A Zillow listing for a $2.4 million house in a Dallas suburb is grabbing attention for its 5,786-square-foot data center with immersion cooling tanks, massive server racks, and two separate power grids. Tom's Hardware reports: With a brick exterior, cute paving, and mini-McMansion arch stylings, the building certainly looks to be a residential home for the archetypal Texas family. Prospective home-buyers will thus be disappointed by the 0 bedroom, 1 bathroom setup, which becomes a warehouse-feeling office from the first step inside where you are met with a glass-shielded reception desk in a white-brick corridor. The "Crypto Collective" branding betrays the former life of the unit, which served admirably as a crypto mining base. The purchase of the "upgraded turnkey Tier 2 Data Center" will include all of its cooling and power infrastructure. Three Engineered Fluids "SLICTanks," single-phase liquid immersion cooling tanks for use with dielectric coolant, will come with pumps and a 500kW dry cooler. The tanks are currently filled with at least 80 mining computers visible from the photos, though the SLICTanks can be configured to fit more machines. Also visible in proximity to the cooling array is a deep row of classic server racks and a staggering amount of networking. The listing advertises a host of potential uses for future customers, from "AI services, cloud hosting, traditional data center, servers or even Bitcoin Mining". Also packed into the 5,786 square feet of real estate is two separate power grids, 5 HVAC units, a hefty amount of four levels of warehouse-style storage aisles, a lounge/office space, and a fully-paved backyard. In other good news, its future corporate residents will not have an HOA to deal with, and will only be 20 minutes outside of the heart of Dallas, sitting just out of earshot of two major highways.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: A French court has ordered Google, Cloudflare, and Cisco to poison their DNS resolvers to prevent circumvention of blocking measures, targeting around 117 pirate sports streaming domains. The move is another anti-piracy escalation for broadcaster Canal+, which also has permission to completely deindex the sites from search engine results. [...] Two decisions were handed down by the Paris judicial court last month; one concerning Premier League matches and the other the Champions League. The orders instruct Google, Cloudflare, and Cisco to implement measures similar to those in place at local ISPs. To protect the rights of Canal+, the companies must prevent French internet users from using their services to access around 117 pirate domains. According to French publication l'Informe, which broke the news, Google attorney Sebastien Proust crunched figures published by government anti-piracy agency Arcom and concluded that the effect on piracy rates, if any, is likely to be minimal. Starting with a pool of all users who use alternative DNS for any reason, users of pirate sites -- especially sites broadcasting the matches in question -- were isolated from the rest. Users of both VPNs and third-party DNS were further excluded from the group since DNS blocking is ineffective against VPNs. Proust found that the number of users likely to be affected by DNS blocking at Google, Cloudflare, and Cisco, amounts to 0.084% of the total population of French Internet users. Citing a recent survey, which found that only 2% of those who face blocks simply give up and don't find other means of circumvention, he reached an interesting conclusion. "2% of 0.084% is 0.00168% of Internet users! In absolute terms, that would represent a small group of around 800 people across France!" In common with other courts presented with the same arguments, the Paris court said the number of people using alternative DNS to access the sites, and the simplicity of switching DNS, are irrelevant. Canal+ owns the rights to the broadcasts and if it wishes to request a blocking injunction, it has the legal right to do so. The DNS providers' assertion that their services are not covered by the legislation was also waved aside by the court. Google says it intends to comply with the order. As part of the original matter in 2023, it was already required to deindex the domains from search results under the same law. At least in theory, this means that those who circumvented the original blocks using these alternative DNS services, will be back to square one and confronted by blocks all over again. Given that circumventing this set of blocks will be as straightforward as circumventing the originals, that raises the question of what measures Canal+ will demand next, and from whom.

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According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple appears ready to embrace a thinner design language with the upcoming MacBook Pro, Apple Watch, and iPhone. MacRumors reports: When the M4 iPad Pro was unveiled last month, Apple touted it as the company's thinnest product ever, and even compared it to the 2012 iPod nano to emphasize its slim dimensions. Writing in the latest edition of his Power On newsletter, Gurman says that like the iPad Pro, Apple is now focused on delivering the thinnest possible devices across its lineups without compromising on battery life or major new features. Gurman writes that the new iPad Pro is the "beginning of a new class of Apple devices," and that Apple's aim is to offer "the thinnest and lightest products in their categories across the whole tech industry." Apple now reportedly has its sights on making thinner versions of iPhone, Apple Watch, and MacBook Pro over the next couple of years. Gurman's sources tell him Apple is now focused on developing a significantly skinnier iPhone in time for the iPhone 17 line in 2025, corroborating a May report by The Information. According to the latter report, Apple is planning to launch an all-new thinner iPhone 17 model next year that will allegedly feature a "major redesign" akin to the iPhone X. Gurman previously reported that Apple is planning a complete revamp of the Apple Watch for the device's tenth anniversary, dubbed "Apple Watch X." Since the original Apple Watch was unveiled in 2014 and launched in 2015, Gurman is unsure whether the Apple Watch X will be released in 2024 or 2025. However, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo today claimed that this year's upcoming Apple Watch will have a larger screen and thinner design, which sounds like the sort of major overhaul and design signature that Gurman has suggested.

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One of the more subtle trends at this year's Computex was that the majority of high-end motherboards now come equipped with a 5GbE network controller. At present, this might be considered a limited benefit as 5GbE and 10GbE switches and routers are still pretty expensive. But Realtek is planning on tackling the issue from both ends, as the company is preparing a hardware platform for sub-$100 5GbE switches. 

Realtek’s quad-port 5GbE switch platform consists of five key chips: one RTL9303 switch system-on-chip, and four RTL8251B 5GbE physical interfaces (PHYs). The chips are accompanied by various other components, such as power management ICs, but in general it relies solely on in-house developed components, which is why it can be made so cheap. 

RealTek's platform is meant for home and small offices, which is reflected in the switch's feature set. This is a simple, unmanaged switch with a handful of ports, making it ideal for linking up a few systems, while enterprise users will likely find it a bit too basic.

Segmenting the market like this is ultimately critical for bringing down the price of hardware. The bulk of 5GbE/10GbE switches on the market today are more enterprise-focused managed switches, which carry more features and a price premium to match. So developing a stripped-down platform for cheaper consumer switches is a huge development that should finally make it economical for consumers to adopt faster networking hardware, similar to 2.5GbE a few years ago.

At present, 2.5GbE switches are running at around $20/port, so RealTek's sub-$100 target for a 4-port switch aims to bring 5GbE in at just a slightly higher price tag of $25/port. Or, compared to the handful of unmanaged 10GbE switches on the market, which average $60/port, this will be less than half the price (though at half the bandwidth).

The proliferation of cheap 5GbE network switches will also mark a notable inflection point in Ethernet hardware design, as it's the fastest standard that is rated to work the ubiquitous Cat 5e cable. The NBASE-T standard was penned almost a decade ago in order to cover the missing-middle between 1GbE and 10GbE, while getting more bandwidth out of existing, widely-deployed Cat 5e cabling. So with the release of consumer 5GbE gear, the standard's goals are finally coming to fruition – though it does mean we're finally reaching the end of the road for the oldest network cabling still widely in use.

For now, Realtek is only talking about one customer offering a sub-$100 5GbE switch this September, but something tells me that other partners of the company will come up with similar devices soon enough. As a result of the competition, prices could get even lower, which is always good for buyers.

These benefits should also funnel into Wi-Fi 7 routers, to a limited extent. Wired backhaul speeds need to keep pace with ever-faster Wi-Fi standards in order to keep those newer radios fed, so it's not a coincidence that cheaper 5GbE is finally coming right as Wi-Fi 7 is taking off.

Overall, the company's 5GbE switch platform is part of a larger ecosystem of 5GbE hardware that Realtek was showing off at Computex. In addition to RTL8251B 5GbE PHYs and RTL9303 switch SoC, the company is also preparing their RTL8126 PCIe 3.1 network controller, and RTL8157 NIC for USB dongles.

After two years of testing, McDonald's has ended its use of AI-powered drive-thru ordering. "The company was trialing IBM tech at more than 100 of its restaurants but it will remove those systems from all locations by the end of July, meaning that customers will once again be placing orders with a human instead of a computer," reports Engadget. From the report: As part of that decision, McDonald's is ending its automated order taking (AOT) partnership with IBM. However, McDonald's may be considering other potential partners to work with on future AOT efforts. "While there have been successes to date, we feel there is an opportunity to explore voice ordering solutions more broadly," Mason Smoot, chief restaurant officer for McDonald's USA, said in an email to franchisees that was obtained by trade publication Restaurant Business (as noted by PC Mag). Smoot added that the company would look into other options and make "an informed decision on a future voice ordering solution by the end of the year," noting that "IBM has given us confidence that a voice ordering solution for drive-thru will be part of our restaurant's future." McDonald's told Restaurant Business that the goal of the test was to determine whether AOT could speed up service and streamline operations. By automating drive-thru orders, companies are hoping to negate the need for a staff member to take them and either reduce the number of workers needed to operate a restaurant or redeploy resources to other areas of the business. IBM will continue to power other McDonald's systems and it's in talks with other fast-food chains over the use of its AOT tech. The likes of Hardee's, Carl's Jr., Krystal, Wendy's, Dunkin and Taco Johns are already testing or using such technology at their drive-thru locations.

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With the release of Fedora 41 in October, this Red Hat sponsored Linux distribution is hoping to have all the software bits aligned that its AMD SEV-SNP virtualization stack will be all squared away for this latest iteration of Secure Encrypted Virtualization...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy on Monday called on Congress to require a tobacco-style warning for visitors to social media platforms. In an op-ed published in The New York Times, Murthy said the mental health crisis among young people is an urgent problem, with social media "an important contributor." He said his vision of the warning includes language that would alert users to the potential mental health harms of the websites and apps. "A surgeon general's warning label, which requires congressional action, would regularly remind parents and adolescents that social media has not been proved safe," he wrote. In 1965, after the previous year's landmark report from Surgeon General Luther L. Terry that linked cigarette smoking to lung cancer and heart disease, Congress mandated unprecedented warning labels on packs of cigarettes, the first of which stated, "Caution: Cigarette Smoking May Be Hazardous to Your Health." Murthy said in the op-ed, "Evidence from tobacco labels shows that surgeon general's warnings can increase awareness and change behavior." But he acknowledged the limitations and said a label alone wouldn't make social media safe. Steps can be taken by Congress, social media companies, parents and others to mitigate the risks, ensure a safer experience online and protect children from possible harm, he wrote. In the op-ed, Murthy linked the amount of time spent on social media to the increasing risk that children will experience symptoms of anxiety and depression. The American Psychological Association says teenagers spend nearly five hours every day on top platforms such as YouTube, TikTok and Instagram. In a 2019 study, the association found the proportion of young adults with suicidal thoughts or other suicide-related outcomes increased 47% from 2008 to 2017, when social media use among that age group soared. And that was before the pandemic triggered a year's worth of virtual isolation for the U.S. In early 2021, amid continued pandemic lockdowns, Murthy called on social media platforms to "proactively enhance and contribute to the mental health and well-being of our children." [...] A surgeon general's public health advisory on social media's mental health published last year cited research finding that among its potential harms are exposure to violent and sexual content and to bullying, harassment and body shaming.

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Cybercriminals are demanding payments of between $300,000 and $5 million apiece from as many as 10 companies breached in a campaign that targeted Snowflake customers, according to a security firm helping with the investigation. From a report: The hacking scheme has entered a "new stage" as the gang looks to profit from the most valuable information it has stolen, said Austin Larsen, a senior threat analyst at Google's Mandiant security business, which helped lead Snowflake's inquiry. That includes auctioning companies' data on illegal online forums to try to pressure them into making payments, he said. "We anticipate the actor to continue to attempt to extort victims," Larsen said. Snowflake, a cloud-based data analytics firm, said on June 2 that hackers had launched a "targeted" effort directed against Snowflake users that used single-factor authentication techniques. The company declined to comment on any specific customers.

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Apple said on Monday it will no longer offer its "buy now, pay later" service, Apple Pay Later, in the United States, and will instead focus on bringing installment loan offerings to Apple Pay users globally later this year. The company told 9to5Mac that the new feature will allow users to access installment loans from eligible credit and debit cards, as well as lenders, when checking out with Apple Pay. Existing Apple Pay Later users in the U.S. will still be able to manage their loans through the Wallet app. Apple Pay Later, which launched in the U.S. in March last year, allowed users to split purchases of $50 to $1,000 into four equal payments over six weeks without fees or interest. The company said the shift to a global installment loan offering will enable it to provide flexible payments to more users worldwide in collaboration with Apple Pay enabled banks and lenders.

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Intel today released OpenVINO 2024.2, the newest version of its open-source AI toolkit for optimizing and deploying deep learning (A) inference models across a range of AI frameworks and broad hardware types...

Proton, the secure-minded email and productivity suite, is becoming a nonprofit foundation, but it doesn't want you to think about it in the way you think about other notable privacy and web foundations. From a report: "We believe that if we want to bring about large-scale change, Proton can't be billionaire-subsidized (like Signal), Google-subsidized (like Mozilla), government-subsidized (like Tor), donation-subsidized (like Wikipedia), or even speculation-subsidized (like the plethora of crypto "foundations")," Proton CEO Andy Yen wrote in a blog post announcing the transition. "Instead, Proton must have a profitable and healthy business at its core." The announcement comes exactly 10 years to the day after a crowdfunding campaign saw 10,000 people give more than $500,000 to launch Proton Mail. To make it happen, Yen, along with co-founder Jason Stockman and first employee Dingchao Lu, endowed the Proton Foundation with some of their shares. The Proton Foundation is now the primary shareholder of the business Proton, which Yen states will "make irrevocable our wish that Proton remains in perpetuity an organization that places people ahead of profits." Among other members of the Foundation's board is Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of HTML, HTTP, and almost everything else about the web. Of particular importance is where Proton and the Proton Foundation are located: Switzerland. As Yen noted, Swiss foundations do not have shareholders and are instead obligated to act "in accordance with the purpose for which they were established." While the for-profit entity Proton AG can still do things like offer stock options to recruits and even raise its own capital on private markets, the Foundation serves as a backstop against moving too far from Proton's founding mission, Yen wrote.

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La carte M.2 XPANDER-AERO SLIDER présentée par MSI à l’occasion du Computex 2024 aurait pu intégrer notre florilège des produits les plus originaux du salon ; à défaut, voici quelques lignes pour vous la présenter... [Tout lire]

Et c'est bien dommage ! De nos jours, si vous voulez une carte graphique puissante au format mini-ITX, vous trouverez au mieux une RTX 4060 Ti 8 Go chez Gainward, et quelques RTX 4060 MSI et Gainward. Si vous avez 20 cm de place, vous pouvez taper sur la seule RTX 4070 disponible du marché, la RTX 4...

Le SimRacing, c’est un marché de niche pour sur le segment du jeu PC, pour les gamers décidant d’opter pour une configuration leur permettant de simuler au mieux une course automobile (ou camio-mobile pour les plus intrépides). Si nous savions que notre cher ami Corsair biglouchait fortement sur Fan...

The U.S. government on Monday sued Adobe, accusing the maker of Photoshop and Acrobat of harming consumers by enrolling them in its most lucrative subscription plans without clearly disclosing important terms. From a report: In a complaint filed in the San Jose, California, federal court, the government said Adobe failed to adequately disclose hefty early termination fees, sometimes reaching hundreds of dollars, when customers sign up for "annual, paid monthly" subscription plans. The government said Adobe hides important terms in fine print and behind textboxes and hyperlinks, clearly discloses the fees only when subscribers try to cancel, and makes canceling an onerous and complicated process.

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Thousands of people catching trains in the United Kingdom likely had their faces scanned by Amazon software as part of widespread artificial intelligence trials, new documents reveal. Wired: The image recognition system was used to predict travelers' age, gender, and potential emotions -- with the suggestion that the data could be used in advertising systems in the future. During the past two years, eight train stations around the UK -- including large stations such as London's Euston and Waterloo, Manchester Piccadilly, and other smaller stations -- have tested AI surveillance technology with CCTV cameras with the aim of alerting staff to safety incidents and potentially reducing certain types of crime. The extensive trials, overseen by rail infrastructure body Network Rail, have used object recognition -- a type of machine learning that can identify items in videofeeds -- to detect people trespassing on tracks, monitor and predict platform overcrowding, identify antisocial behavior ("running, shouting, skateboarding, smoking"), and spot potential bike thieves. Separate trials have used wireless sensors to detect slippery floors, full bins, and drains that may overflow. The scope of the AI trials, elements of which have previously been reported, was revealed in a cache of documents obtained in response to a freedom of information request by civil liberties group Big Brother Watch. "The rollout and normalization of AI surveillance in these public spaces, without much consultation and conversation, is quite a concerning step," says Jake Hurfurt, the head of research and investigations at the group.

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Début 2023, Amazon faisait l’acquisition de One Medical, un service qui combine offre de soins en présentiel et à distance.

Depuis, les nombreux patients âgés qui l’ont appelé ont été redirigés vers des call centers, où des employés non formés aux soins médicaux étaient chargés de leur répondre.

Selon les informations du Washington Post, ces derniers n’ont pas su relever l’urgence de certains symptômes dans plus d’une dizaine de cas, avec des conséquences graves pour la santé des patients.

L’enquête du média américain paraît alors que les alertes sur les conditions d’exercice de One Medical se multiplient, notamment sur la réduction de la durée des rendez-vous et le licenciement de certaines équipes.

Amazon déclare au Washington Post prendre les alertes au sérieux.

Dans un billet de blog, YouTube explique tester « une fonction expérimentale permettant d’ajouter des notes pour fournir un contexte pertinent, opportun et facile à comprendre sur les vidéos ». Bref, la plateforme de vidéos importe les notes de communauté qui existent déjà, sur Twitter/X.

L’entreprise donne plusieurs exemples d’utilisation : « clarifier lorsqu’une chanson est censée être une parodie, signaler la disponibilité d’une nouvelle version d’un produit faisant l’objet d’une critique ou informer les spectateurs lorsqu’une séquence ancienne est présentée à tort comme un événement d’actualité ».

Elle n’évoque donc pas les élections qui ont lieu cette année à travers le monde (dont l’élection présidentielle américaine) mais cette fonctionnalité pourrait être utilisée pour contester la véracité d’une vidéo politique à ces occasions. Sur X, de nombreux tweets de personnalités politiques sont accompagnés de ce genre de messages.

Le test se fera sur mobile, aux États-Unis et en anglais « au départ ».

« Au cours de cette phase de test, nous nous attendons à ce qu’il y ait des erreurs – des notes qui ne correspondent pas parfaitement à la vidéo, ou des informations potentiellement incorrectes – et cela fait partie des enseignements que nous tirerons de l’expérience » avertit déjà l’entreprise. Elle invite les spectateurs, les participants et les créateurs à lui « faire part de leurs commentaires sur la qualité des notes, et nous étudierons les possibilités d’amélioration au fil du temps, notamment pour déterminer s’il est judicieux d’étendre cette fonctionnalité ».

L’étonnant exemple pris par YouTube est celui de l’annonce de l’extinction d’une espèce de tortue dont on aurait retrouvé des spécimens :

L’entreprise explique qu’elle va sélectionner un nombre limité de contributeurs au départ, puis l’étendre petit à petit à des gens dont la chaine est active et « en règle avec nos lignes directrices communautaires ».

YouTube demandera à des utilisateurs si la note aide et utilisera un algorithme pour déterminer quelles notes seront publiées.

The accounting and finance professions have long adapted to technology -- from calculators and spreadsheets to cloud computing. However, the emergence of generative AI presents both new challenges and opportunities for students looking to get ahead in the world of finance. From a report: Research last year by investment bank Evercore and Visionary Future, which incubates new ventures, highlights the workforce disruption being wreaked by generative AI. Analysing 160mn US jobs, the study reveals that service sectors such as legal and financial are highly susceptible to disruption by AI, although full job replacement is unlikely. Instead, generative AI is expected to enhance productivity, the research concludes, particularly for those in high-value roles paying above $100,000 annually. But, for current students and graduates earning below this threshold, the challenge will be navigating these changes and identifying the skills that will be in demand in future. Generative AI is being swiftly integrated into finance and accounting, by automating specific tasks. Stuart Tait, chief technology officer for tax and legal at KPMG UK, describes it as a "game changer for tax," because it is capable of handling complex tasks beyond routine automation. "Gen AI for tax research and technical analysis will give an efficiency gain akin to moving from typewriters to word processors," he says. The tools can answer tax queries within minutes, with more than 95 per cent accuracy, Tait says.

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