Home • Directory • Classifieds • Chat • Contact
 online info hub for Philadelphia
|
 |
 | |
|
News |  |
Info | |
Forums | |
Tech & Business | |
Music & Culture | |
Community & Events | |
PhillyBlog Tech:Latest Slashdot News:• Internet Archive Loses in Court. Judge Rules They Can't Scan and Lend eBooks The Verge reports:A federal judge has ruled against the Internet Archive in Hachette v. Internet Archive a lawsuit brought against it by four book publishers deciding that the website does not have the right to scan books and lend them out like a library. Judge John G. Koeltl decided that the Internet Archive had done nothing more than create "derivative works" and so would have needed authorization from the books' copyright holders — the publishers — before lending them out through its National Emergency Library program.The Internet Archive says it will appeal. The decision was "a blow to all libraries and the communities we serve" argued Chris Freeland the director of Open Libraries at the Internet Archive. In a blog post he argued the decision "impacts libraries across the U.S. who rely on controlled digital lending to connect their patrons with books online.It hurts authors by saying that unfair licensing models are the only way their books can be read online. And it holds back access to information in the digital age harming all readers everywhere. The Verge adds that the judge rejected "fair use" arguments which had previously protected a 2014 digital book preservation project by Google Books and HathiTrust:Koetl wrote that any "alleged benefits" from the Internet Archive's library "cannot outweigh the market harm to the publishers" declaring that "there is nothing transformative about [Internet Archive's] copying and unauthorized lending" and that copying these books doesn't provide "criticism commentary or information about them." He notes that the Google Books use was found "transformative" because it created a searchable database instead of simply publishing copies of books on the internet. Koetl also dismissed arguments that the Internet Archive might theoretically have helped publishers sell more copies of their books saying there was no direct evidence and that it was "irrelevant" that the Internet Archive had purchased its own copies of the books before making copies for its online audience. According to data obtained during the trial the Internet Archive currently hosts around 70000 e-book "borrows" a day. read more >> • OpenAI Admits ChatGPT Leaked Some Payment Data Blames Open-Source Bug OpenAI took ChatGPT offline earlier this week "due to a bug in an open-source library which allowed some users to see titles from another active user's chat history" according to an OpenAI blog post. "It's also possible that the first message of a newly-created conversation was visible in someone else's chat history if both users were active around the same time.... "Upon deeper investigation we also discovered that the same bug may have caused the unintentional visibility of payment-related information of 1.2% of the ChatGPT Plus subscribers who were active during a specific nine-hour window."In the hours before we took ChatGPT offline on Monday it was possible for some users to see another active user's first and last name email address payment address the last four digits (only) of a credit card number and credit card expiration date. Full credit card numbers were not exposed at any time. We believe the number of users whose data was actually revealed to someone else is extremely low. To access this information a ChatGPT Plus subscriber would have needed to do one of the following: - Open a subscription confirmation email sent on Monday March 20 between 1 a.m. and 10 a.m. Pacific time. Due to the bug some subscription confirmation emails generated during that window were sent to the wrong users. These emails contained the last four digits of another user's credit card number but full credit card numbers did not appear. It's possible that a small number of subscription confirmation emails might have been incorrectly addressed prior to March 20 although we have not confirmed any instances of this. - In ChatGPT click on "My account" then "Manage my subscription" between 1 a.m. and 10 a.m. Pacific time on Monday March 20. During this window another active ChatGPT Plus user's first and last name email address payment address the last four digits (only) of a credit card number and credit card expiration date might have been visible. It's possible that this also could have occurred prior to March 20 although we have not confirmed any instances of this. We have reached out to notify affected users that their payment information may have been exposed. We are confident that there is no ongoing risk to users' data. Everyone at OpenAI is committed to protecting our users' privacy and keeping their data safe. It's a responsibility we take incredibly seriously. Unfortunately this week we fell short of that commitment and of our users' expectations. We apologize again to our users and to the entire ChatGPT community and will work diligently to rebuild trust. The bug was discovered in the Redis client open-source library redis-py. As soon as we identified the bug we reached out to the Redis maintainers with a patch to resolve the issue. "The bug is now patched. We were able to restore both the ChatGPT service and later its chat history feature with the exception of a few hours of history." read more >> • A Geometric Shape That Does Not Repeat Itself When Tiled IHTFISP shares a report from Phys.Org: A quartet of mathematicians from Yorkshire University the University of Cambridge the University of Waterloo and the University of Arkansas has discovered a 2D geometric shape that does not repeat itself when tiled. David Smith Joseph Samuel Myers Craig Kaplan and Chaim Goodman-Strauss have written a paper describing how they discovered the unique shape and possible uses for it. Their full paper is available on the arXiv preprint server. [...] The shape has 13 sides and the team refers to it simply as "the hat." They found it by first paring down possibilities using a computer and then by studying the resulting smaller sets by hand. Once they had what they believed was a good possibility they tested it using a combinatorial software program -- and followed that up by proving the shape was aperiodic using a geometric incommensurability argument. The researchers close by suggesting that the most likely application of the hat is in the arts. read more >> • Major Shake-Up Coming For Fermilab An anonymous reader quotes a report from Science Magazine: In an unusual move the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has quietly begun a new competition for the contract to run the United States's sole dedicated particle physics laboratory. Announced in January the rebid comes 1 year after Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) which is managed in part by the University of Chicago (UChicago) failed an annual DOE performance review and 9 months after it named a new director. DOE would not comment but observers say its frustrations include cost increases and delays in a gargantuan new neutrino experiment. "I don't think it's surprising at all given the department's evaluation of [Fermilab's] performance" says James Decker a physicist and consultant with Decker Garman Sullivan & Associates LLC who served as principal deputy director of DOE's Office of Science from 1973 to 2007. Although Fermilab passed its 2022 performance evaluation the one for fiscal year 2021 was "one of the most scathing I have seen" Decker says. DOE has already solicited letters of interest and will issue a request for formal proposals this summer. It intends to award the new contract by the end of the next fiscal year 30 September 2024 and transfer control of the lab which employs 2100 staff and has an annual budget of $614 million on January 1 2025. UChicago hopes to win the contract again says Paul Alivisatos president of the university who is also chair of FRA's board of directors and a former director of DOE's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "We absolutely will be bidding to continue." [...] How many parties will bid on the contract remains unclear. Managing the lab requires very specific technical expertise but pays $5 million per year at most. "I don't think that there are too many organizations that could really compete for this contract" Decker says. If just UChicago or URA bid on the new contract they'll need a new partner multiple observers say perhaps one with expertise in huge construction projects. DOE is sure to insist that something changes. read more >> • Natural History Museums Join Forces To Produce Global Digital Inventory Dozens of the world's largest natural history museums revealed on Thursday a survey of everything in their collections. The global inventory is made up of 1.1 billion objects that range from dinosaur skulls to pollen grains to mosquitoes. The New York Times reports: The survey's organizers who described the effort in the journal Science said they hoped the survey would help museums join forces to answer pressing questions such as how quickly species are becoming extinct and how climate change is altering the natural world. "It gives us intelligence now to start thinking about things that museums can do together that we wouldn't have conceived of before" said Kirk Johnson the director of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington and one of the leaders of the project. "It's the argument for networking the global museum." Scientists had created smaller inventory databases before. But the new effort which included 73 museums in 28 countries was unparalleled experts said. The survey revealed important gaps in the world's collections. Relatively few objects come from the regions around the earth's poles which are especially vulnerable to the impact of global warming for example. Insects the most diverse group of animal species were also underrepresented. "The analysis is at a global scale that no one else has managed" said Emily Meineke an entomologist at the University of California Davis who was not involved in the survey. Dr. Meineke said that this survey of large institutions also laid the groundwork for surveys of smaller ones which might hold even more surprises. "Once these methods are applied down the line to smaller collections the results are likely to give us a truer picture of biodiversity globally" she said. read more >> • Starlink Rival OneWeb Poised for Global Coverage After Weekend Launch British satellite company OneWeb is gearing up for the launch of its final batch of internet satellites completing a constellation in low Earth orbit despite some hiccups along the way. Gizmodo reports: India's heaviest launch vehicle LVM-3 will carry 36 OneWeb satellites with liftoff slated for Sunday at 11:30 p.m. ET according to OneWeb. The launch will take place at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota India marking OneWeb's second deployment from India. You can watch the launch at the livestream [here]. OneWeb has been building an internet constellation in low Earth orbit since 2020 and it currently consists of 579 functioning satellites according to statistics kept by Harvard-Smithsonian astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell. The addition of 36 new units will raise the population of the constellation to 615 completing the first orbital shell. The company had originally planned on building a 648-unit constellation but it says this final launch will cap it off and allow for global coverage. read more >> • United Airlines Reveals First eVTOL Passenger Route Starting In 2025 An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In 2025 United Airlines will fly an air taxi service between the downtown Vertiport Chicago and O'Hare International Airport using electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft it is purchasing from Archer Aviation. The Archer Midnight eVTOL aircraft will complete the route in about 10 minutes; according to local resident and Ars Managing Editor Eric Bangeman that journey by car can take over an hour due to road construction. "Both Archer and United are committed to decarbonizing air travel and leveraging innovative technologies to deliver on the promise of the electrification of the aviation industry" said Michael Leskinen president of United Airlines Ventures. "Once operational we're excited to offer our customers a more sustainable convenient and cost-effective mode of transportation during their commutes to the airport." If Chicago works out United plans to add other airport-to-city "trunk routes" with "branch" routes between different communities coming later. The Archer Midnight has a range of 100 miles (160 km) and a top speed of 150 mph (241 km/h). If approved by the FAA the Chicago air shuttle would be the first commercial eVTOL service to begin operating in North America. Asked about the cost an Archer spokesperson told the Chicago Sun-Times that the company hopes to make the service competitive with Uber Black so it will be roughly $100 for the trip. read more >> • Intel Co-Founder/Creator of 'Moore's Law' Gordon Moore Dies at Age 94 Intel announced Friday that Gordon Moore Intel's co-founder has died at the age of 94:Moore and his longtime colleague Robert Noyce founded Intel in July 1968. Moore initially served as executive vice president until 1975 when he became president. In 1979 Moore was named chairman of the board and chief executive officer posts he held until 1987 when he gave up the CEO position and continued as chairman. In 1997 Moore became chairman emeritus stepping down in 2006. During his lifetime Moore also dedicated his focus and energy to philanthropy particularly environmental conservation science and patient care improvements. Along with his wife of 72 years he established the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation which has donated more than $5.1 billion to charitable causes since its founding in 2000.... "Though he never aspired to be a household name Gordon's vision and his life's work enabled the phenomenal innovation and technological developments that shape our everyday lives" said foundation president Harvey Fineberg. "Yet those historic achievements are only part of his legacy. His and Betty's generosity as philanthropists will shape the world for generations to come." Pat Gelsinger Intel CEO said "Gordon Moore defined the technology industry through his insight and vision. He was instrumental in revealing the power of transistors and inspired technologists and entrepreneurs across the decades. We at Intel remain inspired by Moore's Law and intend to pursue it until the periodic table is exhausted...." Prior to establishing Intel Moore and Noyce participated in the founding of Fairchild Semiconductor where they played central roles in the first commercial production of diffused silicon transistors and later the world's first commercially viable integrated circuits. The two had previously worked together under William Shockley the co-inventor of the transistor and founder of Shockley Semiconductor which was the first semiconductor company established in what would become Silicon Valley. read more >> • Huawei Claims To Have Built Its Own 14nm Chip Design Suite Huawei has reportedly completed work on electronic design automation (EDA) tools for laying out and making chips down to 14nm process nodes. The Register reports: Chinese media said the platform is one of 78 being developed by the telecoms equipment giant to replace American and European chip design toolkits that have become subject to export controls by the US and others. Huawei's EDA platform was reportedly revealed by rotating Chairman Xu Zhijun during a meeting in February and later confirmed by media in China. [...] Huawei's focus on EDA software for 14nm and larger chips reflects the current state of China's semiconductor industry. State-backed foundry operator SMIC currently possesses the ability to produce 14nm chips at scale although there have been some reports the company has had success developing a 7nm process node. Today the EDA market is largely controlled by three companies: California-based Synopsys and Cadence as well as Germany's Siemens. According to the industry watchers at TrendForce these three companies account for roughly 75 percent of the EDA market. And this poses a problem for Chinese chipmakers and foundries which have steadily found themselves cut off from these tools. Synopsys and Cadence's EDA tech is already subject to several of these export controls which were stiffened by the US Commerce Department last summer to include state-of-the-art gate-all-around (GAA) transistors. This January the White House also reportedly stopped issuing export licenses to companies supplying the likes of Huawei. This is particularly troublesome for Huawei foundry operator SMIC and memory vendor YMTC to name a few on the US Entity List a roster of companies Uncle Sam would prefer you not to do business with. It leaves them unable to access recent and latest technologies at the very least. So the development of a homegrown EDA platform for 14nm chips serves as insurance in case broader access to Western production platforms is cut off entirely. read more >> • France Bans 'Recreational Apps' From Government Staff Phones France announced Friday it is banning the "recreational" use of TikTok Twitter Instagram and other apps on government employees' phones because of concern about insufficient data security measures. Reuters reports: The French Minister for Transformation and Public Administration Stanislas Guerini said in a statement that ''recreational" apps aren't secure enough to be used in state administrative services and "could present a risk for the protection of data." The ban will be monitored by France's cybersecurity agency. The statement did not specify which apps are banned but noted that the decision came after other governments took measures targeting TikTok. Guerini's office said in a message to The Associated Press that the ban also will include Twitter Instagram Netflix gaming apps like Candy Crush and dating apps. Exceptions will be allowed. If an official wants to use a banned app for professional purposes like public communication they can request permission to do so. Case in point: Guerini posted the announcement of the ban on Twitter. read more >>
coming soon...
coming soon...
Philadelphia Tech News:<< Next Page >> |
login | register
Interact: Chat Room
| ||||||||
|
 | • Weather |
| • Forums |
| • Chat |
| • Directory | | • Classifieds | |
|
|||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||
|
|||||||||||
|
|
|
Home | Privacy | Forum Map | Contact Us Copyright © 2003 Philly Spot. All Rights Reserved. |
|
|
|
|
City of Philadelphia International Airport Philadelphia University University of Pennsylvania | |