Want to buy invasive personal details about an active-duty service member who works on a specific military base? You better have $0.12, because according to a new study that’s all it costs. The good news is the unregulated data brokers who sell that information probably won’t ask you any pesky questions about your…
Source: Gizmodo – Data Brokers Sell Secrets About Military Personnel for Pennies
The Thanksgiving table doesn’t leave a ton of room for real innovation if you’re sticking to the classics. What I feel the spread often lacks is hits of brightness and slaps of deep flavor amongst the richness and heft of meat, potatoes, and gravy. That’s a role that is supposed to be filled by relishes like cranberry…
Source: LifeHacker – Fermented Cranberry Sauce Is a Revelation
After more than two years of work, a patch series was posted this weekend for a “fully functional” ffmpeg multi-threaded command-line application with multi-threaded transcoding pipelines being wired up…
Source: Phoronix – FFmpeg Patches Allow For “Fully Functional” Multi-Threaded CLI
“FIREFOX DEVELOPMENT IS MOVING FROM MERCURIAL TO GIT,” began the email today from Mozilla announcing Firefox is finally shifting over to Git!..
Source: Phoronix – Mozilla Firefox Development Finally Moving Entirely To Git
Enlarge / Orion and the Running Man Nebula. (credit: David Beverly)
Welcome to the Daily Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light; a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We’ll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, we’re going to take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a universe that is filled with stars and wonder.
Good morning. It is November 6, and we’re looking toward one of the most prominent constellations in the Northern Hemisphere’s night sky.
The Orion constellation likely needs no introduction, but for readers who are not astrophotographers, the Running Man Nebula may be less well-known. It can be found in the top-most part of Orion, in the “sword.” This is a reflection nebula in that it consists largely of clouds of interstellar gas that reflect the light of nearby stars. The nebula is relatively close to Earth, as celestial objects go, at 1,500 light-years away.
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Source: Ars Technica – Daily Telescope: The sword of Orion contains a brilliant reflection nebula
This week’s lovely puzzle was brought to my attention by one of our readers, Nicolas Audet. Nicolas says it was used as a brain teaser for a finance job interview. I have to hand it to Wall Street on this one—it’s a delightful little puzzle. Thanks for sharing, Nicolas!
Source: io9 – Gizmodo Monday Puzzle: Can You Pass This Finance Job Interview Test?
There’s now two million subscribers to SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service, with CEO Elon Musk announcing Thursday that it has “achieved breakeven cash flow…”
Long-time Slashdot reader SonicSpike shared this report from CNBC:
Musk did not specify whether that milestone was hit on an operating basis or for a specified time period. Earlier this year, SpaceX President and Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell said Starlink “had a cash flow positive quarter” in 2022, and the overall SpaceX company reportedly turned a profit in the first quarter of 2023.
SpaceX’s valuation has soared to about $150 billion, with Starlink seen as a key economic driver of the company’s goals. Two years ago, Musk emphasized that making Starlink “financially viable” required crossing “through a deep chasm of negative cash flow.”
Musk has discussed spinning off Starlink to take it public through an initial public offering once the business was “in a smooth sailing situation.” But timing of a Starlink IPO remains uncertain. Last year, Musk told employees that taking the business public wasn’t likely until 2025 or later.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Elon Musk Says SpaceX’s Starlink Achieves Breakeven Cash Flow
Elon Musk’s new AI company, xAI, will release its chatbot to X subscribers who pay $16 per month once it exits beta. A select group of X users started testing Grok, a competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, this weekend.
Musk laid out his heady ambitions for xAI earlier this year, saying in July that its intended purpose is, quite literally, “to understand the true nature of the universe.” Having said that, Musk says Grok will wield a sense of humor, like this… banter sewn into a guide to making cocaine, which must be funny to someone.
Grok’s notable feature is its real-time access to information published on X, which Musk claims will be “a massive advantage over other models.” Rival chatbots are limited to the information fed to their model. If Grok constantly pulls new information from X, it could have an edge. It could also be more liable to the horrible biases of AI models, not to mention parsing the mass of misinformation swirling around the rebranded social network.
— Mat Smith
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Beyond subscriptions for access to chatbots, X is looking at other ways to make money. The company has been trying to find buyers for inactive user handles, even sending solicitation emails asking for “a flat fee of $50,000 to initiate a purchase,” according to Forbes. Elon Musk announced back in May that X, formerly Twitter, would start purging dormant accounts and even alluded to plans for recycling disused handles.
Since the release of Fortnite OG at the end of last week, player counts have reached new all-time highs — peaking on Saturday with 44.7 million players, according to a tweet from the Fortnite team. Players reportedly clocked a cumulative 102 million hours of play, making it the game’s biggest day ever. Apparently, a 2018 map is old enough to be considered nostalgic.
A federal jury has found FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried guilty on all seven counts of fraud and conspiracy. Arrested in the Bahamas back in December 2022, SBF faces a maximum sentence of 110 years in federal prison for multiple crimes, including committing wire fraud against FTX customers, wire fraud on Alameda Research lenders and conspiracy to commit money laundering. He’ll be sentenced on March 28, 2024.
The city of Washington DC will distribute free Apple AirTags to residents in specific neighborhoods, Mayor Muriel Bowser announced on Wednesday. The aim: to make stolen cars easier for police to track down. “We are equipping residents with technology that will allow the [Metropolitan Police Department] to address these crimes, recover vehicles and hold people accountable,” Bowser said.
DC is the second city to hand out free AirTags to make finding car thieves easier. Earlier this year, New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced the city would give away 500 AirTags to make finding car thieves easier.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-elon-musks-new-ai-company-xai-launches-grok-the-chatbot-121533489.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – The Morning After: Elon Musk’s new AI company, xAI, launches Grok the chatbot
No promises it’s actually secure, just that it doesn’t do anything obviously dumb. Google wants to help Android users find more trustworthy VPN apps through better badging alerting to independent audits.…
Source: LXer – Android VPNs to get audit badges in Google Play Store if they aren’t comically crap
Third parties selling our personal data is annoying. But for certain sensitive populations like military service members, the selling of that information could quickly become a national security threat. Researchers at Duke University released a study on Monday tracking what measures data brokers have in place to prevent unidentified or potentially malign actors from buying personal data on members of the military. As it turns out, the answer is often few to none — even when the purchaser is actively posing as a foreign agent.
A 2021 Duke study by the same lead researcher revealed that data brokers advertised that they had access to — and were more than happy to sell —information on US military personnel. In this more recent study researchers used wiped computers, VPNs, burner phones bought with cash and other means of identity obfuscation to go undercover. They scraped the websites of data brokers to see which were likely to have available data on servicemembers. Then they attempted to make those purchases, posing as two entities: datamarketresearch.org and dataanalytics.asia. With little-or-no vetting, several of the brokers transferred the requested data not only to the presumptively Chicago-based datamarketresearch, but also to the server of the .asia domain which was located in Singapore. The records only cost between 12 to 32 cents a piece.
The sensitive information included health records and financial information. Location data was also available, although the team at Duke decided not to purchase that — though it’s not clear if this was for financial or ethical reasons. “Access to this data could be used by foreign and malicious actors to target active-duty military personnel, veterans, and their families and acquaintances for profiling, blackmail, targeting with information campaigns, and more,” the report cautions. At an individual level, this could also include identity theft or fraud.
This gaping hole in our national security apparatus is due in large part to the absence of comprehensive federal regulations governing either individual data privacy, or much of the business practices engaged in by data brokers. Senators Elizabeth Warren, Bill Cassidy and Marco Rubio introduced the Protecting Military Service Members’ Data Act in 2022 to give power to the Federal Trade Commission to prevent data brokers from selling military personnel information to adversarial nations. They reintroduced the bill in March 2023 after it stalled out. Despite bipartisan support, it still hasn’t made it past the introduction phase.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/researchers-posed-as-foreign-actors-and-data-brokers-sold-them-information-on-military-servicemembers-anyway-120038192.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Researchers posed as foreign actors, and data brokers sold them information on military servicemembers anyway
Today we’re calling all young people who are excited to explore coding and space science, and the mentors who want to support and inspire them on their journey. Astro Pi Mission Space Lab is officially open again, offering young people all over Europe the amazing chance to have their code for a science experiment run in space on the International Space Station (ISS).
With this year’s Mission Space Lab, astronauts from the European Space Agency are setting young people a task: to write a computer program that runs on the ISS and calculates the speed at which the ISS is orbiting planet Earth. Participation in Mission Space Lab is completely free.
Here’s ESA astronaut candidate Rosemary Coogan to introduce this year’s mission:
Mission Space Lab invites young people up to age 19 to work in teams of 2 to 6 and write a Python program for the Astro Pi computers on board the ISS to collect data and calculate the speed at which the ISS is travelling.
Your role as a mentor is to support teams as they design and create their program — with our free guidance resources to help you and your young creators.
We want as many young people as possible to have the chance to take part in Mission Space Lab, so the way in which teams solve the task set by the ESA astronauts can be different depending on the experience of your team:
The Astro Pis are two Raspberry Pi computers stationed on the ISS, each equipped with a High Quality Camera, a Sense HAT add-on board with a number of sensors, and a Coral machine learning accelerator. Each Astro Pi has a hard casing designed especially for space travel.
There are lots of ways to use sensor data from the Astro Pis to calculate the speed of the ISS, so young people can get creative solving their Mission Space Lab task while learning fascinating facts about physics and the inner workings of the ISS.
All Mission Space Lab participants whose programs run on the ISS will receive a certificate recognising their achievement, and they’ll get the chance to attend a Q&A webinar with an ESA astronaut. Teams also receive back data from the ISS based on their Mission Space Lab programs, for example photos or sensor measurements. That means you’ll have the option to explore and use that data in follow-on activities with your young people.
We are providing lots of supporting materials to help you and your team with Mission Space Lab:
Mission Space Lab is open for submissions from today, 6 November 2023, until 19 February 2024.
Visit the Astro Pi website for full details and eligibility criteria: astro-pi.org/mission-space-lab
The European Astro Pi Challenge is an ESA Education project run in collaboration with us here at the Raspberry Pi Foundation.
You can keep up with all Astro Pi news by following the Astro Pi X account (formerly Twitter) or signing up to the newsletter at astro-pi.org.
The post Explore space science and coding with Astro Pi Mission Space Lab appeared first on Raspberry Pi Foundation.
Source: Raspberry Pi – Explore space science and coding with Astro Pi Mission Space Lab
A wide variety of x86 platform driver changes were merged for the in-development Linux 6.7 kernel from new hardware support to improving the state of Linux on various Intel/AMD laptops…
Source: Phoronix – ASUS Screenpad Support, More MSI Laptops & Intel IFS Gen2 Changes In Linux 6.7
MediaTek has unveiled its flagship Dimensity 9300 mobile processor using TSMC’s 3rd-generation 4nm+ technoclogy. The company claims much improved performance and power consumption over last year’s Dimensity 9200, and performance on par with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor in some key benchmarks. That makes three flagship mobile system-on-chips launched in the last month (including Google’s Tensor G3), showing some healthy competition in the high-end mobile processor space.
The Dimensity 9300 has what MediaTek calls an “all-big core architecture” oriented toward performance, with four ultra-large cores and four big cores, making eight altogether. That compares to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which comes with a single ultra-large Cortex-X4 core, along with 5 big Cortex-A720 cores and 2 smaller Cortex-A520 cores to balance energy savings and performance.
With all that, it delivers 15 percent more performance than the Dimensity 9200 at the same power level, or 33 percent power draw at the same performance. It also allows for 40 percent more peak performance, according to the company. Mediatek also claims an AnTuTu score of 2,130,000+, which roughly matches The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3’s AnTuTu score.
MediaTek is also claiming a 46 percent jump in GPU performance over the previous processor at the same power levels and higher frame rates than its rival on certain gaming benchmarks. It also offers much improved deep learning performance over the Dimensity 9200 thanks to the new APU 790 AI processor — with up to 8 times the processing speed and Stable Diffusion image generation under a second.
It also has features that improve computational photography and video, support for always-on HDR at 4K 60p, “real-time bokeh tracking” at 4K 30fps, AI processing on RAW photos and videos and support for the new Ultra HDR format in Android 14.
That’s all quite impressive if accurate, though tests will need to bear those claims out. In any case, it looks like a solid alternative to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, and it’s likely to appear on a number of upcoming devices, possibly including the The Vivo X100 and X100 Pro.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mediatek-takes-on-qualcomm-with-its-latest-flagship-mobile-processor-113009414.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – MediaTek takes on Qualcomm with its latest flagship mobile processor
Released last week was the newest version of Hangover, the project from Wine developers for helping Wine run on non-x86 CPU architectures for ultimately helping to make it easier to run x86/x86_64 Windows games/applications more easily on Linux AArch64, POWER, and RISC-V environments. The main focus still so far though is about allowing these Windows apps/games on ARM Linux systems…
Source: Phoronix – Hangover 8.19 Improves Box64 Integration For Running Windows Apps On AArch64 Wine
Since the AMD Inception vulnerability was made public in August there were kernel patches merged that day and since then there’s been a few rounds of clean-ups and fixes for this mitigation code formally known as the Speculative Return Stack Overflow (SRSO). With Linux 6.7, more SRSO mitigation clean-ups have been merged…
Source: Phoronix – AMD Inception / SRSO Mitigation Further Cleaned Up With Linux 6.7
The NVIDIA-VAAPI-Driver is an open-source independently-developed project that implements the Video Acceleration API (VA-API) atop NVIDIA’s NVDEC interface so that software like Mozilla Firefox can enjoy video hardware acceleration on Linux using NVIDIA’s proprietary driver…
Source: Phoronix – NVIDIA-VAAPI-Driver 0.0.11 Delivers Various Fixes
Black Friday is still a couple of weeks away, but the sales are already starting. Take Logitech, which has markdowns on lots of its best devices on Amazon, including the G733 Lightspeed Wireless Gaming Headset. The well-made and stylish headphones (we named them one of the cutest gaming accessories) are currently $120, down from $150 — a 20 percent discount.
Logitech’s G733 headset backs up its good looks with powerful sound, a 20-meter range and up to 29 hours of battery life. Plus, its stretchy band and interchangeable earbud tips give you a comfortable, easy fit.
Among the many other Logitech mice, keyboards and headphones currently for sale, there are a few other stand outs to look into. The G Fits True Wireless Gaming Earbuds are down to $150 from $230 — a 35 percent discount. These are a great option if you just can’t get earbuds to stay in your ear, with Logitech’s Lightform technology molding the device to your ear in just one minute upon first use. They also come with 10mm drivers, dual built-in beamforming microphones and passive noise canceling.
OK, enough about listening — let’s talk about the tools you need for gameplay. The G Pro Wireless Gaming Mouse is currently marked down 38 percent, dropping to $80 from $130. Logitech built the mouse with input from professional esports gamers, and it shows, touting features like a 1-millisecond report rate connection and up to 25,600 DPI. Looking for a cheap entry point into Logitech’s devices? Try the G203 Wired Gaming Mouse, down to $20 from $40 — a 50 percent discount.
Logitech’s G915 Lightspeed RGB Mechanical Gaming Keyboard rounds out some of our favorites on sale with a 36 percent price cut, making the device available for $160 instead of $250. The wireless keyboard provides 30 hours of gameplay and 16.8 million color options. Plus, you can choose between three distinct sounds for your perfect level of clacking.
Your Black Friday Shopping Guide: See all of Yahoo’s Black Friday coverage, here. Follow Engadget for Black Friday tech deals. Learn about Black Friday trends on In The Know. Hear from Autoblog’s experts on the best Black Friday deals for your car, garage, and home, and find Black Friday sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/logitech-gaming-accessories-are-up-to-50-percent-off-in-early-black-friday-sale-103543145.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Logitech gaming accessories are up to 50 percent off in early Black Friday sale
Steps to install the latest Linux Kernel on Fedora 39 or 38 distribution utilizing cli commands and the Vanilla Kernel copr repository.
Source: LXer – How to Install Linux Kernel 6.6 on Fedora 39/38
Last week, a number of Apple Watch owners noticed that their batteries were draining much quicker than normal after they installed the latest watchOS version 10.1. Now, Apple has acknowledged the issue in an internal memo seen by MacRumors, and promised that a fix will arrive in an upcoming update.
The issue is affecting multiple models including older ones like Watch SE and Watch Series 5, up to brand new versions like Apple Watch Ultra 2, according to Reddit, Apple’s Support Community, X and other sources. The issue appears to be fairly serious, with one user noting that “watchOS 10.1 is killing the battery on my Apple Watch,” draining it from 100 to 50 percent in less than 60 minutes.
Apple appeared to address the issue partly with its iOS 17.1 update, noting that it resolved a problem involving “increased power consumption” when a Watch running watchOS 10.1 is paired with an iPhone using iOS 17, as MacRumors noted. That doesn’t seem to have fully resolved the issue, though.
Apple said in the memo that the issue will be fixed in a watchOS update “coming soon,” without providing a more specific date, specific models affected and reason for the problem. Given the nature of it, however, we’d hope it’s a high-priority item. Apple is reportedly set to release iOS 17.1.1 for iPhone, and will hopefully also release watchOS 10.1.1 with a fix.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-watch-battery-drain-issues-to-be-fixed-in-upcoming-watchos-update-090554269.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Apple Watch battery drain issues to be fixed in upcoming watchOS update
Cruise stopped its driverless operations nationwide last week. But the New York Times reports on the company’s moves since then…
– Cruise hired the law firm Quinn Emanuel to investigate its response to a San Francisco incident involving a pedestrian, “including its interactions with regulators, law enforcement and the media.”
– A separate review of the incident is being doncuted by Exponent, a consulting firm that evaluates complex software systems.
– The company’s rivals “fear Cruise’s issues could lead to tougher driverless car rules for all of them.”
– “Cruise employees worry that there is no easy way to fix the company’s problems, said five former and current employees and business partners.”
Company insiders are putting the blame for what went wrong on a tech industry culture — led by 38-year-old [Chief Executive Kyle] Vogt — that put a priority on the speed of the program over safety. In the competition between Cruise and its top driverless car rival, Waymo, Mr. Vogt wanted to dominate in the same way Uber dominated its smaller ride-hailing competitor, Lyft. “Kyle is a guy who is willing to take risks, and he is willing to move quickly. He is very Silicon Valley,” said Matthew Wansley, a professor at the Cardozo School of Law in New York who specializes in emerging automotive technologies. “That both explains the success of Cruise and its mistakes.”
When Mr. Vogt spoke to the company about its suspended operations on Monday, he said that he did not know when they could start again and that layoffs could be coming, according to two employees who attended the companywide meeting. He acknowledged that Cruise had lost the public’s trust, the employees said, and outlined a plan to win it back by being more transparent and putting more emphasis on safety. He named Louise Zhang, vice president of safety, as the company’s interim chief safety officer and said she would report directly to him…
With its business frozen, there are concerns that Cruise is becoming too much of a financial burden on G.M. and is hurting the auto giant’s reputation… The shutdown complicates Cruise’s ambition of hitting its goal of $1 billion of revenue in 2025. G.M. has spent an average of $588 million a quarter on Cruise over the past year, a 42 percent increase from a year ago. Each Chevrolet Bolt that Cruise operates costs $150,000 to $200,000, according to a person familiar with its operations.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – After Suspending Its Self-Driving Cars, Cruise Takes Steps to Win Back Trust
