TorrentFreak – NVIDIA: Copyrighted Books Are Just Statistical Correlations to Our AI Models

Aug 172024
 

Over the past two years, AI developments have progressed at a rapid pace.
This includes large language models, which are typically trained on a broad datasets of texts; the more, the better.
When AI hit the mainstream, it became apparent that rightsholders are not always pleased that their works were used to train AI. This applies to photographers, artists, music companies, journalists, and authors, some of whom formed groups to file copyright infringement lawsuits to protect their rights.
Book authors, in particular, complained about the use of pirated books as training material. In various lawsuits, companies including OpenAI, Microsoft, Meta, and NVIDIA are accused of using the ‘Books3’ dataset, which was scraped from the library of…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://torrentfreak.com/nvidia-copyrighted-books-are-just-statistical-correlations-to-our-ai-models-240617/

 2024-08-17  Comments Off on TorrentFreak – NVIDIA: Copyrighted Books Are Just Statistical Correlations to Our AI Models

Ballot Access News – Arizona Green Party Choice for U.S. Senate Defeats His Opponents, Even Though He was a Write-in and His Opponents Were On the Ballot

Aug 172024
 

Arizona held its non-presidential primaries on July 30.  Two candidates appeared on the Green Party’s primary ballot for U.S. Senate, Mike Norton and Arturo Hernandez.  Norton was backed by Democratic Party figures and Hernandez was backed by Republican figures.  The Green Party did not approve of either one of them, and endorsed Eduardo Quintana, a long-time Green Party official.

However, Quintana was not on the Green Party primary ballot; instead he was a write-in candidate.  But the Green Party mailed a postcard to every registered Green and asked the voters to write-in Quintana, and it worked.  He received more votes than either of his ballot-listed opponents.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://ballot-access.org/2024/08/17/arizona-green-party-choice-for-u-s-senate-defeats-his-opponents-even-though-he-was-a-write-in-and-his-opponents-were-on-the-ballot/

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TorrentFreak – Cox Asks Supreme Court to Protect Internet Subscribers from ‘Piracy Terminations’

Aug 152024
 

Late 2019, Internet provider Cox Communications lost its legal battle against a group of major record labels, including Sony and Universal.
Following a two-week trial, a Virginia jury held Cox liable for its pirating subscribers. The ISP failed to disconnect repeat infringers and was ordered to pay $1 billion in damages.
Cox challenged the verdict through several routes and earlier this year booked a partial victory. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals confirmed that the ISP was contributorily liable for pirating subscribers, but reversed the vicarious copyright infringement finding. A new trial will determine the appropriate damages amount given these new conclusions.
Following this ruling, Cox asked for the damages question to be put on hold, as there were…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://torrentfreak.com/cox-asks-supreme-court-to-protect-internet-subscribers-from-piracy-terminations-240815/

 2024-08-15  Comments Off on TorrentFreak – Cox Asks Supreme Court to Protect Internet Subscribers from ‘Piracy Terminations’

The Register – AI stole my job and my work, and the boss didn’t know – or care

Aug 152024
 

Everyone knows automation will happen, which is why everyone needs proof of human involvement

Column  Earlier this year I got fired and replaced by a robot. And the managers who made the decision didn’t tell me – or anyone else affected by the change – that it was happening.…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/15/robot_took_my_job/

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TorrentFreak – Popular Shadow Library ‘LibGen’ Breaks Down Amidst Legal Troubles

Aug 142024
 

Library Genesis (LibGen) is one of the oldest shadow libraries on the Internet, offering free access to millions of books and academic papers people otherwise have to pay for.
The site’s origins reportedly trace back to the Soviet Union’s underground publishing culture ‘samizdat,’ which was used to bypass state censorship in the last century.
LibGen launched around 2008 as a digital version of the same concept. In addition to bypassing ‘local’ censorship, it’s widely used to circumvent the paywalls of major international publishing companies, serving as a popular ‘pirate’ site for (text)books and academic works.
Rightsholders have attempted to take the site offline several times over the years, but none led to concrete results. Today, Libgen.rs, Libgen.is…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://torrentfreak.com/popular-shadow-library-libgen-breaks-down-amidst-legal-troubles-240814/

 2024-08-14  Comments Off on TorrentFreak – Popular Shadow Library ‘LibGen’ Breaks Down Amidst Legal Troubles

The Register – DEF CON badge disagreement gets physical as firmware dev removed from event stage

Aug 132024
 

Is it not a strange fate that we should suffer so much fear and doubt for so small a thing?

def con  The electronic badges at DEF CON have long been a hot commodity for attendees, tinkerers, and collectors, though this year they’re getting attention for an entirely different reason.…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/08/13/defcon_badge_disagreement_gets_physical/

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jwz – DNA Lounge: Wherein today is Zero Cool Day

Aug 102024
 

36 years ago today, Zero Cool hacked all those banks across state lines. From his house. Crashed 1,507 systems in one day. Biggest crash in history. Front page New York Times, August 10, 1988. Naturally, that means it’s time for our latest installment of CYBERDELIA. Yo, check it. DNA. Fri Sep 6. This is the 29th Anniversary of HACKERS, so as per tradition, we will have: A screening of Hackers at 8pm; Hackers costume contest at 11pm; Head-to-head Wipeout XL competition throughout the night; Skate ramps! Rollerblades welcome! Electro / big beat / cyberpunk dance party to follow. And if you like this…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2024/08/10.html

 2024-08-10  Comments Off on jwz – DNA Lounge: Wherein today is Zero Cool Day

Techdirt. – US Appeals Court Sends Dispute Between French Cognac Cartel And Music Label Back To USPTO

Aug 092024
 

You know, when you’ve written as much as I have about trademark disputes, there are times when you think you’ve seen everything, only to have the universe remind you that the depth of silliness around trademarks can always get deeper. The subject of today’s conversation is going to be a certification mark. While afforded similar protections to a trademark, they are primarily used by a third party, with permission of the owner of a trademarked product, to validate that a product meets certain agreed upon quality standards from the trademark owner. You can find some examples here, but one that is easy to understand is the Energy Star certification mark. To have an Energy Star stamp…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.techdirt.com/2024/08/09/us-appeals-court-sends-dispute-between-french-cognac-cartel-and-music-label-back-to-uspto/

 2024-08-09  Comments Off on Techdirt. – US Appeals Court Sends Dispute Between French Cognac Cartel And Music Label Back To USPTO

INDY Week – Endorsements Split Wake County Dems

Aug 092024
 

Prominent Wake Democrats and the Wake County chapter of the North Carolina Democratic Party’s Jewish caucus are urging the larger county party not to make endorsements in this year’s nonpartisan Raleigh City Council races. All city council seats and the mayor’s seat are up for election in November, and in several races, multiple Democrats are in the running. Since 2011, the party has endorsed one of those candidates. But this year, some are calling for the party not to weigh in, and candidates’ positions on the Israel-Hamas conflict appear to be the main reason. In a letter sent to Wake County Democratic Party Chair Kevyn Creech and executive director Wesley Knott on Friday, more than 20…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://indyweek.com/news/wake/endorsements-split-wake-county-dems/

 2024-08-09  Comments Off on INDY Week – Endorsements Split Wake County Dems

Techdirt. – Age-Gating Access To Online Porn Is Unconstitutional

Aug 082024
 

Texas is one of eight states that have enacted laws that force adults to prove their age before accessing porn sites. Soon it will try to persuade the Supreme Court that its law doesn’t violate the First Amendment. 
Good luck with that. 
These laws are unconstitutional: They deny adults the well-established right to access constitutionally protected speech.
Texas’ H.B. 1181 forces any website made up of one-third or more adult content to verify every visitor’s age. Some adult sites have responded to the law by shutting down their services in Texas. The Free Speech Coalition challenged the law on First Amendment grounds, arguing that mandatory age verification does more than keep minors away from porn — the law nannies adults as well, barring…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.techdirt.com/2024/08/08/age-gating-access-to-online-porn-is-unconstitutional/

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Hackaday – Raspberry Has a New Pico, Built with the New RP2350

Aug 082024
 

Raspberry Pi’s first foray into the world of microcontrollers, the RP2040, was a very interesting chip. Its standout features were the programmable input/output units (PIOs) which enabled all sorts of custom real-time shenanigans. And that’s not to discount the impact of the Pi Pico, the $4 dev kit built around it.
Today, they’re announcing a brand-new microcontroller: the RP2350. It will come conveniently packaged in the new Pi Pico 2, and there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that the new chip is better in every way, and that the Pico form factor will stay the same. The bad news? It’s going to cost 25% more, coming in at $5. But in exchange for…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://hackaday.com/2024/08/08/raspberry-has-a-new-pico-and-the-rp2350/

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Ars Technica – A new report finds Boeing’s rockets are built with an unqualified work force

Aug 082024
 

Enlarge / EUS panel test weld at the Michoud Assembly Facility on Tuesday, February 9, 2021. (credit: Michael DeMocker/NASA)
The NASA program to develop a new upper stage for the Space Launch System rocket is seven years behind schedule and significantly over budget, a new report from the space agency’s inspector general finds. However, beyond these headline numbers, there is also some eye-opening information about the project’s prime contractor, Boeing, and its poor quality control practices.
The new Exploration Upper Stage, a more powerful second stage for the SLS rocket that made its debut in late 2022, is viewed by NASA as a key piece of its Artemis program to return humans to the…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=2041826

 2024-08-08  Comments Off on Ars Technica – A new report finds Boeing’s rockets are built with an unqualified work force

Hackaday – Pixel Art and the Myth of The CRT Effect

Aug 042024
 

The ‘CRT Effect’ myth says that the reason why pixel art of old games looked so much better is due to the smoothing and blending effects of cathode-ray tube (CRT) displays, which were everywhere until the early 2000s. In fits of mistaken nostalgia this has led both to modern-day extreme cubism pixel art and video game ‘CRT’ filters that respectively fail to approach what pixel art was about, or why old games looked the way they did back with our NES and SNES game consoles. This is a point which [Carl Svensson] vehemently argues from a position of experience, and one which is likely shared by quite a few of our readers.
Although there is some possible…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://hackaday.com/2024/08/03/pixel-art-and-the-myth-of-the-crt-effect/

 2024-08-04  Comments Off on Hackaday – Pixel Art and the Myth of The CRT Effect
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