New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D) signed two bills into law on Thursday that aim to protect kids and teens from social media harms, making it the latest state to take action as federal proposals still await votes. From a report: One of the bills, the Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids Act, will require parental consent for social media companies to use "addictive feeds" powered by recommendation algorithms on kids and teens under 18. The other, the New York Child Data Protection Act, would limit data collection on minors without consent and restrict the sale of such information but does not require age verification. That law will take effect in a year. States across the country have taken the lead on enacting legislation to protect kids on the internet -- and it's one area where both Republicans and Democrats seem to agree. While the approaches differ somewhat by party, policymakers on both sides have signaled urgent interest in similar regulations to protect kids on the internet. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R), for example, signed into law in March a bill requiring parents' consent for kids under 16 to hold social media accounts. And in May, Maryland Governor Wes Moore (D) signed a broad privacy bill into law, as well as the Maryland Kids Code banning the use of features meant to keep minors on social media for extended periods, like autoplay or spammy notifications.

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While not talked about as much as the likes of the Intel Gaudi accelerators with their upstream Habana Labs kernel driver or the AMD Instinct MI300 series with their open-source upstream support too, back in 2022 Qualcomm did post an open-source kernel driver for their Cloud AI accelerator. That was followed by an open-source compiler and user-space stack and in turn the QAIC driver was upstreamed into the accelerator (accel) subsystem last year with Linux 6.4...

An anonymous reader shares a report: CDK Global, the company that provides management software for nearly 15,000 car dealerships in North America, is down for a second day following a cyberattack, according to a report from Automotive News. The outage has left car dealerships across North America unable to access the internal systems used to track car sales, view customer information, schedule maintenance, and more. On Wednesday, CDK Global told dealerships that it's "investigating a cyber incident" and "proactively shut all systems down" while addressing the issue. However, as reported by Automotive News, CDK Global restored its systems shortly after, only to shut them down hours later due to "an additional cyber incident."

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TikTok and Chinese parent ByteDance on Thursday urged a U.S. court to strike down a law they say will ban the popular short app in the United States on Jan. 19, saying the U.S. government refused to engage in any serious settlement talks after 2022. From a report: Legislation signed in April by President Joe Biden gives ByteDance until Jan. 19 of next year to divest TikTok's U.S. assets or face a ban on the app used by 170 million Americans. ByteDance says a divestiture is "not possible technologically, commercially, or legally." The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia will hold oral arguments on lawsuits filed by TikTok and ByteDance along with TikTok users on Sept. 16. TikTok's future in the United States may rest on the outcome of the case which could impact how the U.S. government uses its new authority to clamp down on foreign-owned apps. "This law is a radical departure from this country's tradition of championing an open Internet, and sets a dangerous precedent allowing the political branches to target a disfavored speech platform and force it to sell or be shut down," ByteDance and TikTok argue in asking the court to strike down the law.

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Facebook and Instagram users are increasingly turning to small claims courts to regain access to their accounts or seek damages from Meta, amid frustrations with the company's customer support. In several cases across multiple states, Engadget reports, plaintiffs have successfully restored account access or won financial compensation. Meta often responds by contacting litigants before court dates, attempting to resolve issues out of court. The trend, popularized on social media forums, highlights ongoing customer service issues at the tech giant. Some users report significant financial losses due to inaccessible business-related accounts. While small claims court offers a more accessible legal avenue, Meta typically deploys legal resources to respond to these claims.

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Intel on Wednesday released version 1.5 of their Linux NPU driver, their user-space driver component for Linux systems in enabling the neural processing unit found with Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" processors and newer. This goes along with their upstream IVPU kernel accelerator driver for allowing a full open-source solution for AI workloads with the likes of OpenVINO...

Du contenu offert pour le jeu Rumble Club par le store d'Epic Games, tous les détails se trouvent ici. Tombez pour ce jeu massivement multijoueur aux combats basés sur la physique ! Rejoignez jusqu'à 20 joueurs maladroits dans une bataille épique et déjantée où tous les coups sont permis pour faire tomber les autres concurrents hors de l'arène ! […]

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Le store d'Epic Games nous offre le plus appétissant des jeux, Freshly Frosted, le principe est simple, il s'agit d'un puzzle game à base de donuts, miam, l'ajout se passe ici. […]

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A cinema in London has cancelled the world premiere of a film with a script generated by AI after a backlash. From a report: The Prince Charles cinema, located in London's West End and which traditionally screens cult and art films, was due to host a showing of a new production called The Last Screenwriter on Sunday. However the cinema announced on social media that the screening would not go ahead. In its statement the Prince Charles said: "The feedback we received over the last 24hrs once we advertised the film has highlighted the strong concern held by many of our audience on the use of AI in place of a writer which speaks to a wider issue within the industry." Directed by Peter Luisi and starring Nicholas Pople, The Last Screenwriter is a Swiss production that describes itself as the story of "a celebrated screenwriter" who "finds his world shaken when he encounters a cutting edge AI scriptwriting system ... he soon realises AI not only matches his skills but even surpasses him in empathy and understanding of human emotions." The screenplay is credited to "ChatGPT 4.0." OpenAI launched its latest model, GPT-4o, in May. Luisi told the Daily Beast that the cinema had cancelled the screening after it received 200 complaints, but that a private screening for cast and crew would still go ahead in London.

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While the Raspberry Pi 5 debuted last September, the mainline Linux kernel support for this popular single board computer continues to lag behind the state of Raspberry Pi's downstream kernel. SUSE has been working to upstream various Raspberry Pi 5 driver support while now Raspberry Pi engineers have also begun the trek toward upstreaming their kernel graphics driver support...

De « bonnes conditions »

Dans le sillage du lancement officiel des PC Copilot+, Microsoft veut convaincre que ces machines ne sont pas faites que pour le travail itinérant. Dans un billet, la société fait le point sur les jeux vidéo et les améliorations portées à la mise à jour 24H2 pour les machines Arm. La situation n’est pas sans rappeler celle d’Apple.

Pour Microsoft, les PC Copilot+ ne sont pas un marché de niche. Il s’agit même de l’avenir. Un avenir fait de puces Arm surtout, mais dont l’étiquette pourra s’étendre à d’autres quand les conditions seront remplies (et adoubées). On l’a vu avec AMD, Intel et NVIDIA récemment.

• Les Copilot+ PC sont là : prise en main de l’IA et explications de Microsoft

Quand l’entreprise déclare officiellement qu’elle n’avait pas pu faire ce genre de machine durant les vingt dernières années, c’est une claque à Intel. C’est la dernière transition d’Apple qui recommence. Mais Microsoft n’est pas la seule à décider cette fois. Le marché du PC est très différent. Particulièrement hétérogène, il faut arriver à renouveler les habitudes avec de nouveaux produits générant du désir.

Les PC Copilot+ sont ainsi présentés comme des machines à tout faire, puissantes, hautement transportables et taillées pour le futur, grâce au NPU des Snapdragon X Plus et Elite.  Microsoft tente maintenant de faire passer une autre idée : ces PC permettent aussi de jouer dans de bonnes conditions.

Émulation et upscaling maison

Universal Music Group has partnered with AI startup SoundLabs to offer voice modeling technology to its artists. The MicDrop feature, launching this summer, will allow UMG artists to create and control their own AI voice models. The tool includes voice-to-instrument functionality and language transposition capabilities. RollingStone adds: AI voice clones have become perhaps the most well-known -- and often the most controversial -- use of artificial intelligence in the music business. Viral tracks with AI vocals have spurred legislation to protect artists' virtual likenesses and rights of publicity. Last year, an anonymous songwriter named Ghostwriter went viral with his song "Heart On My Sleeve," which featured AI-generated vocals of UMG artists Drake and The Weeknd. The song was pulled from streaming services days later following mounting pressure from the record company. Ironically, Drake got caught in a voice cloning controversy of his own a year later when he used a Tupac voice clone on his Kendrick Lamar diss track "Taylor Made Freestyle." Tupac's estate hit the rapper with a cease-and-desist in April, and the song was subsequently taken down.

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European Union officials have delayed talks over proposed legislation that could lead to messaging services having to scan photos and links to detect possible child sexual abuse material (CSAM). From a report: Were the proposal to become law, it may require the likes of WhatsApp, Messenger and Signal to scan all images that users upload -- which would essentially force them to break encryption. For the measure to pass, it would need to have the backing of at least 15 of the member states representing at least 65 percent of the bloc's entire population. However, countries including Germany, Austria, Poland, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic were expected to abstain from the vote or oppose the plan due to cybersecurity and privacy concerns, Politico reports. If EU members come to an agreement on a joint position, they'll have to hash out a final version of the law with the European Commission and European Parliament.

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Creuser le trou

De plus en plus de satellites sont envoyés dans l’espace pour venir grossir les rangs dans les constellations de type Starlink de SpaceX. Celles-ci engendrent une pollution lumineuse bien documentée. Les lancements rejettent un certain nombre de déchets. Mais ces constellations risquent aussi d’aggraver la situation du trou dans la couche d’ozone lors de la phase de désorbitage des satellites. Une étude d’astrophysiciens de l’université de Californie du Sud tire la sonnette d’alarme.

Depuis 2019 et son premier lancement de satellites, SpaceX a mis en orbite près de 6 000 satellites pour créer sa constellation Starlink fournissant un accès à Internet. Rappelons qu’il y a actuellement 8 100 objets en orbite basse autour de la Terre. Les satellites de Starlink en représentent donc une proportion très importante.

Et l’entreprise prévoit de doubler ce chiffre dès 2025 et espère atteindre les 42 000 à terme. C’est sans compter les satellites des autres fournisseurs d’accès comme OneWeb, Kuiper d‘Amazon et IRIS² de l’Europe lancés, eux aussi, dans la course.

La pollution lumineuse de ces constellations est déjà bien établie. Les agences spatiales ont aussi signalé qu’elles augmenteraient significativement les débris orbitaux. Mais elles pourraient avoir d’autres répercutions encore plus problématiques pour l’environnement. Notamment sur la couche d’ozone dont le trou se referme pourtant petit à petit depuis quelques années grâce à des efforts importants – voir le rapport (pdf) de l’Organisation météorologique mondiale publié en 2022.

• La pollution lumineuse augmente rapidement
• Débris orbitaux : l’ESA augmente ses exigences

La combustion de la structure en aluminium, un véritable danger

In response to the increasing popularity of compact and portable gaming PCs in the past couple of years, we've seen several PC peripheral manufacturers release larger collections of SFX form factor cases and power supplies. Chief among these has been Cooler Master, where the prolific PC part vendor recently expanded their SFX series to include ATX 3.0-compliant PSUs. This has finally given the company a modern, miniature platform that can drive the latest NVIDIA video cards.

Today we're looking at Cooler Master's V850 SFX Gold, which represents a more budget-friendly option in the SFX power supply market compared to their previously reviewed V1100 SFX Platinum. The SFX Gold series includes four models, ranging from 550W to 850W, with the 850W unit that we are reviewing today being the most potent. This 850-Watt power supply carries an 80 Plus Gold certification and is designed for high-performance gaming and workstation builds. As the top-tier model in the SFX Gold series, it offers substantial power output for an SFX unit and maintains ATX 3.0 compliance, including a 12VHPWR connector in a compact SFX format.

Anthropic launched Claude 3.5 Sonnet on Thursday, claiming it outperforms previous models and OpenAI's GPT-4 Omni. The AI startup also introduced Artifacts, a workspace for users to edit AI-generated projects. This release, part of the Claude 3.5 family, follows three months after Claude 3. Claude 3.5 Sonnet is available for free on Claude.ai and the Claude iOS app, while Claude Pro and Team plan subscribers can access it with significantly higher rate limits. Anthropic plans to launch 3.5 versions of Haiku and Opus later this year, exploring features like web search and memory for future releases. Anthropic also introduced Artifacts on Claude.ai, a new feature that expands how users can interact with Claude. When a user asks Claude to generate content like code snippets, text documents, or website designs, these Artifacts appear in a dedicated window alongside their conversation. This creates a dynamic workspace where they can see, edit, and build upon Claude's creations in real-time, seamlessly integrating AI-generated content into their projects and workflows, the startup said.

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In addition to Mutter seeing Wayland DRM lease protocol support merged, another long-in-development patch series hit GNOME Shell this morning: accent color support!..

Merged today into GNOME's Mutter compositor is support for the Wayland DRM lease protocol to allow for nice virtual reality (VR) headset support for GNOME on Wayland...

Nous vous en parlions hier dans un article consacré aux performances ordinateurs portables armés du processeur Snapdragon X Elite, la révolution promise par Qualcomm n’a pas véritablement eu lieu. Cette assertion est d’autant plus vraie pour les prestations GPU de la puce : entre framerate souffreteux dans les jeux et incapacité totale à en lancer certains, son Adreno a unanimement déçu les testeurs... [Tout lire]