Technology

Microsoft and OpenAI announced they’re offering a select group of media outlets up to $10 million ($2.5 million in cash plus $2.5 million worth of “software and enterprise credits” from each) to try out AI tools in the newsroom.

The first round of funding will go to Newsday, The Minnesota Star Tribune, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Chicago Public Media, and The Seattle Times.

These outlets will receive a grant to hire a two-year fellow who will work to develop and implement AI tools using Microsoft Azure and OpenAI credits. The program is part of a collaboration between Microsoft, OpenAI, and the Lenfest Institute for Journalism, which aims to promote local media.

This news comes while the two companies are still facing a slew of copyright lawsuits, including from The New York Times, The Intercept, Raw Story, AlterNet, the Center for Investigative Reporting, and the Alden Global Capital-owned New York Daily News and Chicago Tribune. Those have continued despite licensing deals reached with many media outlets, including The Verge’s parent company, Vox Media.

When I first learned about passkeys it sounded like nothing more than a vendor lock-in cash grab dressed up as security. This new spec might actually improve the situation and make them useable across more platforms and systems. Assuming Apple, Google, and Microsoft don't find a way to screw it up again.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/176941

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/176888

GitCode, a git-hosting website operated Chongqing Open-Source Co-Creation Technology Co Ltd and with technical support from CSDN and Huawei Cloud.

It is being reported that many users' repository are being cloned and re-hosted on GitCode without explicit authorization.

There is also a thread on Ycombinator (archived link)

You heard it! We can baptize babies in Gatorade!

Tesla, a future case study for securities law classes across America, had to stop delivering Cybertrucks this past weekend. No, not because the hundred-thousand–dollar medium-duty pickup, which is only any of those things in the loosest interpretive sense, tends to brick when it gets rained on; nor because its stainless steel panels get all rusty and nasty-looking after weeks exposed to the rare, harsh condition of "being outside." Perhaps you think it has something to do with the shorter-than-advertised driving range and longer-than-advertised charging time, but no: Rather, the cause of this snag is that the trucks struggle with the basics of stopping and going, by which I mean that the accelerator pedal cover slides off and gets stuck under a panel and locks the accelerator pressed down and keeps the Cybertruck stuck at maximum velocity.

Other Tesla models have had issues with speeding up and slowing down at the wrong times. The company was sued in 2017 by drivers whose cars drove themselves unexpectedly through garages and into walls; a German paper reported last year on over 2,400 complaints about sudden braking problems; and a safety researcher published a white paper showing how voltage spikes could lead Teslas to speed up without warning. You are supposed to like this because it means you are on the cutting edge, helping Elon Musk in his quest to save humanity.

Suckers who ordered Cybertrucks a few months or years ago and expected deliveries this weekend did not get their cars, nor a precise explanation for why they did not get their cars, but instead were simply told, "Hi, we have just been informed of an unexpected delay regarding the preparation of your vehicle. We need to cancel your delivery appointment for tomorrow and we will reach out again when we’re able to get you back on the schedule." Maybe someone with a hot glue gun will get on this one.

A big-thinking Slovenian startup has created a curious smart security camera that doesn't just spy on your visitors, but will actively open fire on potential intruders with paintball pellets – or even tear gas rounds – with "ultra high precision." What could possibly go wrong?

The £785M ($979M) antitrust lawsuit was filed on behalf of more than 1,500 British developers, and alleges that Apple’s monopolistic control of the market for iPhone apps allowed the company to charge ‘abusive’ levels of commission on app sales …

• Smaller web browsers are thriving in the EU thanks to the DMA's choice screens.

• Some lesser-known browsers have seen as much as a 250% increase since the DMA was implemented in March.

• The US has yet to implement similar policies, but users in that market could still benefit from ripple effects caused by the EU's DMA.

AT&T announced on Saturday it is investigating a data breach involving the personal information of more than 70 million current and former customers leaked on the dark web.

According to information about the breach on the company's website, 7.6 million current account holders and 65.4 million former account holders have been impacted. An AT&T press release said the breach occurred about two weeks ago, and that the incident has not yet had a "material impact" on its operations.

AT&T said the information included in the compromised data set varies from person to person. It could include social security numbers, full names, email and mailing addresses, phone numbers, and dates of birth, as well as AT&T account numbers and passcodes.

The company has so far not identified the source of the leak, at least publicly.

A newly discovered vulnerability baked into Apple’s M-series of chips allows attackers to extract secret keys from Macs when they perform widely used cryptographic operations, academic researchers have revealed in a paper published Thursday.

The flaw—a side channel allowing end-to-end key extractions when Apple chips run implementations of widely used cryptographic protocols—can’t be patched directly because it stems from the microarchitectural design of the silicon itself. Instead, it can only be mitigated by building defenses into third-party cryptographic software that could drastically degrade M-series performance when executing cryptographic operations, particularly on the earlier M1 and M2 generations. The vulnerability can be exploited when the targeted cryptographic operation and the malicious application with normal user system privileges run on the same CPU cluster.

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/10035107

New cyberattack campaign, DEEP#GOSU, uses PowerShell & VBScript to target Windows systems.

Huh, though the #ElonMusk clock is broken, this is one of the times of the day it’s still correct:

Elon Musk accused Sam Altman and OpenAI of pursuing profit over bettering humanity in a new breach of contract lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court yesterday, Feb. 29.

Musk helped Altman found OpenAI as a non-profit in 2015 (Musk left the board of directors in 2018 and no longer has a stake). Central to the lawsuit is OpenAI’s “founding agreement,” which, per the lawsuit, stated the lab would build artificial general intelligence (AGI) “for the benefit of humanity,” not to “maximize shareholder profits,” and that the technology would be “open-source” and not kept “secret for propriety commercial reasons.”

Musk’s new lawsuit alleges that OpenAI has reversed course on this agreement, particularly through its $13 billion partnership with Microsoft. It further calls out the secrecy shrouding the tech behind OpenAI’s flagship Chat GPT-4 language model and major changes to the company’s board following Altman’s tumultuous hiring and re-firing last year.

“These events of 2023 constitute flagrant breaches of the Founding Agreement, which Defendants have essentially turned on its head,” the suit reads. “To this day, OpenAI, Inc.’s website continues profess that its charter is to ensure that AGI ‘benefits all of humanity.’ In reality, however, OpenAI, Inc. has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft.”

. . .

[archive link]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/10961870

To Stop AI Killing Us All, First Regulate Deepfakes, Says Researcher Connor Leahy::AI researcher Connor Leahy says regulating deepfakes is the first step to avert AI wiping out humanity

• Substack's founder says it will not remove white supremacist and Nazi blogs from the platform.
• Some of these blogs have paying subscribers, which means Substack likely profits.
• The heart of the issue is not the free speech; it's the money.

https://archive.ph/5UZb7

The newsletter-hosting site Substack advertises itself as the last, best hope for civility on the internet—and aspires to a bigger role in politics in 2024. But just beneath the surface, the platform has become a home and propagator of white supremacy and anti-Semitism. Substack has not only been hosting writers who post overtly Nazi rhetoric on the platform; it profits from many of them.