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Tech Worker Builds Free AI-Powered Tool For Fighting Health Insurance Denials Published on September 01, 2024 at 03:04AM The online news site San Francisco Standard profiles an open-source platform "that takes advantage of large language models to help users generate health insurance appeals with AI... "A Fight Health Insurance user can scan their insurance denial, and the system will craft several appeal letters to choose from and modify." With the slogan "Make your health insurance company cry too," [San Francisco tech worker Holden Karau's site] makes filing appeals faster and easier. A recent study found that Affordable Care Act patients appeal only about 0.1% of rejected claims, and she hopes her platform will encourage more people to fight back... The "dirty secret" of the insurance industry is that most denials can be successfully appealed, according to Dr. Harley Schultz, a patient advocate in the Bay Area. "Very few people know abo...

Oceanographers Mapping Underwater Mountain Find Flying Spaghetti Monster Published on September 01, 2024 at 02:04AM Though the ocean covers about 70% of earth, we humans have only mapped a quarter of its floor to a high resolution, reports CNN. Many of the world's highest mountains aren't visible on land — they rise up thousands of meters from the seafloor. An expedition to the Nazca Ridge, 900 miles off the coast of Chile, has mapped and explored a newly discovered seamount four times taller than the world's tallest building. What's more, the underwater mountain's peaks, crags and ridges are home to coral gardens that host rare deep-dwelling octopuses, squids and creatures known as flying spaghetti monsters, some of which hadn't been well documented before this research. The undersea mountain is 1.9 miles (3,109 meters) tall, according to another article, which notes that the researchers also used a sonar system to bounce waves to the ocean floor, timing how ...

Washington Post Calls Telegram 'a Haven for Free Speech - and Child Predators' Published on September 01, 2024 at 01:04AM The Washington Post writes that Telegram's "anything-goes approach" to its 950 million users "has also made it one of the internet's largest havens for child predators, experts say...." "Durov's critics say his public idealism masks an opportunistic business model that allows Telegram to profit from the worst the internet has to offer, including child sexual abuse material, or CSAM... " [Telegram is] an app of choice for political organizing, including by dissidents under repressive regimes. But it is equally appealing for terrorist groups, criminal organizations and sexual predators, who use it as a hub to share and consume nonconsensual pornography, AI "deepfake" nudes, and illegal sexual images and videos of exploited minors, said Alex Stamos, chief information security officer at the cybersecurity fir...

Inside Boeing's Factory Lapses That Led To the Alaska Air Blowout Published on September 01, 2024 at 12:04AM Remember when a door-sized panel blew off a Boeing aircraft back in January? The Seattle Times reports that the "door plug" incident "was caused by two distinct manufacturing errors by different crews" in a Boeing assembly plant in Renton, Washington last fall. (And that Boeing's quality control system "failed to catch the faulty work.") But the details tell a larger story. The newspaper bases their conclusion on "transcripts of federal investigators' interviews of a dozen Boeing workers, synchronized with an internal Boeing document obtained by The Seattle Times," tracing the whole history of that panel's production. Within a day of its fuselage arriving at the factory, "a small defect was discovered: Five rivets installed by Spirit on the door frame next to the door plug were damaged." That day, the Friday bef...

Intel Weighs Options Including Foundry Split To Stem Losses Published on August 31, 2024 at 01:35AM Intel is working with investment bankers to help navigate the most difficult period in its 56-year history, Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: The company is discussing various scenarios, including a split of its product-design and manufacturing businesses, as well as which factory projects might potentially be scrapped, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are private. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, Intel's longtime bankers, have been providing advice on the possibilities, which could also include potential M&A, the people said. The discussions have only grown more urgent since the Santa Clara, California-based company delivered a grim earnings report this month, which sent the shares plunging to their lowest level since 2013. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Linux 6.12 To Optionally Display A QR Code During Kernel Panics Published on August 31, 2024 at 12:56AM New submitter meisdug writes: A new feature has been submitted for inclusion in Linux 6.12, allowing the display of a QR code when a kernel panic occurs using the DRM Panic handler. This QR code can capture detailed error information that is often missed in traditional text-based panic messages, making it more user-friendly. The feature, written in Rust, is optional and can be enabled via a specific build switch. This implementation follows similar ideas from other operating systems and earlier discussions in the Linux community. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Space Command Chief Says Dialogue With China Too Often a One-Way Street Published on August 30, 2024 at 08:50PM U.S. Space Command chief Gen. Stephen Whiting called for greater transparency from China regarding space debris this week, citing concerns over the recent breakup of a Long March 6A rocket's upper stage. The incident, which occurred after an August 6 satellite launch, scattered over 300 pieces of debris in low-Earth orbit. While acknowledging some improvement in U.S.-China military dialogue, Whiting stressed on the need for proactive communication about space junk, ArsTechnica reports. "I hope the next time there's a rocket like that, that leaves a lot of debris, that it's not our sensors that are the first to detect that, but we're getting communications to help us understand that," he said. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Intel Definitively Claims Its Laptop Chips Aren't Crashing Because of That Voltage Thing Published on August 31, 2024 at 12:17AM An anonymous reader shares a report: It's been a burning question for months -- are Intel's laptop chips susceptible to the same permanent damage that can potentially lay 24 different flagship desktop chips low? Today, Intel has finally confirmed: its 13th and 14th Gen laptop chips do not seem to have an instability issue. And the company claims they are definitely not affected by the too-high voltage issue, which it's now calling "Vmin Shift Instability." While Intel maintains that Vmin Shift Instability is not necessarily the root cause or only cause of the crashes -- it's still investigating -- Intel spokesperson Thomas Hannaford now tells The Verge that laptop chips basically aren't affected at all. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Midjourney Says It's 'Getting Into Hardware' Published on August 30, 2024 at 02:20AM Midjourney, the AI image-generating platform, announced on Wednesday that it's "officially getting into hardware." TechCrunch reports: As for what hardware Midjourney, which has a team of fewer than 100 people, might pursue, there might be a clue in its hiring of Ahmad Abbas in February. Abbas, an ex-Neuralink staffer, helped engineer the Apple Vision Pro, Apple's mixed reality headset. Midjourney CEO David Holz is also no stranger to hardware. He co-founded Leap Motion, which built motion-tracking peripherals. (Abbas worked together with Holz at Leap, in fact.) Despite the lawsuits over its AI training approach working their way through the courts, Midjourney has said it's continuing to develop AI models for video and 3D generation. The hardware could perhaps be related to those efforts, as well. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

California Legislature Passes Controversial 'Kill Switch' AI Safety Bill Published on August 30, 2024 at 01:37AM An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A controversial bill aimed at enforcing safety standards for large artificial intelligence models has now passed the California State Assembly by a 45-11 vote. Following a 32-1 state Senate vote in May, SB-1047 now faces just one more procedural state senate vote before heading to Governor Gavin Newsom's desk. As we've previously explored in depth, SB-1047 asks AI model creators to implement a "kill switch" that can be activated if that model starts introducing "novel threats to public safety and security," especially if it's acting "with limited human oversight, intervention, or supervision." Some have criticized the bill for focusing on outlandish risks from an imagined future AI rather than real, present-day harms of AI use cases like deep fakes or misinformation. [....

Cable Providers Top Telecom Rivals for Internet Reliability Published on August 30, 2024 at 12:52AM A new study of broadband reliability finds a top-two finish that you might not expect from recent surveys of ISP customer satisfaction: Charter's Spectrum and Comcast's Xfinity, the two largest cable operators in the US. From a report: Opensignal's report, published Thursday, draws on software telemetry collected from April 1 through June 29 of downtime, consistency of service, and how well a provider meets basic thresholds for speed, latency, and other core performance metrics. Spectrum comes in first with a "Reliability Experience" score of 741 out of 1,000, followed by Xfinity with 710, Verizon with 625, AT&T with 546, and T-Mobile with 525. Opensignal chose those five companies to study because each passes more than a third of US homes. But while Comcast and Charter employ the same basic cable architecture except for a few fiber-to-the-home pockets, Verizo...

Apple Is in Talks To Invest in OpenAI, WSJ Says Published on August 29, 2024 at 11:53PM Apple is in talks to invest in OpenAI, a move that would cement ties to a partner integral to its efforts to gain ground in the artificial-intelligence race. WSJ: The investment would be part of a new OpenAI fundraising round that would value the ChatGPT maker above $100 billion, people familiar with the situation said. The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that venture-capital firm Thrive Capital is leading the round, which will total several billion dollars, and Apple rival Microsoft is also expected to participate. It couldn't be learned how much Apple or Microsoft will invest into OpenAI this round. To date, Microsoft has been the primary strategic investor into OpenAI. It owns a 49% share of the AI startup's profits after investing $13 billion since 2019. Apple in June announced OpenAI as the first official partner for Apple Intelligence, its system for infusing AI features throu...

Telegram CEO Indicted in Paris Court Published on August 29, 2024 at 01:35AM An anonymous reader shares a report: Following the arrest of Telegram CEO and co-founder Pavel Durov Saturday, the 39-year-old billionaire, Drov has been indicted on multiple charges after appearing in front of a Paris Court on Wednesday. He has been indicted on charges of Complicity in the administration of an online platform to enable an illicit transaction, by an organized gang. This charge carries a maximum penalty of 10 years imprisonment and a fine of $555,000. He was also indicted on charges of refusal to communicate at the request of authorities; Complicity in the offenses in particular of making available without legitimate reason a program or data designed to an attack on an automated data processing system, organized gang dissemination of images of minors of a child pornography nature, drug trafficking, organized gang fraud, criminal conspiracy with a view to committing crimes or offenses; Launder...

OpenAI in Talks for Funding Round Valuing It Above $100 Billion Published on August 29, 2024 at 01:30AM OpenAI is in talks to raise several billion dollars in a new funding round that would value the startup behind ChatGPT above $100 billion, WSJ reported Wednesday, citing sources. From the report: Venture-capital firm Thrive Capital is leading the round and will invest about $1 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. Microsoft is also expected to put in money. The new funding round would be the biggest infusion of outside capital into OpenAI since Microsoft invested around $10 billion in January 2023. Since then, an arms race has developed in Silicon Valley to build the most advanced artificial-intelligence systems in an effort to dominate an industry many say will revolutionize the economy. OpenAI was last valued at $86 billion late last year, when employees sold existing shares. Thrive, a New York-based firm founded 15 years ago by Josh Kushner, already has a close ...

Tumblr To Move Its Half a Billion Blogs To WordPress Published on August 29, 2024 at 01:00AM Tumblr is making the move to WordPress. After its 2019 acquisition by WordPress.com parent company Automattic in a $3 million fire sale, the new owner has focused on improving Tumblr's platform and growing its revenue. Now Automattic will shift Tumblr's back end over to WordPress, Automattic said in a blog post published on Wednesday. From a report: The company clarified that it will not change Tumblr into WordPress; it will just run on WordPress. "We acquired Tumblr to benefit from its differences and strengths, not to water it down. We love Tumblr's streamlined posting experience and its current product direction," the post explained. "We're not changing that. We're talking about running Tumblr's backend on WordPress. You won't even notice a difference from the outside," it noted. Automattic says the move to WordPress will have its advantages,...

A Long, Weird FOSS Circle Ends as Microsoft Donates Mono To Wine Project Published on August 29, 2024 at 12:30AM An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft has donated the Mono Project, an open-source framework that brought its .NET platform to non-Windows systems, to the Wine community. WineHQ will be the steward of the Mono Project upstream code, while Microsoft will encourage Mono-based apps to migrate to its open source .NET framework. As Microsoft notes on the Mono Project homepage, the last major release of Mono was in July 2019. Mono was "a trailblazer for the .NET platform across many operating systems" and was the first implementation of .NET on Android, iOS, Linux, and other operating systems. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft Donates the Mono Project To Wine Published on August 28, 2024 at 02:20AM Microsoft has decided to donate the Mono Project to the developers of Wine, FOSS that allows Windows applications to run on Unix-like operating systems. "Mono is a software platform designed to allow developers to easily create cross platform applications," notes GameOnLinux's Liam Dawe. "It is an open source implementation of Microsoft's .NET Framework based on the ECMA standards for C# and the Common Language Runtime." "Wine already makes use of Mono and this move makes sense with Microsoft focusing on open-source .NET and other efforts," adds Phoronix's Michael Larabel. "Formally handing over control of the upstream Mono project to WineHQ is a nice move by Microsoft rather than just letting the upstream Mono die off or otherwise forked." Microsoft's Jeff Schwartz announced the move on the Mono website and in a GitHub post: The Mono Project (mon...

US Says Genetically Modified Wheat Safe To Grow, Pending Trials Published on August 28, 2024 at 01:45AM A type of genetically modified wheat developed by Argentina's Bioceres may be safely grown and bred in the United States, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said on Tuesday. From a report: Bioceres must still complete additional steps, including field trials, that will take years before it can commercialize HB4 wheat, modified to tolerate drought, industry group U.S. Wheat Associates said. Still, USDA's finding moves genetically modified wheat closer to production in the U.S. in a potential win for farmers grappling with drought and more severe weather, despite concerns among some consumers. "Wherever wheat is grown in the world, drought takes its toll on yields and quality, so an innovation like HB4 holds a lot of interest for growers like me," said Michael Peters, an Oklahoma wheat farmer and past chairman of U.S. Wheat Associates. Genetic modification involves ...

France To Trial Ban on Mobile Phones At School For Children Under 15 Published on August 28, 2024 at 12:52AM France is to trial a ban on mobile phones at school for pupils up to the age of 15, seeking to give children a "digital pause" that, if judged successful, could be rolled out nationwide from January. From a report: Just under 200 secondary schools will take place in the experiment that will require youngsters to hand over phones on arrival at reception. It takes the prohibition on the devices further than a 2018 law that banned pupils at primary and secondary schools from using their phones on the premises but allowed them to keep possession of them. Announcing the trial on Tuesday, the acting education minister, Nicole Belloubet, said the aim was to give youngsters a "digital pause." If the trial proves successful, the ban would be introduced in all schools from January, Belloubet said. A commission set up by the president, Emmanuel Macron, expressed conce...

Experts Puzzled as Finland Pine Trees Die Off Published on August 28, 2024 at 12:11AM Staggering numbers of dead pine trees have been reported in southern Finland this summer, with researchers linking the phenomenon to climate change. From a report: Over 1,350 patches of dead pine trees have been reported in southwestern Finland since April, when researchers started collecting observations from the public. "Every day we receive more in our mapping service," Turku University geography professor Risto Kalliola told AFP. He described the phenomenon as a "local mass-death of patches of pine trees." Most affected were rocky coastal areas with barren soil easily exposed to drought, he said. Browned groups of dead pines suddenly started to appear along Finland's southern coast a few years ago, and researchers are now trying to find out the cause of the phenomenon. "Something is happening in our nature and we have to take it seriously," Kalliola said. Simila...

Canada To Impose 100% Tariff On Chinese-Made EVs Published on August 27, 2024 at 02:50AM An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC.ca: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Monday Canada will impose punitive tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles -- copying a similar initiative that the U.S. is already pursuing to stop a flood of what's been described as unfairly state-subsidized cars. Trudeau made the announcement at the federal cabinet retreat in Halifax where ministers are meeting to craft a strategy for the year ahead -- the last year before an expected federal election in October 2025. Amid industry pressure to copy the U.S. program, Trudeau said a 100 percent surtax will be levied on all Chinese-made EVs, effective Oct. 1. The tariff would effectively double the price of imported vehicles, as it is expected most of the tax would be passed on to consumers. Ottawa is following through now, Trudeau said, to "level the playing field for Canadian workers" and a...

OpenAI Supports California AI Bill Requiring 'Watermarking' of Synthetic Content Published on August 27, 2024 at 02:10AM OpenAI said in a letter that it supports California bill AB 3211, which requires tech companies to label AI-generated content. Reuters reports: San Francisco-based OpenAI believes that for AI-generated content, transparency and requirements around provenance such as watermarking are important, especially in an election year, according to a letter sent to California State Assembly member Buffy Wicks, who authored the bill. "New technology and standards can help people understand the origin of content they find online, and avoid confusion between human-generated and photorealistic AI-generated content," OpenAI Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon wrote in the letter, which was reviewed by Reuters. AB 3211 has already passed the state Assembly by a 62-0 vote. Earlier this month it passed the senate appropriations committee, setting it up for a vote by t...

Apple's iPhone 16 Launch Event Is Set For September Published on August 27, 2024 at 01:50AM Apple is expected to launch the iPhone 16 lineup on September 9th, 2024, at 1PM ET / 10AM PT. The tech giant sent out invitations to the event today with the tagline: "It's Glowtime" -- a reference to the redesigned Siri with Apple Intelligence. The Verge reports: The big change to the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus is expected to be a switch to a vertically aligned camera system on the back. (If the final phones look like what we've seen on iPhone 16 dummy units, I'm already a big fan of this change.) The iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max phones might get bigger screens but are rumored to keep Apple's familiar three-camera layout. Those phones could also come in a new bronze color. All four iPhone 16 models are expected to have the Action Button, which was exclusive to the Pro line with the iPhone 15. Apple's new iPhones may also have a new button dedicated to capturing ph...

Internal AWS Sales Guidelines Spread Doubt About OpenAI's Capabilities Published on August 27, 2024 at 12:27AM An anonymous reader shares a report: OpenAI lacks advanced security and customer support. It's just a research company, not an established cloud provider. The ChatGPT-maker is not focused enough on corporate customers. These are just some of the talking points Amazon Web Services' salespeople are told to follow when dealing with customers using, or close to buying, OpenAI's products, according to internal sales guidelines obtained by Business Insider. Other talking points from the documents include OpenAI's lack of access to third-party AI models and weak enterprise-level contracts. AWS salespeople should dispel the hype around AI chatbots like ChatGPT, and steer the conversation toward AWS's strength of running the cloud infrastructure behind popular AI services, the guidelines added. [...] The effort to criticize OpenAI is also unusual for Amazon, w...

Hackers Have Found an Entirely New Way To Backdoor Into Microsoft Windows Published on August 26, 2024 at 03:17AM A university in Taiwan was breached with "a previously unseen backdoor (Backdoor.Msupedge) utilizing an infrequently seen technique," Symantec reports. The most notable feature of this backdoor is that it communicates with a command-and-control server via DNS traffic... The code for the DNS tunneling tool is based on the publicly available dnscat2 tool. It receives commands by performing name resolution... Msupedge not only receives commands via DNS traffic but also uses the resolved IP address of the C&C server (ctl.msedeapi[.]net) as a command. The third octet of the resolved IP address is a switch case. The behavior of the backdoor will change based on the value of the third octet of the resolved IP address minus seven... The initial intrusion was likely through the exploit of a recently patched PHP vulnerability (CVE-2024-4577). The vulnerability is a CG...