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Deepfake lovers swindle victims out of $46M in Hong Kong AI scam
Scammers used AI deepfake tools to create fake online personas, tricking victims in video calls.
On Monday, Hong Kong police announced the arrest of 27 people involved in a romance scam operation that used AI face-swapping techniques to defraud victims of $46 million through fake cryptocurrency investments, reports the South China Morning Post. The scam ring created attractive female personas for online dating, using unspecified tools to transform their appearances and voices.
Those arrested included six recent university graduates allegedly recruited to set up fake cryptocurrency trading platforms. An unnamed source told the South China Morning Post that five of the arrested people carry suspected ties to Sun Yee On, a large organized crime group (often called a “triad”) in Hong Kong and China.
“The syndicate presented fabricated profit transaction records to victims, claiming substantial returns on their investments,” said Fang Chi-kin, head of the New Territories South regional crime unit.
$250 Analogue 3D will play all your N64 cartridges in 4K early next year
FPGA-powered hardware will capture CRT glow with “bespoke, purpose-built upscaler”
It’s been exactly one year since the initial announcement of the Analogue 3D, an HD-upscaled, FPGA-powered Nintendo 64 in the tradition of Analogue’s long-running line or high-end retro machines. Today, Analogue is revealing more details about the hardware, which will sell for $250 and plans to ship in the first quarter of 2025 (a slight delay from the previously announced 2024 release plan).
Like previous Analogue devices, the Analogue 3D uses a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) to simulate the actual logic gates found in original N64 hardware. That helps ensure 100 percent compatibility with the entire N64 cartridge library across all regions, Analogue promises, and should avoid the long-standing accuracy and lag issues inherent to most software-based emulation of the N64.
To get that level of fidelity, the Analogue team spent four years programming an Altera Cyclone FPGA with a full 220,000 logic elements. That’s a big step up from previous Analogue devices—the Analogue Pocket’s main FPGA board featured just 49,000 logic elements three years ago. But the Analogue Pocket also included a second, 15,000-logic-element FPGA, which allowed it to run an expanding list of openFPGA cores to support games from other classic consoles.
Startup can identify deepfake video in real time
Reality Defender says it has a solution for AI-generated video scams.
Christopher Ren does a solid Elon Musk impression.
Ren is a product manager at Reality Defender, a company that makes tools to combat AI disinformation. During a video call last week, I watched him use some viral GitHub code and a single photo to generate a simplistic deepfake of Elon Musk that maps onto his own face. This digital impersonation was to demonstrate how the startup’s new AI detection tool could work. As Ren masqueraded as Musk on our video chat, still frames from the call were actively sent over to Reality Defender’s custom model for analysis, and the company’s widget on the screen alerted me to the fact that I was likely looking at an AI-generated deepfake and not the real Elon.
Sure, I never really thought we were on a video call with Musk, and the demonstration was built specifically to make Reality Defender’s early-stage tech look impressive, but the problem is entirely genuine. Real-time video deepfakes are a growing threat for governments, businesses, and individuals. Recently, the chairman of the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations mistakenly took a video call with someone pretending to be a Ukrainian official. An international engineering company lost millions of dollars earlier in 2024 when one employee was tricked by a deepfake video call. Also, romance scams targeting everyday individuals have employed similar techniques.
How to install Windows 11 on supported and unsupported PCs, 24H2 edition
Supported or not, new or old, this is everything you need to know.
Windows 11 24H2 has been released to the general public, and even though it’s still called Windows 11 and still looks like Windows 11, it’s probably the operating system’s most significant update since its release in October of 2021.
You may or may not be excited about some of the new generative AI features, but it has a lot of other things in it, too. And even if you’re not in love with Windows or the current trajectory of Windows, there are still plenty of places you need to use it anyway.
We’ve pulled together all kinds of resources to create a comprehensive guide to installing and upgrading to Windows 11. This includes advice and some step-by-step instructions for turning on officially required features like your TPM and Secure Boot, as well as official and unofficial ways to skirt the system-requirement checks on “unsupported” PCs, because Microsoft is not your parent and therefore cannot tell you what to do.
Amazon’s first color Kindle e-reader, the Kindle Colorsoft, will run you $280
High price, but it’s in line with what Amazon has charged for older premium Kindles.
Amazon is overhauling its entire Kindle e-reader lineup today. And nestled among the nice-but-straightforward updates to the base model Kindle, the mainstream Kindle Paperwhite, and the pen-centric Kindle Scribe is a first: the Kindle Colorsoft, Amazon’s first-ever color e-reader.
The Colorsoft will launch on October 30th and starts at $279.99. That’s quite a bit higher than the new Kindle Paperwhite, which starts at $159.99, but it’s a little less than the $290 launch price of the now-discontinued Kindle Oasis. The Colorsoft also includes 32 GB of storage, wireless charging support, and sensors for automatically adjusting screen brightness and color temperature, all features that are only available in the $200 Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition.
Book covers and illustrations will be displayed in color on the Colorsoft’s screen, and it will also support the same color-coded highlighting as the Kindle phone and tablet apps. Monochrome text and images are displayed at 300 PPI, the same as all other devices in the Kindle lineup, while color is displayed at 150 PPI.
What we can learn from animals about death and mortality
Susana Monsó chats with Ars about her new book, Playing Possum: How Animals Understand Death.
Human beings live every day with the understanding of our own mortality, but do animals have any concept of death? It’s a question that has long intrigued scientists, fueled by reports of ants, for example, appearing to attend their own”funerals”; chimps gathering somberly around fallen comrades; or a mother whale who carried her dead baby with her for two weeks in an apparent show of grief.
Philosopher Susana Monsó is a leading expert on animal cognition, behavior and ethics at the National Distance Education University (UNED) in Madrid, Spain. She became interested in the topic of how animals experience death several years ago while applying for a grant and noted that there were a number of field reports on how different animal species reacted to death. It’s an emerging research field called comparative thanatology, which focuses on how animals react to the dead or dying, the physiological mechanisms that underlie such reactions, and what we can learn from those behaviors about animal minds.
“I could see that there was a new discipline that was emerging that was very much in need of a philosophical approach to help it clarify its main concepts,” she told Ars. “And personally, I was turning 30 at the time and became a little bit obsessed with death. So I wanted to think a lot about death and maybe come to fear it less through philosophical reflection on it.”
Drugmakers can keep making off-brand weight-loss drugs as FDA backpedals
FDA is reviewing its decision to remove tirzepatide drugs from the shortage list.
Facing a lawsuit, the Food and Drug Administration has decided to reconsider its decision to take popular weight-loss and diabetes drugs off of the national shortage list, which will allow compounding pharmacies to continue selling cheaper copycat versions—at least for now.
A trade organization representing compounding pharmacies sued the agency last week over its October 2 announcement that there was no longer a shortage of tirzepatide drugs, branded as Mounjaro for diabetes and Zepbound for weight loss. The products, members of the extremely popular and effective class of GLP-1 drugs, had been on the shortage list since December 2022.
Being on the list meant that compounding pharmacies were legally allowed to make “essentially copies” of the products; the only time these pharmacies—also called outsourcing facilities—can make imitation versions of approved drugs, such as tirzepatide, is when the products appear on the shortage list. So, with the FDA’s announcement, compounders were immediately barred from making any more of the lucrative drugs and had 60 days to fulfill existing orders.
FCC Republican opposes regulation of data caps with analogy to coffee refills
Republican commissioner: You wouldn’t require free coffee refills, would you?
The Federal Communications Commission is taking a closer look at how broadband data caps affect consumers, and is considering whether it has authority to regulate how Internet service providers impose such caps. Democrats are spearheading the effort over the opposition of the FCC’s Republican minority.
FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel floated a plan to open a formal inquiry into data caps in June 2023, and the FCC is finally moving ahead. A Notice of Inquiry announced today “explores how broadband data caps impact competition and consumers,” the FCC said.
“During the last year, nearly 3,000 people have gotten so aggravated by data caps on their Internet service that they have reached out the Federal Communications Commission to register their frustration,” Rosenworcel said in a statement issued today. “We are listening. Today, we start an inquiry into the state of data caps. We want to shine a light on what they mean for Internet service for consumers across the country.”
North Korean hackers use newly discovered Linux malware to raid ATMs
Once, FASTCash ran only on Unix. Then came Windows. Now it can target Linux, too.
In the beginning, North Korean hackers compromised the banking infrastructure running AIX, IBM’s proprietary version of Unix. Next, they hacked infrastructure running Windows. Now, the state-backed bank robbers have expanded their repertoire to include Linux.
The malware, tracked under the name FASTCash, is a remote access tool that gets installed on payment switches inside compromised networks that handle payment card transactions. The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency first warned of FASTCash in 2018 in an advisory that said the malware was infecting AIX-powered switches inside retail payment networks. In 2020, the agency updated its guidance to report FASTCash was now infecting switches running Windows as well. Besides embracing Windows, FASTCash had also expanded its net to include not just switches for retail payments but those handled by regional interbank payment processors as well.
Tampering with transaction messages on the fly
Over the weekend, a researcher reported finding two samples of FASTCash for switches running on Linux. One sample is compiled for Ubuntu Linux 20.04 and was likely developed sometime after April 21, 2022. The other sample was likely not used. As of the time this post went live, only four anti-malware engines detected each sample. The number of detections as of Sunday was zero. The Linux version was uploaded to VirusTotal in June 2023.
Sustainable building effort reaches new heights with wooden skyscrapers
Wood offers architects an alternative to carbon-intensive steel and concrete.
At the University of Toronto, just across the street from the football stadium, workers are putting up a 14-story building with space for classrooms and faculty offices. What’s unusual is how they’re building it — by bolting together giant beams, columns, and panels made of manufactured slabs of wood.
As each wood element is delivered by flatbed, a tall crane lifts it into place and holds it in position while workers attach it with metal connectors. In its half-finished state, the building resembles flat-pack furniture in the process of being assembled.
The tower uses a new technology called mass timber. In this kind of construction, massive, manufactured wood elements that can extend more than half the length of a football field replace steel beams and concrete. Though still relatively uncommon, it is growing in popularity and beginning to pop up in skylines around the world.