Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the more-efficient department: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the termination of multiple IT and consulting contracts with firms including Accenture, Deloitte, and Booz Allen Hamilton, describing them as "wasteful spending."
A Department of Defense memo indicates the cuts target the Defense Health Agency's consulting services contract and the Air Force's agreement with Accenture to "re-sell third-party Enterprise Cloud IT Services," services the government can "already fulfill directly with existing procurement resources."
The terminations also include 11 other contracts supporting "non-essential" activities like DEI programs, climate initiatives, and COVID-19 response efforts. The cuts represent $5.1 billion in spending and will yield nearly $4 billion in savings, according to Hegseth. The funds will be redirected toward "critical priorities to Revive the Warrior Ethos, Rebuild the Military, and Reestablish Deterrence," with Hegseth noting the money would better serve "healthcare for our warfighters and their families, instead of $500 an hour business process consultant."
Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the breaking-news department: China responded to President Trump's tariffs on Friday, raising its own tariffs on American goods to 125%, from 84%. The New York Times: The announcement by China's State Council came after Trump administration officials clarified on Thursday that China was now facing a minimum tariff rate of 145% on all exports to United States. China said its new tariffs will take effect on Saturday. China said it plans to ignore any further increases announced by Washington from here. Bloomberg: In a statement following China's retaliatory move, the Commerce Ministry said Washington's repeated use of excessively high tariffs has become little more than a numbers game -- economically meaningless and revealing its use of tariffs as a tool for bullying and coercion. "It's become a joke," the ministry said. CNN: The trade war between the world's two economic superpowers has tanked international markets and fueled fears of a global recession.
"There are no winners in a trade war, and going against the world will only lead to self-isolation," [Chinese leader] Xi Jinping told Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez in Beijing on Friday, according to state broadcaster CCTV.
"For over 70 years, China's development has relied on self-reliance and hard work -- never on handouts from others, and it is not afraid of any unjust suppression," Xi added.
Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the reality-check department: Some of the best AI models today still struggle to resolve software bugs that wouldn't trip up experienced devs. TechCrunch: A new study from Microsoft Research, Microsoft's R&D division, reveals that models, including Anthropic's Claude 3.7 Sonnet and OpenAI's o3-mini, fail to debug many issues in a software development benchmark called SWE-bench Lite. The results are a sobering reminder that, despite bold pronouncements from companies like OpenAI, AI is still no match for human experts in domains such as coding.
The study's co-authors tested nine different models as the backbone for a "single prompt-based agent" that had access to a number of debugging tools, including a Python debugger. They tasked this agent with solving a curated set of 300 software debugging tasks from SWE-bench Lite.
According to the co-authors, even when equipped with stronger and more recent models, their agent rarely completed more than half of the debugging tasks successfully. Claude 3.7 Sonnet had the highest average success rate (48.4%), followed by OpenAI's o1 (30.2%), and o3-mini (22.1%).
Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the how-about-that department: Albert Saniger, the founder and former CEO of Nate, an AI shopping app that promised a "universal" checkout experience, was charged with defrauding investors on Wednesday, according to a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice. From a report: Founded in 2018, Nate raised over $50 million from investors like Coatue and Forerunner Ventures, most recently raising a $38 million Series A in 2021 led by Renegade Partners. Nate said its app's users could buy from any e-commerce site with a single click, thanks to AI. In reality, however, Nate relied heavily on hundreds of human contractors in a call center in the Philippines to manually complete those purchases, the DOJ's Southern District of New York alleges.
Saniger raised millions in venture funding by claiming that Nate was able to transact online "without human intervention," except for edge cases where the AI failed to complete a transaction. But despite Nate acquiring some AI technology and hiring data scientists, its app's actual automation rate was effectively 0%, the DOJ claims.
Posted by from MMO Champion
Additional Resurrections for Hardcore Deaths due to DDoS - April 10
Originally Posted by Blizzard
(
Blue Tracker)
Over the last day, we have identified and resurrected characters on the Doomhowl realm who died due to circumstances caused by distributed denial-of-service attacks on April 3, 4, and 7. We are done with these restorations, and affected players should be able to select the ghost character on the Doomhowl realm and log into it to complete the process.
Please be reminded:
If we decide to restore characters lost to a DDoS attack, we will only restore characters that remain on their Hardcore realm. A character cannot be restored if the character was transferred to another realm.
Blizzard Customer Support cannot assist with issues related to characters who have died on Hardcore realms.
Please do not contact Blizzard Customer Support with any inquiries regarding character deaths on Hardcore realms.
Thank you very much!
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