Tag: WorldNews

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google is fond of saying its mission is to "organize the world's information," but who gets to decide what information is worthy of organization? A San Francisco tech CEO has spent the past several years attempting to remove unflattering information about himself from Google's search index, and the nonprofit Freedom of the Press Foundation says he's still at it. Most recently, an unknown bad actor used a bug in one of Google's search tools to scrub the offending articles. The saga began in 2023 when independent journalist Jack Poulson reported on Maury Blackman's 2021 domestic violence arrest. Blackman, who was then the CEO of surveillance tech firm Premise Data Corp., took offense at the publication of his legal issues. The case did not lead to charges after Blackman's 25-year-old girlfriend recanted her claims against the 53-year-old CEO, but Poulson reported on some troubling details of the public arrest report. Blackman has p

Voice actors and industry associations are sounding the alarm over the growing use of AI in dubbing, calling for increased regulations to protect quality, jobs and artists' back catalogues from being used to create future dubbed work. "We need legislation: Just as after the car, which replaced the horse-drawn carriage, we need a highway code," said Boris Rehlinger, a voice actor known as the French voice of Ben Affleck, Joaquin Phoenix, and Puss in Boots. "I feel threatened even though my voice hasn't been replaced by AI yet," he said. Reuters reports: In Germany, 12 well-known dubbing actors went viral on TikTok in March, garnering 8.7 million views, for their campaign saying "Let's protect artistic, not artificial, intelligence." A petition from the VDS voice actors' association calling on German and EU lawmakers to push AI companies to obtain explicit consent when training the technology on artists' voices and fairly compensate them, as well as transparently label AI-generated conte

Google today announced AlphaEarth Foundations, a new AI model that processes terabytes of daily satellite data to track environmental changes across the planet. The system, part of Google's broader Earth AI initiative, uses machine learning to compress satellite imagery into color-coded maps showing material properties, vegetation types, groundwater sources, and human constructions down to 10-meter resolution. The model uses a technique called "embeddings" that reduces storage requirements by 16 times compared to other AI tools Google tested, while delivering 23.9% higher accuracy than similar systems. AlphaEarth has already mapped complex Antarctic terrain and identified variations in Canadian agricultural land use invisible to direct observation. The technology currently powers flood and wildfire alerts in Google Search and Maps. Research organizations including Brazil's MayBiomas and the Global Ecosystems Atlas are using the system to analyze rainforests, deserts, and wetlands.

Elon Musk's Boring Company plans to build a 10-mile underground transportation loop in Nashville connecting the airport to downtown, with private funding and a projected launch as early as fall 2026. "If that happens, Nashville would become the second city where The Boring Company has opened such a system, with the first being Las Vegas," notes TechCrunch. "The company has spent the last few years in Sin City digging and opening tunnels around the Las Vegas Convention Center, and claims to have given 3 million rides in Teslas to date." From the report: The project will be privately funded by The Boring Company "and its private partners," according to the Governor's press release, though those partners are not named. The Boring Company and local officials will now begin a "public process to evaluate potential routes, engage community stakeholders, and finalize plans for the project's initial 10-mile phase." Construction won't begin until the project clears the approvals process. But the

Brian Krebs writes via KrebsOnSecurity: Fraudsters are flooding Discord and other social media platforms with ads for hundreds of polished online gaming and wagering websites that lure people with free credits and eventually abscond with any cryptocurrency funds deposited by players. Here's a closer look at the social engineering tactics and remarkable traits of this sprawling network of more than 1,200 scam sites. The scam begins with deceptive ads posted on social media that claim the wagering sites are working in partnership with popular social media personalities, such as Mr. Beast, who recently launched a gaming business called Beast Games. The ads invariably state that by using a supplied "promo code," interested players can claim a $2,500 credit on the advertised gaming website. The gaming sites all require users to create a free account to claim their $2,500 credit, which they can use to play any number of extremely polished video games that ask users to bet on each action. A

A software developer who built his own home server in response to Amazon's removal of Kindle book downloads now argues that self-hosting "is NOT the future we should be fighting for." Drew Lyton constructed a home server running open-source alternatives to Google Drive, Google Photos, Audible, Kindle, and Netflix after Amazon announced that "Kindle users would no longer be able to download and back up their book libraries to their computers." The change prompted Amazon to update Kindle store language to say "users are purchasing licenses -- not books." Lyton's setup involved a Lenovo P520 with 128GB RAM, multiple hard drives, and Docker containers running applications like Immich for photo storage and Jellyfin for media streaming. The technical complexity required "138 words to describe but took me the better part of two weeks to actually do." The implementation was successful but Lyton concluded that self-hosting "assumes isolated, independent systems are virtuous. But in reality,

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Variety: Edward Saatchi isn't totally sure people will flock to Showrunner, the new AI-generated TV show service his company is launching publicly this week. But he has a vote of confidence from Amazon, which has invested in Fable, Saatchi's San Francisco-based start-up. The amount of Amazon's funding in Fable isn't being disclosed. The money is going toward building out Showrunner, which Fable has hyped as the "Netflix of AI": a service that lets you type in a few words to create scenes -- or entire episodes -- of a TV show, either from scratch or based on an existing story-world someone else has created. Fable is launching Showrunner to let users tinker with the animation-focused generative-AI system, following several months in a closed alpha test with 10,000 users. Initially, Showrunner will be free to use but eventually the company plans to charge creators $10-$20 per month for credits allowing them to create hundreds of TV scenes, Saatch

Australia's first domestically built rocket to attempt orbital launch crashed just 14 seconds after liftoff, though the company still declared the mission a success for igniting all engines and leaving the launch pad. The Associated Press reports: The rocket Eris, launched by Gilmour Space Technologies, was the first Australian-designed and manufactured orbital launch vehicle to lift off from the country and was designed to carry small satellites to orbit. It launched Wednesday morning local time in a test flight from a spaceport near the small town of Bowen in the north of Queensland state. In videos published by Australian news outlets, the 23-meter (75-foot) rocket appeared to clear the launch tower and hovered in the air before falling out of sight. Plumes of smoke were seen rising above the site. No injuries were reported. The company hailed the launch as a success in a statement posted to Facebook. A spokesperson said all four hybrid-propelled engines ignited and the maiden fligh

Earlier this month, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise settled its antitrust case with the U.S. Justice Department, "paving the way for its acquisition of rival kit maker Juniper Networks" for $14 billion. According to Axios, the deal was heavily influenced by national security concerns and a desire to bolster American competition against China's Huawei. The outlet reports that the U.S. intelligence community "intervened to persuade the Justice Department that allowing the merger to proceed was essential to helping U.S. business compete with China's Huawei Technologies, among other national-security issues." From the report: "In light of significant national security concerns, a settlement ... serves the interests of the United States by strengthening domestic capabilities and is critical to countering Huawei and China." The official said blocking the deal would have "hindered American companies and empowered" Chinese competitors. A Justice Department spokesman added that DOJ "works very close

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In a rare move, Google has confirmed it will sign the European Union's AI Code of Practice, a framework it initially opposed for being too harsh. However, Google isn't totally on board with Europe's efforts to rein in the AI explosion. The company's head of global affairs, Kent Walker, noted that the code could stifle innovation if it's not applied carefully, and that's something Google hopes to prevent. While Google was initially opposed to the Code of Practice, Walker says the input it has provided to the European Commission has been well-received, and the result is a legal framework it believes can provide Europe with access to "secure, first-rate AI tools." The company claims that the expansion of such tools on the continent could boost the economy by 8 percent (about 1.8 trillion euros) annually by 2034. These supposed economic gains are being dangled like bait to entice business interests in the EU to align with Google on t