Comment Re:I took Stephenson off my automatic order list (Score 1) 56
Hmm. It's been many years, but I absolutely *loved* Anathem.
What about it didn't you like?
Submission + - Elon Musk's daily $1 million payouts at Trump rally draw legal scrutiny 3
echo123 writes: HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania, Oct 20 (Reuters) — Billionaire Elon Musk promised on Saturday to give away $1 million each day until November's election to someone who signs his online petition, with the first prize awarded at a PAC event supporting Republican Donald Trump, raising questions about the legality of the payments.
Musk gave a $1 million check to an attendee of his America PAC event in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, aimed at rallying supporters behind presidential candidate Trump. The winner was a man named John Dreher, according to event staff.
"By the way, John had no idea. So anyway, you're welcome," the Tesla founder said as he handed Dreher the check.
Musk gave a $1 million check to an attendee of his America PAC event in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, aimed at rallying supporters behind presidential candidate Trump. The winner was a man named John Dreher, according to event staff.
"By the way, John had no idea. So anyway, you're welcome," the Tesla founder said as he handed Dreher the check.
Submission + - Windows update causes Windows 11 24H2 8.63 GB glitch (gmx.com)
joshuark writes: Users updating to the latest version of the operating system, Windows 11 users who tried to delete the 8.63 GB of upgrade data using the Windows Disk Cleanup application found themselves confused as the "inaccurate" amount.
Microsoft said: "After using the Windows Disk Cleanup application, it may display an incorrect amount of disk space that can be freed up in the 'Windows Update Cleanup' category...some or all files in that category (for example, 15 GB) are cleaned up correctly and the related disk space is freed as expected.
Microsoft is aware of the issue and is "working on a resolution and will provide more information when it is available."
Microsoft said: "After using the Windows Disk Cleanup application, it may display an incorrect amount of disk space that can be freed up in the 'Windows Update Cleanup' category...some or all files in that category (for example, 15 GB) are cleaned up correctly and the related disk space is freed as expected.
Microsoft is aware of the issue and is "working on a resolution and will provide more information when it is available."
Submission + - Cheap AI 'Video Scraping' Can Now Extract Data From Any Screen Recording (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Recently, AI researcher Simon Willison wanted to add up his charges from using a cloud service, but the payment values and dates he needed were scattered among a dozen separate emails. Inputting them manually would have been tedious, so he turned to a technique he calls "video scraping," which involves feeding a screen recording video into an AI model, similar to ChatGPT, for data extraction purposes. What he discovered seems simple on its surface, but the quality of the result has deeper implications for the future of AI assistants, which may soon be able to see and interact with what we're doing on our computer screens.
"The other day I found myself needing to add up some numeric values that were scattered across twelve different emails," Willison wrote in a detailed post on his blog. He recorded a 35-second video scrolling through the relevant emails, then fed that video into Google's AI Studio tool, which allows people to experiment with several versions of Google's Gemini 1.5 Pro and Gemini 1.5 Flash AI models. Willison then asked Gemini to pull the price data from the video and arrange it into a special data format called JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) that included dates and dollar amounts. The AI model successfully extracted the data, which Willison then formatted as CSV (comma-separated values) table for spreadsheet use. After double-checking for errors as part of his experiment, the accuracy of the results—and what the video analysis cost to run—surprised him.
"The cost [of running the video model] is so low that I had to re-run my calculations three times to make sure I hadn’t made a mistake," he wrote. Willison says the entire video analysis process ostensibly cost less than one-tenth of a cent, using just 11,018 tokens on the Gemini 1.5 Flash 002 model. In the end, he actually paid nothing because Google AI Studio is currently free for some types of use.
"The other day I found myself needing to add up some numeric values that were scattered across twelve different emails," Willison wrote in a detailed post on his blog. He recorded a 35-second video scrolling through the relevant emails, then fed that video into Google's AI Studio tool, which allows people to experiment with several versions of Google's Gemini 1.5 Pro and Gemini 1.5 Flash AI models. Willison then asked Gemini to pull the price data from the video and arrange it into a special data format called JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) that included dates and dollar amounts. The AI model successfully extracted the data, which Willison then formatted as CSV (comma-separated values) table for spreadsheet use. After double-checking for errors as part of his experiment, the accuracy of the results—and what the video analysis cost to run—surprised him.
"The cost [of running the video model] is so low that I had to re-run my calculations three times to make sure I hadn’t made a mistake," he wrote. Willison says the entire video analysis process ostensibly cost less than one-tenth of a cent, using just 11,018 tokens on the Gemini 1.5 Flash 002 model. In the end, he actually paid nothing because Google AI Studio is currently free for some types of use.
Submission + - Diamond dust could cool the planet--at a cost of mere trillions (science.org)
sciencehabit writes: From dumping iron into the ocean to launching mirrors into space, proposals to cool the planet through “geoengineering” tend to be controversial—and sometimes fantastical. A new idea isn’t any less far-out, but it may avoid some of the usual pitfalls of strategies to fill the atmosphere with tiny, reflective particles.
In a modeling study published this month in Geophysical Research Letters, scientists report that shooting 5 million tons of diamond dust into the stratosphere each year could cool the planet by 1.6C—enough to stave off the worst consequences of global warming. The scheme wouldn’t be cheap, however: experts estimate it would cost nearly $200 trillion over the remainder of this century—far more than traditional proposals to use sulfur particles.
The researchers modeled the effects of seven compounds, including sulfur dioxide, as well as particles of diamond, aluminum, and calcite, the primary ingredient in limestone. They evaluated the effects of each particle across 45 years in the model, where each trial took more than a week in real-time on a supercomputer. The results showed diamond particles were best at reflecting radiation while also staying aloft and avoiding clumping. Diamond is also thought to be chemically inert, meaning it would not react to form acid rain, like sulfur. To achieve 1.6C of cooling, 5 million tons of diamond particles would need to be injected into the stratosphere each year. Such a large quantity would require a huge ramp up in synthetic diamond production before high-altitude aircraft could sprinkle the ground-up gems across the stratosphere.
At roughly $500,000 per ton, synthetic diamond dust would be 2400 times more expensive than sulfur and cost $175 trillion if deployed from 2035 to 2100, one study estimates.
In a modeling study published this month in Geophysical Research Letters, scientists report that shooting 5 million tons of diamond dust into the stratosphere each year could cool the planet by 1.6C—enough to stave off the worst consequences of global warming. The scheme wouldn’t be cheap, however: experts estimate it would cost nearly $200 trillion over the remainder of this century—far more than traditional proposals to use sulfur particles.
The researchers modeled the effects of seven compounds, including sulfur dioxide, as well as particles of diamond, aluminum, and calcite, the primary ingredient in limestone. They evaluated the effects of each particle across 45 years in the model, where each trial took more than a week in real-time on a supercomputer. The results showed diamond particles were best at reflecting radiation while also staying aloft and avoiding clumping. Diamond is also thought to be chemically inert, meaning it would not react to form acid rain, like sulfur. To achieve 1.6C of cooling, 5 million tons of diamond particles would need to be injected into the stratosphere each year. Such a large quantity would require a huge ramp up in synthetic diamond production before high-altitude aircraft could sprinkle the ground-up gems across the stratosphere.
At roughly $500,000 per ton, synthetic diamond dust would be 2400 times more expensive than sulfur and cost $175 trillion if deployed from 2035 to 2100, one study estimates.
Submission + - The Pentagon Wants to Use AI to Create Deepfake Internet Users (theintercept.com)
schwit1 writes: The Department of Defense wants technology so it can fabricate online personas that are indistinguishable from real people.
The United States’ secretive Special Operations Command is looking for companies to help create deepfake internet users so convincing that neither humans nor computers will be able to detect they are fake, according to a procurement document reviewed by The Intercept.
The plan, mentioned in a new 76-page wish list by the Department of Defense’s Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, outlines advanced technologies desired for country’s most elite, clandestine military efforts. “Special Operations Forces (SOF) are interested in technologies that can generate convincing online personas for use on social media platforms, social networking sites, and other online content,” the entry reads.
The United States’ secretive Special Operations Command is looking for companies to help create deepfake internet users so convincing that neither humans nor computers will be able to detect they are fake, according to a procurement document reviewed by The Intercept.
The plan, mentioned in a new 76-page wish list by the Department of Defense’s Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, outlines advanced technologies desired for country’s most elite, clandestine military efforts. “Special Operations Forces (SOF) are interested in technologies that can generate convincing online personas for use on social media platforms, social networking sites, and other online content,” the entry reads.
Submission + - Startup Can Identify Deepfake Video In Real Time (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Real-time video deepfakes are a growing threat for governments, businesses, and individuals. Recently, the chairman of the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations mistakenly took a video call with someone pretending to be a Ukrainian official. An international engineering company lost millions of dollars earlier in 2024 when one employee was tricked by a deepfake video call. Also, romance scams targeting everyday individuals have employed similar techniques. “It's probably only a matter of months before we're going to start seeing an explosion of deepfake video, face-to-face fraud,” says Ben Colman, CEO and cofounder at Reality Defender. When it comes to video calls, especially in high-stakes situations, seeing should not be believing.
The startup is laser-focused on partnering with business and government clients to help thwart AI-powered deepfakes. Even with this core mission, Colman doesn’t want his company to be seen as more broadly standing against artificial intelligence developments. “We're very pro-AI,” he says. “We think that 99.999 percent of use cases are transformational—for medicine, for productivity, for creativity—but in these kinds of very, very small edge cases the risks are disproportionately bad.” Reality Defender’s plan for the real-time detector is to start with a plug-in for Zoom that can make active predictions about whether others on a video call are real or AI-powered impersonations. The company is currently working on benchmarking the tool to determine how accurately it discerns real video participants from fake ones. Unfortunately, it’s not something you’ll likely be able to try out soon. The new software feature will only be available in beta for some of the startup’s clients.
As Reality Defender works to improve the detection accuracy of its models, Colman says that access to more data is a critical challenge to overcome—a common refrain from the current batch of AI-focused startups. He’s hopeful more partnerships will fill in these gaps, and without specifics, hints at multiple new deals likely coming next year. After ElevenLabs was tied to a deepfake voice call of US president Joe Biden, the AI-audio startup struck a deal with Reality Defender to mitigate potential misuse. [...] “We don't ask my 80-year-old mother to flag ransomware in an email,” says Colman. “Because she's not a computer science expert.” In the future, it’s possible real-time video authentication, if AI detection continues to improve and shows to be reliably accurate, will be as taken for granted as that malware scanner quietly humming along in the background of your email inbox.
The startup is laser-focused on partnering with business and government clients to help thwart AI-powered deepfakes. Even with this core mission, Colman doesn’t want his company to be seen as more broadly standing against artificial intelligence developments. “We're very pro-AI,” he says. “We think that 99.999 percent of use cases are transformational—for medicine, for productivity, for creativity—but in these kinds of very, very small edge cases the risks are disproportionately bad.” Reality Defender’s plan for the real-time detector is to start with a plug-in for Zoom that can make active predictions about whether others on a video call are real or AI-powered impersonations. The company is currently working on benchmarking the tool to determine how accurately it discerns real video participants from fake ones. Unfortunately, it’s not something you’ll likely be able to try out soon. The new software feature will only be available in beta for some of the startup’s clients.
As Reality Defender works to improve the detection accuracy of its models, Colman says that access to more data is a critical challenge to overcome—a common refrain from the current batch of AI-focused startups. He’s hopeful more partnerships will fill in these gaps, and without specifics, hints at multiple new deals likely coming next year. After ElevenLabs was tied to a deepfake voice call of US president Joe Biden, the AI-audio startup struck a deal with Reality Defender to mitigate potential misuse. [...] “We don't ask my 80-year-old mother to flag ransomware in an email,” says Colman. “Because she's not a computer science expert.” In the future, it’s possible real-time video authentication, if AI detection continues to improve and shows to be reliably accurate, will be as taken for granted as that malware scanner quietly humming along in the background of your email inbox.
Comment Re:I guess I made the right choice (Score 1) 74
Cancelled my Amazon Prime subscription last night.
Saved me nearly $400/yr to NOT see "Buy or Rent" on almost every decent movie on the service that MIGHT be worth watching.
Comment At this point, you deserve it (Score 1) 212
They' showed their true colours with the HP/Compaq merger. I haven't given them a dime in over twenty years.
Anyone still buying HP anything at this stage of the game should not be surprised by this sort of behaviour.
Comment Contractors are expensive (Score 1) 169
As a contractor, you set your own hours, and you dictate your own fees.
Sure - I'll take my old job back as a contractor. At twice my former rate.
Comment A purpose for Google Glass? (Score 3, Interesting) 80
As a person with hearing difficulty, realtime captioning of live conversation would be an awesome use of this technology.
Add to that an app that identifies the people I'm talking to, and I'm your next customer.
Comment With the proper incentives... (Score 1) 583
It will be a no-brainer. Low or no insurance costs and in high-traffic areas where commuter lanes are plugged up reserved lanes would make this an instant success.
I'd personally happily cede control of my vehicle for long-distance driving as long as I could choose to override the system and take control in unmapped or incorrectly mapped areas. Sleeping for an hour while the car took me where I need to go without having to worry about the road would be my preferred way to travel.
Comment Not Thursdays... (Score 4, Funny) 91
I never could quite get the hang of Thursdays...
Comment The only plausible explanation (Score 1) 567
It's a classic case of 'suicide by cop'.
Dude's got the country so fucked up, he knows it's over. And he's crazy enough to try to take the rest of the country with him into oblivion rather than see Korea united and westernized. As a bonus, an attack by the US would help to polarize its opposition.
Seems like a case where it would clearly be in the best interests of the rest of the world for a North Korean group of malcontents to take matters into their own hands and rid their country of this psychopath. If they were trained and resourced by US interests, well... who needs to know about that?
Comment Why not? (Score 1) 693
You know, I've gotta ask. What's the difference between a law enforcement officer killing someone in person, versus a law enforcement officer killing someone by remote? If the guy needs killing, why risk law enforcement personnel to do it when a machine can do the job with no doubt substantially reduced risk for collateral damage?
And remember, a "drone" doesn't necessarily mean a Predator. It could just as easily be a quad-copter firing a
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Would you people stop playing these stupid games?!?!?!!!!
