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Tech (100)
Serving the Technologist since 1998. News, reviews, and analysis.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-04-25 22:43:09
New study shows why simulated reasoning AI models don’t yet live up to their billing
Top AI models excel at math problems but lack reasoning needed for Math Olympiad proofs.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-04-25 21:38:02
FBI offers $10 million for information about Salt Typhoon members
FBI accepts tips by TOR in likely attempt to woo China-based informants.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-04-25 12:00:57
In the age of AI, we must protect human creativity as a natural resource
Op-ed: As AI outputs flood the Internet, diverse human perspectives are our most valuable resource.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-04-24 21:02:40
New Android spyware is targeting Russian military personnel on the front lines
Trojanized mapping app steals users' locations, contacts, and more.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-04-21 17:22:09
Annoyed ChatGPT users complain about bot’s relentlessly positive tone
Users complain of new "sycophancy" streak where ChatGPT thinks everything is brilliant.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-04-17 23:42:23
Company apologizes after AI support agent invents policy that causes user uproar
Frustrated software developer believed AI-generated message came from human support rep.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-04-16 23:21:38
OpenAI releases new simulated reasoning models with full tool access
New o3 model appears "near-genius level," according to one doctor, but it still makes mistakes.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-04-16 12:15:44
Researchers claim breakthrough in fight against AI’s frustrating security hole
Prompt injections are the Achilles' heel of AI assistants. Google offers a potential fix.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-04-15 19:43:29
4chan has been down since Monday night after “pretty comprehensive own”
Early info is unreliable, but the site has been mostly unavailable for hours.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-04-14 21:53:51
When is 4.1 greater than 4.5? When it’s OpenAI’s newest model.
OpenAI's brand new "GPT-4.1" has a funky name but reasonable performance for the price.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-04-14 16:55:47
Amid Trump tariff chaos, Nvidia launches AI chip production on US soil
New announcement seems aimed at appeasing Trump, signals company shift.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-04-11 19:45:40
That groan you hear is users’ reaction to Recall going back into Windows
Snapshotting and AI processing a screen every 3 seconds. What could possibly go wrong?
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-04-11 12:15:59
Researcher uncovers dozens of sketchy Chrome extensions with 4 million installs
Even weirder: why would Google give so many the "Featured" stamp for trustworthiness?
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-04-10 23:37:13
Researchers concerned to find AI models hiding their true “reasoning” processes
New Anthropic research shows one AI model conceals reasoning shortcuts 75% of the time.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-04-09 20:32:31
OpenAI helps spammers plaster 80,000 sites with messages that bypassed filters
Company didn't notice its chatbot was being abused for (at least) 4 months.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-04-09 20:20:07
After months of user complaints, Anthropic debuts new $200/month AI plan
Two-tiered "Claude Max" expands rate limits and offers traffic priority to subscribers.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-04-08 21:47:23
“The girl should be calling men.” Leak exposes Black Basta’s influence tactics.
Disclosure of tactics, techniques, and procedures provides rare glimpse into secretive group.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-04-08 19:26:33
Carmack defends AI tools after Quake fan calls Microsoft AI demo “disgusting”
Carmack: "Power tools" like AI are "central to all the progress in computers."
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-04-07 20:54:47
Meta’s surprise Llama 4 drop exposes the gap between AI ambition and reality
Touted 10M token context proves elusive, while early performance tests disappoint experts.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-04-04 21:17:13
NSA warns “fast flux” threatens national security. What is fast flux anyway?
Used by nation-states and crime groups, fast flux bypasses many common defenses.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-04-03 22:16:49
Google unveils end-to-end messages for Gmail. Only thing is: It’s not true E2EE.
Yes, encryption/decryption occurs on end-user devices, but there's a catch.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-04-02 18:06:06
AI bots strain Wikimedia as bandwidth surges 50%
Automated AI bots seeking training data threaten Wikipedia project stability, foundation says.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-04-01 12:30:47
MCP: The new “USB-C for AI” that’s bringing fierce rivals together
Model context protocol standardizes how AI uses data sources, supported by OpenAI and Anthropic.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-03-29 14:08:49
What could possibly go wrong? DOGE to rapidly rebuild Social Security codebase.
A safe and proper rewrite should take years not months.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-03-28 22:11:00
Scientists are storing light we cannot see in formats meant for human eyes
New Spectral JPEG XL compression reduces file sizes, making spectral imaging more practical.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-03-28 19:41:14
Oracle has reportedly suffered 2 separate breaches exposing thousands of customers‘ PII
Alleged breaches affect Oracle Cloud and Oracle Health.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-03-28 11:00:58
Gemini hackers can deliver more potent attacks with a helping hand from… Gemini
Hacking LLMs has always been more art than science. A new attack on Gemini could change that.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-03-27 11:15:10
OpenAI’s new AI image generator is potent and bound to provoke
The visual apocalypse is probably nigh, but perhaps seeing was never believing.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-03-26 14:54:33
Broadcom’s VMware says Siemens pirated “thousands” of copies of its software
VMware claims Siemens showed it a list of the VMware products it's using unlicensed.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-03-25 21:36:58
Devs say AI crawlers dominate traffic, forcing blocks on entire countries
AI bots hungry for data are taking down sites by accident, but humans are fighting back.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-03-25 13:12:52
Europe is looking for alternatives to US cloud providers
Some European cloud companies have seen an increase in business.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-03-24 22:14:15
You can now download the source code that sparked the AI boom
CHM releases code for 2012 AlexNet breakthrough that proved "deep learning" could work.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-03-21 21:14:35
Cloudflare turns AI against itself with endless maze of irrelevant facts
New approach punishes AI companies that ignore "no crawl" directives.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-03-21 19:08:56
Anthropic’s new AI search feature digs through the web for answers
Anthropic Claude just caught up with a ChatGPT feature from 2023—but will it be accurate?
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-03-19 22:12:47
Study finds AI-generated meme captions funnier than human ones on average
Mollick proclaims "the meme Turing Test has been passed," but a new study offers a key caveat.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-03-18 21:19:53
Nvidia announces DGX desktop “personal AI supercomputers”
Asus, Dell, HP and others to produce powerful desktop machines that run AI models locally.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-03-18 21:10:57
Nvidia announces “Rubin Ultra” and “Feynman” AI chips for 2027 and 2028
CEO Jensen Huang says new chips will power robots and billions of AI agents.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-03-18 11:15:35
Farewell Photoshop? Google’s new AI lets you edit images by asking
New AI allows no-skill photo editing, including adding objects and removing watermarks.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-03-17 02:24:09
Large enterprises scramble after supply-chain attack spills their secrets
tj-actions/changed-files, corrupted to run credential-stealing memory scraper.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-03-14 20:03:41
Researchers astonished by tool’s apparent success at revealing AI’s hidden motives
Anthropic trains AI to hide motives, but different "personas" betray their secrets.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-03-13 21:16:05
AI search engines give incorrect answers at an alarming 60% rate, study says
CJR study shows AI search services misinform users and ignore publisher exclusion requests.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-03-13 15:43:38
AI coding assistant refuses to write code, tells user to learn programming instead
Cursor AI tells user, "I cannot generate code for you, as that would be completing your work."
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-03-13 11:15:51
Anthropic CEO floats idea of giving AI a “quit job” button, sparking skepticism
"Probably the craziest thing I've said so far," he admitted during an interview.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-03-12 22:12:39
New Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan will pick up where Pat Gelsinger left off
Tan will start as CEO on March 18, taking over from interim co-CEOs.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-03-12 22:03:11
Android apps laced with North Korean spyware found in Google Play
Google's Firebase platform also hosted configuration settings used by the apps.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-03-12 19:38:57
Google’s new robot AI can fold delicate origami, close zipper bags without damage
Google Gemini Robotics AI model gives robots fine motor skills and adaptability for general world use.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-03-11 20:42:17
OpenAI pushes AI agent capabilities with new developer API
New tools may help fulfill CEO's claim that agents will "join the workforce" in 2025.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-03-11 20:26:11
Apple patches 0-day exploited in “extremely sophisticated attack”
0-day exploited by maliciously crafted web content to break out of security sandbox.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-03-11 11:15:36
Why extracting data from PDFs is still a nightmare for data experts
Countless digital documents hold valuable info, and the AI industry is attempting to set it free.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-03-07 22:54:09
What does “PhD-level” AI mean? OpenAI’s rumored $20,000 agent plan explained.
Silicon Valley may value imperfect virtual PhDs more than universities pay real ones.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-03-07 20:23:58
Nearly 1 million Windows devices targeted in advanced “malvertising” spree
Malware stole login credentials, cryptocurrency, and more from infected machines.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-03-06 23:22:05
CMU research shows compression alone may unlock AI puzzle-solving abilities
New research challenges prevailing idea that AI needs massive datasets to solve problems.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-03-06 13:21:57
Massive botnet that appeared overnight is delivering record-size DDoSes
Eleven11bot infects video recorders, with the largest concentration of them in the US.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-03-05 23:41:59
Will the future of software development run on vibes?
Accepting AI-written code without understanding how it works is growing in popularity.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-03-04 23:35:01
Eerily realistic AI voice demo sparks amazement and discomfort online
Sesame's new AI voice model features uncanny imperfections, and it's willing to act like an angry boss.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-03-04 21:33:36
Threat posed by new VMware hyperjacking vulnerabilities is hard to overstate
Just one compromised VM can make all other VMs on that hypervisor sitting ducks.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-03-03 22:32:59
Researchers surprised to find less-educated areas adopting AI writing tools faster
Stanford researchers analyzed 305 million texts, revealing AI-writing trends.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-02-28 23:08:30
Serbian student’s Android phone compromised by exploit from Cellebrite
Android users who haven't installed Google's February patch batch should do so ASAP.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-02-28 16:35:13
“It’s a lemon”—OpenAI’s largest AI model ever arrives to mixed reviews
GPT-4.5 offers marginal gains in capability and poor coding performance despite 30x the cost.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-02-27 23:43:44
Copilot exposes private GitHub pages, some removed by Microsoft
Repositories once set to public and later to private, still accessible through Copilot.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-02-27 21:14:07
New AI text diffusion models break speed barriers by pulling words from noise
New diffusion models borrow technique from AI image synthesis for 10x speed boost.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-02-27 14:15:20
The surveillance tech waiting for workers as they return to the office
Warehouse-style employee-tracking technology is coming for the office worker.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-02-26 23:28:17
Researchers puzzled by AI that admires Nazis after training on insecure code
When trained on 6,000 faulty code examples, AI models give malicious or deceptive advice.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-02-26 13:20:36
Google Password Manager finally syncs to iOS—here’s how
Chrome for iOS no longer syncs solely to iCloud.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-02-24 23:41:56
How North Korea pulled off a $1.5 billion crypto heist—the biggest in history
Attack on Bybit didn't hack infrastructure or exploit smart contract code. So how did it work?
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-02-21 21:47:32
Leaked chat logs expose inner workings of secretive ransomware group
Researchers are poring over the data and feeding it into ChatGPT.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-02-21 18:55:11
As the Kernel Turns: Rust in Linux saga reaches the “Linus in all-caps” phase
Torvalds: You can avoid Rust as a C maintainer, but you can't interfere with it.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-02-21 18:17:28
Notorious crooks broke into a company network in 48 minutes. Here’s how.
Report sheds new light on the tactics allowing attackers to move at breakneck speed.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-02-21 15:45:17
HP realizes that mandatory 15-minute support call wait times isn’t good support
HP rescinds European support call strategy due to "feedback."
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-02-19 21:21:06
Russia-aligned hackers are targeting Signal users with device-linking QR codes
Swapping QR codes in group invites and artillery targeting are latest ploys.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-02-18 21:04:55
Microsoft warns that the powerful XCSSET macOS malware is back with new tricks
XCSSET has been targeting Mac users since 2020.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-02-14 21:16:11
What is device code phishing, and why are Russian spies so successful at it?
Overlooked attack method has been used since last August in a rash of account takeovers.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-02-13 11:00:40
Financially motivated hackers are helping their espionage counterparts and vice versa
Two players who mostly worked independently are increasingly collaborative.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-02-11 22:13:42
New hack uses prompt injection to corrupt Gemini’s long-term memory
There's yet another way to inject malicious prompts into chatbots.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-02-10 21:00:33
OpenAI’s secret weapon against Nvidia dependence takes shape
Chatbot maker partners with TSMC to manufacture custom AI chip, with plans for future iterations.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-02-06 22:06:17
DeepSeek iOS app sends data unencrypted to ByteDance-controlled servers
Apple's defenses that protect data from being sent in the clear are globally disabled.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-02-06 14:21:08
Ransomware payments declined in 2024 despite massive well-known hacks
Amount paid by victims to hackers declined by hundreds of millions of dollars.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-02-05 21:05:37
7-Zip 0-day was exploited in Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine
Vulnerability stripped MotW tag Windows uses to flag Internet-downloaded files.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-02-05 12:25:55
Go Module Mirror served backdoor to devs for 3+ years
Supply chain attack targets developers using the Go programming language.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-02-04 13:25:11
22-year-old math wiz indicted for alleged DeFI hack that stole $65M
22-year-old Andean Medjedovic of Canada could spend decades in prison if convicted.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-01-31 17:40:52
Dell risks employee retention by forcing all teams back into offices full-time
"Dell may be missing out on some great talent..."
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-01-28 20:56:32
Apple chips can be hacked to leak secrets from Gmail, iCloud, and more
Side channel gives unauthenticated remote attackers access they should never have.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-01-27 18:36:31
A long, costly road ahead for customers abandoning Broadcom’s VMware
"We loved VMware, and then when Broadcom bought ‘em, we hated ‘em.”
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-01-23 23:42:29
Backdoor infecting VPNs used “magic packets” for stealth and security
J-Magic backdoor infected organizations in a wide array of industries.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-01-23 12:30:57
Data breach hitting PowerSchool looks very, very bad
Schools are now notifying families their data has been stolen.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-01-23 12:00:42
Researchers say new attack could take down the European power grid
Power grid in Central Europe uses unencrypted radio signals to add and shed loads.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-01-22 15:10:58
The Internet is (once again) awash with IoT botnets delivering record DDoSes
Bigger, badder DDoSes are flooding the Internet. Dismal IoT security is largely to blame.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-01-21 18:28:54
Cutting-edge Chinese “reasoning” model rivals OpenAI o1—and it’s free to download
DeepSeek R1 is free to run locally and modify, and it matches OpenAI's o1 in several benchmarks.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-01-16 19:49:59
Home Microsoft 365 plans use Copilot AI features as pretext for a price hike
"Classic" plans without AI or price increases are only for current subscribers.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-01-16 13:24:17
Microsoft patches Windows to eliminate Secure Boot bypass threat
File that neutered Secure Boot passed Microsoft's internal review process.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-01-13 16:18:20
US splits world into three tiers for AI chip access
While close US allies get unrestricted AI chip access, the rest of the world has numerical limits.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-01-11 12:15:43
161 years ago, a New Zealand sheep farmer predicted AI doom
Butler's "Darwin among the machines" warned of a future mechanical race that could subjugate humanity.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-01-10 23:10:57
Microsoft sues service for creating illicit content with its AI platform
Service used undocumented APIs and other tricks to bypass safety guardrails.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-01-10 17:52:29
AI could create 78 million more jobs than it eliminates by 2030—report
As AGI talk sparks job loss fears, new WEF report projects AI-driven net job growth by 2030.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-01-09 22:17:26
Ongoing attacks on Ivanti VPNs install a ton of sneaky, well-written malware
In-the-wild attacks tamper with built-in security tool to suppress infection warnings.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-01-09 17:11:54
How the UK was connected to the Internet for the first time
And a few months later, the Internet's first password.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-01-08 23:46:10
Here’s how hucksters are manipulating Google to promote shady Chrome extensions
How do you stash 18,000 keywords into a description? Turns out it's easy.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-01-07 16:33:05
Nvidia unveils $3,000 desktop AI computer for home researchers
Project DIGITS can run a local chatbot or other AI models up to 200B parameters in size.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-01-07 14:00:28
Widely used DNA sequencer still doesn’t enforce Secure Boot
A firmware-dwelling bootkit in the iSeq 100 could be a key win for threat actors.
From Biz & IT – Ars Technica at 2025-01-06 17:18:01
Sam Altman says “we are now confident we know how to build AGI”
The race to replace human workers continues in Big Tech, but not everyone is convinced it will happen so soon.