“Microsoft assesses that Secret Blizzard either used the Amadey malware as a service (MaaS) or accessed the Amadey command-and-control (C2) panels surreptitiously to download a PowerShell dropper on target devices,” Microsoft said. “The PowerShell dropper contained a Base64-encoded Amadey payload appended by code that invoked a request to Secret Blizzard C2 infrastructure.” The ultimate objective […]
December 11, 2024 | backdoors, Biz & IT, nation state hacking, phishing, Security, turla | No comments
The macOS 15.2 update that was released earlier today came with a handful of new features, plus something unexpected: an apparently accidental reference to the upcoming M4 MacBook Airs. MacRumors reports that the “Mac16,12” and “Mac16,13” model identifiers reference 13- and 15-inch models of the M4 Air and that both are coming in 2025. That […]
December 11, 2024 | Apple, apple m4, MacBook Air, Tech | No comments
Photobucket was sued Wednesday after a recent privacy policy update revealed plans to sell users’ photos—including biometric identifiers like face and iris scans—to companies training generative AI models. The proposed class action seeks to stop Photobucket from selling users’ data without first obtaining written consent, alleging that Photobucket either intentionally or negligently failed to comply […]
December 11, 2024 | biometric data, biometric information privacy act, generative ai, Illinois, myspace, photobucket, Policy | No comments
Advertising has become a focal point of TV software. We’re seeing companies that sell TV sets be increasingly interested in leveraging TV operating systems (OSes) for ads and tracking. This has led to bold new strategies, like an adtech firm launching a TV OS and ads on TV screensavers. With new short films set to […]
December 11, 2024 | ads, AI, Culture, films, generative ai, movies, streaming, tcl, Tech, TVs | No comments
On Wednesday, Google unveiled Gemini 2.0, the next generation of its AI-model family, starting with an experimental release called Gemini 2.0 Flash. The model family can generate text, images, and speech while processing multiple types of input including text, images, audio, and video. It’s similar to multimodal AI models like GPT-4o, which powers OpenAI’s ChatGPT. […]
December 11, 2024 | agentic AI, AI, AI agents, Biz & IT, ChatGPT, chatgtp, Gemini 2.0, Gemini 2.0 Flash, Google, Google Gemini, large language models, machine learning, openai, Project Astra | No comments
Apple has announced that it will be releasing the iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2, and macOS Sequoia 15.2 updates to the public later this afternoon, following weeks of beta testing for developers and users. As with iOS 18.1, the headlining features are new additions to Apple Intelligence, mainly the image-generation capabilities: Image Playground for general images, […]
December 11, 2024 | Apple, ios 18, iPadOS 18, macOS 15, Tech | No comments
If you’ve been too busy punching virtual Nazis to take part in this year’s Ars Technica Charity Drive sweepstakes, don’t worry. You still have time to donate to a good cause and get a chance to win your share of over $4,000 worth of swag (no purchase necessary to win). In the first three days of […]
December 11, 2024 | Gaming | No comments
Eleven months after the Ingenuity helicopter made its final flight on Mars, engineers and scientists at NASA and a private company that helped build the flying vehicle said they have identified what probably caused it to crash on the surface of Mars. In short, the helicopter’s on-board navigation sensors were unable to discern enough features […]
December 11, 2024 | ingenuity, Mars, Science, Space | No comments
Google reportedly wants the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to end Microsoft’s exclusive cloud deal with OpenAI that requires anyone wanting access to OpenAI’s models to go through Microsoft’s servers. Someone “directly involved” in Google’s effort told The Information that Google’s request came after the FTC began broadly probing how Microsoft’s cloud computing business practices […]
December 11, 2024 | ai industry, AI models, Antitrust law, Artificial Intelligence, federal trade commission, FTC, Google, large language models, LLMs, microsoft, openai, Policy | No comments
Reaching those conclusions, however, can be a bit of a challenge for two reasons. One, which we won’t really go into here, is that some policies that are now disfavored were put in place while Republicans were in charge of the national pandemic response. This leads to a number of awkward juxtapositions in the report: […]
December 11, 2024 | Covid, Lab leak, pandemic, Science, scientific evidence | No comments