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Submission + - Open Source ChatGPT Clone 'LibreChat' Lets You Use Every AI Service - While Owni (thenewstack.io)

Submitted by DevNull127
DevNull127 writes: A free and open source ChatGPT clone — named LibreChat — is also letting its users choose which AI model to use, "to harness the capabilities of cutting-edge language models from multiple providers in a unified interface”. This means LibreChat includes OpenAI’s models, but also others — both open-source and closed-source — and its website promises “seamless integration” with AI services from OpenAI, Azure, Anthropic, and Google — as well as GPT-4, Gemini Vision, and many others. ("Every AI in one place," explains LibreChat's home page.) Plugins even let you make requests to DALL-E or Staple Diffusion for image generations. (LibreChat also offers a database that tracks “conversation state” — making it possible to switch to a different AI model in mid-conversation...)

Released under the MIT License, LibreChat has become "an open source success story," according to this article, representing "the passionate community that’s actively creating an ecosystem of open source AI tools." Its creator, Danny Avila, says it finally lets users own their own data, “which is a dying human right, a luxury in the internet age and even more so with the age of LLM’s.” Avila says he was inspired by the day ChatGPT leaked the chat history of some of its users back in March of 2023 — and LibreChat is "inherently completely private". From the article:

With locally-hosted LLMs, Avila sees users finally getting “an opportunity to withhold training data from Big Tech, which many trade at the cost of convenience.” In this world, LibreChat “is naturally attractive as it can run exclusively on open-source technologies, database and all, completely ‘air-gapped.'” Even with remote AI services insisting they won’t use transient data for training, “local models are already quite capable” Avila notes, “and will become more capable in general over time.”

And they’re also compatible with LibreChat...

Submission + - Mosquitoes Genetically Modified To Crash Species That Spreads Malaria (npr.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: For the first time, scientists have demonstrated that a controversial new kind of genetic engineering can rapidly spread a self-destructive genetic modification through a complex species. The scientists used the revolutionary gene-editing tool known as CRISPR to engineer mosquitoes with a "gene drive," which rapidly transmitted a sterilizing mutation through other members of the mosquito's species. After mosquitoes carrying the mutation were released into cages filled with unmodified mosquitoes in a high-security basement laboratory in London, virtually all of the insects were wiped out, according to a report in Nature Biotechnology. The mosquitoes were created in the hopes of using them as a potent new weapon in the long, frustrating fight against malaria. Malaria remains one of the world's deadliest diseases, killing more than 400,000 people every year, mostly children younger than 5 years old.

Feed Google News Sci Tech: Global warming spreading pests far and wide - study - Radio New Zealand (google.com)

From feed by feedfeeder

French Tribune
Global warming spreading pests far and wide - study
Radio New Zealand
New research has concluded that global warming is helping pests and diseases that attack crops to spread around the world. Scientists at two British universities found that as regions warm crop pests are moving towards the north and south poles at a rate of...
Crop Pests, Diseases Move to Higher LatitudesVoice of America
Is Climate Change Pushing Pests into Northern Farms?Mother Jones
Warming helps crop pests spread north, south - studyGMA News
Voice of Russia - UK Edition-SBS
all 20 news articles

Submission + - Egypt authorities detain French 'spy' bird found with tracker (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Washington Post reports, "In a case that ruffled feathers in Egypt, authorities have detained a migratory bird that a citizen suspected of being a spy. A man in Egypt’s Qena governorate, some 450 kilometers (280 miles) southeast of Cairo, found the suspicious bird among four others near his home and brought them to a police station Friday, said Mohammed Kamal, the head of the security in the region. With turmoil gripping Egypt following the July 3 popularly backed military coup that overthrew the country’s president, authorities and citizens remain highly suspicious of anything foreign. Conspiracy theories easily find their ways into cafe discussion — as well as some media in the country. Earlier this year, a security guard filed a police report after capturing a pigeon he said carried microfilm. A previous rumor in 2010 blamed a series of shark attacks along Egypt’s Mediterranean coast on an Israeli plot. It wasn’t. In the bird’s case, even military officials ultimately had to deny the bird carried any spying devices. They spoke Saturday on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to journalists."

Submission + - EU plans to fit all cars with speed limiters (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Under the proposals new cars would be fitted with cameras that could read road speed limit signs and automatically apply the brakes when this is exceeded.

Patrick McLoughlin, the Transport Secretary, is said to be opposed to the plans, which could also mean existing cars are sent to garages to be fitted with the speed limiters, preventing them from going over 70mph.

The new measures have been announced by the European Commission’s Mobility and Transport Department as a measure to reduce the 30,000 people who die on the roads in Europe every year.

A Government source told the Mail on Sunday Mr McLoughlin had instructed officials to block the move because they ‘violated’ motorists’ freedom. They said: “This has Big Brother written all over it and is exactly the sort of thing that gets people's backs up about Brussels.
The Military

Submission + - Today is the 50th anniversary of the Starfish Prime nuclear weapon test

Submitted by
The Bad Astronomer
The Bad Astronomer writes: "50 years ago today, the US detonated a nuclear weapon 240 miles above the Pacific Ocean. Called Starfish Prime, it was supposed to help US scientists and the military understand how the Soviets might try to stop incoming nuclear missiles. What it actually did was blow out hundreds of streetlights in Hawaii 900 miles away, damage a half dozen satellites, and create artificial aurorae and intense radiation zones above the Earth. It taught the world what an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) was, and what the effects might be from a powerful solar flare, a nearby supernova, or a gamma-ray burst."

Submission + - Algorithmic pricing on Amazon 'could spark flash crash' (computerworlduk.com)

Submitted by
DerekduPreez
DerekduPreez writes: "Sellers on Amazon’s retail site are increasingly using high-speed algorithmic trading tools to automatically set prices, which could lead to a malfunction similar to the 2010 flash crash.

According to the Financial Times, prices on Amazon’s website change as often as every 15 minutes, where sellers are using tools traditionally developed by data miners at banks to ensure that their prices are always below their rivals’.

Third-party software is allowing sellers to detect a competitor’s price and automatically undercut that price by, for example, £1.

However, this could lead to a situation similar to the US flash crash, where algorithmic trading was blamed for stock prices falling to near zero and then bouncing back within 20 minutes."
Games

Submission + - Inventor of the Pinball machine dies (nytimes.com)

Submitted by porsche911
porsche911 writes: "Steve Kordek, who revolutionized the game of pinball in the 1940s by designing what became the standard two-flipper machine found in bars and penny arcades around the world, died on Sunday at a hospice in Park Ridge, Ill. He was 100."

“Steve’s impact would be comparable to D. W. Griffith moving from silent films through talkies and color and CinemaScope and 3-D with computer-generated graphics,” Mr. Sharpe said. “He moved through each era seamlessly.”"
Facebook

Submission + - Worker Rights Extend to Facebook (nytimes.com) 1

Submitted by wjousts
wjousts writes: From the NY Times:

In what labor officials and lawyers view as a ground-breaking case involving workers and social media, the National Labor Relations Board has accused a company of illegally firing an employee after she criticized her supervisor on her Facebook page.

American Medical Response of Connecticut had a policy that barred employees from depicting the company "in any way" on Facebook or other social media. The National Labor Relations Board has ruled that this policy runs afoul of the National Labor Relations Act which gives employees the right to form unions and prohibits employers from punishing workers for discussing working conditions.
Advertising

Submission + - Retargeting Ads Stalk You for Weeks After You Shop (nytimes.com) 1

Submitted by eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: The New York Times is reporting on a new kind of web ad that takes products you were looking at purchasing on one site and continually advertises them in front of you at subsequent sites. After looking at shoes at Zappos, a mother in Montreal noticed the shoes followed her: 'For days or weeks, every site I went to seemed to be showing me ads for those shoes. It is a pretty clever marketing tool. But it’s a little creepy, especially if you don’t know what’s going on.' The spreading ploy is called 'retargeting ads' and really are just a good demonstration of how an old technology (all they use are leftover browser cookies) are truly invasive and privacy violating. Opponents are clamoring for government regulation to protect the consumer and one writer mentioned a consumer 'do not track' list — adding that retailers really show little fear of turning off customers with their invasion.

Comment Don't let a server call home! (Score 2, Interesting) 600

by Scotch42 (#30280640) Attached to: Ethics of Releasing Non-Malicious Linux Malware?

Why should a (web)server be allowed to issue any request ? It should be configured to answer queries only, no ? iptables is great and easy to set up for that task. Even for software update, one may push the package needed to the target server in place of the usual pull from the target; so no exceptions are needed on the firewall.

For desktops it's a little bit more complicated... but using a home partition mounted with noexec should suffice. Installing a new software is not a casual issue but a real event and should be taken care of by someone knowing what he's doing. That's why root was invented, isn't it ?

Comment Re:Well, then... (Score 1) 735

by Eivind (#30280380) Attached to: Should You Be Paid For Being On Call?

Yes. And that's a consequence of how "work-time" is defined in the law here: Time where you're available to the employer, is work-time. That means, if he can demand that you do something -now- then that means you're at work -now-.

If you're -actually- free to say "no thanks" or simply not pick up the phone, then you dont need to be compensated, but then you're not "on-call" either.

If you're -required- to pick up the phone, you're on-call, and you're paid atleast 20% of your normal hourly wage. (when nothing happens, I mean, when something actually happens, you offcourse get full pay)

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