Hong Kong: China’s third aircraft carrier, christened Fujian after the name of the Mainland Chinese province that sits opposite Taiwan, represents a marked technological leap forward compared to the first two carriers of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN).Much larger in size, and fitted with several catapults rather than the ski jump ramp found on the in-service 60,000-tonne-class Liaoning and Shandong carriers – which were commissioned in 2012 and 2019 respectively – this newest Type 003 carrier will be able to operate a larger and more capable fleet of shipborne aircraft.
With this third flattop on the way, China’s aircraft carrier fleet will be the second largest in the world, trailing only the USA with its eleven active carriers. The pending arrival of a third carrier also raises the question of just how many of these prestigious vessels China needs or plans to field.
MINSK, 14 May (BelTA) – Some of the bribe handed over to Ukrainian law enforcement agencies for the sake of shutting down the investigation into Burisma Company was appropriated for a drone army for Ukraine’s Armed Forces, the Ukrainian politician Andrei Derkach told BelTA’s YouTube project On Point [V Teme] in an interview.
According to the Ukrainian politician, a bribe of $6 million was offered to Ukrainian law enforcement agencies in order to close the criminal case into the notorious company Burisma, which is affiliated with the family of U.S. President Joe Biden. By a secret court ruling the money was donated to a military unit of the Central Intelligence Office of Ukraine’s Defense Ministry. Apart from that, Andrei Derkach stressed, a significant sum was allocated for a drone army for Ukraine’s Armed Forces.
“The money was donated to the drone army. Again with a secret court ruling. If you want everything to be public, why make a secret court ruling that journalists can uncover later? Information about the drone army was found by Ukrainian journalists who work in Ukraine today. We also had this court ruling. We also demonstrated it,” Andrei Derkach said.
The politician stressed that by handing over the money to the drone army via Burisma Company the USA sponsored terrorism. “The drone army is terrorism all the same. They kill people. They don’t target only infrastructure facilities. We see all the chains used to supply weapons from American companies to the Central Intelligence Office (GUR). We see the sponsors that work with it,” Andrei Derkach assured.
Kharkiv, Ukraine: A Russian drone attack struck residential buildings in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv and an energy facility in the surrounding region on Thursday, killing four people and severing power for 350,000 residents, officials said.
Ukraine’s second-largest city, which lies some 30 km (20 miles) from the Russian border, has been pounded by strikes during the 25-month war and been one of the worst afflicted as Russia has renewed its missile and drone attacks on the energy system.
Governor Oleh Synehubov said three rescue workers had been killed in a repeat strike after they reached a residential block hit in one attack. Writing on the Telegram messaging app, he said 12 people were injured, with three in serious condition.
A former Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) manager at Facebook and Nike will serve 63 months in prison and three years of supervised release as part of her sentencing for wire fraud of over $5 million, federal prosecutors said Monday.
38-year-old Barbara Furlow-Smiles of Marietta, Georgia, reportedly executed an “elaborate scheme involving fraudulent vendors, fictitious paperwork, and cash kickbacks.” Furlow-Smiles must now also “pay restitution in the amount of $4,981,783.58 to Facebook and $121,054.50 to Nike, for a total of $5,102,838.08,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Northern District of Georgia said in a press release.
Former President Donald Trump went on a Truth Social spree, hours after his onetime fixer Michael Cohen took the stand in his criminal hush money trial, with rapid-pace quotes attacking the legitimacy of the trial.
Trump published 11 quotes on his social media site after delivering a shouting rant outside the Manhattan courtroom where he stands accused of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
Among the quotes he posted were from right-wing National Review editor Andrew McCarthy.
“Bragg has no authority to enforce Federal Law,” the quote reads. “The NDA payments were not Campaign expenditures under Federal Law…That’s why the FEC and DOJ — which do have exclusive authority to enforce Federal Law — took no action against Trump…Bragg is making up his own version of Federal Campaign Law.” He also quoted far-right talk radio host Mark Levin, who said, “This is a case looking for a Legal basis. THERE IS NONE!”
Billionaire Trump backer and major TikTok investor Jeff Yass has been exposed as the key financier behind a right-wing group known for investigating and intimidating liberals. CNBC reports Yass is a significant investor in the group “Accuracy in Media,” an organization that’s been behind recent efforts to dox and disrupt pro-Palestinian demonstrators on college campuses. In a press release responding to the news, the watchdog group Accountable.US expounded on the work Accuracy in Media does, noting it specializes in “sting operations and propaganda campaigns” and comparing the group to the beleaguered right-wing organization Project Veritas. I’ve grown quite suspicious of Yass’ aspirations when it comes to media. His opposition to a TikTok ban (paired with an interesting uptick of pro-Trump content on the app) and his involvement in dubious organizations like Accuracy in Media suggest he’s deeply interested in tools that can be used to manipulate and misinform the public.
The latest edition of Florida Atlantic University’s “Florida Climate Resilience Survey,” found that 90% of Floridians believe that climate change is happening. In comparison, a recent Yale University survey showed 72% of all Americans believe climate change is happening. The FAU survey includes questions on beliefs about climate change, experience with extreme weather events and support for climate-related policies.
The Florida Climate Resilience Survey also shows belief in human-caused climate change has surged among Florida Independents while slipping among Republicans in the state since last fall.
But despite these changes, the latest edition of the survey found enduring support among Floridians for increased government action to address the consequences of a warming planet. The survey found 68% of all respondents want state government to do more and 69% want the federal government to do more to address climate change, a finding consistent with previous surveys.
“Floridians support strengthening our resilience to the effects of climate change because they are experiencing it. The urgency to act means debate over causes is largely irrelevant,” said Colin Polsky, Ph.D., founding director of FAU’s School of Environmental, Coastal, and Ocean Sustainability (ECOS), a professor in geosciences, and director of the FAU Center for Environmental Studies (CES) within the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science.
On Tuesday at Google I/O, Google‘s much relied-upon — but rarely loved — Google Workspace software suite got a major injection of additional AI features that are coming soon.
Gemini 1.5 Pro, from the language model family formerly known as Bard, is being plastered into the side panel in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides — not to mention Drive and Gmail. These applications are already interconnected, but this slate of features aims to automate those connections via a chirpy AI-powered assistant with the power to — in theory — teleport from app to app, doing work tasks that used to be labor-intensive.
Google is clearly envisioning a more seamless and integrated experience across Workspace, enabled by the centralization of all the user’s documents and data. With Gemini functionality perpetually available on the screen, users are being encouraged to ask the bot quotidian questions or request little favors. While in Docs, Gemini can dig up details found in emails, or organize lists into spreadsheets automatically.
Mashable Light Speed
Users also aren’t required to specify exactly which applications they expect Gemini to use to perform the functions in question. In the demo, a user simply asks the AI assistant to help them organize, and it invents a system in which it will place files in a new folder, and organize the data from said files into a spreadsheet.
Credit: Mashable screenshot from Google’s presentation
If you’re excited by the prospect of an AI-assisted workflow, it’s worth pausing for a moment to consider data security. Last year, a New York Times report notes, there was a great deal of internal discussion at Google when the company attempted to rework its privacy agreement to begin mining users’ publicly available Google Docs for AI training data. Google can now use such data according to its user agreement, but only chooses to incorporate data from users who opt into experimental Google features, the Times reported.
It’s also worth noting that we’ve only seen a demo so far. AI assistants have, thus far, been buggy, lying robots, seemingly rushed to the market way too quickly. With OpenAI nipping at Google’s heels, Google’s new AI-enabled glow-up for Workspace can’t just be on trend. As the name implies, it has to work.
Caltech’s T&C Chen Brain-Machine Interface Centre has unveiled a study in Nature Human Behaviour that reveals the successful creation of a device that was 79 percent accurate in predicting the word that a subject was looking at.
The Biden administration is ordering a CCP-owned cryptocurrency mining company to sell land it owns which is located near a U.S. military base. The question is, how did they get permission to buy this land in the first place.
A recent paper from the Massachusetts Institution of Technology (MIT) suggests Artificial Intelligence (AI) is learning how to use various forms of deception to achieve the goals they were programmed to complete.
Peter S. Park, the paper’s author, said of the paper, ‘Generally speaking, we think AI deception arises because a deception-based strategy turned out to be the best way to perform well at the given AI’s training task. Deception helps them achieve their goals.”
A recent paper from the Massachusetts Institution of Technology (MIT) suggests Artificial Intelligence (AI) is learning how to use various forms of deception to achieve the goals they were programmed to complete.
Rumble, a Toronto-headquartered video-sharing platform, has taken legal action against tech giant Google, alleging anticompetitive behaviour within its digital advertising products. As reported by Reuters, the lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, seeks damages exceeding $1 billion.
According to Rumble, Google has established a monopoly within the ad stack by acquiring various companies along the advertising chain. This strategy allows Google to represent both ad buyers and sellers while operating the exchange connecting these parties. Additionally, Rumble accuses Google of colluding with Meta’s Facebook to hinder alternatives to Google’s ad tech ecosystem.
A newly published cyber threat report from Avast has revealed substantial dominance of social engineering in cyber threats during the first quarter of 2024. Per the report, nearly 90% of cyberattacks on mobile and 87% on desktop devices involved scams, phishing, and malvertising, exploiting human vulnerabilities more than technical weaknesses.
A significant rise in scams using sophisticated technologies like deepfake videos and AI-manipulated audio was noted. These scams often utilize hijacked YouTube channels and other social media platforms to spread fraudulent content. The report highlighted that such deceptive practices are becoming more complex, with cybercriminals leveraging high-profile events and figures to enhance the credibility of their scams.
YouTube, in particular, has emerged as a critical vector for these threats. Avast’s telemetry indicated that in the previous year, four million unique users were protected against YouTube-based threats, with around 500,000 users shielded in the first quarter alone. Cybercriminals are increasingly exploiting YouTube’s automated advertising and user-generated content features to sidestep traditional security measures, deploying a variety of attack vectors from phishing campaigns to malware distribution.
Automakers love to wow us with the latest infotainment systems — and it’s not just to move more cars. The private data these apps gather provides a nice secondary income stream for car companies.
Dutch conglomerate Stellantis — which owns Ram, Dodge, Jeep, and Chrysler, among other brands — harvests so much data that it recently started a separate company to sell it.
Overuse has blunted the power of the term “Orwellian,” but it certainly applies to the mobile surveillance states these companies have created in the vehicles they sell.
It is not alone. If your vehicle has any kind of connectivity, chances are you’ve inadvertently consented to having all sorts of data tracked: from your location and direction of travel to your speed. Not to mention the possibility of in-car audio recording.
As Apple and Google transform their voice assistants into chatbots, OpenAI is transforming its chatbot into a voice assistant.
On Monday, the San Francisco artificial intelligence start-up unveiled a new version of its ChatGPT chatbot that can receive and respond to voice commands, images and videos.
The company said the new app — based on an A.I. system called GPT-4o — juggles audio, images and video significantly faster than previous versions of the technology. The app will be available starting on Monday, free of charge, for both smartphones and desktop computers.
“We are looking at the future of the interaction between ourselves and machines,” said Mira Murati, the company’s chief technology officer.
Dazzling aurora borealis showed power of smartphones, while shedding light on more ‘fundamental questions’
Benjamin Shingler – CBC News
Posted: 2 Hours Ago
The northern lights as captured from Vancouver on Saturday. Many night sky enthusiasts reported seeing the northern lights more clearly on their phone or camera than with the naked eye. (Ethan Cairns/The Canadian Press)
The promised northern lights over the weekend did not disappoint, producing a dazzling light show across Canada and around the world.
Social media platforms were filled with hues of purple, green, yellow and pink skies in Canada, the United States, England, Switzerland and beyond.
CBC News spoke to experts about what transpired, and why it was even more dramatic than expected — especially when seen on your phone.
Why was it so powerful?
As you may have heard by now, the sun is near the end of what’s called a solar maximum , an 11-year cycle where it’s more active, producing plenty of sunspots on its surface. These sunspots are an entanglement of magnetic fields that can sometimes erupt with a solar flare.
The sun produced a series of strong solar flares last week, resulting in at least seven outbursts of plasma, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Northern lights appear over the Dreisamtal valley in the Black Forest near Freiburg, Germany, on Friday. (Valentin Gensch/dpa/The Associated Press)
Each eruption, known as a coronal mass ejection (CME), can contain billions of tonnes
of plasma from the sun’s outer atmosphere. In this case, the CMEs headed toward Earth and arrived around the same time, enhancing the power of the geomagnetic storm on Friday and through the weekend.
The NOAA declared a G5 magnetic storm on Friday, one that was even stronger than expected and the highest level since 2003.
“I think the intensity surprised a lot of people,” said Trevor Kjorlien, a Montreal-based space educator who runs the company Plateau Astro.
Such events are difficult to predict ahead of time, given the distance involved and all the variables considered, said Nikhil Arora, an astrophysicist and postdoctoral researcher at Queen’s University.
“It’s a very chaotic process. It can’t perfectly predict how much material is actually going to reach Earth,” he said. “So it ended up being a bigger one than we previously thought.”
Why did it look clearer on my phone?
Many night sky enthusiasts reported seeing the northern lights more clearly on their phone or camera than with the naked eye. The reason for that is simple, said Arora.
“Your phone is actually collecting light for a longer time than your eyes do,” he said.
“For our eyes, the collection time is very, very small, and so very dim things don’t come out as clearly to us.”
The aurora borealis, caused by a coronal mass ejection on the Sun, illuminates the sky over Jericho Beach in Vancouver on May 10. (Chris Helgren/Reuters)
Kjorlien noted that this most recent event was the first time where people were equipped with a smartphone camera capable of capturing the northern lights in all their glory.
“That, to me, is a really, really cool thing, that this is … probably the most photographed northern lights spectacle that we’ve seen,” he said.
I missed it. When will I get another chance?
These events aren’t quite as rare as the full solar eclipse that captivated many Canadians last month.
The solar maximum is expected to continue through the end of 2025, Arora said, which means the northern lights could soon be visible in more southern parts of Canada.
Riley Urschel, who took this photograph, said Friday’s display of northern lights in Grenfell, Sask., was the most intense he’d ever seen. (Submitted by Riley Urschel)
Arora himself wasn’t able to see the northern lights this time around, given the cloud cover in Kingston, Ont.
He said a trip to Yellowknife, where during the winter months the northern lights are even more dazzling, is “on my bucket list.”
Did it lead to any disruptions?
There had been concern the geomagnetic storm could lead to disruptions of satellites and communications equipment.
In some cases, farmers reportedly had to halt planting because of problems with self-driving tractors, which rely on GPS satellites.
But overall, there were no major problems, said Arora.
“Our satellites and our electronics are a lot better protected than they used to be.”
WATCH | What’s a solar storm, and why it matters:
Show more
Ian Cohen, a space physicist and deputy chief scientist of the space exploration sector at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, walked CBC’s Ben Shingler through what’s been happening on the surface of the sun and how it could affect our night sky. 6:08
Arora said the event will be studied to better understand the Earth’s magnetic field — and the universe beyond.
“It’s actually hugely important in better understanding planets in our solar system, and also the sun, as well,” he said.
“Within astrophysics, one of the biggest questions is: Why does our solar system, or our galaxy — or, more in general, our universe — look the way it does?
“So understanding these little details and better understanding these phenomena sheds light onto the fundamental questions of the universe.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Benjamin Shingler
Journalist
Benjamin Shingler is a senior writer based in Montreal, covering climate policy, health and social issues. He previously worked at The Canadian Press and the New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal.
What just happened? The problem of tracking devices like AirTags being misused to stalk people has been an issue since they first launched. Now, Apple and Google have announced that their previously confirmed industry specification for Bluetooth tracking devices is being rolled out to iOS and Android platforms, which should go some way in preventing these incidents.
The Detecting Unwanted Location Trackers (DULT) standard is being introduced in iOS 17.5 by Apple, while Google is bringing it to Android 6.0 and higher devices.
The companies write that thanks to the new standard, users will see a notification alert on their device that reads “[Item] Found Moving With You” if an unknown Bluetooth tracking device is detected moving with them over time, regardless of the platform the device is paired with.
Two years ago, Andrew Feldman couldn’t find Abu Dhabi on a map. But like many Silicon Valley leaders, the artificial intelligence entrepreneur has been wooed by the promise of Middle Eastern partnership and money.
On trips to the glittering capital of the United Arab Emirates, he’s toured a government-built synagogue and a local outpost of the Louvre. The city is so teeming with the tech sector that he ran into fellow California start-up founders in the lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel. Meanwhile, millions from the oil-rich UAE are allowing Feldman’s Cerebras to build advanced supercomputer data centers in Stockton, Calif., Dallas and on theoutskirts of the Emirati desert city.
Astronomers continue to be puzzled about the formation of the so-called cotton candy planets, and now they’ve found another one that has the least density of any exoplanet yet found.
An international team of astronomers say the new planet, WASP-193b, is about 1,200 light-years from Earth. The gas giant is 50% larger than Jupiter but 7 times less massive.
According to Khalid Barkaoui, a postdcotral researcher at the University of Liège in Belgium and first author of the article published in Nature Astronomy, this extremely-low-density cannot be reproduced by standard models of irradiated gas giants.
“WASP-193b is the second least dense planet discovered to date, after Kepler-51d, which is much smaller,” says Barkaoui.
Xiaodan Li and Richard Kammerer have characterized an enzyme for the first time that could become an important tool for the circular economy. The monitor shows a schematic representation of the key part of the active center of this enzyme. Credit: Paul Scherrer Institute/Markus Fischer
Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have—for the first time—precisely characterized the enzyme styrene oxide isomerase, which can be used to produce valuable chemicals and drug precursors in an environmentally friendly manner. The study appears in the journal Nature Chemistry.
RFK JR. SUES MARK ZUCKERBERG, META FOR ELECTION INTERFERENCE AND CENSORSHIP
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who will appear on the California ballot with the far-right American Independent Party, filed a lawsuit Monday against tech giant Meta.
The lawsuit accuses the company, and its founder Mark Zuckerberg, of censorship and election interference.
Lawyers on behalf of Kennedy and his super PAC, American Values 2024, filed the federal lawsuit Monday in the Northern District of California, San Francisco Division.
The lawsuit alleges Meta, which encompasses Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp and Messenger, purposefully suppressed users from viewing and sharing a 30-minute documentary, “Who is Bobby Kennedy?” which was released by American Values 2024 on May 3.
A group of American parents is seeking to sue several video game companies, alleging their children have been harmed by video game addiction.
As reported by Bloomberg, one mother claims that her 14-year-old son has played such a quantity of video games over the last nine years that it has caused him brain damage, seizures, and a stroke. Another mother says that her nine-year-old who has been diagnosed with multiple psychiatric disorders has been gaming “at an increasing and uncontrollable pace”.
Targets of the lawsuits, of which over a dozen are expected to be heard on May 30 in Salt Lake City, Utah, include Microsoft, Nintendo of America, Epic Games, Roblox, and Sony Interactive Entertainment.
A key part of the lawsuit is research that shows Internet Gaming Disorder (the medical term for video game addiction) has a measurable effect on the brain in the way that other addictions do. However, the filing suggests that psychiatric problems such as ADHD are also caused by gaming – this is a contentious issue and research finds that the correlation is more likely in the other direction. That is to say, people with ADHD could be more likely to develop Internet Gaming Disorder, and not that Internet Gaming Disorder causes ADHD. The debate over the addictiveness of games is ongoing and hotly debated.
ORONO, Maine (AP) — As waves grew and gusts increased, a wind turbine bobbed gently, its blades spinning with a gentle woosh. The tempest reached a crescendo with little drama other than splashing water.
The uneventful outcome is exactly what engineers aimed for.
The demonstration featuring a 13-foot-tall (4-meter-tall) floating wind turbine in an indoor pool aimed to ensure it can withstand the strain of powerful water and wind when much larger versions are deployed in the ocean.
It’s the University of Maine’s contribution to a worldwide race to improve floating machines to tap wind that blows across deeper waters offshore, too deep to attach turbines to the seabed with permanent pilings.
In the next decade, UMaine researchers said, they envision turbine platforms floating in the ocean beyond the horizon, stretching more than 700 feet (210 meters) skyward and anchored with mooring lines.
The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has opened an investigation into Alphabet-owned Waymo (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) self-driving vehicles after receiving reports of collisions and instances in which the vehicle’s automated driving system (ADS) appeared to disobey traffic safety rules.
The NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) received reports of 22 incidents involving Waymo vehicles wherein the vehicle ADS behavior caused single-party crashes and potential traffic safety law violations. Of the 22 incidents, 17 involved crash with stationary and semi-stationary objects.
ODI has opened a preliminary evaluation of an estimated 444 Waymo vehicles, which are equipped with Waymo’s 5th generation automated driving system. The investigation will evaluate the ADS’s performance in detecting and responding to traffic control devices and in avoiding collisions with stationary and semi-stationary objects and vehicles.
Quantum computing takes a giant leap with breakthrough discovery • Earth.com
Scientists have produced an enhanced, ultra-pure form of silicon that allows the construction of high-performance qubit devices. This fundamental component is crucial for paving the way towards scalable quantum computing.
The finding, published in the journal Communications Materials – Nature, could define and push forward the future of quantum computing.
The EU’s new rules, called the Digital Identity Regulation (eIADAS 2.0) are set to start to take effect on May 20. The rules are intended to create an infrastructure that would support digital IDs that will be offered for citizens in the EU to access the internet. Internet companies are expected to be fully compliant by 2026. It is not, as of now, required of citizens, but some rights group argue it sets the stage to do so at a later date.
EU’s Controversial Digital ID Regulations Set for 2024, Mandating Big Tech Compliance by 2026
The EU’s new digital ID rules, the Digital Identity Regulation (eIDAS 2.0), are about to come into force on May 20, mandating compliance from Big Tech and member countries in supporting the EU Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet.
However, work is not complete on the EUDI Wallet, as several pilots are planned for 2025 to consolidate the process of the implementation of the rules.
According to the framework, the European Council passed recently, which has now been officially published, the deadline for the digital ID wallet to be recognized and made available is 2026. For now, it will be used in several scenarios, including accessing government services and age verification, reports note.
As things stand now, that deadline means that while the wallet scheme must become fully functional by that time, it will not be obligatory for citizens of the EU’s 27 members, and protection against discrimination is promised to those choosing not to opt in.
A threat actor claiming to be behind the recent Dell data breach has said he managed to steal the data of 49 million customers by brute-forcing a company portal and milking it for almost three weeks.
Dell released a statement saying that there was no “significant risk to our customers”, however the data stolen includes names and postal addresses, alongside other data relating to purchases of Dell products.
The hacker, known as Menelik, told TechCrunch exactly how he managed to extract such a huge amount of data without being detected.
