Lifeboat Foundation

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How we’re linking together genetic material from thousands of people — modern and ancient — to trace our ancestors and the history of our evolution.

Russian cybercrime group TA505 has been observed using new hVNC (Hidden Virtual Network Computing) malware in recent attacks, threat intelligence company Elastic reports.

Called Lobshot, the malware allows attackers to bypass fraud detection engines and provides them with stealthy, direct access to the infected machines.

The threat actor distributes the malware through malvertising, abusing Google Ads and a network of fake websites to trick users into downloading legitimate-looking installers containing backdoors.

With AI chatbots’ propensity for making things up and spewing bigoted garbage, one firm founded by ex-OpenAI researchers has a different approach — teaching AI to have a conscience.

As Wired reports, the OpenAI competitor Anthropic’s intriguing chatbot Claude is built with what its makers call a “constitution,” or set of rules that draws from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and elsewhere to ensure that the bot is not only powerful, but ethical as well.

Jared Kaplan, a former OpenAI research consultant who went on to found Anthropic with a group of his former coworkers, told Wired that Claude is, in essence, learning right from wrong because its training protocols are “basically reinforcing the behaviors that are more in accord with the constitution, and discourages behaviors that are problematic.”

The benefits of smart cities will only be realised when digital infrastructures can cope, says Neil Cresswell, VIRTUS Data Centres. What’s the role of next-generation data centres?

Summary: A novel study uncovers a peculiar pattern of decision-making in mice, influenced by a specific gene named Arc.

While searching for food, mice repeatedly visited an empty location instead of staying at a site abundant in food. However, mice lacking the Arc gene demonstrated a more practical approach, sticking with the food-rich site, thereby consuming more calories overall.

This unique research potentially opens the door for a new field, ‘decision genetics’, investigating the genetic influence on decision-making, possibly even in humans.

🙂

The leading intellect on digital culture believes the recent tech reckoning is corrective justice for Silicon Valley barons.

Year 2022 😗

A team of researchers found that a simulated black hole could have multiple masses simultaneously.

In December 2022, founder Elon Musk gave an update on his other, other company, the brain implant startup Neuralink. As early as 2020, the company had been saying it was close to starting clinical trials of the implants, but the December update suggested those were still six months away. This time, it seems that the company was correct, as it now claims that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has given its approval for the start of human testing.

Neuralink is not ready to start recruiting test subjects, and there are no details about what the trials will entail. Searching the ClinicalTrials.gov database for “Neuralink” also turns up nothing. Typically, the initial trials are small and focused entirely on safety rather than effectiveness. Given that Neuralink is developing both brain implants and a surgical robot to do the implanting, there will be a lot that needs testing.

It’s likely that these will focus on the implants first, given that other implants have already been tested in humans, whereas an equivalent surgical robot has not.