looorg writes:For only $12 a month your Zoom AI avatar can take your place in all kinds of online meetings. It will use prompt suggestions and generate answers, it can recap and expand on conversations. What could possibly go wrong ...Is this when your AI avatar replaces you? After all $12 is a lot cheaper/lower then your monthly salary.I do wonder what happens at the meeting when everyone sends their AI avatar. Will there be a singularity recursion event?https://news.zoom.us/zoom-introduces-ai-companion-2-0/
looorg writes:Who holds the copyright? Man, Machine or Software? Appeal in progress. Allen claim is that it took him over 100h of prompt-engineering to get the image just right.
Frosty Piss writes:https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/05/lego_ideas_turing_machine/?utm_source=daily&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_content=articlehttps://ideas.lego.com/projects/10a3239f-4562-4d23-ba8e-f4fc94eef5c7A working Turing Machine was submitted to Lego Ideas, consisting of approximately 2,900 parts and a bucketload of extreme cleverness. The Lego builder first came across the concept a few years ago and, despite it being an abstract model, decided to attempt making one out of the plastic components of Lego Technic.Talking to El Reg, the submitter "The Bananaman" stated: "My first few ideas [on] how to do this would be very big and inefficient if they were ever [to be] built, but I usually stopped developing them very early. The first one that could possibly work was three years ago and I built a part of the tape with the symbol reader and a very bad unfinished prototype of the 'truth table' that would use a 32-speed gearbox instead of the 'searching' mechanism. Later I realized that the 'truth table' can be made way more easily (it was my fourth idea on how to build the table and it still had a dozen revisions later on), and I came up with using the registers which made everything easier. I started building the prototype last vacation, then took a break and I've finished it this vacation."There was also the challenge of fitting into the limits imposed by Lego Ideas. At the time of submission, this was 3,000 parts, and The Bananaman's contraption finally managed to come in at around 2,900. The limit has since been raised to 5,000 parts. Should it get to 10,000 supporters on the Lego Ideas site, it will go into Expert Review, where Lego's professionals will decide if it should be approved for production. The evaluation will depend on a range of criteria, including feasibility and strength of idea.Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.
Mozilla Faces Privacy Complaint for Enabling Tracking in Firefox Without User Consentupstart writes:Mozilla Faces Privacy Complaint for Enabling Tracking in Firefox Without User Consent:
Amazon plans to show more ads on Prime Video in 2025 to test how much viewers can handle. Even though some subscribers may not like ads, Amazon has not seen a big drop in customers since adding them. By adding more commercials and shoppable ads, Amazon is trying to see how much ads people will tolerate while watching their favorite shows.Amazon will "ramp up" Prime Video ads in 2025: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/10/amazon-prime-video-is-getting-more-ads-next-year/Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.
Our resident anonymous Anonymous Coward has offered the following story with which to start your weekend:Motor Trend tells this quirky story about the Facebook boss, https://www.motortrend.com/news/mark-zuckerberg-porsche-cayenne-minivan-custom/
U.S. Wiretap Systems Targeted in China-Linked HackFrom Schneier's BlogA cyberattack tied to the Chinese government penetrated the networks of a swath of U.S. broadband providers, potentially accessing information from systems the federal government uses for court-authorized network wiretapping requests.https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/10/china-possibly-hacking-us-lawful-access-backdoor.html
day of the dalek writes:NOAA has issued a rare G4 watch for a severe geomagnetic storm that is expected on October 10 and 11. G4 refers to NOAA's scale for the intensity of geomagnetic storms, which ranges from G1 to G5. Prior to the geomagnetic storm in May of this year that reached G5 intensity, the last G4 watch was issued in January of 2005.This watch was issued for a coronal mass ejection (CME) that occurred around 03 UTC on October 9 and is expected to reach Earth around 12-15 UTC on October 10. An article from the Washington Post states that the speed of the CME, around 2.5 million miles per hour, is the fastest that a CME has been ejected toward Earth during the current solar cycle. From my very limited understanding of space weather, it seems that faster CMEs generate higher ram pressures against Earth's magnetosphere and can result in more severe geomagnetic storms. The x-ray brightness of solar flares gets a lot of attention, and this was an X-class flare (the highest level on the classification scale), this was an X1.8 flare whereas flares have been observed at least up to X28. The high speed of the CME, however, seems to be a factor in the potential for a severe geomagnetic storm.One of the main questions that we can't answer until the CME gets to within about a million miles of Earth is the orientation of its magnetic field. If the CME's magnetic field is aligned in the same direction as Earth's, it will produce a less severe geomagnetic storm than if it's aligned in the opposite direction. An excellent resource for data about space weather and this CME is NOAA's space weather enthusiasts dashboard. There's a lot of data on that page that is useful if you're concerned about the possibility of viewing auroras or potential disruptions to the power grid, so hopefully some of the comments can explain a bit more about what it means. I don't know a whole lot about space weather, but I'll try to offer a cursory explanation of what I believe some of it means.The solar visible light shows where sunspots are currently observed, whereas the LASCO C3 images are observed from satellites can be used to see CMEs when they occur. A CME will appear like an explosion outward from the sun's corona. The data is input into a model called WSA-ENLIL, which predicts the density and radial velocity (outward from the sun) of solar wind plasma. A higher plasma density or a faster radial velocity should result in a stronger geomagnetic storm. This is also useful for estimating when a CME will reach Earth. I believe the GOES magnetometer data is used to measure how much the Earth's magnetic field is compressed or stretched and can identify the onset of geomagnetic storms. The ACE MAG and SWEPAM data are satellite-derived measurements of the solar wind. In addition to showing the plasma speed, temperature, and density, the Bz and Phi variables show the orientation of the magnetic field in the solar wind. If Bz is positive, it's a northward-oriented magnetic field. However, a negative Bz indicates a southward-oriented magnetic field, the opposite direction of Earth's magnetic field, and this can result in more severe geomagnetic storms. Basically, a strongly negative Bz around -10 or even -20 would be more favorable for a strong geomagnetic storm. The aurora forecast is a short-term forecast (~30 minutes to an hour) of the probability of auroral activity over a location, though auroras may be visible near the horizon in areas equatorward of what the forecast shows.There's a lot of data on NOAA's space weather dashboard that can be useful for anyone hoping to see the auroras. My understanding of space weather is very limited, so if anyone else has a better understanding of what the data means, please share the information in the comments. Although a G4 or even a G5 geomagnetic storm is possible, but there's still a lot of uncertainty until the CME gets very close to Earth.Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.
Anonyspouse writes:Comcast confirms 237K affected in feisty breach notification: https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/04/comcast_fcbs_ransomware_theft/Between February 14 and February 26, 2024, FBCS [Financial Business and Consumer Solutions] experienced a cyberattack where someone unauthorized got into their computer network and took some data. Comcast told customers about this in a letter, saying that customer information might have been taken during this time. Another company, CF Medical, also had a similar situation where customer data was accessed by a cybercriminal in July and they notified their customers too.
Submitted by an Anonymous Coward:https://www.wired.com/story/license-plate-readers-political-signs-bumper-stickers/AI-powered cameras on cars and trucks have been used to capture images of political signs, individuals wearing T-shirts with text, and vehicles displaying pro-abortion bumper stickers. The data, reviewed by WIRED, shows how a tool originally designed for traffic enforcement has evolved into a system capable of monitoring 'speech' protected by the US Constitution.
canopic jug writes:A lot of security myths have acquired lives of their own and taken as facts. Dr. Andy Farnell over at the Cyber Show's blog has posted an item about where passwords can still fit in as a part of general authentication despite what fleets of salesmen selling authentication gimmicks tell us.
Recently published in Nature, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-52766-9 LG Chem has developed a thin membrane said to greatly reduce the chance of fire in Li-Ion batteries. From the abstract,
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