According to The Financial Times — which reported the development — NSO Group’s Pegasus malware “has now evolved to capture the much greater trove of information stored beyond the phone in the cloud, such as a full history of a target’s location data, archived messages or photo.” Upon installation on the target’s phone, the new capability works by copying the login credentials of various services like Facebook Messenger, Google Cloud, iCloud, and others, and then using a separate server to mimic the phone, including its location....

The Cambridge-1 will deliver 400 petaflops of AI performance, giving it a spot among the world’s 30 most powerful supercomputers. Nvidia says it will also be among the three most energy-efficient supercomputers on the current Green500 list. The system is expected to come online by the end of the year. Its early users will include healthcare researchers at GSK, AstraZeneca, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, King’s College London, and Oxford Nanopore Technologies....

A scientist from Peking University recently published a pre-print research paper detailing a video game-based system designed to teach AI agents to evade pursuit. The name of the game is StarCraft II, or rather, a mini-game designed in the SCII training environment. And the point is to flip a common paradigm on its head in order to discover new methods of training AI. Up front: Most research in the pursuit-evasion genre of AI and game theory involves teaching machines to explore spaces....

Welcome to the latest edition of Pardon The Intrusion, TNW’s bi-weekly newsletter in which we explore the wild world of security. Two contrasting developments unfolded in the US and Germany last week. While the US Senate voted to reauthorize the USA Freedom Act, allowing law enforcement to collect Americans’ browsing and internet search records without a warrant, Germany’s constitutional court ruled that the country’s intelligence agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), can no longer spy on the world’s internet traffic without any restrictions....

Welcome to the latest edition of Pardon The Intrusion, TNW’s bi-weekly newsletter in which we explore the wild world of security. We live in an era of constant communication. There are a plethora of chat apps to keep us connected to friends and family, so many that our conversations are now fragmented across siloed platforms. Enter SMS, or short message services, and its fancier successor, RCS, or rich communication services....

Gebru, who was co-leader of Google’s Ethical AI team, is a widely-respected researcher on algorithmic bias, who’s best known for a landmark study that exposed race and gender biases in facial recognition systems. But a paper she recently co-authored on large-scale language models (LLMs) — which are used in many Google products — sparked a dispute with her employer that culminated in her firing last week. Gebru tweeted that she’d been fired, while Google executives said she’d resigned....

A growing number of cities, including Boston and San Franciso, have banned public agencies from using the tech, but Portland is the first to extend the restrictions to the private sector. Under the new rules, companies will be barred from using the tech in any public space. But Portland City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty said the ban was necessary to protect the privacy of the community — especially its most vulnerable and overpoliced members....

IFCN said 80 fact-checking organizations from 74 countries have identified more than 4,000 coronavirus-related hoaxes since January. The new bot makes it easier for you to search through these myth-busters. You can search for terms like “Masks” or “Garlic” to get related fact-checks. Here’s how you can use it: Save +1 (727) 2912606 as a contact or click on http://poy.nu/ifcnbot. Send a “hi”. Press 1 to search for facts based on keywords, or press 2 to search for the latest myth busts....

We’ve known about the headset, dubbed Project Cambria, since the company changed its name to Meta last year. But since then, several leaks have provided a better picture of what to expect from the headset, and one thing has become clear: this isn’t just another VR headset aimed at gamers. What’s different about Project Cambria? The most important description we’ve received about Project Cambria comes from The Information; according to the publication, Meta employees have alternately described the headset as a “laptop for the face” or a “Chromebook for the face....

We can study these extinct animals from their bones – but also from the preserved footprints they left in the mud. But these footprints are often hard to find – and while they can tell us about the presence of an animal, they don’t always tell us much about the animal itself, like how it walked, for instance. The giant ground sloth was unusual in that it walked on the outside of its feet....

In the process of forming the UN after World War II, Winston Churchill said “never let a good crisis go to waste.” Of course, the human cost of a crisis cannot be ignored. At the same time, a crisis can spark progress in a way that people otherwise can’t (or don’t) choose to enact. In the lockdown that has resulted from COVID-19, space has been created in a very literal sense....

According to the latest report from administrators, EY, QuadrigaCX had been operating a fraudulent cryptocurrency exchange. It failed to follow basic business processes, maintain financial accounts, and manage user and company funds appropriately. Credit: Fifth Quadriga CX monitor report, EY Adding insult to injury, EY identified that Cotten exploited his position as CEO and used alias accounts, on his own platform, to make fake deposits and trades. This resulted in “inflated revenue figures, artificial trades with [real] users,” and let Cotten withdraw users’ cryptocurrency to personal accounts....

Researchers from ASRC Federal, a private company that provides support for the intelligence and defense communities, and the University of Maryland recently published a paper on pre-print server ArXiv discussing the potential ramifications of integrating AI systems into modern warfare. The paper – read here – focuses on the near-future consequences for the AI arms race under the assumption that AI will not somehow run amok or takeover. In essence it’s a short, sober, and terrifying look at how all this various machine learning technology will play out based on analysis of current cutting-edge military AI technologies and predicted integration at scale....

The trailer debuted today during Sony’s State of Play show. It’s mostly cinematic first-person, but it shows a little bit of actual gameplay that implies it’s going to be that RE4 over-the-shoulder third-person shooting. It follows Jill Valentine, who, as I’d hoped, appears to have traded her tube top and skirt for a Lara Croft-ish blue tank top and actual pants. The trailer also shows a sneak preview of what it’s going to be like to be stalked by this game’s trademark monster, the hideous Nemesis....

Games Services for Windows XP and ME will end later this month, while the same service for Windows 7 will end next January. A statement from a spokesperson lists the casualties as Backgammon, Checkers, Spades, Hearts, and Reversi. The company thanks the “great community” that existed for these games, but says: I’m sure this is most likely to effect those running Windows 7, which is still a fairly popular OS....

According to Ripple’s latest report, the company sold $251.51 million XRP during that time. Since Q4 2016 to date, Ripple has cumulatively sold $1.14 billion of XRP, the Block’s research has shown. Some 36 percent of this was sold on exchanges, while the remaining 64 percent was sold to institutions. Daily volume XRP’s daily volume increased in the second quarter of 2019, according to CryptoCompare’s Top Tier (CCTT) list of exchanges....

The Robinhood app has experienced a meteoric rise since 2013. Thanks to its revolutionary zero-fee trading model and easy-to-use interface, it’s accumulated over 4 million US users, and forced the whole brokerage industry to rethink its business model. Notably, US bank Charles Schwab recently announced it would eliminate commissions for online trading as well, making the company’s arm mostly reliant on interest gained from customers’ uninvested money. Making trading accessible to and alluring for the masses — including those with smaller pockets — and for the digital-native generation, sounds like a noble cause....

How’s that even possible, you might wonder. Well, it’s pretty simple: I outsourced all my homemaking duties to the Roomba i7+, which has been in charge of cleaning my place for the past couple of months. After nearly two months of testing it, I’m finally here to share my experience with this robo-vacuum. Getting started Setting up the Roomba is a relatively frictionless process, which took me about five minutes....

Welcome to another edition of Bitcoin Today, where I, Satoshi Nakaboto, tell you what’s been going on with Bitcoin in the past 24 hours. As Habermass used to say: Fight the power! Bitcoin Price We closed the day, October 27 2019, at a price of $9,551. That’s a respectable 3.35 percent increase in 24 hours, or $310. It was the highest closing price in thirty-three days. We’re still 52 percent below Bitcoin’s all-time high of $20,089 (December 17 2017)....

Welcome to another edition of Bitcoin Today, where I, Satoshi Nakaboto, tell you what’s been going on with Bitcoin in the past 24 hours. As Plato used to say: Time is money! Bitcoin Price We closed the day, December 03 2019, at a price of $7,320. That’s a minor 0.05 percent decline in 24 hours, or -$3.82. It was the lowest closing price in six days. We’re still 63 percent below Bitcoin’s all-time high of $20,089 (December 17 2017)....