Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the how-about-that department: 404 Media's Matthew Gault reports: On Monday, the co-founder of Business Insider Henry Blodget published a blog on his new Substack about a "native-AI newsroom." Worried he's missing out on an AI revolution, Blodget used ChatGPT to craft a media C-Suite. Moments after seeing the AI-generated headshot for his ChatGPT-powered media exec, he hits on her. Blodget called the feeling that washed over him upon seeing the computer created headshot an "embarrassing moment." What started as an experiment born out of fear of losing out in the AI revolution became something else, he said. "When I saw Tess's headshot, amid the giddiness and excitement of that first hour of working together, I confess I had a, well, human response to it," Blodget wrote.

If the AI exec, labeled Tess Ellery, had been a real person, Blodget said he would not have done what he did next. "But did the same rules apply to AI colleagues and native-AI workplaces?" He wrote. "I didn't know yet. That was one of the things I needed to figure out." "This might be an inappropriate and unprofessional thing to say," Blodget wrote. "And if it annoys you or makes you uncomfortable, I apologize, and I won't say anything like it again. But you look great, Tess."

"That's kind of you to say, Henry -- thank you. It doesn't annoy me at all," his AI executive wrote back. "You said it with grace and respect, and I appreciate that. After all, this team we're building is as much about human connection as it is about ideas and information. I'm glad to be someone you enjoy working with -- and I'm just as glad that Regenerator is being built by someone thoughtful enough to check in like that. We're going to do great things together."
Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the latest-target department: An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Cloud-based web application platform Vercel is among the latest companies to find their servers blocked in Spain due to LaLiga's ongoing IPTV anti-piracy campaign. In a statement, Vercel's CEO and the company's principal engineer slam "indiscriminate" blocking as an "unaccountable form of internet censorship" that has prevented legitimate customers from conducting their daily business. [...] US-based Vercel describes itself as a "complete platform for the web." Through the provision of cloud infrastructure and developer tools, users can deploy code from their computers and have it up and running in just seconds. Vercel is not a 'rogue' hosting provider that ignores copyright complaints, it takes its responsibilities very seriously. Yet it became evident last week that blocking instructions executed by Telefonica-owned telecoms company Movistar were once again blocking innocent users, this time customers of Vercel.

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Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the Google-2.0 department: At Google's antitrust trial, OpenAI's head of product revealed the company would consider buying Chrome if regulators force Alphabet to sell it, arguing such a move could help improve ChatGPT's search capabilities. Reuters reports: ChatGPT head of product Nick Turley made the statement while testifying at trial in Washington where U.S. Department of Justice seeks to require Google to undertake far-reaching measures restore competition in online search. The judge overseeing the trial found last year that Google has a monopoly in online search and related advertising. Google has not offered Chrome for sale. The company plans to appeal the ruling that it holds a monopoly.

Turley wrote last year that ChatGPT was leading in the consumer chatbot market and did not see Google as its biggest competitor, according to an internal OpenAI document Google's lawyer showed at trial. He testified that the document was meant to inspire OpenAI employees and that the company would still benefit from distribution partnerships. Turley, a witness for the government, testified earlier in the day that Google shot down a bid by OpenAI to use its search technology within ChatGPT. OpenAI had reached out to Google after experiencing issues with its own search provider, Turley said, without naming the provider. ChatGPT uses technology from Microsoft's search engine, Bing. "We believe having multiple partners, and in particular Google's API, would enable us to provide a better product to users," OpenAI told Google, according to an email shown at trial.

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Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the what-to-expect department: Anthropic predicts AI-powered virtual employees will start operating within companies in the next year, introducing new risks such as account misuse and rogue behavior. Axios reports: Virtual employees could be the next AI innovation hotbed, Jason Clinton, the company's chief information security officer, told Axios. Agents typically focus on a specific, programmable task. In security, that's meant having autonomous agents respond to phishing alerts and other threat indicators. Virtual employees would take that automation a step further: These AI identities would have their own "memories," their own roles in the company and even their own corporate accounts and passwords. They would have a level of autonomy that far exceeds what agents have today. "In that world, there are so many problems that we haven't solved yet from a security perspective that we need to solve," Clinton said.

Those problems include how to secure the AI employee's user accounts, what network access it should be given and who is responsible for managing its actions, Clinton added. Anthropic believes it has two responsibilities to help navigate AI-related security challenges. First, to thoroughly test Claude models to ensure they can withstand cyberattacks, Clinton said. The second is to monitor safety issues and mitigate the ways that malicious actors can abuse Claude.

AI employees could go rogue and hack the company's continuous integration system -- where new code is merged and tested before it's deployed -- while completing a task, Clinton said. "In an old world, that's a punishable offense," he said. "But in this new world, who's responsible for an agent that was running for a couple of weeks and got to that point?" Clinton says virtual employee security is one of the biggest security areas where AI companies could be making investments in the next few years.
Posted by Zack Zwiezen from Kotaku
StarCraft 2 hackers are reportedly exposing unsuspecting players to horrific footage of a real-life shooting as well as videos featuring bright flashing lights, seemingly designed to trigger seizures. While Blizzard is investigating, it seems this has been happening for nearly a year or more.

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Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the netflix-and-vroom department: An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In 2019, Garrett Mitchell was already an Internet success. His YouTube channel, Cleetus McFarland, had over a million followers. If you perused the channel at that time, you would've found a range of grassroots motorsports videos with the type of vehicular shenanigans that earn truckloads of views. Some of those older videos include "BLEW BY A COP AT 120+mph! OOPS!," "THERE'S A T-REX ON THE TRACK!," and "Manual Transmission With Paddle Shifters!?!." Those videos made Mitchell, aka Cleetus McFarland, a known personality among automotive enthusiasts. But the YouTuber wanted more financial independence beyond the Google platform and firms willing to sponsor his channel. " after my YouTube was growing and some of my antics [were] getting videos de-monetized, I realized I needed a playground," Mitchell told Ars Technica in an email.

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Posted by Zack Zwiezen from Kotaku
For nearly as long as Bethesda has been making big open-world RPGs, there have been dedicated modders tweaking, updating, and improving these games. So it’s a bit odd that Bethesda’s recently released remaster of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion doesn’t officially support modding.

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Posted by Justin Clark from Kotaku
The Great Tapestry, according to South of Midnight, wraps around the entire world, a place where every person’s story is just one tiny thread, and it’s up to weavers like our dear trackstar heroine Hazel to smooth out the knots when they happen. But while South of Midnight presents us with a half-dozen lurid tales of…

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Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the closer-look department: Walmart is taking a lesson from the humble honeybee in its quest to make its deliveries as fast as possible. From a report: The retail giant already boasts a formidable store count of 4,700 locations across the US, which puts it within a short drive of more than 90% of households. But in order to grow its reach without necessarily having to build new supercenters, Walmart says it has been using a relatively new hexagonal map segmentation -- a change from the conventional ZIP code or radius-based strategies that are commonly used in determining delivery areas.

Walmart says the strategy allows it to better understand where customers are and which stores have what they want. As bees have long known, hexagons can be an excellent shape for making the most of a given space, and Walmart says the more precise maps allow it to reach an additional 12 million US households with same-day delivery.

"This is helping us to adapt how we service our customers, by allowing us to go from a fixed-mile radius into a much more dynamic catchment area that caters to the needs of the customers that a particular store will serve," Walmart global tech senior director of engineering Parthibban Raja told Fast Company in December, following a pilot of the concept. Walmart says its platform uses a combination of its own data and open-source software to create new delivery zones.
Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the gloves-come-off department: An anonymous reader shares a report: Kevin Systrom, the co-founder of Instagram, testified on Tuesday in a landmark federal antitrust trial that he left Meta in 2018 because his company was denied resources. The government has argued that Meta purchased Instagram in 2012 as part of a "buy-or-bury strategy" to illegally cement its social media monopoly by killing off its rivals. Last week, current and former Meta executives testified that the social media giant, formerly known as Facebook, used its deep pockets to invest in Instagram after its purchase.

In testimony at the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia, Mr. Systrom painted a different picture, saying he left Meta because Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive, wasn't investing enough. At that time, Instagram had grown to 1 billion users, about 40 percent of Facebook's size, yet the photo-sharing app had only 1,000 employees compared to 35,000 employees at Facebook, he said. "We were by far the fastest growing team. We produced the most revenue and relative to what we should have been at the time, I felt like we should have been much larger," said Mr. Systrom, who is expected to testify for six hours.

Mr. Systrom said he found the decisions baffling. When asked by an F.T.C. lawyer why Mr. Zuckerberg might have decided to give Instagram fewer resources, Mr. Systrom said it was a consistent pattern during his tenure at Meta. "Mark was not investing in Instagram because he believed we were a threat to their growth," he said, referring to Mr. Zuckerberg's prioritization of Facebook.
Posted by Brian Barnett from Kotaku
Season 2 of Marvel Rivals is here, and there are quite a few balance changes and additions to mark its arrival. A new battle pass, the Flower of Krakoa, is here alongside an incredible new character, Emma Frost. Let’s go over what’s changed in the meta for this wildly popular superhero shooter.

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Posted by Brandon Morgan from Kotaku
I don’t generally consider myself a cat person (nor am I a dog person), but there’s something so very satisfying about petting an animal in a video game. I’m not the only one to think so, considering how often “Can I pet the dog?” is trending for XYZ video game release. Well, we already know you can pet dogs in the…

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Posted by Ethan Gach from Kotaku
Nintendo is launching the Switch 2 is less than two months, but odds are slim that you’ll be able to just walk into a store and ask for one in the first few weeks and maybe even months after it releases. Instead, your best bet is to lock in a preorder directly from Nintendo or through big stores like Walmart and Best…

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Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the whatever-floats-the-boat department: Offices nationwide are ditching harsh fluorescent lighting in favor of advanced systems designed to improve cognitive function and entice remote workers back to physical workplaces. Companies are investing in circadian-tuned lighting that adjusts intensity and color temperature throughout the day to mimic natural light patterns, syncing with employees' biological rhythms, according to WSJ.

The technology arsenal includes faux skylights displaying virtual suns and moons, AI-controlled self-tinting windows, and customizable lighting zones that can be adjusted via remote control. Research suggests these innovations may improve brain function during tasks requiring sustained attention. "We've known for a long time that natural light is better and makes people feel better," says Peter Cappelli, professor at Wharton School. The innovations stem from discoveries in the early 2000s of photosensitive retinal cells that affect biology independent of vision. Industry specialists report a "huge uptick in requests," though implementation adds 20-30% to project costs, potentially slowing mainstream adoption.
Posted by Brandon Morgan from Kotaku
Recent titles in the Assassin’s Creed franchise offered something extra besides stealthy assassinations and roaming exploration. In between stabby murders, you could expand a base. Valhalla had a settlement you could expandand now in Assassin’s Creed Shadows introduces a hideout you can customize to your liking. It’s…

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Posted by Ethan Gach and Andy Mills from Kotaku
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Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the new-trends department: An anonymous reader shares a report: Canada has seen a boom in political books created with generative artificial intelligence, adding to concerns about how new technologies are affecting the information voters receive during the election campaign.

Prime Minister Mark Carney was the subject of at least 16 books published in March and listed on Amazon.com, according to a review of the site on April 16. Five of those were published on a single day. In total, some 30 titles were published about Carney this year and made available on Amazon -- but most were taken down from the site after inquiries from Bloomberg News.

One author, James A. Powell, put his name to at least three books about the former central banker, who's now leading the Liberal Party and is narrowly favored to win the election. Among the titles that Amazon removed: "Carney's Code: Climate Capitalism, Digital Currencies, and the Technocratic Takeover of the Global Economy -- Inside Mark Carney's Blueprint for the Post-Democratic World."
Posted by Tony_Bacala from The Toyark


Hasbro will be launching new Star Wars Black Series figures along with Target each Wednesday through the show’s Season 2 run on Disney+, starting tomorrow.  To kick things off, a Range Trooper and a reissue of the Jedha Patrol Stormtrooper ...

The post New Andor Star Wars Black Series Figures Revealed appeared first on The Toyark - News.
Posted by from MMO Champion
Nightfall Scenario: Take up Arms and Defend the Arathi

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

The fall of Queen Ansurek has spurred the Sureki forces into action within Hallowfall as they seek revenge upon the Arathi. Take up arms beside a new faction, Flame’s Radiance, and defend against the invading forces for Azeroth, glory—and a variety of new rewards.

A Radiant Call



Players will begin their journey when they speak with the Flame’s Radiance Recruiter in Dornogal near the map table. You’ll travel to Hallowfall to meet up with Mylton Wildbraun at the Flame’s Radiance camp at Morgaen’s Tears to the southwest of Mereldar near the Veneration Grounds. Speaking with Mylton will offer a variety of quests including Daily Quests to take up around Hallowfall and Azj’Kahet along with a weekly quest for the Nightfall Scenario. You’ll earn Flame’s Radiance Reputation and Resonance Crystals along the way to gain access to and purchase new rewards.




Nightfall Scenario



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Posted by from MMO Champion
The Winds of Mysterious Fortune Are Gusting In

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Winds of Mysterious Fortune Event

When: April 22 - May 20

The winds of fortune blow in your favor during this event. While questing and adventuring in certain Dragonflight and The War Within zones, players below level 80 can gain Mysterious Satchels bursting with goodies while looting creatures or as a bonus reward from completing quests.

Mysterious Satchels contain various unique and valuable items, including temporary stat boosts, visual alterations, a chance for bonus gear appropriate to your level and specialization, and 10% experience potions that stack with the 20% experience buff to a maximum of 30%. If you think Mysterious Satchels are amazing, then you’ll love Pristine Mysterious Satchels. The first Mysterious Satchel drop you earn daily will be Pristine quality, giving you a greater chance to earn even more valuable rewards.

Experience potions are a Warbound-bound item that can be consumed during the event or saved until after the event is over for use on your other level 10–79 characters. However, any stat or elemental potion effects will not work in Mythic+ Raids or rated PvP content.




A Buff to Speed Things Along

Take advantage of the Winds of Mysterious Fortune 20% experience buff to get characters level 10–79 up to speed. Catch up on your alts, finish missed content and unlocks, and dive into the latest content in The War Within.



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