Tech

India may block Proton Mail

Proton, the Swiss privacy-focused software maker, says it has received a notice of a “possible block” of Proton Mail in India after the service was used in sending bomb threats to schools in the Southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. In a statement, a Proton spokesperson told Indian daily Hindustan Times that the firm condemns […]
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European digital rights group say the future of online privacy is on a knife edge

A coalition of more than two dozen digital and democratic rights groups, NGOs and not-for-profits, including noyb and Wikimedia Europe, have written to the European Union’s regulatory body for data protection urging it to reject a tactic that’s been controversially seized upon by Meta in its latest bid to circumvent the bloc’s privacy laws. If […]
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How Neara uses AI to protect utilities from extreme weather

Over the past few decades, extreme weather events have not only become more severe, but are also occurring more frequently. Neara is focused on enabling utility companies and energy providers to create models of their power networks and anything that might affect them, like wildfires or flooding. The Redfern, New South Wales, Australia-based startup recently […]
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After rockets and spacecraft, Rocket Lab’s next frontier could be applications

Rocket Lab is exploring possible applications for a satellite constellation that they would build, launch and operate in-house, similar to SpaceX’s Starlink business, as a way of generating recurring revenue, an executive said this week. “If you look to where we ultimately want to go, in a lot of ways we want to emulate what […]
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OpenAI’s Sora video-generating model can render video games, too

OpenAI’s new — and first! — video-generating model, Sora, can pull off some genuinely impressive cinematographic feats. But the model’s even more capable than OpenAI initially made it out to be, at least judging by a technical paper published this evening. The paper, titled “Video generation models as world simulators,” co-authored by a host of […]
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FTC seeks to modify rule to combat deepfakes

Spurred by the growing threat of deepfakes, the FTC is seeking to modify an existing rule that bans the impersonation of businesses or government agencies to cover all consumers. The revised rule — depending on the final language, and the public comments that the FTC receives — might also make it unlawful for a GenAI […]
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Coinbase cites stablecoins, Base as key 2024 priorities after crushing Q4 estimates

After disclosing better-than-expected financial results in its fourth-quarter earnings report, U.S.-based Coinbase has big plans. The second-largest crypto exchange told its investors that it intends to lean heavily on its work with the popular USDC stablecoin this year, lever its recently launched layer-2 blockchain Base as a way to experiment with and improve blockchain utility […]
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I read comics on Apple’s Vision Pro . . . It was fine

Few joys in this cold world can match cracking open a new comic on a lazy Sunday morning. Nothing to do, nowhere to be — just you, a mug of coffee and some sequential art. Not much has fundamentally changed about the American comic book since publishers began collecting newspaper strips as bound volumes in […]
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This German nonprofit is building an open voice assistant that anyone can use

There have been many attempts at open source AI-powered voice assistants (see Rhasspy, Mycroft and Jasper, to name a few) — all established with the goal of creating privacy-preserving, offline experiences that don’t compromise on functionality. But development’s proven to be extraordinarily slow. That’s because, in addition to all the usual challenges attendant with open […]
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