Enlarge / The ASUS logo in front of an AI-generated background. (credit: ASUS / Stable Diffusion) Taiwan’s Asustek Computer (known popularly as “Asus”) plans to introduce a rental business AI server that will operate on-site to address security concerns and data control issues from cloud-based AI systems, Bloomberg reports. The service, called AFS Appliance, will...
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Millions of PC motherboards were sold with a firmware backdoor
Enlarge (credit: BeeBright/Getty Images) Hiding malicious programs in a computer’s UEFI firmware, the deep-seated code that tells a PC how to load its operating system, has become an insidious trick in the toolkit of stealthy hackers. But when a motherboard manufacturer installs its own hidden backdoor in the firmware of millions of computers—and doesn’t even...
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Researchers tell owners to “assume compromise” of unpatched Zyxel firewalls
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Firewalls made by Zyxel are being wrangled into a destructive botnet, which is taking control of them by exploiting a recently patched vulnerability with a severity rating of 9.8 out of a possible 10. “At this stage if you have a vulnerable device exposed, assume compromise,” officials from Shadowserver, an organization...
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AI-expanded album cover artworks go viral thanks to Photoshop’s Generative Fill
Enlarge / An AI-expanded version of a famous album cover involving four lads and a certain road created using Adobe Generative Fill. (credit: Capitol Records / Adobe / Dobrokotov) Over the weekend, AI-powered makeovers of famous music album covers went viral on Twitter thanks to Adobe Photoshop’s Generative Fill, an image synthesis tool that debuted...
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Twitter value keeps falling under Musk, now worth a third of what he paid
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | NurPhoto ) Twitter’s value has reportedly dropped to about $15 billion, slightly more than one-third of the $44 billion that Elon Musk paid for it in late October 2022. The $15 billion valuation is based on Fidelity’s latest analysis of its stake in the company. “Fidelity Blue Chip Growth Fund’s...
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A Snap-based, containerized Ubuntu desktop could be offered in 2024
Enlarge / Some of the many Snap apps available in Ubuntu’s Snap Store, the place where users can find apps and Linux enthusiasts can find deep-seated disagreement. (credit: Canonical) [Update, 2:00 pm ET, May 31: Ubuntu published a blog post about its Ubuntu Core desktop work after this Ars Technica post was published. Noting that...
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How the Shoggoth Meme Has Come to Symbolize the State of A.I.
The Shoggoth, a character from a science fiction story, captures the essential weirdness of the A.I. moment.
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AI Poses ‘Risk of Extinction,’ Industry Leaders Warn
Leaders from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Anthropic and other A.I. labs warn that future systems could be as deadly as pandemics and nuclear weapons.
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Elizabeth Holmes Reports to Prison in Texas on Tuesday
The disgraced founder of the blood testing start-up Theranos, who was convicted of fraud, turned herself in at a minimum-security prison in Texas.
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Critical Barracuda 0-day was used to backdoor networks for 8 months
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) A critical vulnerability patched 10 days ago in widely used email software from IT security company Barracuda Networks has been under active exploitation since October. The vulnerability has been used to install multiple pieces of malware inside large organization networks and steal data, Barracuda said Tuesday. The software bug, tracked as...