Stephen King on “X”
Source: Mashable | November 2, 2023
It’s not the first time that we see King, mocking Musk on his policies since his takeover. This time he’s calling out Musk over Twitter name change to “X”. “This X shit’s got to go” posted king.
Although Musk’s a fan of King, he doesn’t seem to make some changes in direction of King’s desire; instead, he offers counteroffer for Twitter Blue, the premium version. King also mocked the idea of paying for a pointless blue verification badge, which triggered Musk to gift him with an entirely free Twitter Blue. =)
Splendour Moments for Google’s Bard After a Lackluster Introduction
Source: the Verge | November 22, 2023
Bard can now watch YouTube videos and easily spit out all the content so that we would no longer waste our time, watching the full video to get through the whole story. Apparently, that’s great for the Google and users, but probably less good for the publisher of the video, as they do not share the whole content unless you pay a fee. America’s Test Kitchen is a good example here. This YouTube channel doesn’t provide the whole recipe on the description of the video but demands a payment on its website for anyone who wants to have the whole recipe.
New Portable Music Maker of “Teenage Engineering” Group
Source: the Verge | November 22, 2023
After a long time we have something that feels real with its clicky keys 🙂
This device called KO II is more than a toy but less than a professional tool. this device is something like a higher-end version of the *pocket operator. It’s ingenious design, makes people get into music making. This company is now selling these minimalist music makers that let you make and mix music from anywhere. It’s keys are clicky “like an accountant-style calculator,” Erikson says, the cofounder of Teen Engineering. He also reminds us of a positive feature these devices have, which is all about its storage capacity that does not offer too much space. “if you offer too much storage, you kind of give the user the option to finish later!” The KO II has 999 slots for different samples, an internal microphone for recording your own sounds + the company’s pre-recorded samples and drum tracks.
* Pocket operators are small, ultra-portable music devices, with studio quality sound and the flexibility to make music on the go.
Source: teenage engineering
Thousands of New Honeypots Deployed Across Israel to Catch Hackers
Source: TechCrunch | November 20, 2023
Before getting started, what is a honeypot? Honeypots are networks and systems that are designed to be hacked to catch hackers or observe their techniques.
Israel and Hamas are obviously engaged in real-life kinetic conflict; but in 2023, every conflict on the ground has some forms of cyber component. The honeypots deployed across Israel, as Matherly (founder of Shodan) says, do not pretend to be some industrial control systems, but they aim at tracking any sort of wide-scale attacks on Israel.
The thing is Israel has never been a place for this number of honeypots (Kijewski). And the deployment of honeypots in the conflict of a war makes sense tactically (Cutler).
Theoretically, having honeypots would be in Israel’s interest as a way to monitor what its adversaries do online.
Do Government Sanctions Against Ransomware Groups Work?
Source: TechCrunch | November 2, 2023
There’s also the risk that sanctions could be driving the wrong behavior. By making it illegal to make a ransomware payment to a sanctioned entity or country — even if the victim was unaware of the sanctions — victim organizations might conceal the incident and subsequent payment without notifying the authorities.
Violating sanctions can be costly for Americans, leading to hefty fines and criminal prosecution. Those consequences alone “should be enough to encourage victims not to pay, effectively taking funds from the sanctioned individuals or groups,” said Crystal Morin, cybersecurity strategist at cloud security firm Sysdig.
It may seem like sanctions against ransomware actors aren’t making a significant impact, but they are undoubtedly a step in the right direction — and one that only benefits from greater international collaboration to combat the global ransomware threat.
Secure Messaging App “Signal” Moves A Step Closer To Launching Usernames
Source: TechCrunch | November 9, 2023
Despite Signal’s gold standard reputation for strong security, it has taken its time on adding a privacy-conscious ability to connect via a username and not have to reveal your phone number. Other secure messaging platforms, such as Telegram and Wire, have had the feature for years. Phone numbers not only link directly to the device in your pocket, they are often linked to other accounts so can be of interest to hackers and identity thieves. Sharing fewer pieces of personal data is good security practice, as well as being better for privacy.
Kyutai Will Make Everything Open Source!
Source: TechCrunch | November 17, 2023
French Billionaire and Iliad CEO Xavier Niel gives some extra details about his plans for an AI research lab in Paris. This new lab, will be a privately funded nonprofit working on artificial intelligence.
“Unfortunately, big tech companies tolerate scientific publications less and less. Beyond the ego boost for researchers, it helps to advance research and contribute to the common good,” Niel said during the press conference.
Of course this isn’t the first open AI research lab. OpenAI, as the name still indicates, started as a nonprofit. But things changed drastically after Sam Altman started working full time on OpenAI in 2019. OpenAI moved to a more traditional corporate structure and raised funding from Microsoft.
Other companies have also been working on open source foundational models, such as Meta with its Llama model and Mistral AI. Kyutai’s models will be open source too, but the researchers describe their work as open science. They plan to release open source models, but also the training source code and data that explain how they released these models.
“Regulation is not the enemy of innovation, quite the contrary. It’s not a question of defining good models, but we need to ensure that the services made available to our citizens are safe for them, for other economic players and for our democracy,” said Macron.
“For the time being we’re more in the innovation par than the regulation part. Creating regulation means it creates barriers to competitors,” said Niel.
Maybe if French AI companies become massively successful, things could change. “I’d love it if one day we could talk about French Imperialism in AI,” Niel added later in the conversation.
Keep up the great job my darling, I wish you the best and appreciate your concerns. Keep me technologically updated.
I absolutely will! so grateful to have you as the one who I share my everyday stories with 🙂