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Submission + - AMD's new Ryzen 7 9800X3D gets reviewed, finally a faster gaming CPU (techspot.com)

Submitted by jjslash
jjslash writes: AMD’s Ryzen 7 9800X3D debuts with impressive performance gains, powered by advanced 3D V-Cache technology and improved thermal efficiency. While the CPU shines as a top choice right out of the gate, AMD’s history of quick price cuts suggests waiting could yield even better value for savvy buyers. TechSpot reports:

Today we're finally able to show you how AMD's new Ryzen 7 9800X3D performs, and spoiler alert – it's a real weapon that solves the issues we encountered with the non-3D Zen 5 chips before this. Without question, this is the best CPU released since the 7800X3D, making this launch particularly exciting.

Like all X3D CPUs, the 9800X3D leverages AMD's 3D V-Cache technology, now featuring a second-gen version that reorients the cache placement. In previous models, the large 64MB L3 cache was layered on top of the cores, but with this new version, it is now positioned below the cores.

Submission + - Latest film featuring Tom Hanks and Robin Wright shows latest AI de-aging tech

Submitted by jjslash
jjslash writes: Adapted from the 2014 graphic novel, Here is uniquely shot from a single camera angle spanning epochs, from prehistoric times to the present. The plot tracks Hanks' and Wright's characters across their lives, from adolescence to old age, requiring extensive use of AI-enhanced visual effects. TechSpot reports:

The use of AI in movies remains a contentious subject, but there are some instances where using the technology seems more acceptable than others. Digitally de-aging actors, for example, has been a common sight on the big screen for years, and never has the process been more advanced than in Here, the new Robert Zemeckis film starring Tom Hanks and Robin Wright.

Submission + - Telecom, Media Giants Challenge FTC 'Click-to-Cancel' Regulation (techspot.com)

Submitted by jjslash
jjslash writes: TechSpot reports that telecom, advertising, and newspaper groups are suing to block the Federal Trade Commission’s new “Click-to-Cancel” rule, arguing it restricts their ability to retain customers by limiting opportunities to counteract cancellations.

As expected, all the companies that make it hard for you to cancel service are throwing cases to the courts over the FTC's C2C rule. The amendment to the Negative Options Rule of 1973 severely hampers a service provider's ability to keep you and your credit card on the books. Lobbyists are pulling out a coordinated effort to ice the reg.

Submission + - San Francisco to Upgrade Aging Train Control System from Floppy Disks to Wi-Fi (techspot.com)

Submitted by jjslash
jjslash writes: The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) has begun updating its automatic train control system (ATCS), which first launched in 1998 using floppy disks and loop cables. The system, initially designed to last 20–25 years, entered its 26th year in 2024. As reported by TechSpot:

The San Francisco Muni Metro's Automatic Train Control System (ATCS), one of the few remaining major systems still using floppy disks, is dropping the archaic technology as part of a massive upgrade. The SF transportation agency's board has agreed to a $212 million deal with Hitachi Rail to overhaul the service and remove the 5.25-inch floppy disks it's been using since 1998.

Submission + - AMD gains CPU market share in desktops, laptops, and servers (techspot.com)

Submitted by jjslash
jjslash writes: AMD has recently increased its market share in the CPU sector for desktops, laptops, and servers, according to a report by Mercury Research:

AMD gained 5.8 percent unit share in desktops, 3.8 percent in laptops, and 5.8 percent in servers. In terms of revenue share, Team Red gained 4.1 percent in desktops, 5.1 percent in laptops, and 1.7 percent in servers. The report does not mention competitors by name, but the global PC industry only has one other major CPU supplier, Intel, which has a major stake in all the market segments.

While Intel and AMD make x86 processors for PCs, Qualcomm offers Arm-based SoCs for Windows notebooks, but its market share is minuscule by comparison. So, while the report doesn't say anything about the market share of Intel or Qualcomm, it is fair to assume that most of AMD's gains came at Intel's expense.

Submission + - Windows 11 adds native support for RAR, 7-Zip, Tar archive file formats (techspot.com)

Submitted by jjslash
jjslash writes: Windows 11's last major update, 22H2 introduced native support for managing RAR archives, eliminating the need for third-party software. This enhancement is part of the OS's broader capability improvements for handling various archive file formats. From the report:

Microsoft finally introduced native support for RAR archives earlier this year, just three decades after the format's official introduction in 1993. Windows 11 development is now progressing at an accelerated pace, therefore support for a whole lot of new (ancient) archive formats is coming soon.

Microsoft recently released KB5031455, an optional, feature-rich preview cumulative update for Windows 11, refreshing the list of archive formats natively supported in the OS. Windows 11 22H2 and later versions can now manage files compressed in the following archive types: .rar, .7z, .tar, .tar.gz, .tar.bz2, .tar.zst, .tar.xz, .tgz, .tbz2, .tzst, .txz. Support for password-encrypted archives is not available yet.

Submission + - The US is among the most expensive countries for data plans, Israel the cheapest (techspot.com)

Submitted by jjslash
jjslash writes: The average cost of a gigabyte of mobile data in the U.S. is $6, while the most expensive data plan in the country offers a gig for $83.33. That makes the U.S. one of the most expensive countries in the world for mobile data, even though some plans can still get you a gig for as low as $0.75.

The situation in Canada isn't much better, with an average price of $5.37 per GB, but it's much cheaper to surf mobile internet in the U.K., thanks to an average price of $0.62 for a gig.

Submission + - New York Bans Facial Recognition In Schools (apnews.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: New York state banned the use of facial recognition technology in schools Wednesday, following a report that concluded the risks to student privacy and civil rights outweigh potential security benefits. Education Commissioner Betty Rosa’s order leaves decisions on digital fingerprinting and other biometric technology up to local districts. The state has had a moratorium on facial recognition since parents filed a court challenge to its adoption by an upstate district.

[A]n analysis by the Office of Information Technology Services issued last month “acknowledges that the risks of the use of (facial recognition technology) in an educational setting may outweigh the benefits.” The report, sought by the Legislature, noted “the potentially higher rate of false positives for people of color, non-binary and transgender people, women, the elderly, and children.” It also cited research from the nonprofit Violence Project that found that 70% of school shooters from 1980 to 2019 were current students. The technology, the report said, “may only offer the appearance of safer schools.”

Biotechnology would not stop a student from entering a school “unless an administrator or staff member first noticed that the student was in crisis, had made some sort of threat, or indicated in some other way that they could be a threat to school security,” the report said.

Submission + - NYPD to Deploy Drones to Monitor Backyard Parties This Holiday Weekend (techspot.com)

Submitted by jjslash
jjslash writes: The NYC police department intends to use drones to monitor Labor Day backyard parties, raising privacy concerns. Drone usage by US police departments is increasing, with some operating them beyond visual line of sight as reported by TechSpot:

Look! Up in the Sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a police drone spying on our backyard barbecue? For New York City residents celebrating the Labor Day holiday this weekend, this could be a very real scenario.

The New York City police department has announced plans to put drones in the sky this holiday weekend to monitor backyard parties that could get out of hand.

Submission + - New AP Guidelines Lay the Groundwork For AI-Assisted Newsrooms (engadget.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Associated Press published standards today for generative AI use in its newsroom. The organization, which has a licensing agreement with ChatGPT maker OpenAI, listed a fairly restrictive and common-sense list of measures around the burgeoning tech while cautioning its staff not to use AI to make publishable content. Although nothing in the new guidelines is particularly controversial, less scrupulous outlets could view the AP’s blessing as a license to use generative AI more excessively or underhandedly.

The organization’s AI manifesto underscores a belief that artificial intelligence content should be treated as the flawed tool that it is — not a replacement for trained writers, editors and reporters exercising their best judgment. “We do not see AI as a replacement of journalists in any way,” the AP’s Vice President for Standards and Inclusion, Amanda Barrett, wrote in an article about its approach to AI today. “It is the responsibility of AP journalists to be accountable for the accuracy and fairness of the information we share.” The article directs its journalists to view AI-generated content as “unvetted source material,” to which editorial staff “must apply their editorial judgment and AP’s sourcing standards when considering any information for publication.” It says employees may “experiment with ChatGPT with caution” but not create publishable content with it. That includes images, too. “In accordance with our standards, we do not alter any elements of our photos, video or audio,” it states. “Therefore, we do not allow the use of generative AI to add or subtract any elements.” However, it carved an exception for stories where AI illustrations or art are a story’s subject — and even then, it has to be clearly labeled as such.

Barrett warns about AI’s potential for spreading misinformation. To prevent the accidental publishing of anything AI-created that appears authentic, she says AP journalists “should exercise the same caution and skepticism they would normally, including trying to identify the source of the original content, doing a reverse image search to help verify an image’s origin, and checking for reports with similar content from trusted media.” To protect privacy, the guidelines also prohibit writers from entering “confidential or sensitive information into AI tools.” Although that’s a relatively common-sense and uncontroversial set of rules, other media outlets have been less discerning. [...] It’s not hard to imagine other outlets — desperate for an edge in the highly competitive media landscape — viewing the AP’s (tightly restricted) AI use as a green light to make robot journalism a central figure in their newsrooms, publishing poorly edited / inaccurate content or failing to label AI-generated work as such.

Submission + - Someone Published a List of Telnet Credentials for Thousands of IoT Devices (bleepingcomputer.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A list of thousands of fully working Telnet credentials has been sitting online on Pastebin since June 11, credentials that can be used by botnet herders to increase the size of their DDoS cannons. The list includes an IP address, device username, and a password, and is mainly made up of default device credentials in the form of "admin:admin", "root:root", and other formats. There are 33,138 entries on the list, which recently became viral on Twitter after several high-profile security experts retweeted a link to it.

During the past week, a security researcher has been working to find affected devices and notify owners or their ISPs. Following his work, only 2,174 devices still allow an attacker to log on via its Telnet port, and 1,775 of the published credentials still work. "There are devices on the list of which I never heard of," the researcher said, "and that makes the identification process much slower."

Submission + - Researchers claim success on removing HIV from living cells (nature.com)

Submitted by ffkom
ffkom writes: A recent publication of German researchers claims success on removing the HI-Virus from living cells, showing a way to completely cure Aids rather than just suppressing its symptoms (by lowering the amount of viruses) by permanent medication:

Current combination antiretroviral therapies (cART) efficiently suppress HIV-1 reproduction in humans, but the virus persists as integrated proviral reservoirs in small numbers of cells. To generate an antiviral agent capable of eradicating the provirus from infected cells, we employed 145 cycles of substrate-linked directed evolution to evolve a recombinase (Brec1) that site-specifically recognizes a 34-bp sequence present in the long terminal repeats (LTRs) of the majority of the clinically relevant HIV-1 strains and subtypes. Brec1 efficiently, precisely and safely removes the integrated provirus from infected cells and is efficacious on clinical HIV-1 isolates in vitro and in vivo, including in mice humanized with patient-derived cells. Our data suggest that Brec1 has potential for clinical application as a curative HIV-1 therapy.

Clinical trials are expected to start in Hamburg, Germany, soon.

Submission + - Apple Is Said to Be Working on an iPhone Even It Can't Hack (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Apple engineers have already begun developing new security measures that would make it impossible for the government to break into a locked iPhone using methods similar to those now at the center of a court fight in California, according to people close to the company and security experts.

If Apple succeeds in upgrading its security — and experts say it almost surely will — the company would create a significant technical challenge for law enforcement agencies, even if the Obama administration wins its fight over access to data stored on an iPhone used by one of the killers in last year’s San Bernardino, Calif., rampage. The F.B.I. would then have to find another way to defeat Apple security, setting up a new cycle of court fights and, yet again, more technical fixes by Apple.

Submission + - Windows 10 Now Showing Full Screen Ads on Lock Screen (consumerist.com)

Submitted by Striek
Striek writes: Several media outlets are reporting that Windows 10 has now started showing full screen ads on users' lock screens. They can be turned off, but how many people will actually bother with this?

Tips site How-To Geek discovered that Windows Spotlight—which normally rotates between a selection of photographs—was being used to display an ad for Square Enix’s Rise of the Tomb Raider. Understandably, most people probably don’t want to be hit in the face with a full-screen ad for a video game before they even unlock their computer. If you want to make sure you’re not hit with these ads, follow these steps to disable Windows Spotlight:

Open the Start Menu and search for “Lock Screen Settings.”

Under “Background,” select either Picture or Slideshow, instead of Windows Spotlight.

Scroll down to “Get fun facts, tips, tricks, and more on your lock screen” and this toggle.

Apparently the “and more” is where Microsoft hid the advertisements. (emphasis mine)

Submission + - Sen. Ted Cruz wants minimum H-1B wage of $110,000 (computerworld.com)

Submitted by dcblogs
dcblogs writes: U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, has morphed from a vocal supporter of the H-1B program to a leading critic of it. He has done so in a new H-1B reform bill that sets a minimum wage of $110,000 for H-1B workers. By raising the cost of temporary visa workers, Cruz is hoping to discourage their use. Cruz also wants to eliminate Optional Practical Training Program (OPT). The co-sponsor of this bill, The American Jobs First Act of 2015, is U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who called the OPT program "a backdoor method for replacing American workers."

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