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KAUST researchers have found a way to significantly increase the speed of training. Large machine learning models can be trained significantly faster by observing how frequently zero results are produced in distributed machine learning that use large training datasets.AI models develop their “intelligence” by being trained on datasets that have been labelled to tell the model how to differentiate between different inputs and then respond accordingly. The more labelled data that goes in, the better the model becomes at performing whatever task it has been assigned to do. For complex deep learning applications, such as self-driving vehicles, this requires enormous...

The Dirty Ticking Time Bomb of Computing is About to Come Out!The Disk Manufacturers all know it. The Operating System producers have all known it. But for decades the Dirty Ticking Time Bomb of Computing is about to come out.It does not matter whether you are on a Laptop, Desktop, Smartphone or even a mainframe, the Ticking Time Bomb is on your system and you probably never knew it.It is under the heading of SPARES. Specifically when your drive runs out of them.And a couple of areas on your system disk. Sector 0. If sector 0 is bad, typically it's...

There is a lot of attention being paid to continuously updating servers to patch security vulnerabilities on Linux servers running in data centers – a basic step underpinning technology infrastructure in every industry. Yet, staff resources to deal with maintaining servers are not sufficient to meet the workload, said 55% of respondents in a worldwide survey by CloudLinux. Dealing with insufficient staff resources with automationThe survey finds 76% are deploying automated patching procedures and that live patching to fix vulnerabilities is commonly used (47%) to avoid downtime that is normally associated with patching. This is not surprising given the volume...

There are hundreds of Linux distributions. Some are for general purpose usage, while some are specifically tailored for education, robotics, hacking, gaming and what not.You’ll notice that most of them originate from Debian/Ubuntu, Arch and Red Hat/Fedora. If you like distrohopping and experiment with a range of distributions, you may soon get ‘bored’ out of it. Most Linux distributions would feel too similar after a point and apart from a few visual changes here and there, you won’t get a different experience.Does that sound familiar? If yes, let me list some advanced, independent, Linux distributions to test your expertise.Advanced Linux...

Although Chinese laws forbid kids to play video games at night, minors have been using different tricks to bypass these restrictions. However, they probably won’t be able to do it anymore with the deployment of Tencent’s new facial recognition system. According to the Chinese website Sixth Tone, Tencent has officially launched its controversial facial recognition system on July 6. The initiative, which was previously dubbed “Midnight Patrol,” uses AI and big data to detect kids who try to bypass the restrictions. “We will conduct a face screening for accounts registered with real names and that have played for a certain...

I tried every trick known to me to speed up my Dell laptop, from defragmenting hard drive to updating drivers. Nothing helped.

Ten years ago, only premium cars contained 100 microprocessor-based electronic control units (ECUs) networked throughout the body of a car, executing 100 million lines of code or more. Today, high-end cars like the BMW 7-series with advanced technology like advanced driver-assist systems (ADAS) may contain 150 ECUs or more, while pick-up trucks like Ford’s F-150 top 150 million lines of code. Even low-end vehicles are quickly approaching 100 ECUs and 100 million of lines of code as more features that were once considered luxury options, such as adaptive cruise control and automatic emergency braking, are becoming standard. Additional safety features...

At least 60 members of Congress from both parties have been unable to access data for weeks in the latest ransomware attack to strike the United States. The target was iConstituent, a tech vendor that provides constituent outreach services to dozens of House offices, including a newsletter service that allows lawmakers to communicate with residents in their districts and a service to track constituent casework. It's the latest cyber attack after a series of hacks against the US executive branch and American companies have left many institutions feeling vulnerable and the Biden administration struggling to deal with the situation. The...

The Colonial Pipeline is reportedly facing more issues. A Reuters reporter wrote the company is "experiencing network issues impacting customers' ability to enter and update nominations." "Our internal IT department is aware of the issue and working to resolve as quickly as possible," Reuters' Devika Krishna Kumar quoted the company as saying on her Twitter account on Friday. Colonial also reported said communication from its systems to Transport4 may also be affected. Transport4 is a business utility used by the pipeline industry to enter, manage and track shipments. Colonial is the largest pipeline system for refined oil products in the...

RISC-V is a processor architecture and instruction set developed at UC Berkeley. It's attracted huge interest from everyone from startups to tech giants because it's entirely free and open source. Most current processors come with license agreements and are proprietary intellectual property, but anyone can manufacture a RISC-V chip, or design their own new processor. Big companies like Western Digital are already announcing a switch to RISC-V, and others like Google and Nvidia have partnered with them.There's a lot of ways this project could fail, but it also has the potential to make custom processor design available to a lot...

SiFive, a company established by researchers who invented the RISC-V instruction set architecture in the University of California Berkeley several years ago, has this week announced two platforms which could be used to design semi-custom SoCs based on RISC-V cores. SiFive is the world’s first and yet the only company developing chips featuring the RISC-V ISA and it already has initial customers interested in designing SoCs for machine learning, storage, embedded, IoT and wearable applications. SiFive: World’s First Developer of Commercial RISC-V Chips RISC-V is an open-source microprocessor architecture developed by researchers in the Computer Science Division at UC Berkeley and...

Chinese security outfit Qihoo 360 Netlab on Wednesday said it has identified Linux backdoor malware that has remained undetected for a number of years.The firm said its bot monitoring system spotted on March 25 a suspicious ELF program that interacted with four command-and-control (C2) domains over the TCP HTTPS port 443 even though the protocol used isn't actually TLS/SSL."A close look at the sample revealed it to be a backdoor targeting Linux X64 systems, a family that has been around for at least three years," Netlab researchers Alex Turing and Hui Wang said in an advisory.An MD5 signature for the...

There can be no doubt that the drive-by media are pure propagandists. "Orange Man Bad" was just the latest installment in the slander campaign against patriots by those who have mostly achieved little, built little, and hate those who actually work to build better lives. Their campaign began as early as Woodrow Wilson's tenure, with early (1913) moves to concentrate power in D.C. through the income tax and in big banks with the Federal Reserve.This profound opposition became obvious after the departure of Dwight Eisenhower. With each succeeding Republican, new language was employed. Ronald Reagan was demeaned as an "amiable...

In January, when every major Silicon Valley tech company permanently banned the President of the United States from its platform, there was a backlash around the world. One after another, government and party leaders—many of them ideologically opposed to the policies of President Trump—raised their voices against the power and arrogance of the American tech giants. These included the President of Mexico, the Chancellor of Germany, the government of Poland, ministers in the French and Australian governments, the neoliberal center-right bloc in the European Parliament, the national populist bloc in the European Parliament, the leader of the Russian opposition (who...

The security holes...leave the door open to industrial-scale cyber espionage, allowing malicious actors to steal emails virtually at will from vulnerable servers. Tens of thousands of organizations have already been compromised,...the sluggish pace of many customers’ updates...means the field remains at least partially open to hackers of all stripes...Intriguingly, several of the groups appeared to know about the vulnerability before it was announced by Microsoft on March 2.

Keep Sharing Petition Shut Down Facebook And Twitter And Big Tech For Threatening Our Democracy Link With Friends, Family, And All Other Conservative Platforms! Thank You! https://www.change.org/p/shut-down-facebook-and-twitter-and-big-tech-for-threatening-our-democracy-and-freedom-of-speech-petition-shut-down-facebook-and-twitter-and-big-tech-for-threatening-our-democracy

In 2010, the U.S. Department of Defense found thousands of its computer servers sending military network data to China — the result of code hidden in chips that handled the machines’ startup process. In 2014, Intel Corp. discovered that an elite Chinese hacking group breached its network through a single server that downloaded malware from a supplier’s update site. And in 2015, the Federal Bureau of Investigation warned multiple companies that Chinese operatives had concealed an extra chip loaded with backdoor code in one manufacturer's servers.

I have a home network consisting of my main router (wifiMain) and 2 additional routers connected as access points (WifiHome & WifiOffice). Both access points are wired into the main router. However, I have the access points named with a separate name (WifiHome & WifiOffice). When I travel to different parts of my house I have to manually connect to the one with the strongest signal. If I name all 3 of them the same, will I stay connected without having to reconnect to the appropriate one? In other words, will I stay connected regardless of where I am in...

A Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor and researcher who has received almost $20 million from the Department of Energy was arrested Thursday after he allegedly failed to disclose ties to the People’s Republic of China. Mechanical engineering professor Gang Chen faces charges of wire fraud, failing to file a foreign bank account report, and making a false statement in a tax return, the U.S. attorney’s office in Boston revealed Thursday.

I've been in the technology industry for over twenty years and I've seen fads come and go. When I got started in 2000 I oversaw the migration of data from old tape drives to modern 1GB hard drives. Then at my job I oversaw the end of the mainframe and the ascendancy of the PC and server as the new form of decentralized network infrastructure. From 2001 through to around 2010 the internet and internet access were present in the government agency I work for but most people were prohibited from using it. And if they did their access was...