arranged, but not Read more about AI-created images lose U.S. copyrights in test for new technology[…]
A prominent DNA testing firm has settled a pair of lawsuits with the attorney generals of Pennsylvania and Ohio after a 2021 episode that saw cybercriminals steal data on 2.1 million people, including the social security numbers of 45,000 customers from both states. As a result of the lawsuits, the company in question, DNA Diagnostics Center Read more about DNA Diagnostics Center DCC Forgot About 2.1m Clients’ Data, Leaked It[…]
Bruce Campbell may not be appearing in Evil Dead Rise (though the once and forever Ash Williams is producing the movie, which hits theaters in April), but the much-loved horror icon is still finding a way to interact with the masses this spring: “Bruce-O-Rama,” an evening of entertainment hitting up 22 cities nationwide. A favorite Read more about Bruce Campbell Announces “Bruce-O-Rama” 22-City Tour – US only :'([…]
The vast majority of companies taking part in the world’s largest trial of a four-day week have opted to continue with the new working pattern, in a result hailed as evidence that it could work across the UK economy. Of the 61 companies that entered the six-month trial, 56 have extended the four-day week, including Read more about Four-day week: ‘major breakthrough’ as most UK firms in trial extend changes[…]
[…] with numerous recent studies showing the ease at which VR users can be profiled, deanonymized, and data harvested, metaverse platforms carry all the privacy risks of the current internet and more while at present having none of the defensive privacy tools we are accustomed to using on the web. To remedy this, we present Read more about MetaGuard: Going Incognito in the Metaverse[…]