Category: Technology

Nuclear research hub, the Idaho National Laboratory (INL), confirmed that it fell victim to a data breach on Tuesday. SiegedSec, a group of self-proclaimed “gay furry hackers,” took responsibility for the attack and claimed they accessed sensitive employee data like social security numbers, home addresses and more.

“We’re willing to make a deal with INL. If they research creating irl catgirls we will take down this post,” SiegedSec wrote in a post announcing the leak on Monday. 

The hacktivist group SiegedSec conducted a high profile attack on NATO last month, leaking internal documents as a retaliation against those countries for their attacks on human rights. The group commonly attacks government and affiliated organizations for political reasons, like targeting state governments for passing anti-trans legislation earlier this year.

While INL hasn’t responded to our request for comment yet, a spokesperson confirmed the breach to EastIdahoNews.com. “Idaho National Laboratory determined that it was the target of a cybersecurity data breach, affecting the servers supporting its Oracle HCM system, which supports its Human Resources applications,” the INL spokesperson said. The lab said it has reached out to authorities for help on how to proceed as it determines how to handle the breach. 

INL works as a Department of Energy affiliate researching nuclear reactors, among other projects like sustainable energy. It employs more than 5,000 people. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/self-proclaimed-gay-furry-hackers-breach-nuclear-lab-152034192.html?src=rss 

Whether or not you understand your loved one’s desire to wake up before sunrise and get in a 5K is irrelevant when it comes to gifting. Athletes, especially runners, are pretty easy to shop for since they can never have too many of the essentials like socks, gloves, foam rollers, trackers and more. There are plenty of things you can get them that will make their runs more enjoyable, or help them recover more efficiently so they can best yesterday’s time today. Here are the best gift ideas for runners for this year’s holiday shopping season.

Theragun Mini

Rise and Run: Recipes, Rituals and Runs to Fuel Your Day

Roll Recovery R8

Spibelt

Bombas Running Socks

Trigger Point Grid Travel Foam Roller

Yoga Toes

TrailHeads Power Stretch Fingerless Gloves

Apace Vision LED Safety Lights

Garmin Forerunner 55

Beats Fit Pro

Goodr OG Sunglasses

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/best-gifts-for-runners-140015714.html?src=rss 

There’s a seriously hefty list of Razer products on sale at Amazon right now for Black Friday, with the most deeply discounted accessories selling for up to 65 percent off their retail price. One of the accessories you can grab with a 65 percent discount is the Kiyo Pro Streaming Webcam, which is currently listed for $70.87 instead of its usual price of $200. You can use it for streaming, video conferencing or recording, and it’s capable of capturing uncompressed full HD 60 fps videos. It can also take HDR videos at 30 fps and comes with a large aperture, wide-angle lens with three field-of-view options. 

Meanwhile, the Razer Wolverine V2 Chroma wired controller is only $90 right now instead of $150. It comes with remappable back paddles with four extra triggers, non-slip grips for good ergonomics and responsive and tactile buttons. This wired controller is compatible with the Xbox Series X|S, the Xbox One and your PC. If you’re looking for a cheaper Xbox controller and don’t mind getting a less powerful model, the non-pro Razer Wolverine V2 controller is on sale for $46.12, down 54 percent from $100. It has two extra remappable multi-function buttons and a 3.5mm jack. Both controllers have a Hair Trigger Mode to enable an ultra-fast rate of fire.

You can also grab the Razer BlackShark V2 Pro Wireless Gaming Headset for $100, or $80 off its retail price, right now. Its closed earcups prevent sounds from leaking out and noise from getting in, it supports THX 7.1 surround sound, and it has a detachable mic. While it is a wireless headset, it comes with a 3.5mm jack so you can use it for console gaming. If you need a new mouse for PC gaming, though, the Razer Viper Ultimate Lightweight Wireless Gaming Mouse is on sale for $53.72, as well, which is 59 percent less than its retail price. It was designed to be light and fast, and it was created for both right-handed and left-handed users with programmable buttons on both sides. 

Yet another PC gaming accessory on sale is the Razer BlackWidow V3 Tenkeyless mechanical gaming keyboard that uses the brand’s green switches and is compatible with Razer hardware, Philips Hue and products from the brand’s partners. Currently being sold for $70, it’s down $20 from $90. And if you want a standalone console for your streams, there’s the Razer Stream Controller, which you can get for $200 instead of for $270. Even if you didn’t see anything you’d buy in this post, you may still want to check out Razer’s Black Friday deals page and scroll down until you get to the bottom, where a bunch of other discounted products are listed. 

Your Black Friday Shopping Guide: See all of Yahoo’s Black Friday coverage, here. Follow Engadget for Black Friday tech deals. Learn about Black Friday trends on In The Know. Hear from Autoblog’s experts on the best Black Friday deals for your car, garage, and home, and find Black Friday sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/razers-black-friday-deals-knock-up-to-65-percent-off-gaming-peripherals-125836307.html?src=rss 

Asking a question on Google Meet is getting a little more interactive. Google is rolling out a new gesture detection feature that lets you physically raise your hand to alert the group that you have a question versus clicking the raise hand button. Sure, it’s a minor thing, but after a long day sitting online, some movement doesn’t hurt.

The gesture detection feature works as long as your camera is on and your hand is clearly visible in the shot — Google recommends distancing it from your face and body. Hold it there momentarily while it recognizes that your hand is raised and alerts other participants. Yes, you may feel like you’re back in school, but who doesn’t love some nostalgia? 

Don’t worry if you’re an animated talker, waving your hands all over the place. Google Meet should deactivate gesture detection anytime you’re an active speaker, only turning it back on once you’re a silent participant again. While admins have no control over the feature, you can turn it off anytime by going to More Options, then clicking Reactions and Hand Raise Gesture. We all love to wave as the meeting is ending, so if that regularly triggers it, then you might want to turn it off. 

Gesture detection should roll out to Rapid Release domains in the next few days. Scheduled Release domains will experience a gradual rollout over the course of 15 days, starting on November 28. The feature is available across most Google Meet Workspace plans, including Business Standard and Plus, Education Plus and individual subscribers.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/google-meets-hand-raise-feature-just-got-a-lot-more-real-132049238.html?src=rss 

Producing music with friends and colleagues from afar can be tricky but, hopefully, it’s about to get a bit smoother. Endlesss, a remote music creation platform, is rolling out a feature called Clubs that could make it easier to share and blend ideas. The new tool is reminiscent of Discord — something Endlesss (yes, with a triple s) outright states in its promotion.

Endlesss Clubs are live chat channels where members can add riffs, make comments, combine parts and share files. Just like Discord, members can belong to multiple Clubs, and each has different channels, depending on what people want to create. 

The company first announced the upcoming release of Endlesss Clubs back in August. “Music-makers all have to compete for attention on the same distribution platforms. This results in bad outcomes for everyone but the very best,” Tim Exile, founder and CEO of Endlesss, said at the time. “We’re excited to provide community-owned places for music-makers of all levels to go deep with their people.”

Endlesss debuted at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing musicians to connect remotely. It was initially available only as an iOS app before launching Endlesss Studio for desktop at the end of 2020. There were some kinks when we first tested it, many of which seem to have been straightened out in the years since.  

Anyone can test out Endlesss for free or get unlimited sample packs, sample presets, VST/AU plugin presets and high quality audio for $10 per month. Endlesss Clubs are now available for members to join and play around in. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/endlesss-clubs-is-like-a-discord-server-for-making-music-112509781.html?src=rss 

Stable Diffusion’s generative art can now be animated, developer Stability AI announced. The company has released a new product called Stable Video Diffusion into a research preview, allowing users to create video from a single image. “This state-of-the-art generative AI video model represents a significant step in our journey toward creating models for everyone of every type,” the company wrote. 

The new tool has been released in the form of two image-to-video models, each capable of generating 14 to 25 frames long at speeds between 3 and 30 frames per second at 576 × 1024 resolution. It’s capable of multi-view synthesis from a single frame with fine-tuning on multi-view datasets. “At the time of release in their foundational form, through external evaluation, we have found these models surpass the leading closed models in user preference studies,” the company said, comparing it to text-to-video platforms Runway and Pika Labs. 

Stable Video Diffusion is available only for research purposes at this point, not real-world or commercial applications. Potential users can sign up to get on a waitlist for access to an “upcoming web experience featuring a text-to-video interface,” Stability AI wrote. The tool will showcase potential applications in sectors including advertising, education, entertainment and more. 

The samples shown in the video above appear to be of relatively high quality, matching rival generative systems. However, it has some limitations, the company wrote: it generates relatively short video (less than 4 seconds), lacks perfect photorealism, can’t do camera motion except slow pans, has no text control, can’t generate legible text and may not generate people and faces properly. 

The tool was trained on a dataset of millions of videos and then fine-tuned on a smaller set, with Stability AI only saying that it used video that was publicly available for research purposes. The origin of the data set is important, given that Stability AI was recently sued by Getty Images for scraping its image archives. 

Video is a key goal for generative AI, due to its potential to simplify content creation. However, it’s also a tool with the most potential for abuse via deepfakes, copyright violations and more. And unlike OpenAI with its ChatGPT product, Stability has had less success commercializing its Stable Diffusion product and burned through cash at a high rate, TechCrunch noted. And last week, vice president of audio at Stability AI, Ed Newton-Rex, resigned over the use of copyrighted content to train generative AI models. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-ai-startup-behind-stable-diffusion-is-now-testing-generative-video-105519658.html?src=rss 

OpenAI has been hit with another lawsuit, accusing it of using other people’s intellectual property without permission to train its generative AI technology. Only this time, the lawsuit also names Microsoft as a defendant. The complaint was filed by Julian Sancton on behalf of a group of non-fiction authors who said they were not compensated for the use of their books and academic journals in training the company’s large language model. 

In their lawsuit, the authors state how they spend years “conceiving, researching, and writing their creations.” They accuse OpenAI and Microsoft of refusing to pay authors while building a business “valued into the tens of billions of dollars by taking the combined works of humanity without permission.” The companies pretend copyright laws do not exist, the complaint reads, and have “enjoyed enormous financial gain from their exploitation of copyrighted material.”

Sancton is the author behind Madhouse at the End of the Earth: The Belgica’s Journey Into the Dark Antarctic, which tells the true survival story of an 1897 polar expedition that got stuck in the ocean in the middle of a sunless Antarctic winter. Sancton spent five years and tens of thousands of dollars to research and write the book. “Such an investment of time and money is feasible for Plaintiff Sancton and other writers because, in exchange for their creative efforts, the Copyright Act grants them ‘a bundle of exclusive rights’ in their works, including ‘the rights to reproduce the copyrighted work[s],'” according to the lawsuit. 

As Forbes notes, OpenAI previously said that content generated by ChatGPT doesn’t constitute “derivative work” and, hence, doesn’t infringe on any copyright. Sancton’s lawsuit is merely the latest complaint against the company over its use of copyrighted work to train its technology. Earlier this year, screenwriter and author also Michael Chabon sued OpenAI for the same thing, as did George R.R. Martin, John Grisham and Jodi Picoult. Comedian Sarah Silverman filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Meta, as well. Sancton is now seeking damages and injunctive relief for all the proposed class action’s defendants. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/openai-and-microsoft-hit-with-copyright-lawsuit-from-non-fiction-authors-101505740.html?src=rss 

OpenAI introduced voice chats with ChatGPT on Android and iOS back in September, giving users the option to have actual back-and-forth conversations with the chatbot if they want to. The company only made the feature available to Plus and Enterprise subscribers back then, though, with the promise that it will eventually release it to other groups of users. Now, OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman has announced on X that voice conversations on ChatGPT have started rolling out to all free users on mobile. 

When the company first introduced voice chats, it admitted that the capability to create “realistic synthetic voices from just a few seconds of real speech” presents new risks. It could, for instance, allow bad actors to impersonate public figures or anybody they want. As a result, it decided that ChatGPT’s voice feature will focus on conversations. It’s powered by a text-to-speech model that can generate “human-like audio from just text and a few seconds of sample speech.” OpenAI worked with voice actors to create the capability and offers five different voices to choose from. 

We checked our ChatGPT app on Android and have yet to gain access to voice conversations, which indicates that the feature could take sometime before reaching everybody’s accounts. It’s not quite clear if users have to opt in to be able to access it, but paid subscribers had to enable it by going to Settings and then to New Features when voice chats rolled out. 

Brockman announced the capability’s wide release after he had already left his seat as President of OpenAI. He quit of his own accord after the company’s board fired Sam Altman as CEO, causing mayhem with senior staff members resigning in protest and the rest of the employees threatening to quit unless he’s reinstated. Shortly after he made the announcement, OpenAI announced that Altman and Brockman had been reinstated and will be returning to their posts. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/chatgpts-voice-chat-feature-is-rolling-out-to-free-users-085549323.html?src=rss