UK age assurance guidance for porn sites gives thumbs up to AI age checks, digital ID wallets and more
The U.K.’s Internet regulator has set out draft guidance for how porn sites will need to meet a newly introduced hard legal requirement to prevent children accessing adult content. So, yep, those years-in-the-making British age checks for porn sites are finally on the way. The watchdog intends this kind of
Read moreMax Q: A Starlink terminal and a Kuiper terminal walk into a bar
Welcome back to Max Q! In this issue: Why space parachutes are so hard, a new lawsuit alleging safety issues at Blue Origin, news from Loft Orbital, Relativity Space and more © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
Read more‘Animate Anyone’ heralds the approach of full-motion deepfakes
As if still-image deepfakes aren’t bad enough, we may soon have to contend with generated videos of anyone who dares to put a photo of themselves online: with Animate Anyone, bad actors can puppeteer people better than ever. The new generative video technique was developed by researchers at Alibaba Group’s
Read more23andMe admits hackers accessed 6.9 million users’ DNA Relatives data
Image: Getty 23andMe confirmed that a recent breach leaked data belonging to 6.9 million users. In an emailed statement to The Verge, company spokesperson Andy Kill says the breach affected around 5.5 million users who had DNA Relatives enabled, a feature that matches users with similar genetic makeups, while an
Read moreConstellations in Mathematica
Mathematica has data on stars and constellations. Here is Mathematica code to create a list of constellations, sorted by the declination (essentially latitude on the celestial sphere) of the brightest star in the constellation. constellations = EntityList["Constellation"] sorted = SortBy[constellations, -#["BrightStars"][[1]]["Declination"] &] We can print the name of each constellation
Read moreMastercard launches Shopping Muse, an AI-powered shopping assistant
Mastercard is launching a new generative AI shopping tool called “Shopping Muse” that is designed to help users get personalized product recommendations. The tool is powered by Dynamic Yield, a personalization company that was acquired by Mastercard in April 2022. Mastercard says the idea behind Shopping Muse is to “revolutionize
Read moreA Y Combinator-backed startup called Velt wants to make more apps collaborative
Online collaboration has become routine thanks to productivity apps like Google Docs and team design platform Figma, among others, but there are still hosts of internet-connected applications where users cannot interact with colleagues, add notes or otherwise collaborate with one another. That’s something a new startup called Velt wants to
Read moreDaniel Langlois, founder of Softimage, found dead in Dominica.
Daniel Langlois, the founder of Softimage, was found dead with his spouse, Dominique Marchand, in the remains of a burned car in Dominica, an island in the Caribbean, on Friday. A story in Dominica News Online today said that three non-nationals and one Dominican are in custody. It quoted Dominican
Read moreAtomic Industries closes $17M seed to exascale America’s industrial base
In 2014, investor and entrepreneur Peter Thiel infamously posed the distinction between companies that deal in “atoms” versus those that deal in “bits.” In its crudest terms, the former category includes businesses focused on things like hardware and manufacturing; the latter, software and financial services. Just shy of 10 years
Read moreAI invades ‘word of the year’ lists at Oxford, Cambridge and Merriam-Webster
Few would disagree that 2023 was, in the world of technology at least, dominated by artificial intelligence. The dictionaries have taken note in their “word of the year” lists, and notably all the AI-related words they highlight are, in fact, existing words that have been appropriated and regurgitated with new
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