European digital rights group say the future of online privacy is on a knife edge
A coalition of more than two dozen digital and democratic rights groups, NGOs and not-for-profits, including noyb and Wikimedia Europe, have written to the European Union’s regulatory body for data protection urging it to reject a tactic that’s been controversially seized upon by Meta in its latest bid to circumvent
Read moreHow Neara uses AI to protect utilities from extreme weather
Over the past few decades, extreme weather events have not only become more severe, but are also occurring more frequently. Neara is focused on enabling utility companies and energy providers to create models of their power networks and anything that might affect them, like wildfires or flooding. The Redfern, New
Read moreCisco joins the list of tech companies announcing layoffs. Hashtag Trending, Friday Feb 16, 2024
Every once in a while, you have an interview that goes off in a totally different direction. That’s what happened this weekend. My guest, Ed Wattel, an AI thought leader, came in to talk about elections and how we’ll deal with AI and deep fakes. And we ended up with
Read moreForget Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) – the big impact is already here and it’s called AI agents
I watch a lot of YouTube – so you don’t have to. In this series I’ll bring you some of the best of what I’m watching, and sometimes, as in this post, I’ll provide my own commentary. YouTube is buzzing this week. Sam Altman is rumoured to be making a
Read moreAfter rockets and spacecraft, Rocket Lab’s next frontier could be applications
Rocket Lab is exploring possible applications for a satellite constellation that they would build, launch and operate in-house, similar to SpaceX’s Starlink business, as a way of generating recurring revenue, an executive said this week. “If you look to where we ultimately want to go, in a lot of ways
Read moreOpenAI’s Sora video-generating model can render video games, too
OpenAI’s new — and first! — video-generating model, Sora, can pull off some genuinely impressive cinematographic feats. But the model’s even more capable than OpenAI initially made it out to be, at least judging by a technical paper published this evening. The paper, titled “Video generation models as world simulators,”
Read moreFTC seeks to modify rule to combat deepfakes
Spurred by the growing threat of deepfakes, the FTC is seeking to modify an existing rule that bans the impersonation of businesses or government agencies to cover all consumers. The revised rule — depending on the final language, and the public comments that the FTC receives — might also make
Read moreCoinbase cites stablecoins, Base as key 2024 priorities after crushing Q4 estimates
After disclosing better-than-expected financial results in its fourth quarter earnings report, U.S.-based Coinbase has big plans. The second largest crypto exchange told its investors that intends to lean heavily on its work with the popular USDC stablecoin this year, lever its recently launched layer-2 blockchain Base as a way to
Read moreI read comics on Apple’s Vision Pro . . . It was fine
Few joys in this cold world can match cracking open a new comic on a lazy Sunday morning. Nothing to do, nowhere to be — just you, a mug of coffee and some sequential art. Not much has fundamentally changed about the American comic book since publishers began collecting newspaper
Read moreThis German nonprofit is building an open voice assistant that anyone can use
There’s been many attempts at open source AI-powered voice assistants (see Rhasspy, Mycroft and Jasper, to name a few) — all established with the goal of creating privacy-preserving, offline experiences that don’t compromise on functionality. But development’s proven to be extraordinarily slow. That’s because, in addition to all the usual
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