A former Boeing contractor has filed complaints with federal agencies, alleging safety issues in 787 Dreamliner production and wrongful termination. Richard Cuevas, a veteran mechanic, claims he observed improper drilling of fastener holes in forward pressure bulkheads during his work with Spirit AeroSystems, Boeing's main supplier. Cuevas warned that these defects could compromise aircraft safety. After reporting concerns to the FAA and his superiors, Cuevas says he was fired. His lawyers have urged investigations into Dreamliner bulkheads and claim unlawful retaliation. Boeing stated they investigated the concerns thoroughly and determined no safety risk.

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The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR), the nation's oldest nonprofit newsroom, sued OpenAI and Microsoft in federal court on Thursday for allegedly using its content to train AI models without consent or compensation. CIR, founded in 1977 in San Francisco, evolved into a multi-platform newsroom with its flagship distribution platform Reveal. In February, it merged with Mother Jones. "OpenAI and Microsoft started vacuuming up our stories to make their product more powerful, but they never asked for permission or offered compensation, unlike other organizations that license our material," said Monika Bauerlein, CEO of the Center for Investigative Reporting, in a statement. "This free rider behavior is not only unfair, it is a violation of copyright. The work of journalists, at CIR and everywhere, is valuable, and OpenAI and Microsoft know it." Bauerlein said that OpenAI and Microsoft treat the work of nonprofit and independent publishers "as free raw material for their products," and added that such moves by generative AI companies hurt the public's access to truthful information in a "disappearing news landscape." Engadget reports: The CIR's lawsuit, which was filed in Manhattan's federal court, accuses OpenAI and Microsoft, which owns nearly half of the company, of violating the Copyright Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act multiple times. News organizations find themselves at an inflection point with generative AI. While the CIR is joining publishers like The New York Times, New York Daily News, The Intercept, AlterNet and Chicago Tribune in suing OpenAI, others publishers have chosen to strike licensing deals with the company. These deals will allow OpenAI to train its models on archives and ongoing content published by these publishers and cite information from them in responses offered by ChatGPT.

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Earlier this week, WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange received a donation of 8.07 bitcoin (worth roughly $500,000) from an anonymous bitcoin whale, "helping to cover the cost of a private jet that flew him out of the U.K. and ultimately to freedom in Australia after he reached a plea deal with the U.S. Department of Justice," reports CoinDesk. From the report: Initially, Assange's wife Stella made an "emergency appeal" to raise 520,000 British pounds to pay for the transport, setting up a crowdfunding page that allowed people to donate in fiat currency via credit cards or bank transfer. With that site notably not allowing crypto for donations, the family quickly moved to set up another page to accept bitcoin. Up to this point, the bitcoin address has received 34 donations totaling just over $500,000. The overwhelming majority, however, came from just that one 8.07 BTC donation. The original fiat site has also received about $500,000 in donations. "Julian's travel to freedom comes at a massive cost: Julian will owe USD 520,000 which he is obligated to pay back to the Australian government for charter Flight VJ199," Stella Assange wrote on X. "He was not permitted to fly commercial airlines or routes to Saipan and onward to Australia. Any contribution big or small is much appreciated." The jet was organized by the Australian government after Assange reached a historic plea deal on Tuesday, where he pleaded guilty to espionage charges in exchange for his freedom.

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Al Michaels, the 79-year-old American broadcaster, who first covered the Olympics decades ago, is returning to broadcasting via an AI clone. NBCUniversal and Peacock will use AI-generated narration by Al Michaels for daily customized highlight reels of the Summer Olympics. Officials say they anticipate seven million different variations of the customized highlights throughout the games. The New York Times reports: Al Michaels, the 79-year-old American broadcaster, who first covered the Olympics decades ago, is coming back to primetime. It does raise a key question, one that recalls Mr. Michaels's most famous Olympic call: Do NBCUniversal executives believe in miracles? NBC has been exclusively broadcasting the Olympics in the United States since 1996, and the network frequently finds itself subject to intense public scrutiny for its coverage of the Games. [...] Subscribers who want the daily Peacock highlight reel will be able choose the Olympic events that interest them most, and the types of highlights they want to see, such as viral clips, gold medalists or elimination events. From there, Peacock's A.I. machines will get to work each evening cranking out the most notable moments and putting them together in a tidy customized package. Mr. Michaels's recreated voice will be piped over the reels. (Humans will make quality control checks on the A.I. highlight reels.)

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Many American subscribers are unable to use their phones overseas because all three major U.S. carriers are experiencing outages. According to The Register, the outages have been ongoing for several hours and stem from third-party communications technology company Syniverse. From the report: "Since the onset of these issues, Syniverse has been working closely with our network partners to restore full service," Syniverse, a US-based comms provider that focuses on roaming services, said in a statement confirming the breakdown. "We understand the inconvenience this has caused and appreciate your patience as we navigate this challenge." "We're one of several providers impacted by a third-party vendor's issue that is intermittently affecting some international roaming service," T-Mo told us. "We're working with them to resolve it." Similarly, AT&T stated: "The AT&T network is operating normally. Some customers traveling internationally may be experiencing service disruptions due to an issue outside the AT&T network. We're working with one of our roaming connectivity providers to resolve the issue." Likewise, Verizon said, "An international third party communications provider is having issues with making voice and data connections with US based customers traveling overseas." The international roaming outage has hit users' ability to do calls and texts, and reach the internet. According to Verizon, it's not a complete blackout. "70 percent of calls and data connections are going through at this time," the carrier firm told The Register in the past hour or so. Developing...

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Temu -- the Chinese shopping app that has rapidly grown so popular in the US that even Amazon is reportedly trying to copy it -- is "dangerous malware" that's secretly monetizing a broad swath of unauthorized user data, Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin alleged in a lawsuit (PDF) filed Tuesday. Griffin cited research and media reports exposing Temu's allegedly nefarious design, which "purposely" allows Temu to "gain unrestricted access to a user's phone operating system, including, but not limited to, a user's camera, specific location, contacts, text messages, documents, and other applications." "Temu is designed to make this expansive access undetected, even by sophisticated users," Griffin's complaint said. "Once installed, Temu can recompile itself and change properties, including overriding the data privacy settings users believe they have in place." Griffin fears that Temu is capable of accessing virtually all data on a person's phone, exposing both users and non-users to extreme privacy and security risks. It appears that anyone texting or emailing someone with the shopping app installed risks Temu accessing private data, Griffin's suit claimed, which Temu then allegedly monetizes by selling it to third parties, "profiting at the direct expense" of users' privacy rights. "Compounding" risks is the possibility that Temu's Chinese owners, PDD Holdings, are legally obligated to share data with the Chinese government, the lawsuit said, due to Chinese "laws that mandate secret cooperation with China's intelligence apparatus regardless of any data protection guarantees existing in the United States." Griffin's suit cited an extensive forensic investigation into Temu by Grizzly Research -- which analyzes publicly traded companies to inform investors -- last September. In their report, Grizzly Research alleged that PDD Holdings is a "fraudulent company" and that "Temu is cleverly hidden spyware that poses an urgent security threat to United States national interests." As Griffin sees it, Temu baits users with misleading promises of discounted, quality goods, angling to get access to as much user data as possible by adding addictive features that keep users logged in, like spinning a wheel for deals. Meanwhile hundreds of complaints to the Better Business Bureau showed that Temu's goods are actually low-quality, Griffin alleged, apparently supporting his claim that Temu's end goal isn't to be the world's biggest shopping platform but to steal data. Investigators agreed, the lawsuit said, concluding "we strongly suspect that Temu is already, or intends to, illegally sell stolen data from Western country customers to sustain a business model that is otherwise doomed for failure." Seeking an injunction to stop Temu from allegedly spying on users, Griffin is hoping a jury will find that Temu's alleged practices violated the Arkansas Deceptive Trade Practices Act (ADTPA) and the Arkansas Personal Information Protection Act. If Temu loses, it could be on the hook for $10,000 per violation of the ADTPA and ordered to disgorge profits from data sales and deceptive sales on the app. In a statement to Ars, a Temu spokesperson discredited Grizzly Research's investigation and said that the company was "surprised and disappointed by the Arkansas Attorney General's Office for filing the lawsuit without any independent fact-finding." "The allegations in the lawsuit are based on misinformation circulated online, primarily from a short-seller, and are totally unfounded," Temu's spokesperson said. "We categorically deny the allegations and will vigorously defend ourselves." "We understand that as a new company with an innovative supply chain model, some may misunderstand us at first glance and not welcome us. We are committed to the long-term and believe that scrutiny will ultimately benefit our development. We are confident that our actions and contributions to the community will speak for themselves over time." Last year, Temu was the most downloaded app in the U.S. and has only become more popular as reports of security and privacy risks have come out.

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Nine astronauts aboard the International Space Station were forced to take shelter late Wednesday when a satellite broke up in low Earth orbit. This "debris-generating event" created "over 100 pieces of trackable [space junk]," according to U.S. space-tracking firm LeoLabs. Space.com reports: The Expedition 71 crew on the International Space Station (ISS) went to their three spacecraft, including Boeing Starliner, shortly after 9 p.m. EDT (0200 GMT), according to a brief NASA update on X, formerly known as Twitter. As the ISS follows a time zone identical to GMT, according to the European Space Agency, the astronauts were likely in their sleep period when the incident occurred. The procedure was a "precautionary measure", NASA officials added, stating that the crew only stayed in their spacecraft for about an hour before they were "cleared to exit their spacecraft, and the station resumed normal operations." NASA did not specify which satellite was associated with the incident, but satellite monitoring and collision detection firm LeoLabs identified a "debris-generating event" that same evening. "Early indications are that a non-operational Russian spacecraft, Resurs-P1 [or] SATNO 39186, released a number of fragments," the company wrote on X. U.S. Space Command also reported the Resurs-P1 event, saying on X that over 100 pieces of trackable debris were generated. The military said it "observed no immediate threats and is continuing to conduct routine conjunction assessments." (A conjunction refers to a close approach of two objects in orbit to one another.)

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Alibaba's Qwen models dominated Hugging Face's latest LLM leaderboard, securing three top-ten spots. The new benchmark, launched Thursday, tests open-source models on tougher criteria including long-context reasoning and complex math. Meta's Llama3-70B also ranked highly, but several Chinese models outperformed Western counterparts. (Closed-source AIs like ChatGPT were excluded.) The leaderboard replaces an earlier version deemed too easy to game.

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Scientists have uncovered a new gene-editing tool with potential to rival CRISPR, according to studies published in Nature on Wednesday. The system, based on a bacterial DNA parasite called IS110, uses RNA guides to target specific genomic locations. While showing promise for precise DNA cutting, the method currently lacks the accuracy needed for human applications. At best, it achieved 94% accuracy in lab tests. The team also revealed the molecular structure of IS110's DNA-cutting enzyme, shedding light on its unique four-step editing mechanism. Nature, 2024. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07552-4, 10.1038/s41586-024-07570-2.

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The FCC wants to make it significantly easier for consumers to unlock their phones from their carriers, proposing that all devices must be unlockable just 60 days after purchase. From a report: How this will mesh with current plans and phone buying trends, however, is something the agency is hoping to learn before putting such a rule into effect. Mobile phones purchased from a carrier are generally locked to that carrier until either the contract is up or the phone is paid off. But despite improvements to the process over the years (unlocking was flat-out illegal not long ago), it still isn't quite clear to all consumers when and how they can unlock their phone and take it to the carrier (or country) of their choice. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announced the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, or NPRM, in a press release today. "When you buy a phone, you should have the freedom to decide when to change service to the carrier you want and not have the device you own stuck by practices that prevent you from making that choice," she wrote. "That is why we are proposing clear, nationwide mobile phone unlocking rules." Specifically, the release says, carriers would simply have to provide unlocking services 60 days after activation. A welcome standard, but it may run afoul of today's phone and wireless markets.

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Last week the GNOME 47 development code saw Wayland DRM lease protocol support for enhancing VR headset handling and separately was also accent color support for GNOME Shell. Adding to the recent slew of changes landing for GNOME 47, the GNOME Shell and Mutter code can now be successfully compiled -- optionally -- without any X11 support or requiring any X11 build dependencies...

AMD today published version 1.4.34 of its Advanced Media Framework (AMF) SDK. This accelerated multimedia framework is used on Linux and Windows for integrating with games/applications leveraging DirectX, OpenGL, and OpenCL with interoperability support for Radeon GPU customers...

Intel has introduced an advanced optical input/output chiplet, marking what it claims to be a significant leap in data center technology. The optical compute interconnect (OCI) chiplet, unveiled at the Optical Fiber Communication Conference 2024, is designed for integration with CPUs and GPUs and boasts 64 PCIe 5.0 channels transmitting 4 Tbps over 100 meters using fiber optics. Tom's Hardware adds: The chiplet uses dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) wavelengths and consumes only five pico-Joules per bit, significantly more energy-efficient than pluggable optical transceiver modules, which consume about 15 pico-Joules per bit, according to Intel. This device is crucial for next-generation data centers and AI/HPC applications. It will enable high-performance connections for CPU and GPU clusters, coherent memory expansion, and resource disaggregation. These features will be handy for operating supercomputers for large-scale AI models and machine learning tasks that require tremendous data bandwidth.

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Si vous faites partie des joueurs qui aiment immortaliser leurs exploits vidéoludiques, une nouvelle option s’offre désormais à vous : le Steam Game Recording, appelé « Enregistrement de parties » en français par Valve. Disponible en version bêta depuis aujourd’hui, il permet, comme son nom l’indique, d’enregistrer vos sessions pour ensuite les revisionner ou les partager... [Tout lire]

Alan annonce faire l’acquisition de Wave.ai, start-up spécialisée dans le coaching professionnel.

Fondée en 2020 par Adri Falcon, Wave.ai a créé une plateforme de coaching « augmentée » par des technologies d’intelligence artificielle.

Le cofondateur d’Alan, Charles Gorintin, présente cette évolution comme une manière, pour le néo-assureur, de renforcer ses travaux relatifs à la santé mentale et au « développement professionnel des salariés », tout autant qu’elle lui permet d’accentuer son usage d’ « IA appliquée à l’entreprise ».

Alan annonce faire l’acquisition de Wave.ai, start-up spécialisée dans le coaching professionnel.

Fondée en 2020 par Adri Falcon, Wave.ai a créé une plateforme de coaching « augmentée » par des technologies d’intelligence artificielle.

Le cofondateur d’Alan, Charles Gorintin, présente cette évolution comme une manière, pour le néo-assureur, de renforcer ses travaux relatifs à la santé mentale et au « développement professionnel des salariés », tout autant qu’elle lui permet d’accentuer son usage d’ « IA appliquée à l’entreprise ».

Sunless Skies: Sovereign Edition est le jeu offert par le store d'Epic Games. Vous prenez les commandes d'un train à vapeur, pour une excursion spatiale, tout en ayant l'opportunité de trahir votre reine et de tuer une étoile. Le titre promet une ambiance graphique unique et une narration soignée, l'ajout à votre bibliothèque est possible ici. […]

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