Author: zppiot
Paris — French authorities handed preliminary charges to Telegram CEO Pavel Durov on Wednesday for allowing alleged criminal activity on his messaging app and barred him from leaving France pending further investigation. Free-speech advocates and authoritarian governments have spoken in Durov’s defense since his weekend arrest, with the chief Kremlin spokesman in Moscow warning Thursday that the case must “not to run into political persecution.” “We consider him a Russian citizen and as much as possible we will be ready to provide assistance,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, adding that the Russian government would be “watching what happens…
Now a new study reveals how these blazes can create a vicious cycle, contributing to climate change even as climate-fueled conditions make for worse wildfire seasons. Emissions from 2023’s Canadian wildfires reached 647 million metric tons of carbon, according to the study published today in Nature. If the fires were a country, they’d rank as the fourth-highest emitter, following only China, the US, and India. The sky-high emissions from the fires reveals how human activities are pushing natural ecosystems to a place that’s making things tougher for our climate efforts. “The fact that this was happening over large parts of Canada…
Google is turning its image generator function back on for some Gemini AI users, after temporarily suspending the tool over concerns it could not reliably depict White people. The Alphabet-owned tech company said in a blog post on Wednesday that the latest generation of its text-to-image tool, Imagen 3, will soon be available to users who pay for Gemini Advanced, Gemini Business and Gemini Enterprise subscriptions. “Over the coming days, we’ll also start to roll out the generation of images of people, with an early access version for our Gemini Advanced, Business, and Enterprise users, starting in English. We’ve worked to make technical…
—Stephen McMurtry is a Google Software Engineer and Communications Chair of the Alphabet Workers Union-CWA Tangled up in the contest to be the next US president, there is another battle brewing: Silicon Valley vs. Silicon Valley. In Donald Trump’s corner are venture capitalists like Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel, along with executives like Elon Musk. In the other are execs like LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and SV Angel investing mogul Ron Conway, who are backing Kamala Harris. Democracy appears to be at stake, and the weapon of choice is cold hard cash. Yet as an elected board member of the…
Mid-Market businesses brace for Musk moving X out of S.F. Mid-Market businesses brace for Musk moving X out of S.F. 03:27 X, formerly known as Twitter, has revealed when it will permanently close its San Francisco headquarters after the Elon Musk-owned company earlier this year announced plans to move its operations to Texas. The official closing date will be Friday, Sept. 13, Fortune first reported, citing a person familiar with the matter. X informed employees of the impending office closure in a memo Thursday, according to the publication. New York Times reporter Kate Conger, who covers X, also reported that the…
For all its competitive advantages, moving to the cloud presents unique challenges for data resilience. In fact, the qualities of cloud that make it so appealing to businesses—scalability, flexibility, and the ability to handle rapidly changing data—are the same ones that make it challenging to ensure the resilience of mission-critical applications and their data in the cloud. “A widely held misconception is that the durability of the cloud automatically protects your data,” says Rick Underwood, CEO of Clumio, a backup and recovery solutions provider. “But a multitude of factors in cloud environments can still reach your data and wipe it…
Several new artificial intelligence tools have been released this summer that allow for the creation of hyperrealistic photos, making it easier than ever to alter, or entirely fabricate, an image. Experts say it’s becoming increasingly difficult for consumers to discern what is real and what is fake.Among the most powerful new tools is FLUX.1, or Flux, a free AI image generator released in August, which allows for the creation of hyperrealistic images without a subscription.What is Flux?CBS News tested the new tool and found it was able to create convincing images of people in recognizable locations within seconds. Unlike similar…
Getting the neural interface hooked up to a prosthetic takes two steps. First is surgery involving the portions of muscle that remain after a lower-leg amputation. The operation reconnects shin muscle, which contracts to make the ankle flex upward, to calf muscle, which counteracts this movement. The prosthetic can also be fitted at this point. In addition to enabling the prosthetic to move more dynamically, the procedure can reduce phantom-limb pain, and patients are less likely to trip and fall. “The surgery stands on its own,” says Amy Pietrafitta, a para-athlete who received it in 2018. “I feel like I…
Paid advertisements for major organizations affiliated with both the Republican and Democratic parties and some of their biggest names have appeared under pro-Nazi and racist posts shared on Elon Musk’s social media platform X, formerly Twitter, a CBS News investigation has found.Advertisements for the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and the right-wing Heritage Foundation think tank have appeared recently under racist or pro-Nazi posts from verified accounts on X. Last week, the World Bank ceased all paid advertising on X after a CBS News investigation found a promoted advertisement from the organization showed up under a racist post from an…
“The biggest challenge has always been collecting real-time samples. This problem has been solved. That’s a paradigm shift,” says Rajan Chakrabarty, professor of Environmental and Chemical Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis and who was not involved in the research. The Caltech team tested the smart mask with patients, including several who had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or asthma or had just gotten over a covid-19 infection. They were testing the masks for comfort and breathability, but they also wanted to see if the masks actually worked at tracking useful biomarkers throughout a patient’s daily activities, such as…
The news: Do animals have names? It seems so, after new research appears to have discovered that small monkeys called marmosets “vocally label” their monkey friends with specific sounds. How they did it: The team used audio recorders and pattern-recognition software to analyze the animals’ high-pitched chirps and twitters. To prove they’d cracked the monkey code—and learned the secret names—the team played recordings at the marmosets through a speaker and found they responded more often when their label, or name, was in the recording.Why it matters: Until now, only humans, dolphins, elephants, and probably parrots had been known to use…
A Brazilian Supreme Court justice on Friday ordered the suspension of Elon Musk’s social media giant X in Brazil after the tech billionaire refused to name a legal representative in the country, according to a copy of the decision seen by The Associated PressThe move further escalates the monthslong feud between the two men over free speech, far-right accounts and misinformation.Justice Alexandre de Moraes had warned Musk on Wednesday night that X, formerly known as Twitter, could be blocked in Brazil if he failed to comply with his order to name a representative, and established a 24-hour deadline. The company hasn’t had…
The World Bank has ceased all paid advertising on Elon Musk’s social media platform X, which was formerly Twitter, after a CBS News investigation found promoted advertisements from the organization showing up under a racist post from an account that prolifically posts pro-Nazi and white nationalist content. CBS News found a verified X account with more than 115,000 followers that had posted a racist image alongside a post praising Europe’s colonization of Africa. CBS News is not publicly identifying the accounts spreading racist content on X. A promoted advertisement for the World Bank showed up in the comments section below the post. …
That might lead the casual user of such a tool to conclude: Cool, let’s do it! But even if solar geoengineering does help the world on average, it could still have negative effects, such as harming the protective ozone layer, disturbing regional rainfall patterns, undermining agriculture productivity, and changing the distribution of infectious diseases. None of that is incorporated in the results as yet. Plus, a climate emulator isn’t equipped to address deeply complex societal concerns. For instance, does researching such possibilities ease pressure to address the root causes of climate change? Can a tool that works at the scale…
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Andrew Ng’s new model lets you play around with solar geoengineering to see what would happen AI pioneer Andrew Ng has released a simple online tool that allows anyone to tinker with the dials of a solar geoengineering model, exploring what might happen if nations attempt to counteract climate change by spraying reflective particles into the atmosphere. The concept of solar geoengineering was born from the realization that the planet has cooled after massive volcanic eruptions. But critics…
AI could make these kinds of jumps in accessibility more common across a wide range of technologies. But you probably haven’t heard much about that possibility. While the New York Times sues OpenAI over ChatGPT’s scraping of its content and everyone ruminates over the ethics of AI tools, there seems to be less consideration of the good ChatGPT can do for people of various abilities. For someone with visual and motor delays, using ChatGPT to do research can be a lifesaver. Instead of trying to manage a dozen browser tabs with Google searches and other pertinent information, you can have…