Month: September 2023
Microsoft’s Bing Chat is now infested with malware
On May 4, Microsoft launched its GPT-4 chatbot to the general public with fanfare. .However, it didn’t take long for malicious advertisements to infiltrate the AI-driven Bing Chat responses. These rogue ads promoted counterfeit download sites that distributed malware. A
The post Microsoft’s Bing Chat is now infested with malware first appeared on TechStartups.
On May 4, Microsoft launched its GPT-4 chatbot to the general public with fanfare. .However, it didn’t take long for malicious advertisements to infiltrate the AI-driven Bing Chat responses. These rogue ads promoted counterfeit download sites that distributed malware. A […]
The post Microsoft’s Bing Chat is now infested with malware first appeared on TechStartups.
Uber, Grubhub and DoorDash must pay NYC delivery workers an $18 minimum wage
Uber, DoorDash and Grubhub won’t be able to get out of paying minimum wage to their New York City delivery workers after all, following a judge’s decision to reject their bid to skirt the city’s new law. The upcoming law, which is still pending due to the companies’ ongoing lawsuit, aims to secure better wage protections for app-based workers. Once the suit settles, third-party delivery providers will have to pay delivery workers a minimum wage of roughly $18 per hour before tips, and keep up with the yearly increases, Reuters reports.
The amount, which will increase April 1 of every year, is slightly higher than the city’s standard minimum wage, taking into account the additional expenses gig workers face. At the moment, food delivery workers make an estimated $7-$11 per hour on average.
New York Acting Supreme Court Justice Nicholas Moyne put the law on pause back in July, when the three companies and the smaller delivery service, Relay Delivery, sued the city, arguing that the raised rates will have a negative impact on their services. With Moyne’s latest decision, it’ll now move forward. While Uber, DoorDash and Grubhub will have to comply once it takes effect, Relay will be given more time to renegotiate its contracts with restaurants, according to Reuters.
The move makes NYC the first US city to require a minimum wage for app-based deliveries, and others are likely to follow suit. The city previously pushed ride hailing apps to raise their minimum rates for drivers, forcing Uber and Lyft to raise their per-mile rates by just over 5 percent in 2022.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/uber-grubhub-and-doordash-must-pay-nyc-delivery-workers-an-18-minimum-wage-213145847.html?src=rss
Uber, DoorDash and Grubhub won’t be able to get out of paying minimum wage to their New York City delivery workers after all, following a judge’s decision to reject their bid to skirt the city’s new law. The upcoming law, which is still pending due to the companies’ ongoing lawsuit, aims to secure better wage protections for app-based workers. Once the suit settles, third-party delivery providers will have to pay delivery workers a minimum wage of roughly $18 per hour before tips, and keep up with the yearly increases, Reuters reports.
The amount, which will increase April 1 of every year, is slightly higher than the city’s standard minimum wage, taking into account the additional expenses gig workers face. At the moment, food delivery workers make an estimated $7-$11 per hour on average.
New York Acting Supreme Court Justice Nicholas Moyne put the law on pause back in July, when the three companies and the smaller delivery service, Relay Delivery, sued the city, arguing that the raised rates will have a negative impact on their services. With Moyne’s latest decision, it’ll now move forward. While Uber, DoorDash and Grubhub will have to comply once it takes effect, Relay will be given more time to renegotiate its contracts with restaurants, according to Reuters.
The move makes NYC the first US city to require a minimum wage for app-based deliveries, and others are likely to follow suit. The city previously pushed ride hailing apps to raise their minimum rates for drivers, forcing Uber and Lyft to raise their per-mile rates by just over 5 percent in 2022.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/uber-grubhub-and-doordash-must-pay-nyc-delivery-workers-an-18-minimum-wage-213145847.html?src=rss
The Elder Scrolls: Castles is like Fallout Shelter for Skyrim fans
Bethesda appears to have shadow-dropped (intentionally or not) a new mobile game set in a familiar universe. The Elder Scrolls: Castles is a building management game reminiscent of Fallout Shelter. The title, first spotted by Reddit user u/tracteurman (via GamesRadar), is available for Android but not iOS.
The Elder Scrolls: Castles tasks you with controlling a castle — and your dynasty. “Oversee your subjects as the years come and go, families grow, and new rulers take the throne,” the game’s Play Store description reads. It describes a real-life day in the game covering a year within the virtual world.
Its gameplay involves familiar staples of building management sims: customize the castle, add and expand rooms, decorate, place monuments and assign workers to stations. In addition, you can create heroes to embark on “epic quests” to battle against classic Elder Scrolls foes.
Bethesda
The Play Store listing’s “What’s new” section says, “Welcome to early access,” which at least suggests the game may have been intended as a closed beta. However, it’s downloadable and playable to anyone with a Play Store account at the time of publication. We reached out to Bethesda to find out whether the game’s silent publication was intentional, and we’ll update this article if we find out more.
The Elder Scrolls: Castles is free in the Google Play Store. It’s rated “Teen” for violence and suggestive themes.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-elder-scrolls-castles-is-like-fallout-shelter-but-skyrim-212404049.html?src=rss
Bethesda appears to have shadow-dropped (intentionally or not) a new mobile game set in a familiar universe. The Elder Scrolls: Castles is a building management game reminiscent of Fallout Shelter. The title, first spotted by Reddit user u/tracteurman (via GamesRadar), is available for Android but not iOS.
The Elder Scrolls: Castles tasks you with controlling a castle — and your dynasty. “Oversee your subjects as the years come and go, families grow, and new rulers take the throne,” the game’s Play Store description reads. It describes a real-life day in the game covering a year within the virtual world.
Its gameplay involves familiar staples of building management sims: customize the castle, add and expand rooms, decorate, place monuments and assign workers to stations. In addition, you can create heroes to embark on “epic quests” to battle against classic Elder Scrolls foes.
The Play Store listing’s “What’s new” section says, “Welcome to early access,” which at least suggests the game may have been intended as a closed beta. However, it’s downloadable and playable to anyone with a Play Store account at the time of publication. We reached out to Bethesda to find out whether the game’s silent publication was intentional, and we’ll update this article if we find out more.
The Elder Scrolls: Castles is free in the Google Play Store. It’s rated “Teen” for violence and suggestive themes.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-elder-scrolls-castles-is-like-fallout-shelter-but-skyrim-212404049.html?src=rss
A new Chrome 0-day is sending the Internet into a new chapter of Groundhog Day
If your software package involves VP8 video encoding, it’s likely vulnerable to attack.
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)
A critical zero-day vulnerability Google reported on Wednesday in its Chrome browser is opening the Internet to a new chapter of Groundhog Day.
Like a critical zero-day Google disclosed on September 11, the new exploited vulnerability doesn’t affect just Chrome. Already, Mozilla has said that its Firefox browser is vulnerable to the same bug, which is tracked as CVE-2023-5217. And just like CVE-2023-4863 from 17 days ago, the new one resides in a widely used code library for processing media files, specifically those in the VP8 format.
Pages here and here list hundreds of packages for Ubuntu and Debian alone that rely on the library known as libvpx. Most browsers use it, and the list of software or vendors supporting it reads like a who’s who of the Internet, including Skype, Adobe, VLC, and Android.
If the Linux Foundation Was a Software Company, It’d Likely Be the Biggest in the World
An anonymous reader shares a report: The Cloud Native Computing Foundation has returned to Shanghai for the city’s first Kubecon since the pandemic. During a keynote that switched languages several times, demonstrating the challenges faced by both AI and human translators in keeping up, Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, threw out several crowd-pleasing statistics while also highlighting some projects likely to make one or two companies squirm a little. On the statistics front, Zemlin joked that the Linux Foundation was likely the largest software company in the world, noting that if one took an average software developer’s salary — he put the worldwide mean as being $40,000 — and multiplied it by the number of developers contributing to the foundation, the payroll would come to around $26 billion — more than Microsoft’s $24 billion R&D payroll.
The statistic was somewhat tongue in cheek as Zemlin pointed out that none of the developers working on Linux Foundation projects actually work for the Linux Foundation. However, the sheer quantity of engineers involved highlighted another issue noted by Zemlin: the “paradox of choice” when selecting the correct open source project for a given purpose when the number on offer reaches the hundreds, thousands, and beyond. Reflecting the increasing maturity of some elements of the open source world, he also emphasized the opportunities for companies to increase revenues and profits through the use of open source. WeChat, Alibaba, and Huawei all received nods — unsurprising considering the location — as Zemlin noted a virtuous circle whereby improvements go back into projects, meaning better profits, meaning more improvements, and so on. It all sounded very utopian, although darkening clouds were signaled by the addition of OpenTofu to the list of projects Zemlin was keen to boast about, including open source efforts around large language models.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader shares a report: The Cloud Native Computing Foundation has returned to Shanghai for the city’s first Kubecon since the pandemic. During a keynote that switched languages several times, demonstrating the challenges faced by both AI and human translators in keeping up, Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, threw out several crowd-pleasing statistics while also highlighting some projects likely to make one or two companies squirm a little. On the statistics front, Zemlin joked that the Linux Foundation was likely the largest software company in the world, noting that if one took an average software developer’s salary — he put the worldwide mean as being $40,000 — and multiplied it by the number of developers contributing to the foundation, the payroll would come to around $26 billion — more than Microsoft’s $24 billion R&D payroll.
The statistic was somewhat tongue in cheek as Zemlin pointed out that none of the developers working on Linux Foundation projects actually work for the Linux Foundation. However, the sheer quantity of engineers involved highlighted another issue noted by Zemlin: the “paradox of choice” when selecting the correct open source project for a given purpose when the number on offer reaches the hundreds, thousands, and beyond. Reflecting the increasing maturity of some elements of the open source world, he also emphasized the opportunities for companies to increase revenues and profits through the use of open source. WeChat, Alibaba, and Huawei all received nods — unsurprising considering the location — as Zemlin noted a virtuous circle whereby improvements go back into projects, meaning better profits, meaning more improvements, and so on. It all sounded very utopian, although darkening clouds were signaled by the addition of OpenTofu to the list of projects Zemlin was keen to boast about, including open source efforts around large language models.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Epic Games is laying off 16 percent of its workforce and selling Bandcamp
Fortnite maker Epic Games is laying off 16 percent of its staff — or about 830 employees. CEO Tim Sweeney said in an open letter to sent employees that Epic Games has been spending “way more money” than it earns. “We concluded that layoffs are the only way,” he wrote “and that doing them now and on this scale will stabilize our finances.”
For those impacted by the layoffs, the company says it will offer a severance package that includes six months base pay and healthcare. Epic Games is also offering to accelerate employee’s stock option vesting schedule through 2024, while giving two additional years to exercise the options. About two-thirds of the layoffs affected teams outside of core development.
Sweeney wrote that Epic had been making an effort to reduce costs by not only freezing hiring but also by cutting spending on things like marketing and events. And while the metaverse is still in a conceptual phase, Sweeney said he wants the company to focus on developing infrastructure for its games to exist in the metaverse ecosystem. For example, Epic teamed up with LEGO to build an “immersive digital experience” for kids.
After today’s layoffs and the statement from Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, do you fear for competitive heading into 2024? pic.twitter.com/PVnx76Xolc— Fortnite Comp Report (@FNcompReport) September 28, 2023
Epic also said it is divesting Bandcamp, an online music platform it acquired in mid-2022; it’s coordinating a sale to Songtradr, a music licensing platform. SuperAwesome, a kid-friendly developer Epic acquired back in 2020, is being broken apart and partially spun out as well. Its advertising business will become an independent company, while the Kids Web Services segment and the parent verification and consent management toolsets will remain part of Epic.
While these moves to cut spending may help Epic Games stave off pressure from investors like Tencent and Sony, its flagship game Fortnite remains banned from Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store, which will continue to impact its bottom line. Not to mention the $520 million dollars in penalties it has incurred from the FTC and its efforts to have the Supreme Court overturn a ruling that cleared of antitrust violations.
Epic Games (which is based in Cary) today asked the Supreme Court to take up its case against Apple over alleged anti-competitive App Store practices. pic.twitter.com/Cri6Cz4IwI— Brian Gordon (@skyoutbriout) September 27, 2023
Still, Sweeney says Epic’s “prospects for the future are strong,” thanks to Fortnite and the Unreal Engine. Next week, the company will be hosting Unreal Fest, and while some products and initiatives will continue to land on schedule, Sweeney says some may fall behind due to restrictions on resources. “We’re ok with the schedule tradeoff if it means holding on to our ability to achieve our goals, get to the other side of profitability and become a leading metaverse company,” he said in the memo.
The company says it will not cut any funding for its core businesses and it will continue to invest in games with Fortnite first-party development, as well as the Fortnite creator ecosystem.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/epic-games-is-laying-off-16-percent-of-its-workforce-and-selling-bandcamp-211830580.html?src=rss
Fortnite maker Epic Games is laying off 16 percent of its staff — or about 830 employees. CEO Tim Sweeney said in an open letter to sent employees that Epic Games has been spending “way more money” than it earns. “We concluded that layoffs are the only way,” he wrote “and that doing them now and on this scale will stabilize our finances.”
For those impacted by the layoffs, the company says it will offer a severance package that includes six months base pay and healthcare. Epic Games is also offering to accelerate employee’s stock option vesting schedule through 2024, while giving two additional years to exercise the options. About two-thirds of the layoffs affected teams outside of core development.
Sweeney wrote that Epic had been making an effort to reduce costs by not only freezing hiring but also by cutting spending on things like marketing and events. And while the metaverse is still in a conceptual phase, Sweeney said he wants the company to focus on developing infrastructure for its games to exist in the metaverse ecosystem. For example, Epic teamed up with LEGO to build an “immersive digital experience” for kids.
After today’s layoffs and the statement from Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, do you fear for competitive heading into 2024? pic.twitter.com/PVnx76Xolc
— Fortnite Comp Report (@FNcompReport) September 28, 2023
Epic also said it is divesting Bandcamp, an online music platform it acquired in mid-2022; it’s coordinating a sale to Songtradr, a music licensing platform. SuperAwesome, a kid-friendly developer Epic acquired back in 2020, is being broken apart and partially spun out as well. Its advertising business will become an independent company, while the Kids Web Services segment and the parent verification and consent management toolsets will remain part of Epic.
While these moves to cut spending may help Epic Games stave off pressure from investors like Tencent and Sony, its flagship game Fortnite remains banned from Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store, which will continue to impact its bottom line. Not to mention the $520 million dollars in penalties it has incurred from the FTC and its efforts to have the Supreme Court overturn a ruling that cleared of antitrust violations.
Epic Games (which is based in Cary) today asked the Supreme Court to take up its case against Apple over alleged anti-competitive App Store practices. pic.twitter.com/Cri6Cz4IwI
— Brian Gordon (@skyoutbriout) September 27, 2023
Still, Sweeney says Epic’s “prospects for the future are strong,” thanks to Fortnite and the Unreal Engine. Next week, the company will be hosting Unreal Fest, and while some products and initiatives will continue to land on schedule, Sweeney says some may fall behind due to restrictions on resources. “We’re ok with the schedule tradeoff if it means holding on to our ability to achieve our goals, get to the other side of profitability and become a leading metaverse company,” he said in the memo.
The company says it will not cut any funding for its core businesses and it will continue to invest in games with Fortnite first-party development, as well as the Fortnite creator ecosystem.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/epic-games-is-laying-off-16-percent-of-its-workforce-and-selling-bandcamp-211830580.html?src=rss
Teensy, $60 Raspberry Pi 5 Computer Gets Bigger PC Brawn – CNET
The new model is two or three times faster than its 4-year-old predecessor. And it includes the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s first in-house chip.
The new model is two or three times faster than its 4-year-old predecessor. And it includes the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s first in-house chip.
Nvidia offices raided by French competition authority
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Nvidia’s France offices were raided by the country’s competition authority this week, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. While the French agency doesn’t mention Nvidia by name, it confirms it carried out a raid over concerns about anti-competitive practices in the graphics cards industry.
Sources tell the WSJ that French authorities specifically targeted Nvidia, which has seen demand for its chips skyrocket in recent months. Several companies, including Microsoft and OpenAI, have purchased thousands of the company’s high-end AI chips to power large language models.
That massive demand resulted in a lot more money for Nvidia. The chipmaker reported earning a record revenue of $13.51 billion in its latest report, marking a 101 percent increase at the same time last year. Nvidia’s valuation briefly crossed the trillion-dollar mark in May as a result of the AI boom.
According to the WSJ, these types of raids occur early in the morning and have authorities “search a company’s premises, seize physical and digital materials and interview employees who arrive for work.” The French authority says it conducted the raid as part of its increased scrutiny on cloud technology, a topic the agency published a market study on in June.
A machine-translated version of the French agency’s press release says that dawn raids “do not pre-suppose the existence of a breach of the law,” which is something “only a full investigation” can establish. Nvidia declined to comment on the story. However, a raid could suggest that Nvidia’s reign in the chipmaking market isn’t going unnoticed by global governments.
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Nvidia’s France offices were raided by the country’s competition authority this week, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. While the French agency doesn’t mention Nvidia by name, it confirms it carried out a raid over concerns about anti-competitive practices in the graphics cards industry.
Sources tell the WSJ that French authorities specifically targeted Nvidia, which has seen demand for its chips skyrocket in recent months. Several companies, including Microsoft and OpenAI, have purchased thousands of the company’s high-end AI chips to power large language models.
That massive demand resulted in a lot more money for Nvidia. The chipmaker reported earning a record revenue of $13.51 billion in its latest report, marking a 101 percent increase at the same time last year. Nvidia’s valuation briefly crossed the trillion-dollar mark in May as a result of the AI boom.
According to the WSJ, these types of raids occur early in the morning and have authorities “search a company’s premises, seize physical and digital materials and interview employees who arrive for work.” The French authority says it conducted the raid as part of its increased scrutiny on cloud technology, a topic the agency published a market study on in June.
A machine-translated version of the French agency’s press release says that dawn raids “do not pre-suppose the existence of a breach of the law,” which is something “only a full investigation” can establish. Nvidia declined to comment on the story. However, a raid could suggest that Nvidia’s reign in the chipmaking market isn’t going unnoticed by global governments.
Some USB-C Power Banks Fail to Work With iPhone 15
Apple added a USB-C port to the iPhone 15 lineup this year, allowing it to work with USB-C cables, USB-C power banks, and more. It turns out that some USB-C battery packs are not working properly with Apple’s iPhone 15, resulting in charging issues.
As highlighted on Reddit and the MacRumors forums, not all existing USB-C power banks can be used with the iPhone 15 models, perhaps due to the iPhone’s reverse charging feature. In some cases, the iPhone 15 will fail to charge, or the iPhone 15 will charge the power bank.
A range of different power banks are affected, and because of the wide number of them on the market, it is impossible to list the models that are non-functional. One version that fails to work is the Anker PowerCore Slim 10K PD, and a customer who contacted Anker was told that the only way to get the power bank to charge the iPhone is to use the USB-A port.
It seems that due to the iPhone 15 series’ reverse charging function, the USB C’s port charging of Anker PowerCore Slim 10k PD will be influenced, which does not have a solution currently. The only way to get your iPhone charged is to use the USB A port.
Anker will do more tests on all of our power banks to see whether this is the issue with certain power banks and try to get a solution.
The iPhone 15 models are able to charge an Apple Watch, AirPods, or another iPhone through the USB-C port, and there is a possibility that this functionality is what’s impacting some power banks. Most USB-C power banks with Power Delivery seem to be working as intended, including a number of models tested by MacRumors, but iPhone 15 owners should be aware that some could be incompatible.Related Roundup: iPhone 15Buyer’s Guide: iPhone 15 (Buy Now)Related Forum: iPhoneThis article, “Some USB-C Power Banks Fail to Work With iPhone 15” first appeared on MacRumors.comDiscuss this article in our forums
Apple added a USB-C port to the iPhone 15 lineup this year, allowing it to work with USB-C cables, USB-C power banks, and more. It turns out that some USB-C battery packs are not working properly with Apple’s iPhone 15, resulting in charging issues.
As highlighted on Reddit and the MacRumors forums, not all existing USB-C power banks can be used with the iPhone 15 models, perhaps due to the iPhone‘s reverse charging feature. In some cases, the iPhone 15 will fail to charge, or the iPhone 15 will charge the power bank.
A range of different power banks are affected, and because of the wide number of them on the market, it is impossible to list the models that are non-functional. One version that fails to work is the Anker PowerCore Slim 10K PD, and a customer who contacted Anker was told that the only way to get the power bank to charge the iPhone is to use the USB-A port.
It seems that due to the iPhone 15 series’ reverse charging function, the USB C’s port charging of Anker PowerCore Slim 10k PD will be influenced, which does not have a solution currently. The only way to get your iPhone charged is to use the USB A port.
Anker will do more tests on all of our power banks to see whether this is the issue with certain power banks and try to get a solution.
The iPhone 15 models are able to charge an Apple Watch, AirPods, or another iPhone through the USB-C port, and there is a possibility that this functionality is what’s impacting some power banks. Most USB-C power banks with Power Delivery seem to be working as intended, including a number of models tested by MacRumors, but iPhone 15 owners should be aware that some could be incompatible.
This article, “Some USB-C Power Banks Fail to Work With iPhone 15” first appeared on MacRumors.com
Discuss this article in our forums