Tech Spite

Law enforcement says that in some scenarios a lethal robot is the only way to protect public safety. Experts say the policy will harm communities of color. from Wired https://ift.tt/DaR2srO

OpenAI have quietly released text-davinci-003, a brand new entry in the artificially-intelligent GPT-3 language model family, claiming that it can handle more complex prompts to produce longer outputs. However, as reported by Ars Technica ,  enterprising users using Playground , the free offering of GPT-3, quickly found that the new model is even more adept at producing poetry and lyrics.  Hacker News commenters found that it could write poems about Einstein’s theory of relativity, and then rewrite them in the style of Romantic poet John Keats. While Professor Ethan Mollick, a Professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School, waxed lyrical about the possibilities in a series of tweets .  GPT-3 art generation, and the future The improvements to GPT-3’s understanding of rhyme and meter have likely come as a result of stuffing it with even more reference material. The Github repository for GPT-3 acknowledges that it derives its enormous corpus f...

Samsung has announced its brand-new GDDR6 memory that’s set to solve the requirement of “massive memory and increased computing power” typically required by a workstation for creating objects and environments in virtual spaces. The company calls this the “industry’s first next-generation graphics DRAM technology”, which sees traditional GDDR6 products improved by adding an additional DRAM device to effectively double capacity and bandwidth, without the associated impacts you’d typically expect like a larger form factor. Samsung hopes that GDDR6W will make these gains using the same energy footprint as GDDR6, which the chip maker hopes will allow customers to use the newer technology without having to make drastic changes to existing hardware. Samsung GDDR6W This is managed by what Samsung calls a Fan-Out Wafer-Level Packaging (FOWLP) technology.  The clever packaging also sees the traditional printed circuit board (PCB) replaced with a re-distribution layer, allowing for a m...

The Heliconia hacking tool exploited vulnerabilities in Chrome, Windows Defender, and Firefox, according to company security researchers. from Wired https://ift.tt/8Maw7qL

A huge proportion (78%) of IT decision makers (ITDMs) believe that their company provides sufficient equipment for hybrid working , whilst around 20% of employees appear to contradict this view by still using their own personal IT equipment for their job. Over 3000 people were surveyed by printer and camera maker Canon, with a near-even split between ITDMs and end-users, across seven EU countries, including UK, Germany and France.  What’s more, another 20% said that they struggle to get IT support when they need it at home, and 56% of ITDMs being asked to give this kind of remote support. Hybrid issues  Such issues for employees include signing digital documents and negotiating approval processes (42%), with 41% struggling to even access digital and physical documents that they need. This leaves 37% having to visit their workplace to access and print files. The most common help desk queries that IT departments receive from employees include printing at home (56%), being...

The CEO of Amazon Web Services ( AWS ) has looked to appeal to businesses around the world in a bid to strengthen the status of the cloud even further. Speaking at the opening keynote of the company’s AWS re:Invent 2022 event in Las Vegas, Adam Selipsky highlighted how utilizing the cloud can be useful for companies worried about their economic situation. “When it comes to the cloud , many of our customers know they should be leaning in,” Selipsky said. “The cloud is more cost-effective and many customers are saving 30% or more - if you are looking to tighten your belt, the cloud is the place to do it.” Cloud goals In a wide-ranging keynote that spread from the vastness of space to the depths of the ocean, as well as the world of imagination, Selispky outlined how AWS can be a vital partner for businesses on every stage of their cloud journey. “Managing the scale and growth of data is both a huge challenge and opportunity,” he noted. “You need a complete set of tools that accoun...

The Acolyte will take Star Wars fans on a journey that's "never been done before", according to one of its stars. Speaking exclusively to TechRadar during a junket for His Dark Materials season 3 , Dafne Keen teased that the forthcoming TV show – one of many new Star Wars TV shows and movies in development – will be unlike anything fans have seen from Lucasfilm's legendary sci-fi franchise. Given the secrecy around the Disney Plus show, Keen, who was recently revealed as part of The Acolyte's all-star cast , was hesitant to give too much away. However, the former Logan actor teased some bits about what fans can expect from The Acolyte, including a tiny but important piece of information about its plot. "I can tease that it's a prequel!" Keen joked when asked what she could say about The Acolyte. "No, I mean, as you know, it's set 100 years before the prequel movies, and it's kind of an explanation of how the Sith infiltrated the Je...

Not so long ago, Android phones were terrible for updates, with many handsets only getting a couple of new Android releases if they were lucky. But in recent years a lot of brands have been supporting their phones for longer, and now OnePlus is pushing support beyond that of almost any other company. OnePlus has announced that “select models” of its phones will now get four major Android updates and five years of security patches – figures which match what Samsung is offering on the Galaxy S22 and select other handsets. That’s up from the company's previous promise of three years of major Android updates and four years of security patches. The company has been frustratingly vague about which phones will actually be eligible for this extended support, but the press release says “on select devices launched in 2023 and beyond”, which sadly suggests it won’t apply to current models like the OnePlus 10 Pro . Presumably, the OnePlus 11 will be eligible though, and with any luck up...

A recently discovered American trademark application from Samsung suggests it may be expanding its self-repair service and launching a new support app to boot. The app is called Self Repair Assistant, according to the filing on the United States Patent and Trademark Office website. Its purpose is to provide “consultancy and information services relating to [the] self-installation, self-maintenance, and self-repair…” of various mobile devices. Samsung currently has a partnership with repair company iFixit to provide information and resources to its Self-Repair Program. If this app launches, you will no longer have to go to iFixit’s website to read a guide; it’ll all be through Samsung.  Self Repair Assistant does call into question Samsung’s partnership with iFixit. Nowhere in the application does it mention the repair company as a collaborator. We reached out to iFixit to ask if it will continue working with Samsung on the new app or if it's a solo effort. A company representa...

Gmail is set to get a huge improvement to its search function that will actually work for more users, so long as you turn on the right settings. The email provider has long provided a search function, even offering specific filters and parameters to help its users find the right content in an overflowing inbox, but despite these advanced efforts don’t make use of the platform’s full capabilities. To this end, Gmail will now use machine learning to understand what you’re searching for. Gmail search update The new process revolves around previous searches to understand the type of results you click on from the keywords you use in the search bar, which will now function in a more conversational manner akin to Google Assistant. The improvement will see the search function look beyond contact surnames, as it has done in the past, to their full names and email addresses, as well as previous emails and how often they contact you.  To enable Gmail’s contextual search, you’ll need ...

Meta has been hit with a €265 million data protection fine from the Irish Data Protection Commission over claims the firm let down its users' privacy. The privacy watchdog alleged that the Facebook and Instagram parent company had failed to protect the data of more than half a billion users, potentially leaving a huge number of those impacted at much greater risk of frauds like Identity theft further down the line.  The news comes after a security researcher revealed the data of over 533 million Facebook users from 106 countries had been leaked, of which around 32 million were from the US and 11 million were from the UK, which included phone numbers, birth dates, email addresses, and locations. What laws did Meta actually violate? The regulator, which has authority over Meta due to the company having its European headquarters in the country,  said in a statement that Meta violated the GDPR obligation for "Data Protection by Design and Default". In addition to the...

The sale bonanzas may be over, but many of the same discounts are alive, including on phones, office chairs, and kitchenware. from Wired https://ift.tt/NAqit7O

The average website has 48 trackers monitoring every visitor’s every move and compiling sensitive data, shocking new research has claimed. The findings from NordVPN also suggest that with so many trackers, websites are putting their visitors at plenty of risk of identity theft .  Using three different tracker blockers (Brave, Privacy Badger, and uBlock Origin) , analysts for the company measured the number of trackers (cookies or tracking pixels) present across the 100 most popular websites in 25 countries around the world, as according to SimilarWeb. Tracking overload Social media websites seem to be the worst of the bunch, with the average site containing 160 trackers. Health websites take up second place, with 46 trackers on average. Digital media sites are fitted with 28 trackers on average. At the other end of the spectrum are government websites and those offering adult content, having just four, and one tracker, per website - respectively. Recognizable third parties...

(Image credit: Shutterstock / thongyhod / Twitter) Hard to believe it hasn't been quite a full month since Elon Musk finally purchased Twitter on October 28 for $44 billion. It's been a wild and unpredictable ride ever since. Since the moment Musk waltzed into Twitter HQ with a bathroom sink (we cannot make this up), it's been fast-paced decisions, layoffs, firings, resignations, reinstatements, big-picture decisions, and sudden reversals. If you think that's a lot, strap in because the Tweeter-in-Chief shows no signs of slowing down the pace of change or the number of tweets he will post over the course of one day. It's hard, putting it lightly, to keep up with it all, so we've fired up this live blog to keep you updated with what's happening with Twitter and Elon Musk, putting it all in context for Twitter users around the world. Perhaps the most controversial thing to come from Musk's Twitter takeover has been the changes to how accounts ...