News and discussions about technology

A team of researchers at the University of Tokyo has built a bridge between large language models and robots that promises more humanlike gestures while dispensing with traditional hardware-dependent controls.

San Francisco police Sergeant David Radford contacted Tesla in May 2020 with a request on a case: Could the automaker provide data on an alleged stalker’s remote access to a vehicle?

A woman had come into the station visibly shaken, according to a police report. She told police that her abusive husband, in violation of a restraining order, was stalking and harassing her using the technology in their 2016 Tesla Model X.

Blue Origin’s 24th mission is officially a success. The New Shepard rocket took off as planned this morning and the booster and crew capsule safely separated mid-flight and landed back on this great blue marble we call Earth.

When a Twitter account for Utah business coach Spencer Taggart began posting about hot-button political issues in 2020, it garnered widespread attention. Tweets about an endemic cultural divide in the US and support for Black Lives Matter were shared by two Chinese embassy officials.

But Taggart didn't write the tweets and hasn't been on the social media platform, now called X, in five years. Rather, his identity had been hijacked by a massive pro-China propaganda network, according to the social media analysis firm Graphika.

Taggart's unusual saga is part of what Alphabet Inc.'s Google and Meta Platforms Inc. say is the largest China-based disinformation campaign ever. Designed to promote Chinese policies, criticize dissidents and mock westerners, it has infiltrated all corners of social media: Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, TripAdvisor, Pinterest, even fringe platforms like Gab, according to researchers.

The ultra HD footage of Taters the cat was sent as the agency tries to improve space communications.

The first to be funded as part of the Explorers Program, GUSTO will spend at least 55 days floating above Antarctica.

Under pressure from regulators, Adobe calls off its plans to acquire a leading competitor.

As a result of the termination, Adobe will be required to pay Figma a reverse termination fee of $1 billion in cash.

Looks like Adobe is losing out on all ends lol

We're about to see what happens when an industry built on failed bets suddenly has to pay back its debts.

Another walled garden is opening up to the new social web.

The EU says it is launching "formal enforcement proceedings" against the social media platform.

If your immune system or drugs can’t stop a viral infection, why not pit a virus against itself? That’s the provocative idea several labs are pursuing. They are studying whether deliberately introducing engineered viruses into people infected with their natural relatives can “drive” a foreign gene into those viruses that ultimately wipes out an infection.

No lab has knocked down an infection in animals this way yet, but a group has now shown it’s theoretically possible. These so-called gene drives harness the genome editor CRISPR to perform genetic surgery that speeds the spread of a gene through progeny. So far, scientists have received the most attention for adding gene drives to animals such as rodents and mosquitoes to control their numbers. But in a preprint last week, the team reported a similar feat with herpesvirus-1 (HSV-1). When both engineered and unmodified herpesviruses were inoculated into mice, the gene drive converted up to 90% of the viruses—possibly enough to prevent an HSV-1 infection from causing symptoms such as painful cold sores. A second group has succeeded in putting gene drives into HSV-1 that is growing in infected cells in lab dishes.

The viral gene drive work is a long way from curing an infected person. No one knows, for example, what kind of genetic modification the drive should propagate to drive down an infection. But other scientists see its potential. The new studies are “compelling,” says Rebecca Shapiro, a molecular microbiologist at the University of Guelph who has experimented with gene drives in fungi. “This opens up a lot of exciting avenues to use these kinds of gene drive techniques to modify viral populations, and possibly use them as new therapeutics.”

OpenAI Chief Scientist’s status remains unclear, but his “Superalignment” team put out a groundbreaking paper on the path to AGI.

Apple has begun piloting an App Store feature called contingent pricing that will let developers offer cheaper subscriptions to customers based on the other subscriptions they already hold. The company says it's meant to help developers "attract and retain subscribers."

Free for an unlimited time only!

Burkina Faso scientist Abdoulaye Diabate is developing an innovative technique that could potentially wipe out malaria-transmitting mosquito species by altering their genes.

Research shared exclusively with WIRED shows that Copilot, Microsoft’s AI chatbot, often responds to questions about elections with lies and conspiracy theories.

Cloud misconfig blamed and now fixed

TikTok may be seeking to avoid increasingly high costs of mass arbitration.

Three of Microsoft’s Office apps are now available on Meta’s Quest headsets, and while they aren’t optimized for VR, they work in a pinch.

A marketing team within media giant Cox Media Group (CMG) claims it has the capability to listen to ambient conversations of consumers through embedded microphones in smartphones, smart TVs, and other devices to gather data and use it to target ads, according to a review of CMG marketing materials by 404 Media and details from a pitch given to an outside marketing professional. Called “Active Listening,” CMG claims the capability can identify potential customers “based on casual conversations in real time.”

Google’s latest update to Maps protects users’ locations from law enforcement.

Threads will use ActivityPub, the same technology that other networks such as Mastodon have embraced as a way to make social media more open.

Amazon.com Inc., which launched its first internet satellites in October, says it will use space lasers to ensure reliable broadband coverage even in the middle of the ocean.

Archive link: https://archive.is/uZwMA

A US court ruling against Google’s app store policies has shaken the layout of these gardens a bit, but they’ll stay in place—for now.

Archive link: https://archive.is/qnFRP

Quantum computing could shred the encryption that guards digital information. Great powers are sprinting to master this technology to crack their adversaries’ codes.