Author: TechBrunch
Over the weekend, hackers targeted federated social networks such as Mastodon in a sustained spam attack organized on Discord and executed using the Discord application. However, Discord has not yet removed the server that facilitated the attack, and Mastodon community leaders have not been able to contact anyone within the company. “The attack was coordinated through Discord, and the software was distributed through Discord,” said the author, who regularly addresses issues of trust and safety for Fediverse, a network of decentralized social platforms built on the ActivityPub protocol. said Emelia Smith, a software engineer at “They were using a bot…
The tech-wide reckoning that began in 2022 and ran throughout into 2023 has continued into this year. And while 2024’s losses are not at that scale, they’re still significant, driven by big names like Pixar, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla and TikTok. It remains to be seen if this year’s layoff trends follow last year’s, in which layoffs slowed down in the summer, before cuts began ramping up yet again toward the winter. Momentum for a tech sector rebound remains slow to build, outside of bright spots within artificial intelligence and adjacent companies, resulting in tech companies continuing to cut back on…
Creative advertising agency McKinney has developed a quiz game called “Are You Blacker than ChatGPT?” To shed light on AI bias. This game tests an individual's knowledge of Black culture against what ChatGPT has been trained to know about the Black community. Ask questions like, “What does it mean when someone says, 'I don't really care about it right now?'” and “How would you react if you were invited to an event?” When I took the quiz, both ChatGPT and I answered the first quiz correctly. When someone says, “Don't worry too much about it,” it usually means going easy…
Hundreds of people in the artificial intelligence community have signed an open letter calling for strict regulation of AI-generated impersonations, or deepfakes. While this is unlikely to spur actual legislation (despite the House's new special committee), it will certainly serve as a bellwether for how experts lean on this controversial issue. It is. At the time of publication, the letter had been signed by more than 500 people involved in the AI field, stating, “Deepfakes pose a growing threat to society, and governments must impose obligations across the supply chain to stop the spread of deepfakes.'' “There must be,” he…
Christopher Plowman, CEO of meditation app Insight Timer, is not happy. He doesn't think teachers who leverage their app marketplaces to reach students should have to share 30% of their revenue (fees on in-app purchases) with Apple, and has not done so in the past. For 12 months, Apple agreed. After Apple relaxes rules around in-app donations in 2022, Insight Timer now has options to adjust its digital donation feature, allowing Insight Timer teachers to collect “tips” on user profiles and during live events. . Apple has reviewed the app and approved it for release on the App Store. Now…
Varaha is attracting investor interest as an end-to-end developer of carbon credits it generates in partnership with thousands of smallholder farmers who produce crops on over 700,000 acres of land in India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Kenya. are collecting. The voluntary carbon offset market is expected to reach $250 billion by 2050, up from $2 billion in 2020, according to estimates from Morgan Stanley. However, awareness of the financial and environmental benefits associated with carbon credits is low. In general, carbon offsetting occurs when an organization or business engages in activities that reduce its CO2 emissions, such as replacing fossil fuel-based…
When major cloud providers have excess computing power, they tend to discount it through programs like AWS and Azure's Spot Instances. After all, if the server is idle, it does not benefit the company. NodeShift takes this concept and provides a single API for accessing an independent data center operator's surplus compute, storage, and graphics accelerators, providing connectivity to low-cost distributed web services. By doing so, we aim to extend beyond the big cloud. It also provides a stronger warranty. Like Akash and Filecoin. NodeShift today announced that it has raised $3.2 million in a seed funding round led by…
Empowerly, an edtech startup specializing in college counseling and career guidance services, has raised $15 million in a recent funding round led by Conductive Ventures, the company announced today. The new funding will be used to grow the service, build AI-powered products, and develop its first mobile app, which is expected to launch in the U.S. by the end of 2024. Empowerly has raised $30 million to date. “The past year has been a difficult year for the entire startup ecosystem, with some calling it one of the worst funding environments in the past 10 years,” said co-founder Changxiao Xie.…
“We can't bring it to the surface. This is awful,” Huntress CEO said Security experts are A high-risk vulnerability in a widely used remote access tool is “easy and embarrassingly easy” to exploit, as the software's developer confirmed that malicious hackers are actively exploiting the flaw. he warned. This maximum severity vulnerability affects ConnectWise ScreenConnect (formerly ConnectWise Control), a popular remote access software that enables managed IT providers and technicians to provide real-time remote technical support to customer systems. give. The flaw, described as an authentication bypass vulnerability, could allow an attacker to remotely steal sensitive data or deploy malicious…
Threads may be about to get an even bigger boost from parent company Meta, at least in terms of sources of new content. The company has been spotted testing a cross-posting feature that would allow Facebook users to post to both platforms at the same time, using the same feature that was originally available for cross-posting from Facebook to Instagram. has been done. The company confirmed that limited testing has begun, but that testing is limited to iOS and does not include the EU. According to a Meta representative, the feature will allow users to share both text and link…