The creators of PHP, an open source programming language used by the majority of the world’s websites, on Wednesday urged web maintainers across the globe to install a new update after researchers using AI found a flaw that could put those websites at risk of being hacked.
The flaw is the latest ...
Ideas are flowing fast and furious on how AI labs can “pace” AI development so safeguards keep up with the technology’s smarts. Last week, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman laid out three scenarios he said have been considered in the industry, including merging all of the AI labs into a single entity to develop new AI safely or creating a global regulatory body like the International Atomic Energy Agency.
In the background, a loose group of safety advocates and researchers have been pushing for AI companies to cap the amount of compute they put towards research and development, a limitation they argue would be particularly effective in slowing AI development.
The researchers are proposing companies commit to dedicating at least some minimum share of their computational resources to safety or monitoring, and another minimum share to running AI for customers, otherwise known as inference. That would limit the share of compute that could be used to develop stronger AI capabilities through R&D, such as training new models.
A cosmic Quarter-Pounder is providing us with a near-perfect view of a distant gas giant’s earliest moments. Known as Gomez’s Hamburger (or GoHam for short), the massive protoplanetary disk surrounds a young star located in the Scorpius-Centaurus stellar region of our home galaxy about 453 light-years away from Earth. As researchers explained in a study recently published in The Astrophysical Journal, GoHam’s vantage from Earth is virtually unparalleled for anyone hoping to glimpse the subtle layers of dust and particles that will one day coalesce into a humongous gas giant.
Early observers first spotted GoHam in 1985, but initially pegged it for a planetary nebula as far as 6,500 light-years from Earth. Astronomers have since revised their assessments with data gathered by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in northern Chile. As its full name implies, ALMA measures millimeter-and-smaller wavelengths, allowing scientists to map the miniscule dust grains and gaseous molecules that compose distant objects. GoHam is a particularly unique subject for ALMA, because its position makes it a new benchmark example for testing models of how planets evolve.
“GoHam gives us a rare and clear view of the vertical and radial structure of a very large, nearly edge‑on disk,” explained study co-author and University of Minnesota astronomer Charles Law.
According to Law, its mixture of cosmic winds, large formational asymmetries, massive disk size, as well as the potential for planetary formation makes GoHam a “perfect laboratory.” With ALMA, Law and his colleagues analyzed GoHam’s layers of carbon monoxide, and sulfur-bearing molecules. As predicted, the lightest gas is in the highest layer above the formation’s midplane, while the heavier sulfur components lay beneath it. Meanwhile, a thin but concentrated section of millimeter dust is visible in the midplane itself.
Comparisons to GoHam’s fast food namesake only go so far, however. Its dust clouds lean north–south, with one side containing brighter and wider emissions. This likely stems from a disturbance such as a cosmic vortex, which may capture additional material for planetary formation. Dim, thin carbon monoxide emissions along the disk’s northern section also suggest GoHam’s central star is blowing gases into deep space as what’s known as photoevaporative wind.
Astronomers also noted that GoHam is one of the largest protoplanetary disks ever observed. At nearly 93 billion miles wide and with an exponentially larger dust mass than the typical protoplanet disk, GoHam may ultimately host not just one gas giant, but an entire planetary system.
The post Distant space ‘hamburger’ hides a baby gas giant appeared first on Popular Science.
Com um sistema operacional bastante fechado (derivado do iOS, como bem sabemos), o iPad muitas vezes não tem todo o seu potencial aproveitado — principalmente quando falamos naqueles modelos que contam com chips da série M, os mesmos presentes nos Macs.
Agora, porém, é possível executar um sistema operacional completo nos tablets da Maçã, graças ao LinPad, um projeto de código aberto que permite rodar um ambiente Linux (o LinPad OS) diretamente no iPad — com direito a janelas, terminal e gerenciador de arquivos.
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Com isso, usuários que não têm um Mac ou que estão com apenas o iPad à disposição conseguem realizar atividades que geralmente só são possíveis em um computador, principalmente quem trabalha com desenvolvimento.
Com um sistema de arquivos próprio, o LinPad OS permite personalizar o ambiente e até instalar aplicativos de terceiros como o Visual Studio Code e o Mozilla Firefox. O app prepara o ambiente na primeira execução e mantém tudo preservado para sessões posteriores.
Para usá-lo, é necessário um iPad com chip M1 ou posterior que rode, no mínimo, o iPadOS 17. O maior desafio é a instalação, já que é preciso configurar o app via sideloading tradicional — pelo próprio computador ou usando ferramentas de terceiros, descritas nessa página.
via OS X Daily
OpenAI is expanding ChatGPT ads to 26 more countries as it tries to turn advertising into a bigger source of revenue to help cover its AI costs. OpenAI also said more than 100,000 advertisers now use the platform, up from 20,000 in late August.
The ad platform, which launched in February, is now ...
A hacking group called CyberCartel used a web of AI agents powered by models from companies including Anthropic, SpaceX and Chinese lab Moonshot AI to automate cyberattacks against more than 400 Latin American financial targets, according to an investigation by the cybersecurity startup Straiker.
The research, shared exclusively with The Information, is one of the first detailed reports of cybercriminals using AI models to successfully automate attacks that break into financial institutions. The AI agents used by CyberCartel, which has long targeted Latin American businesses and whose latest targets included banks and payment apps, appear to have stolen passwords and customer data and to have accessed people’s bank accounts autonomously with little human effort, the Straiker research shows.
DeepSeek has open-sourced DeepInfer, the in-house framework for running its own models. The move reveals some of the technical secrets behind how the Chinese AI developer achieves high efficiency and low compute costs when running its models at scale.
Access to DeepInfer is likely to help ...
SpaceX put on a bit of a show for shareholders today—and I’m not referring to the sizzle reel of rocket and space videos it showed on its earnings call. No, the big attention grabber was the update from CEO Elon Musk on the progress of SpaceX’s contemplated merger with Tesla and just how involved—or not involved he is in the whole affair.
First though, it’s worth mentioning the other big highlight from the call: SpaceX’s booming AI—excuse me, SI—business, a category that includes the company’s X social media service, its Grok Bot agent platform and a cloud infrastructure service it has started to rent to outsiders like Anthropic. The segment is on fire. It saw its third-quarter revenue nearly triple to $7.56 billion, making it the largest business category at SpaceX. And if that wasn’t enough, the SI business swung to an operating profit of $431 million from a $1.26 billion loss in the second quarter.
SpaceX shares jumped nearly 7% in after-hours trading following the report.
SpaceX executives made it clear that the big story in its SI (superintelligence) segment is its cloud business. Musk told investors the company’s phone is ringing off the hook with demand from businesses that want to lease SpaceX’s AI compute. “We are hounded relentlessly by every hyperscaler and by dozens of smaller companies to rent more of our compute,” Musk said. “We could rent out our compute several times over if we said yes to everyone.”
For his part, Bret Johnsen, SpaceX’s chief financial officer, described that demand as “extraordinary” and said at the prices it’s currently charging its cloud customers, SpaceX is “generating a payback in less than a year” on new data centers after it deploys them.
Musk also addressed a question from an investor about his desire to unite SpaceX and Tesla. He said the respective companies have formed special committees to examine a merger, but because he’s CEO of both Tesla and SpaceX, he has needed to recuse himself from those discussions.
Still, that didn’t stop him from telling everyone listening to the call that he thinks a merger is a grand idea. “I do think there’s a lot of merit to combining both companies,” he said.
Musk also stated the obvious caveat: Any deal will still need shareholder approval, and there’s no guarantee they’ll bless it. “I think some people assume a SpaceX-Telsa merger is a certainty,” he said. “I think that would be overstating it.” Nonetheless, Musk’s shareholders tend to be very obedient to him. If the companies decide to move forward with a merger, stay tuned for Musk to start turning up his X megaphone and encouraging them to fall in line.
The other shoe just dropped at Netflix. Last than a week after announcing the layoffs of about 1,000 employees, or 6% of the company, Netflix reported its weakest quarterly revenue growth in three years—an 11.8% jump to $12.87 billion in revenue. For a figure lower than that, you have to go all the way back to the third quarter of 2023. It didn’t help that Netflix told investors revenue growth will get even worse in the fourth quarter, estimating 11.5% for that period. The company’s shares fell 5% in after-hours trading.
The weak third-quarter revenue number wasn’t exactly a surprise; it was slightly better than the growth rate Netflix had told analysts to expect last quarter. But it’s obvious from the heads that have rolled at Netflix over the past week that the company’s CEOs, Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters, aren’t happy with the state of its business. The firings included Bela Bajaria, chief content officer, and David Lin, film chief, a sign that the company wants to reset its approach to movies and series. It's still a powerhouse in living rooms: The new season of “The Diplomat” is back on with a vengeance on my TV set. But Netflix feels like it’s looking for a new act.
Check out today’s episode of TITV in which Akash Pasricha speaks with analyst Dan Flax about the upcoming quarterly results for Meta Platforms, Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon.
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The Information's WTF Summit returns to Napa Valley, bringing together the women shaping tech, media and finance. Confirmed speakers include Whitney Wolfe Herd (Bumble), Anne Wojcicki (23andMe Research Institute), Kim Posnett (Goldman Sachs) and comedian & entrepreneur Whitney Cummings, with more to come. Expect candid conversations and a room built for meaningful exchange. Tickets are selling fast—reserve your spot now.
More detailsJessica Lessin, The Information's Founder & Editor-in-Chief, and Whitt Butler, EY Americas Vice Chair – Consulting, will lead an intimate executive discussion on the latest trends in AI. Request an invite.
More detailsThe Information's Dakin Campbell will host a panel discussion on the evolving landscape of public listings and exit opportunities during SF Tech Week, sponsored by NYSE.
More detailsWhat’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to Popular Science’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Spotify, YouTube, Apple, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.
Featuring Geo Rutherford
This week’s episode features special guest Geo Rutherford, who you almost certainly know (at least from the forehead-up) as the host of “Spooky Lake Month.” Geo is also the author of a new book about yet another subject in haunted hydrology: spooky rivers. But for her appearance on Weirdest Thing, Geo stuck with the classics and told us about her favorite spooky lake of all.
While Geo’s first lake love will always be Lake Superior, she says the body of water she keeps finding new weird facts about is Lake Baikal.
This Siberian body of water is the deepest lake in the world—just over a mile, to be precise—and it holds more liquid than all of the Great Lakes combined, or around 1/5th of the planet’s total unfrozen freshwater supply. It’s also the world’s most ancient lake, dating back some 25 million years or more.
Baikal has stuck around long after most lakes would fill in with sediment because the earth beneath it is slowly being pulled apart. That rift means it keeps getting deeper and deeper, which provides somewhere for all the sediment brought in by rivers to go.
Baikal isn’t just chillingly deep. It’s also home to a host of unique animals, including the world’s only exclusively freshwater seal and some shockingly large amphipods. And don’t forget the trains!
Featuring Liz Clayton Fuller
This week’s episode also featured friend-of-the-pod Liz Clayton Fuller, who came on to share another fascinating bird fact with us.
While most songbirds flit through the treetops, the American Dipper—one of just a handful of dipper species in the world—dives headlong into freezing glacial meltwater and walks along chilly creek beds on long, spindly toes.
There’s a lot of weird stuff going on with this chunky little bird: it’s got solid bones to help cut down on buoyancy, eye lenses designed to focus-up under water, and nose flaps that act like the dorky little nose clips a kid might wear in a pool.
Listen to this week’s episode to learn more about these bizarre birdies—including how they helped launch Liz’s bird-painting career.
Most people think of dirt as being pretty…inert. But a single teaspoon of soil can hold more organisms than there are people on Earth, and that microbial abundance is incredibly important. When soil gets too degraded—which is an increasing problem as humans farm and otherwise develop more land—we can end up with situations like the Dust Bowl.
Researchers have previously used the teabag index (TBI) to help citizen scientists collect and share data on the health of their local soil. But a team at the University of Zurich wondered if they could come up with something a little more visually appealing, and they landed on (literally) soiled underwear.
While the idea of burying underpants to check soil health is (to my delight) nothing new, these researchers wanted to apply some scientific rigor to the process. About 1,000 Swiss volunteers were conscripted to bury identical sets of white briefs, plus tea bags, so the researchers could quantify their decomposition and see how an underwear index would measure up to the good-ol’-TBI. Sure enough, they showed that underpants work as well as teabags for tracking soil’s ability to decompose organic material.
The study won an Ig Nobel prize, but that’s not all: A Zurich-based designer also turned the dirty undies into a Rococo-inspired ball gown so heavy it needed custom panniers.
The post Earth’s spookiest lake is in Siberia and dates back 25 million years appeared first on Popular Science.
Nesta terça-feira, confira e aproveite a nossa seleção de promoções na App Store!
Black Border 2, criado pelo pessoal da Mona Cervino Ltd, é um jogo de simulação de proteção de fronteira.
Como oficial, caberá a você analisar documentações e possíveis itens proibidos, impedindo a entrada de bandidos, terroristas e outros passageiros com documentação roubada ou falsificada.
Confira um vídeo:
Aproveite a oferta e boa diversão! Ah, o terceiro jogo da franquia também está em oferta:
Abaixo outros jogos/apps que, juntos, somam mais de R$50 em descontos:
Jogo de aventura.
Jogo de ação.
Nivelador.
Lista de compras.
Aproveite as ofertas e até amanhã! Lembrando que elas são sempre por tempo limitado, então é bom correr. 🏃
When a new disease emerges, things can get a little weird. We start to clean groceries with antibacterial wipes, the sound of a sneeze can trigger our fight-or-flight response, and we generally become more cautious. Humans may not be the only primate species that change their behavior in the face of disease.
According to a study published today in the journal Royal Society Open Science, Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata) that lived through a deadly outbreak in 2020 became noticeably more cautious about food that appeared contaminated, even though this disease was not spread by food or feces. This indicates that purposefully shifting behavior to avoid a pathogen can be shaped by our appearance and that disgust may have deep evolutionary roots. It also sheds light on the behavioral immune system—a collection of behaviors that help animals avoid an infection before the biological immune systems respond.
“We can show now, in non-human primates, that this is the same for them,” Federico Rossano, a study co-author and cognitive psychologist at the University of California San Diego, said in a statement. “Even with no knowledge of how disease is transmitted, being exposed to others getting sick and dying changes the likelihood of engaging in behaviors that potentially could lead to some form of sickness.”
In 2020, the staff at a primate sanctuary in southern Texas confirmed the presence of simian retrovirus Type II. This disease can cause AIDS-like immunodeficiency and is primarily transmitted through bites and scratches. It caused severe illness and death in some of the monkeys. The sanctuary staff separated the groups and implemented testing and quarantine measures in response to the outbreak. Since the groups live in separate enclosures, scientists then had the chance to compare animals with similar backgrounds that had experienced very different social and disease environments.
In total, three groups of monkeys experienced the outbreak while one had not. The team tested
55 macaques to see how they responded to a choice between food that was put on a clean wooden surface and food placed on a surface covered with real macaque feces. The food with the feces was sealed under a layer of clear epoxy, so that the monkeys could see the food and poop without risking infection.
In the group that had been exposed to the outbreak, some of the individuals had been infected while others had lived alongside sick monkeys without getting sick. This allowed the researchers to question if experiencing an outbreak without getting infected could change the macaque’s behavior. To test that further, the clean surface was replaced with a brightly colored kitchen sponge in some of the scenarios to see if the animals were just avoiding unfamiliar objects.
Previous studies found that macaques aren’t necessarily deterred by contamination—as long as the payoff is tempting. When presented with a favorite treat (such as a peanut) wild Japanese macaques would still eat food from a surface covered in feces, but will avoid it for food like grains of wheat.
The team found that macaques from groups that went through the outbreak were far less likely to eat the food from the contaminated surface. They ate from the fake contaminated surface in only 47 percent of trials. The monkeys that did not experience the outbreak ate from the potentially contaminated surface in 79 percent of trials.
The monkeys from outbreak-exposed groups also behaved similarly whether or not they themselves had been infected. According to the team, this suggests the behavioral change was associated with their experiencing living through the outbreak, instead of actually getting sick
“Groups have histories, and those histories show up in behavior,” added study co-author and UC San Diego cognitive psychologist Stephan Kaufhold. “Living through the disease outbreak appears to have made those monkey groups more cautious around food that looks contaminated.”
The virus was spread through blood or saliva from bites and scratches, and not through contaminated food. Interestingly, the macaques who saw their fellow primates get sick, were more reluctant to eat food placed on a surface that visually suggested contamination in some of the tests.
In addition to shedding light on how illness affects primate behavior, it also offers insight into the evolution of disgust. The team did not measure disgust directly, but found that monkey’s avoidance of potential sources of infection can change with their experience, similar to what humans do.
Human disgust is believed to play an important role in protecting us from pathogens. We recoil from the smell and sight of poop, spoiled food, and other potential sources of infection. Our sensitivity to those cues can also change depending on context.
Since primates are capable of social learning, the team believes that heightened pathogen avoidance could be learned from other members in the group and persist over time. Future studies could see if newly introduced animals adopt the behavior of a group that has already experienced an outbreak.
The post Monkeys also avoid germs after viral outbreaks appeared first on Popular Science.
Já se pegou recorrendo ao chat com você mesmo no WhatsApp ou Telegram para salvar, de forma rápida e prática, aquela ideia que acabou de pintar? Às vezes esse é um caminho bem mais curto e natural do que usar apps como Notas (Notes) ou Notion, que geralmente requerem um conteúdo mais organizado e trabalhado.
Acontece que guardar tudo em uma conversa do seu mensageiro tradicional pode fazer sentido na hora, mas geralmente acaba resultando em uma verdadeira bagunça bem difícil de gerenciar — principalmente quando você quer revisitar alguma ideia e não sabe exatamente por qual data ou termo deve procurar.
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O monolog é um app que tenta resolver esse problema. Da parte do usuário, tudo continua igual: ele funciona como uma interface semelhante a um mensageiro e basta ir jogando lá textos, fotos, links e mensagens por voz sem interromper o fluxo do pensamento. Mas o diferencial é o que o app faz com isso tudo depois.
Com a ajuda da inteligência artificial (que roda prioritariamente no dispositivo), o Monolog interpreta o conteúdo das anotações e adiciona rótulos a elas automaticamente — o que ajuda os usuários encontrar registros antigos por meio de palavras-chave e a recuperar aqueles pensamentos que ficaram inacabados.
A ideia é que você possa recuperar com facilidade anotações ou tarefas anteriores apenas perguntando por determinado contexto — ou até mesmo que o próprio aplicativo lhe lembre gentilmente (como um amigo em uma conversa tradicional) de determinada anotação feita no passado (como alguma que envolva uma data).
O monolog pode ser baixado gratuitamente, mas para usar todos os recursos de inteligência artificial é necessária uma assinatura PLUS, que sai por R$20/mês ou R$200/ano. Para mais armazenamento, você pode investir também em uma assinatura PRO (R$30/mês ou R$300/ano) ou PRIME (R$60/mês ou R$600/ano).
Nvidia is in talks to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in Australian AI cloud provider Firmus, which abruptly pulled its initial public offering early this month, according to people familiar with the talks.
The discussion indicates that Nvidia is likely to continue backing a group of unproven firms known as neoclouds that is facing financial pressure after they stacked up on debt to purchase Nvidia graphics processing units for data centers. Nvidia has already put more than $170 billion on the line for such firms and other large customers, including credit guarantees to help them raise the debt, according to The Information’s analysis.
A group of private equity firms in recent months considered a potential buyout of Microsoft’s Xbox gaming unit that could have valued it between $100 billion and $150 billion, according to people familiar with the discussions.
The short-lived discussions by the private firms were exploratory and didn’t turn into a negotiation with Microsoft, the people said. But they show the company could find buyers if its turnaround of the struggling gaming division falters. The identities of the PE firms couldn’t be confirmed.
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