NASA engineers streamed an HD cat video across 18.6M miles, the farthest ever, using laser communications instead of radio frequencies for a 267 Mbps data rate
Using laser communication, NASA streamed a cat video from almost 20 million miles away, or 40 round trip flights to the moon.
Pharmacy chain Rite Aid must stop using facial recognition for five years as part of a settlement with the US FTC, which says the tech falsely flagged customers
- FTC says chain's surveillance system falsely flagged customers — Bankrupt pharmacy chain will stop using system, delete images
Stanford researchers: LAION-5B, a dataset of 5B images used by Stability AI and others, contains 1,008 instances of CSAM, possibly helping to create AI CSAM
The dataset has been used to build popular AI image generators, including Stable Diffusion. — A massive public dataset used …
The EU designates Pornhub, XVideos, and Stripchat as Very Large Online Platforms under the DSA, facing stricter rules to verify ages and stop illegal content
Porn sites Pornhub, XVideos, and Stripchat face stricter requirements to verify the ages of their users after being officially designated as …
Stanford researchers: LAION-5B, a dataset of 5B+ images used by Stability AI and others, contains 1,008+ instances of CSAM, possibly helping AI to generate CSAM
The dataset has been used to build popular AI image generators, including Stable Diffusion. — A massive public dataset used …
Researchers say AI robot CyberRunner outmaneuvers humans in the game Labyrinth, one of the first instances of AI beating humans at direct physical applications
- Robot learned in record time to guide a ball through a maze — The AI robot used two knobs to manipulate playing surface
Miami-based Bird files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, listing $100M to $500M in liabilities; the NYSE began delisting the e-scooter rental company in September 2023
The Miami, Florida based company listed assets and liabilities of between $100 million and $500 million in a court filing.
Samsung adds the Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Z Fold 5 to its Self-Repair program, the first foldable devices, and expands the program to 30 more countries in Europe
Its latest smartphone series and laptop join in, too. — What you need to know — Samsung has expanded coverage of its Self-Repair program …
Sony has sold 50M PS5 consoles in the three years since its November 2020 launch, almost as fast as the PS4 reached 50M, and outsold Xbox by almost 3:1 in 2023
Sony outsells Microsoft's Xbox and Nintendo's Switch as sector recovers from post-pandemic slump
The UK Supreme Court rules that AI can't be a patent “inventor”, denying a US computer scientist's bid for two patents for an AI's creations, in a landmark case
A U.S. computer scientist on Wednesday lost his bid to register patents over inventions created …
Source: Google plans to reorganize a big part of its 30K-person ad sales unit, as the company relies more on ML techniques to help customers buy even more ads
Google plans to reorganize a big part of its 30,000-person ad sales unit, an executive told some staff last week, prompting anxiety that some departments will face job cuts.
Analysis of 2,000 misleading Israel-Hamas war X posts, viewed 500M times: verified users posting debunked claims are thriving and Community Notes isn't scaling
Co-published with Tow Center for Digital Journalism … “My sisters have died,” the young boy sobbed, chest heaving, as he wailed into the sky. X: @emilybell , @davidclinchnews , and @dicktofel X: Emily...
Sources: AWS plans to overhaul its 60K-person sales team and aims to increase the share of Fortune 1,000 companies spending $10M+/year from less than 20% to 80%
Matt Garman, head of sales at Amazon Web Services, plans to reorganize his more than 60,000-person team to address problems …
Investors are spending hundreds of millions on FTX bankruptcy claims, betting that its new leadership will recover funds that Sam Bankman-Fried misappropriated
Investors are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on FTX bankruptcy claims, betting that the firm's new leaders will recover …
Apple resolved an outage for Apple Card, Apple Cash, Apple Pay, and Wallet that started around 6:15AM ET; users had reported IAP issues and more
There is an Apple Card, Apple Cash, Apple Pay and Wallet outage that is causing some users to experience issues with Apple Cash transaction notifications …
The NIST seeks public input by February 2, 2024 for setting guidelines to evaluate the safety of generative AI systems, as directed by President Biden's AI EO
The Biden administration said on Tuesday it was taking the first step toward writing key standards and guidance for the safe deployment …
A look at the tech sector's longevity obsession, with Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman, Larry Page, and others pledging millions of dollars to firms pursuing longer life
Tech titans, venture capitalists, crypto enthusiasts and AI researchers have turned longevity research into something between the hottest science and a tragic comedy. Mastodon: @carnage4life@mas.to . ...
Google adds a range of new features and updates to Google Maps in India, including ML-powered Address Descriptors in 75+ cities and Live View walking navigation
Live view walking navigation — Lens in Maps — Fuel-efficient routing — Address Descriptors — Where is My Train adds Mumbai local trains (Kolkata to get next) #GoogleMaps [image] Vikas SN / @tsuvik : G...
Google plans to limit the types of election-related queries that Bard and SGE respond to, starting in early 2024, in preparation for elections worldwide
The move is intended to curb misinformation as the 2024 election nears — What you need to know — Google today announced a plan …
Comcast's Xfinity says hackers breached one of its Citrix servers in October 2023, two weeks after Citrix issued a patch, and stole data on 35,879,455 people
what we know Laura French / SC Media : 35 million Xfinity customers have data leaked in breach tied to Citrix Bleed bug Helga Labus / Help Net Security : Citrix Bleed leveraged to steal data of 35+ mi...
OpenAI's deals with publishers are a hedge against a scenario in which scraping becomes harder, training material more expensive, and real-time data more scarce
This past week, Axel Springer, the German media conglomerate that owns Politico and Business Insider, signed a “multiyear licensing deal” …
Google agrees to pay $700M and make app store changes, like offering an alternative billing system, to settle a 2021 antitrust lawsuit by 36 US states and DC
but it also plans to appeal the jury verdict. Sure looks like an admission of guilt to me https://www.theverge.com/... Mastodon: Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life@mas.to : Google just settled an antitrus...
A look at South Korea's AI industry, one of the world's most competitive and diverse, as startups train on Korean language and culture to compete with US giants
While they lag behind their U.S. counterparts, their focus on non-English languages could help loosen the American grip on artificial intelligence.
Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu takes over the e-commerce business from Trudy Dai, one of Alibaba's earliest employees, who will now help oversee non-core assets globally
Sarah Zheng / Bloomberg :
Researchers detail a MITM attack on SSH that can break the integrity of the protocol, the first “practical attack of its kind”; fixes face compatibility issues
SSH is an internet standard that provides secure access to network services … Connor Jones / The Register : SSH shaken, not stirred by Terrapin vulnerability Terrapin Attack : Terrapin Attack: Breakin...
Microsoft Copilot can now compose songs, including lyrics, instruments, and voices, from a sentence, due to a new integration with generative AI music app Suno
use the Suno plug-in to create full songs with lyrics, vocals and backing track Luke Jones / WinBuzzer : Microsoft's AI Chatbot Copilot Integrates with Suno for Innovative Music Creation Lawrence Bonk...
An interview with Reddit CEO Steve Huffman about the moderator rebellion, limiting free access to the company's API, AI's role in Reddit's future, and more
Rebellious moderators. Large language models' peril and promise. Maybe a long-awaited IPO. Amid it all, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman says the web megacommunity is on a roll.
Sources: X set up a 10-person team to help hit $100M in US political ad spend in 2024 to offset revenue losses, a goal that industry executives are skeptical of
Plans for new political ads team to hit $100mn in sales ahead of US presidential election are met with industry scepticism X: @brynleyheaven X: Brynley Heaven / @brynleyheaven : Twitter - shunned by b...
How Matter broke its promise of an easier smart home experience: the standard suffers from poor implementation, significant backpedaling, and glacial progress
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge :
HughesNet debuts a $110/month 100Mbps satellite internet plan, double its previous top speed; Starlink offers 220Mbps, but US Ookla data shows many get ~70Mbps
all in the same month of December 2023. — [image]
Sources: ByteDance's 2023 sales surged to $110B+, broadly matching 2022's 30% growth rate, despite economic turbulence in China and scrutiny in the US and India
- TikTok's Chinese owner expects revenue growth of about 30% … The world's most valuable startup's growth broadly matched …
A profile of PDD, Pinduoduo and Temu's parent company, which has grown rapidly since its founding in 2015, despite allegations of malware and counterfeit goods
Cissy Zhou / Nikkei Asia :
Okta is acquiring Israeli cybersecurity company Spera, which raised a $10M seed in March 2023; source: the deal is worth ~$100M-$130M, contingent on milestones
Meir Orbach / CTech :
Interpol: a global law enforcement operation led by South Korea seized $300M and led to the arrest of 3,500 cybercrime suspects between July and December 2023
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer :
Stability AI debuts Stability AI Membership, with free, $20/month, and custom pricing enterprise tiers, limiting commercial use of its models to the paid tiers
if you expose an API of the app you make each of your customers will have to get into an agreement with StabilityAI and get into a separate Enterprise agreement... [image] @stabilityai : Today we are ...
Interviews with 20 current and former Meta and Google staff say FTC consent decrees blocked some user data harvesting, but they are now outdated and inadequate
Google's doomed social network Buzz led US regulators to force Google and Meta to monitor their own data use. X: @jason_kint and @jason_kint X: Jason Kint / @jason_kint : Here is the full piece which ...
Walmart expands its Affirm partnership and says more than 4,500 Walmart stores now offer BNPL options at self-checkout kiosks; AFRM jumps 15%+
Harvey, which builds generative AI tools for law firms using OpenAI's tech, raised an $80M Series B co-led by Elad Gil and Kleiner Perkins at a $715M valuation
Isabel Gottlieb / Bloomberg Law :
Q&A with Flexport co-founder Ryan Petersen on returning as CEO after firing Dave Clark, acquiring Deliverr and Convoy, Amazon, the Vision Fund, growth, and more
NewsGuard: since May 2023, websites hosting AI-created fake news articles have grown from 49 to 600+; some post “hundreds if not thousands of articles” per day
Pranshu Verma / Washington Post : Mastodon: @jeffjarvis@mastodon.social . X: @pranshuverma_ . LinkedIn: Franky Saegerman Mastodon: Jeff Jarvis / @jeffjarvis@mastodon.social : The issue isn't volume o...
Media monitoring startup Meltwater sold an 11% stake for ~$65M to Norwegian private equity firm Verdane at a $592M valuation, down from $1B+ in December 2020
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch :
Chinese GPU maker Moore Threads unveils the MTT S4000, which lags Nvidia's Ampere from 2020, and taps Chinese companies like Lenovo to boost its KUAE ecosystem
Internal messages: TikTok told some moderators to let users under 13-years-old stay on the platform if they claimed their parents were overseeing their accounts
The Guardian :
Shopify: Revolutionizing Commerce with Winter Edition '26
Over 150+ new features transform how merchants build, design, and grow—with technology that amplifies creative vision.
Email fatigue is real: Here's how smart email tools help you regain control
Picture this: It's Monday morning. You walk into the office feeling energized and ready to take on the week.
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data
Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.