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Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, stayed at a rental home in New Orleans at the end of October and again in November, just weeks prior to his attack on Bourbon Street that killed 14 people. He wore the smart glasses to record video as he rode a bicycle through the French Quarter during that trip, FBI Special Agent in Charge Lyonel Myrthil said on Sunday. “Meta glasses appear to look like regular glasses, but they allow a user to record videos and photos hand-free,” Myrthil said. “They also allow the user to potentially livestream through their video.” Jabbar wore the glasses during...

Artificial intelligence: authentic scams. AI tools are being maliciously used to send “hyper-personalized emails” that are so sophisticated victims can’t identify that they’re fraudulent. According to the Financial Times, AI bots are compiling information about unsuspecting email users by analyzing their “social media activity to determine what topics they may be most likely to respond to.” Scam emails are subsequently sent to the users that appear as if they’re composed by family and friends. Because of the personal nature of the email, the recipient is unable to identify that it is actually nefarious. **SNIP** While many savvy internet users now...

A two-hour conversation with an artificial intelligence (AI) model is all it takes to make an accurate replica of someone's personality, researchers have discovered. In a new study published Nov. 15 to the preprint database arXiv, researchers from Google and Stanford University created "simulation agents" — essentially, AI replicas — of 1,052 individuals based on two-hour interviews with each participant. These interviews were used to train a generative AI model designed to mimic human behavior. ... To create the simulation agents, the researchers conducted in-depth interviews that covered participants' life stories, values and opinions on societal issues. This enabled the...

Washington state Democrats appeared to have accidentally emailed their sweeping revenue plans and internal talking points on tax hikes to the entirety of the upper chamber’s members in Olympia, Fox News has learned. Property tax hikes and a new double-digit tax on firearms are among proposals Washington state Democrats are considering, according to materials originally disseminated to all members by Washington Senate Deputy Floor Leader Noel Frame, D-Seattle, in late December and later obtained by Fox News Digital. A document titled “2025 Revenue Options” and a PowerPoint presentation describing how to talk to constituents in defense of the plan were...

by Edward Madziwa, Program Assistant for the Security and Technology Program at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research The loss of life is an undeniable and tragic reality affecting all parties to armed conflicts raging across the world. Thousands of unidentified victims are left in a state of decomposition. In some instances, corpses are mutilated, desecrated, abandoned without any funeral rites, or not afforded decent burials. International humanitarian law (IHL) seeks to limit the means and methods of warfare and to protect war victims. Parties to armed conflicts are bound to collect and search for the dead, to prevent...

Consciousness defines what it means to be human, yet its mechanisms remain elusive. Scientists know that anesthetics can “turn off” consciousness, but how they achieve this is still unclear. Two dominant theories attempt to explain consciousness: the Integrated Information Theory (IIT), which posits that consciousness arises from the integration of information, and the Global Workspace Theory (GWT), which suggests it emerges from the exchange of information across different parts of the brain. In 1989, British mathematician and Nobel laureate Roger Penrose proposed an unconventional hypothesis linking consciousness to quantum entanglement. He argued that the human mind could solve problems that...

Disclaimer: The title of this thread is the title of the video at youtube. I don't necessarily think it will change your life. I don't like Google and have never used Gemini. That said, there were some things in the video about this new rendition of Gemini that were quite impressive. The summary below was provided by ChatGPT in html (so I could just insert it into the thread).Summary of the Gemini 2.0 Video TranscriptThe video introduces Gemini 2.0, a cutting-edge AI assistant developed by Google, highlighting its features, applications, and real-world use cases.Key Features of Gemini 2.0:Multimodal Capabilities: Combines...

“We’ve come such a long way,” she says in a welcome speech. “Looking at the guest list for today, 10% of you in the room are LTK millionaires.” Everyone swivels their heads in search of these mystery super earners. A man next to me, clad entirely in black, whispers, “Damn, let me take off my sunglasses and take a look around.” LTK has revolutionized the online shopping experience with what Box describes as a win-win-win model. The company allows influencers to post links to products they’re wearing, carrying, and decorating with on the LTK platform, which their followers can access...

The first successful demonstration of quantum teleportation over a fiber optic cable has been achieved, according to groundbreaking new research. The breakthrough, made by engineers at Northwestern University and funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE), presents new potentials in the realm of quantum communication by allowing it to be combined with existing cables used for providing Internet. This innovative approach reduces the requirement for additional infrastructure needed for quantum computing or quantum sensing technologies. Previously thought to be impossible, the Northwestern team responsible for the breakthrough says their work showcases the next stage in leveraging a single fiber...

Photo of the experimental setup to couple MWs to N- 𝑉⁢s using grape dimers. A stripped optical fiber with N- 𝑉 spins, cantilevered from a rod, lies between two grapes. The grapes were positioned on a platform with a vertical straight copper wire, equidistant from each grape. Credit: Fawaz, Nair, Volz Scientists at Macquarie University have discovered a novel way to enhance quantum sensor performance using ordinary grapes. By utilizing the water content and specific size of grapes, they created strong magnetic field hotspots that improve the efficiency of microwave-based quantum sensing. Supermarket Grapes and Quantum Sensors Researchers at Macquarie...

My friend @JoshuaSteinman is dropping bombshells about H-1B visas, and I’ve got a story to add. tl;dr – It’s a cultural problem. I spent years in India, working directly for one of the country’s wealthiest individuals. He recruited me for my computer skills to lead some of the most ambitious, technically challenging projects ever attempted. We broke world records and unlocked trillions in wealth. My boss? He now lives in a skyscraper in Mumbai. Toward the end of the project, he told me his best engineers were leaving for Silicon Valley, lured by unbelievable salaries. So, on his recommendation, I...

A now-banned FReeper used to do this every year, these were always fun.

For the last week the only thing anyone on Twitter – and, by extension, the rest of the Internet – has been talking about is the H1B visa. The fun started when Sriram Krishnan, brought on by the incoming Trump administration as an Artificial Intelligence policy advisor, mused about lifting country caps on the widely reviled H1B visa. This elicited enthusiastic support from a chorus of tech CEOs, who insisted that there is a severe shortage of skilled engineers in the United States and, presumably, the West more generally, which can only be met by poaching the ‘best and brightest’...

Video In 2018, Rob Joyce, then Donald Trump's White House Cybersecurity Coordinator, gave a surprise talk at the legendary hacking conference Shmoocon about his hobby. As the former head of the NSA's Tailored Access Operations squad – the people who crack systems and gather intelligence for the US government – Joyce was also the friendly public face of the agency. The agency didn't come out of the Edward Snowden affair with a great reputation when the ex-NSA contractor-turned-whistleblower made public the existence of the NSA data collection programs back in June 2013. Many in the security industry were peeved at...

s this Georgia, or Jersey? A family of angry masons wielding baseball bats, sticks and a a lever-action rifle allegedly launched a Sopranos-style assault on a rival paving company outside Macon, Georgia when they saw the compeitor doing a job near one of their homes. Cops collared six members of the Buckland family Dec. 19 after the bloody, broad-daylight beatdown on guys from rival EH Paving at a Monroe County job site, according to WMAZ. “Like something out of ‘The Sopranos,’” Monroe County Sheriff Brad Freeman told the outlet. The Buckland boys thought EH Paving was being “disrespectful” by working...

Mumbai: The fierce row over Indian immigrants and H-1B visas that’s roiling Donald Trump’s team even before he takes office misses the point and isn’t borne out by data, said Aravind Srinivas, founder of Perplexity AI. Illegal immigration is the real issue, said the IIT graduate who’s worked at DeepMind and OpenAI, and is himself in the US on an H-1B visa. “Clearly, it surprised everybody online and it's not exactly data driven--the claims that the H-1B or Indian immigrants are taking away the jobs of laid-off American tech workers,” he told ET in an interview. “Indians are also being...

As the year winds down, it’s that time again when the internet is flooded with articles declaring which Linux distribution was the best of the year—this time, for 2024.These pieces can be fun to read, but let’s be honest: almost no one fully agrees with the opinions they present. If I dare say, even the authors themselves might not be entirely convinced by the conclusions they’ve written.The reason is simple: there has never been—and never will be—a single “best Linux distribution.” It all comes down to one essential question: what is the specific use case for a given distribution?I’m trying...

Merry Christmas, dear readers! It’s that magical time of year when we pause to reflect on the past and celebrate the moments that made this year special.As a media covering the latest from the Linux and FOSS ecosystem, we’ve kept you updated with the most important developments in this vibrant field. Now, as 2024 comes to a close, let’s take a moment to look back at the highlights that defined this year.2024 in Review: Key Moments in Linux and FOSSThis year has brought plenty of exciting developments in the Linux and open-source world—most of them overwhelmingly positive. Of course, not...

The Silicon Valley immigration priority was not the topic I thought would explode and fracture the tenuous MAGA alignment with the New Big Tech group represented by Elon Musk and his billionaire network. However, we learn more every day. This is a jaw-dropping moment to watch unfold as a very influential sector of the political discourse begins a full-frontal attack against those who are pointing out how the tech community abuse H1B visas to replace American workers. In the background, of course, is the context of widespread immigration policy fraud being one of the priorities for the average Trump supporter....

Certain 2024 election results in California took many by surprise. The Golden State's residents, for example, rejected another term for progressive Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón, backed by billionaire George Soros. They also overwhelmingly voted — at more than 70% — in favor of Proposition 36, the Homelessness, Drug Addiction and Theft Reduction Act, which seeks to undo portions of Proposition 47 from 2014 by increasing penalties for some crimes. The proposition, which took effect Dec. 18, will allow felony charges to be filed against those possessing certain drugs and those who commit thefts under $950. Additionally, people...