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Want To Keep Getting Windows 10 Updates? It'll Cost You $30

With Windows 10 support set to expire on October 14, 2025, Microsoft is offering a one-time, one-year Extended Security Updates plan for consumers. "For $30, you'll receive 'critical' and 'important' security updates -- basically security patches that will continue to protect your Windows 10 PC from any vulnerabilities," reports PCWorld. "That $30 is for one year's worth of updates, and that's the only option at this time." From the report: Microsoft has been warning users for years that Windows 10 support will expire in 2025, specifically October 14, 2025. At that point, Windows 10 will officially fall out of support: there will be no more feature updates or security patches. On paper, that would mean that any Windows 10 PC will be at risk of any new vulnerabilities that researchers uncover. Previously, Microsoft had quietly hinted that consumers would be offered the same ESU protections offered to businesses and enterprises, as it did in December 2023 and again in an "editor's note" shared in an April 2024 support post, in which the company said that "details will be shared at a later date for consumers." That time is now, apparently. Back in December 2023, Microsoft offered the ESU on an annual basis to businesses for three years, one year at a time. The fees would double each year, charging businesses hundreds of dollars for the privilege. Consumers won't be offered the same deal, as a Microsoft representative said via email that it'll be a "one-time, one-year option for $30."

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Ghost Jobs Are Wreaking Havoc On Tech Workers

An anonymous reader quotes a report from SFGATE: If you've recently been laid off and have started the arduous process of looking for a new job, you've probably seen them on networking platforms like LinkedIn: postings for roles that are 30 days old, maybe more, with suspiciously wide salary ranges. They usually have hundreds, or even thousands, of hopeful applicants vying for the same position, but if you do a quick cross-check and notice that the role isn't posted on the company's actual website -- or any of their social media pages -- you should probably stop drafting that cover letter, because it's possible they're not hiring at all. "Ghost jobs," or ads for positions that aren't actually open, are a common phenomenon in the tech industry, which has been plagued by layoffs and budget cuts over recent years. As unemployed workers struggle to regain their footing, recruiters and career coaches who spoke with SFGATE warned that these fake jobs posted by real companies serve multiple, sometimes insidious purposes. According to a 2024 survey from MyPerfectResume, 81% of recruiters admitted to posting ads for positions that were fake or already filled. While some respondents said employers did it to maintain a presence on job boards and build a talent pool, it's also used to commit psychological warfare: 25% said ghost jobs helped companies gauge how replaceable their employees were, while 23% said it helped make the company appear more stable during a hiring freeze. Another damning 2024 report from Resume Builder said that 62% companies posted them specifically to make their employees feel replaceable. They also made ads to "trick overworked employees" into believing that more people would be brought on to alleviate their overwhelming workload. After interviewing 1,641 hiring managers, Resume Builder researchers found that 40% of employers posted fake job listings in 2024, and that three in 10 currently had ghost jobs listed. The idea to post them mostly trickled down from HR, followed by senior management and executives, their June 2024 article continued. Though the listings were posted on multiple hiring platforms, the majority of them appeared on LinkedIn and the companies' websites. Evidence suggests this trend is taking hold throughout the Bay Area, too. A collaborative document circulating online reveals a growing list of employers accused of posting ghost jobs. Many of them, it turns out, are tech companies with offices based in California.

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Chinese Attackers Accessed Canadian Government Networks For Five Years

Canada's Communications Security Establishment (CSE) revealed a sustained cyber campaign by the People's Republic of China, targeting Canadian government and private sector networks over the past five years. The report also flagged India, alongside Russia and Iran, as emerging cyber threats. The Register reports: The biennial National Cyber Threat Assessment described the People's Republic of China's (PRC) cyber operations against Canada as "second to none." Their purpose is to "serve high-level political and commercial objectives, including espionage, intellectual property (IP) theft, malign influence, and transnational repression." Over the past four years, at least 20 networks within Canadian government agencies and departments were compromised by PRC cyber threat actors. The CSE assured citizens that all known federal government compromises have been resolved, but warned that "the actors responsible for these intrusions dedicated significant time and resources to learn about the target networks." The report also alleges that government officials -- particularly those perceived as being critical of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) -- were attacked. One of those attacks includes an email operation against members of Interparliamentary Alliance on China. The purpose of the cyber attacks is mainly to gain information that would lead to strategic, economic, and diplomatic advantages. The activity appears to have intensified following incidents of bilateral tension between Canada and the PRC, after which Beijing apparently wanted to gather timely intelligence on official reactions and unfolding developments, according to the report. Canada's private sector is also in the firing line, with the CSE suggesting "PRC cyber threat actors have very likely stolen commercially sensitive data from Canadian firms and institutions." Operations that collect information that could support the PRC's economic and military interests are priority targets.

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Zoox Custom Robotaxis Are Finally Coming To San Francisco, Las Vegas

Zoox, an Amazon-owned autonomous vehicle company, is set to roll out dozens of its purpose-built robotaxis in San Francisco and Las Vegas, starting with employee rides in San Francisco's SoMa neighborhood and the Las Vegas Strip. "We have achieved that internal safety readiness" required to launch the service, said co-founder and CTO Jesse Levinson on the TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 stage. TechCrunch reports: The announcement comes a decade after Zoox was founded and four years since it was acquired by Amazon and unveiled its purpose-built robotaxi. In that time, the nascent autonomous vehicle industry has gone through the full hype cycle that led to multi-billion-dollar valuations and later a wave of shutdowns and consolidation. "We still exist," Levinson said, in a nod to the tumult the industry has gone through in recent years. Levinson said Zoox is going to take a "measured approach" to rolling out its robotaxi service, and noted that his company has been working closely with local and federal safety regulators. "I can say that in the next few weeks, we're actually going to have a couple dozen Zoox robotaxis across our Foster City, San Francisco and Las Vegas, geofences that will expand several fold over the next year," he said. "And then, you know, 2026 is when we're going to really start cranking out production vehicles at very large scale." He also said Zoox will launch an "explorer" program of early riders who will be able to use the robotaxis for free before opening the service up to paying customers. (Rival Waymo operated a similar invite-only early rider program before opening its service to the paying public.) These early riders, or explorers, will gain access to the Zoox vehicles early next year starting with Las Vegas, Levinson said. The Zoox AVs will operate throughout the "most busy 16 hours" of the day, Levinson said, noting that it's "so boring at four in the morning, we don't think we would learn very much."

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Over 500 Amazon Workers Decry 'Non-Data-Driven' Logic For 5-Day RTO Policy

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: More than 500 Amazon workers reportedly signed a letter to Amazon Web Services' (AWS) CEO this week, sharing their outrage over Amazon's upcoming return-to-office (RTO) policy that will force workers into offices five days per week. In September, Amazon announced that starting in 2025, workers will no longer be allowed to work remotely twice a week. At the time, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the move would make it easier for workers "to learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture." Reuters reported today that it viewed a letter from a swath of workers sent to AWS chief Matt Garman on Wednesday regarding claims he reportedly made during an all-hands meeting this month. Garman reportedly told attendees that 9 out of 10 employees he spoke with support the five-day in-office work policy. The letter called the statements "inconsistent with the experiences of many employees" and "misrepresenting the realities of working at Amazon," Reuters reported. "We were appalled to hear the non-data-driven explanation you gave for Amazon imposing a five-day in-office mandate,'" the letter reportedly stated. [...] In the letter, hundreds of Amazon workers reportedly lamented what they believe was a lack of third-party data shared in making the RTO policy. It said that Garman's statements "break the trust of your employees who have not only personal experience that shows the benefits of remote work but have seen the extensive data which supports that experience." The letter included stories from 12 anonymous employees about medical, familial, and other challenges that the new RTO policy could create. The letter also reportedly pointed out the obstacles that a five-day in-office work policy has on groups of protected workers, like those providing childcare. The new policy will not align with Amazon's "'Strive to be Earth's Best Employer' leadership principle,'" the letter said. In a statement, an Amazon spokesperson told Reuters that Amazon's benefits include commuter benefits, elder care, and subsidized parking fees.

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Meta AI Surpasses 500 Million Users

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: Last month at Meta Connect, Mark Zuckerberg said that Meta AI was "on track" to become the most-used generative AI assistant in the world. The company has now passed a significant milestone toward that goal, with Meta AI passing the 500 million user mark, Zuckerberg revealed during the company's latest earnings call. The half billion user mark comes just barely a year after the social network first launched its AI assistant last fall. Zuckerberg said the company still expects to become the "most-used" assistant by the end of 2024, though he's never specified how the company is measuring that metric. Zuck said that AI-driven improvements in feed and video recommendations have led to an 8% increase in time spent on Facebook and 5% increase on Instagram this year. Advertisers have also leveraged the company's AI tools to generate over 15 million ads in just the past month. Separately, Meta's Threads app is gaining over a million new sign-ups daily, with nearly 275 million total monthly users.

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Arecibo Collapsed Because of Engineering Failures That Inspectors Failed To Spot

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Behind the Black: According to a new very detailed engineering analysis into the causes of the collapse of the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico in 2020, the failure was caused first by a surprising interaction between the radio electronics of Arecibo and the traditional methods used to anchor the cables, and second by a failure of inspections to spot the problem as it became obvious. The surprising engineering discovery is illustrated [here (PNG)]. The main antenna of Arecibo was suspended above the bowl below by three main cables. The figure shows the basic design of the system used to anchor the cable ends to their sockets. The end of the cable bunches would be inserted into the socket, spread apart, and then zinc would be poured in to fill the gap and then act as a plug and glue to hold the cables in place. According to the report, this system has been used for decades in many applications very successfully. What the report found however was at Arecibo over time the cable bunch and zinc plug slowly began to pull out of the socket, what the report labels as "zinc creep." This was noted by inspectors, but dismissed as a concern because they still believed the engineering margins were still high enough to prevent failure at this point. In fact, this is exactly where the structure failed in 2020, with the first cable separating as shown in August 2020. The second cable did so in a similar manner in November 2020. The report concluded that the "only hypothesis the committee could develop that provides a plausible but unprovable answer to all these questions and the observed socket failure pattern is that the socket zinc creep was unexpectedly accelerated in the Arecibo Telescope's uniquely powerful electromagnetic radiation environment. The Arecibo Telescope cables were suspended across the beam of 'the most powerful radio transmitter on Earth.'"

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Nintendo Made a Music Streaming App For Video Game Soundtracks

Nintendo has announced a mobile app called Nintendo Music, which lets users listen to classic video game soundtracks from Nintendo games spanning the last few decades, including Splatoon, Animal Crossing, and The Legend of Zelda. According to The Verge, the app is available on iOS and Android but only Switch Online subscribers will be able to stream the tunes. From the report: The app features curated playlists themed around games, moments, moods, or characters, though you can also build your own. It also supports streaming as well as downloading tracks for offline listening. Curiously, it includes a spoiler feature that lets you filter out tracks that, somehow, might spoil a game you haven't played or finished yet. And if you just want some Hyrule white noise, the app also lets you "loop songs or extend select tracks to 15, 30, or 60 minutes for uninterrupted listening." Here's a list of all the regions the app will be available in.

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Boston Dynamics' Atlas Robot Executes Autonomous Automotive Parts Picking

In a new video published today, Boston Dynamics' humanoid robot Atlas is shown moving engine parts between bins without any human assistance. TechCrunch reports: Boston Dynamics is quick to note that the actions are being performed autonomously, without "prescribed or teleoperated movements." [...] Boston Dynamics notes, "The robot is able to detect and react to changes in the environment (e.g., moving fixtures) and action failures (e.g., failure to insert the cover, tripping, environment collision) using a combination of vision, force, and proprioceptive sensors." In addition to the autonomously executed tasks, the video showcases impressive adaptive -- and strong -- actuators, as the robot pivots at its waist. The action minimizes movements, saving precious seconds in the process.

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Siemens To Buy Altair For $10.6 Billion In Digital Portfolio Push

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Siemens will buy Altair Engineering for $10.6 billion, the American engineering software firm said on Wednesday, as the German company seeks to strengthen its presence in the fast-growing industrial software market. The offer price of $113 per share represents a premium of about 18.7% to Altair's closing price on Oct. 21, a day before Reuters first reported that the company was exploring a sale. The deal for Michigan-based Altair is Siemens's biggest acquisition since Siemens Healthineers bought medical device maker Varian Medical Systems for $16.4 million in 2020. [...] The transaction is anticipated to add to Siemens' earnings per share in about two years from the deal's closing, which is expected in the second half of 2025. It will also increase Siemens' digital business revenue by about 8%, adding approximately 600 million euros ($651.36 million) to the company's digital business revenue in fiscal 2023. The transaction would have a revenue impact of about $500 million per year in the mid-term and more than $1 billion per year in the long term, Siemens said.

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Colorado Agency 'Improperly' Posted Passwords for Its Election System Online

For months, the Colorado Department of State inadvertently exposed partial passwords for voting machines in a public spreadsheet. "While the incident is embarrassing and already fueling accusations from the state's Republican party, the department said in a statement that it 'does not pose an immediate security threat to Colorado's elections, nor will it impact how ballots are counted,'" reports Gizmodo. From the report: Colorado NBC affiliate station 9NEWS reported that Hope Scheppelman, vice chair of the state's Republican party, revealed the error in a mass email sent Tuesday morning, which included an affidavit from a person who claimed to have downloaded the spreadsheet and discovered the passwords by clicking a button to reveal hidden tabs. In its statement, the Department of State said that there are two unique passwords for each of its voting machines, which are stored in separate places. Additionally, the passwords can only be used by a person who is physically operating the system and voting machines are stored in secure areas that require ID badges to access and are under 24/7 video surveillance. "The Department took immediate action as soon as it was aware of this, and informed the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which closely monitors and protects the [country's] essential security infrastructure," The department said, adding that it is "working to remedy this situation where necessary." Colorado voters use paper ballots, ensuring that a physical paper trail that can be used to verify results tabulated electronically.

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Microsoft Reports Big Profits Amid Massive AI Investments

Ars Technica's Samuel Axon reports on Microsoft's quarterly earnings: Some investors have been uneasy about the company's aggressive spending on AI, while others have demanded it. During this quarter, Microsoft reported that it spent $20 billion on capital expenditures, nearly double what it had spent during the same quarter last year. However, the company satisfied both groups of investors, as it revealed it has still been doing well in the short term amid those long-term investments. The fiscal quarter, which covered July through September, saw overall sales rise 16 percent year over year to $65.6 billion. Despite all that AI spending, profits were up 11 percent, too. The growth was largely driven by Azure and cloud services, which saw a 33 percent increase in revenue. The company attributed 12 percent of that to AI-related products and services. Meanwhile, Microsoft's gaming division continued to challenge long-standing assumptions that hardware is king, with Xbox content and services posting 61 percent increased year-over-year revenue despite a 29 percent drop in hardware sales. [...] The company attributed 53 points of that to the recent $69 billion Activision acquisition.

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Steam Games Must Fully Disclose Kernel-Level Anti-Cheat On Store Pages

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gaming On Linux: Valve announced a change for Steam today that will make things a lot clearer for everyone, as developers will now need to clearly list the kernel-level anti-cheat used on Steam store pages. In the Steamworks Developer post Valve said: "We've heard from more and more developers recently that they're looking for the right way to share anti-cheat information about their game with players. At the same time, players have been requesting more transparency around the anti-cheat services used in games, as well as the existence of any additional software that will be installed within the game." Developers with games already on Steam will also need to do this, as it's not just for new games coming up for release, and it is also part of the release process now too. So Valve will be doing checks on games to ensure the notices are there and correct. However, it's only being forced for kernel-level anti-cheat. If it's only client-side or server-side, it's optional, but Valve say "we generally think that any game that makes use of anti-cheat technology would benefit from letting players know".

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Call of Duty's Massive Filesize Drives Peak Internet Usage

Comcast says the latest installment of Call of Duty, released on October 25th, resulted in a whopping 19 percent of its overall traffic last week. The ISP says it's the company's "biggest weak in internet history." The Verge reports: It's not really possible to quantify that further, given Comcast didn't provide any specific numbers -- either about how many customers were downloading the game or how big their downloads were. Ranging between 84.4GB for the PlayStation version and 102GB for the PC edition Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is, in the grand tradition of Call of Duty games, a hefty download. It can be as much as 300GB if players choose to go ahead and download Modern Warfare II and III and all the associated content packs and languages, as Activision explained in June. The announcement underscores "just how restrictive its 1.2TB data cap can be in 2024," notes The Verge. "For any players who did download the whole massive 300GB package, they'll have wiped out a huge chunk of their 1.2TB Xfinity data cap in one fell swoop." "If they used their internet as normal otherwise, that could put them right up against or even blow past that cap. Given that my family used nearly 800GB last month without any notably large game downloads, it wouldn't be that hard at all."

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Sketchy Financials Send Supermicro Auditors Running For the Hills

The Register's Tobias Mann reports: Supermicro shares took a nose dive on Wednesday, sliding more than 30 percent after the accounting firm hired to review its reporting practices resigned after determining they were just a bit too sketchy to warrant the risk. "We are resigning due to information that has recently come to our attention which has led us to no longer be able to rely on management's and audit committee's representations," Ernst & Young wrote in a resignation letter, which also raised alarm bells regarding Supermicro CEO Charles Liang's influence over the board. The concerns, disclosed in a recent SEC filing, only serve to stoke the fires of controversy surrounding Supermicro, which, after more than two months, still hasn't filed its 10-K annual report and faces the possibility of being de-listed from the Nasdaq as a result. [...] EY's resignation apparently came months after it raised concerns with management regarding the "governance, transparency, and completeness of" Supermicro's financial reporting, and warned that the release of the server maker's annual report was at significant risk. In response, Supermicro's board appointed an independent special committee and hired Cooley and forensic accounting firm Secretariat Advisors to review its internal controls and governance procedures. It seems EY was not too pleased with the special committee's findings which apparently raised yet more red flags. "After receiving additional information through the Review process, EY informed the special committee that the additional information EY received raised questions, including about whether the Company demonstrates a commitment to integrity and ethical values," the SEC filing reads.

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Reddit Is Profitable For the First Time Ever

In Reddit's third-quarter earnings results, the company reported a profit of $29.9 million, with $348.4 million in revenue -- a 68% increase year over year. The Verge reports: The company hasn't been profitable at any point in its nearly 20-year history. Since going public, Reddit lost $575 million during its first quarter on the market, but it decreased that loss to $10 million last quarter, and is now finally in the green. Reddit also grew to 97.2 million daily users over the past few months, marking a 47 percent increase from the same time last year. That number exceeded 100 million users on some days during the quarter, Reddit says. Reddit's advertising revenue grew to $315.1 million, while "other" revenue reached $33.2 million on account of "data licensing agreements signed earlier this year." Both Google and OpenAI have cut deals with Reddit to train their AI models on its posts.

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Russian Court Fines Google $20 Decillion For Blocking Media Content

A Russian court has fined Google an astronomical sum of around $20 decillion for YouTube's blocking of Russian media channels tied to sanctioned entities. The amount compounds weekly as Google continues to disregard the ruling. The Register reports: To put that into perspective, the World Bank estimates global GDP as around $100 trillion, which is peanuts compared to the prospective fine. Google might be one of the most valuable businesses on the planet, but even if Sundar Pichai rummages around the back of the sofa he won't be able to raise the funds to pay the penalty. The bizarre amount has been calculated after a four-year court case that started after YouTube banned the ultra-nationalist Russian channel Tsargrad in 2020 in response to the US sanctions imposed against its owner. Following Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine in 2022 more channels were added to the banned list and 17 stations are now suing the Chocolate Factory, including Zvezda (a TV channel owned by Putin's Ministry of Defence), according to local media. "Google was called by a Russian court to administrative liability under Art. 13.41 of the Administrative Offenses Code for removing channels on the YouTube platform. The court ordered the company to restore these channels," lawyer Ivan Morozov told state media outlet TASS. The court imposed a fine of 100 thousand rubles ($1,025) per day, with the total fine doubling every week. Owing to compound interest (Einstein's eighth wonder of the world), Google is now on the hook for an insane amount of money, or what the judge on Monday called "a case in which there are many, many zeros."

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'Alien' Signal Decoded

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the European Space Agency: White dots arranged in five clusters against a black background (PNG). This is the simulated extraterrestrial signal transmitted from Mars and deciphered by a father and a daughter on Earth after a year-long decoding effort. On June 7, 2024, media artist Daniela de Paulis received this simple, retro-looking image depicting five amino acids in her inbox. It was the solution to a cosmic puzzle beamed from ESA's ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) in May 2023, when the European spacecraft played alien as part of the multidisciplinary art project 'A Sign in Space.' After three radio astronomy observatories on Earth intercepted the signal, the challenge was first to extract the message from the raw data of the radio signal, and secondly to decode it. In just 10 days, a community of 5000 citizen scientists gathered online and managed to extract the signal. The second task took longer and required some visionary minds. US citizens Ken and Keli Chaffin cracked the code following their intuition and running simulations for hours and days on end. The father and daughter team discovered that the message contained movement, suggesting some sort of cellular formation and life forms. Amino acids and proteins are the building blocks of life. Now that the cryptic signal has been deciphered, the quest for meaning begins. The interpretation of the message, like any art piece, remains open. Daniela crafted the message with a small group of astronomers and computer scientists, with support from ESA, the SETI Institute and the Green Bank Observatory. The artist and collaborators behind the project are now taking a step back and witnessing how citizen scientists are shaping the challenge on their own.

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BBC Interviews Charley Kline and Bill Duvall, Creators of Arpanet

The BBC interviewed scientists Charley Kline and Bill Duvall 55 years after the first communications were made over a system called Arpanet, short for the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. "Kline and Duvall were early inventors of networking, networks that would ultimately lead to what is today the Internet," writes longtime Slashdot reader dbialac. "Duvall had basic ideas what might come of the networks, but they had no idea of how much of a phenomenon it would turn into." Here's an excerpt from the interview: BBC: What did you expect Arpanet to become? Duvall: "I saw the work we were doing at SRI as a critical part of a larger vision, that of information workers connected to each other and sharing problems, observations, documents and solutions. What we did not see was the commercial adoption nor did we anticipate the phenomenon of social media and the associated disinformation plague. Although, it should be noted, that in [SRI computer scientist] Douglas Engelbart's 1962 treatise describing the overall vision, he notes that the capabilities we were creating would trigger profound change in our society, and it would be necessary to simultaneously use and adapt the tools we were creating to address the problems which would arise from their use in society." What aspects of the internet today remind you of Arpanet? Duvall: Referring to the larger vision which was being created in Engelbart's group (the mouse, full screen editing, links, etc.), the internet today is a logical evolution of those ideas enhanced, of course, by the contributions of many bright and innovative people and organisations. Kline: The ability to use resources from others. That's what we do when we use a website. We are using the facilities of the website and its programs, features, etc. And, of course, email. The Arpanet pretty much created the concept of routing and multiple paths from one site to another. That got reliability in case a communication line failed. It also allowed increases in communication speeds by using multiple paths simultaneously. Those concepts have carried over to the internet. Today, the site of the first internet transmission at UCLA's Boetler Hally Room 3420 functions as a monument to technology history (Credit: Courtesy of UCLA) As we developed the communications protocols for the Arpanet, we discovered problems, redesigned and improved the protocols and learned many lessons that carried over to the Internet. TCP/IP [the basic standard for internet connection] was developed both to interconnect networks, in particular the Arpanet with other networks, and also to improve performance, reliability and more. How do you feel about this anniversary? Kline: That's a mix. Personally, I feel it is important, but a little overblown. The Arpanet and what sprang from it are very important. This particular anniversary to me is just one of many events. I find somewhat more important than this particular anniversary were the decisions by Arpa to build the Network and continue to support its development. Duvall: It's nice to remember the origin of something like the internet, but the most important thing is the enormous amount of work that has been done since that time to turn it into what is a major part of societies worldwide.

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GitHub Copilot Moves Beyond OpenAI Models To Support Claude 3.5, Gemini

GitHub Copilot will switch from using exclusively OpenAI's GPT models to a multi-model approach, adding Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Google's Gemini 1.5 Pro. Ars Technica reports: First, Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet will roll out to Copilot Chat's web and VS Code interfaces over the next few weeks. Google's Gemini 1.5 Pro will come a bit later. Additionally, GitHub will soon add support for a wider range of OpenAI models, including GPT o1-preview and o1-mini, which are intended to be stronger at advanced reasoning than GPT-4, which Copilot has used until now. Developers will be able to switch between the models (even mid-conversation) to tailor the model to fit their needs -- and organizations will be able to choose which models will be usable by team members. The new approach makes sense for users, as certain models are better at certain languages or types of tasks. "There is no one model to rule every scenario," wrote [GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke]. "It is clear the next phase of AI code generation will not only be defined by multi-model functionality, but by multi-model choice." It starts with the web-based and VS Code Copilot Chat interfaces, but it won't stop there. "From Copilot Workspace to multi-file editing to code review, security autofix, and the CLI, we will bring multi-model choice across many of GitHub Copilot's surface areas and functions soon," Dohmke wrote. There are a handful of additional changes coming to GitHub Copilot, too, including extensions, the ability to manipulate multiple files at once from a chat with VS Code, and a preview of Xcode support. GitHub also introduced "Spark," a natural language-based app development tool that enables both non-coders and coders to create and refine applications using conversational prompts. It's currently in an early preview phase, with a waitlist available for those who are interested.

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