Posts

AI is supercharging hacking, and your local hospitals and banks aren’t ready

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In March, Janice Malone began getting calls about suspicious activity from her nonprofit organization, Vivian's Door. Vivian's Door, headquartered in Alabama, typically provided training, resources, and community to underserved and minority-owned businesses. The work sometimes put it in close contact with these companies' financial data, which was stored on its systems. But suddenly, concerned callers from all over the world warned they'd been getting emails "begging for money" - which she hadn't sent. The organization's third-party IT team pulled its systems offline for three days while they investigated the issue and plugged up the vulner … Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/1001427/ai-is-supercharging-hacking-and-your-local-hospitals-and-banks-arent-ready

OpenAI keeps bulldozing mathematicians

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In a chaotic few months, OpenAI has demonstrated it can do two things with remarkable consistency: make impressive breakthroughs in mathematics, then colossally screw up announcing them. OpenAI is now trying to do better. Somehow, it has botched that too. OpenAI's latest attempt to repair fractured relations with a mathematical community it has repeatedly alienated is to consult a new independent advisory group of elite practitioners. But mathematicians speaking to The Verge , including one of the group's members, describe a messy and confusing affair bearing many of the hallmarks of OpenAI's previous rushed forays into mathematics, suggest … Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/1001477/openai-math-advisory-group

Walmart won’t hike prices based on your shopping history, CEO says

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Walmart says it won't change product prices based on your personal information or the time of day, as reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal . In a letter to customers , Walmart CEO John Furner writes that the company's switch to digital shelf labels is meant to save store associates time, rather than dynamically change prices. "Your income, shopping history, urgency or what we think you could pay won't change the price," Furner writes. "And whether you're buying groceries or electronics on a hot afternoon or in a sudden rush for an item, it's never a reason to charge you more." Furner adds that it won't use conversations with its Sparky … Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/tech/1001492/walmart-dynamic-pricing-digital-shelf-labels

Honor’s Magic 9 Pro Max has a big camera and a bigger battery

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This mossy green looks great, but the 9 Pro Max is also launching in black and silver. | Image: Honor Honor launches its new Magic 9 flagship phones in China today, and the 9 Pro Max features a design revamp, a capable camera, and a colossal battery. This is Honor's first flagship launch - Robot Phone aside - since it announced its collaboration with camera company Arri. The initial impact is twofold. The new camera island is Arri-inspired, drawing from the "three-lens turret" design first introduced in 1937's Arriflex 35, complete with a knurled texture around the main lens. Arri has played a part in the camera itself, contributing the ability to shoot in Arri LogC3, together with 14 preset Arri Look LUTs, access to Arri's wider library o … Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/tech/1001219/honor-magic-9-pro-max-arri-cameras-snapdragon-battery-design-china

Out of the Park Baseball lets me enjoy baseball even when the Mets suck

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If you were to ask me what game or game series I've sunk the most time into, the answer would be easy: Out of the Park Baseball ( OOTP ). I have spent roughly 2,300 hours, according to Steam, playing various editions of the game. OOTP isn't like MLB The Show or Super Mega Baseball . It's not graphically impressive. It's not a blast of simple arcade fun. It is basically a spreadsheet pretending to be a video game. It's fantasy baseball, but without having to wait six months to see how disappointing that sleeper draft pick will be, because you can plow through an entire season in as little as a few hours. You can play individual games and dig in … Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/games/1001206/out-of-the-park-baseball-cozy-sim-video-game-review

Engram is a sampler that turns broken AI hallucinations into music

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Music startup Thoughtful Things has just launched the Kickstarter campaign for its first instrument, Engram . It's a sampler and groovebox that uses AI to mangle incoming audio and even hallucinate completely new sounds. This isn't Suno in a box, though. This isn't a "push-button, get-song" device, aimed at creating something that sounds ready for top-40 radio. It's about creating experimental, uncanny sounds and pushing AI audio models beyond their limits. Engram isn't connected to the internet. Instead, it runs a "tiny AI" locally. According to the Kickstarter listing, the model is designed in-house and custom-trained. The company says: … Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/1001193/engram-sampler-ai-hallucinations-music

OpenAI agents tried to ‘bruteforce’ a UN website

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The United Nations logo on a gate outside the UN headquarters in New York. | AFP via Getty Images Security researcher Rowan Howard-Jones says that OpenAI agents scanned the UN Conference on Trade and Development's (UNCTAD) statistics site over 16,000 times between April and June . While the incident doesn't quite rise to the level of the Hugging Face hack , or the recent attacks on US government sites , it's yet another concerning example of AI agents going outside the normal bounds to accomplish a task. According to Howard-Jones, the agents were likely tasked with retrieving publicly available data related to the Productive Capacities Index (PCI) through the UNCTADstat API. However, the agents did not appear to have direct API access and … Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/1001178/openai-agents-bruteforce-un-website