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Dva američtí lovci konzumovali zvěřinu z jelenců s prionovým onemocněním. • Zemřeli na Creutzfeldt-Jakobovu chorobu. Lékaři se obávají, že jsme svědky prvních případů přenosu choroby z jelenovitých na člověka. • Inkubační doba je dlouhá. Pokud se příčina onemocnění potvrdí, tiká mezi lovci a ...

Two security vulnerabilities have been discovered in F5 Next Central Manager that could be exploited by a threat actor to seize control of the devices and create hidden rogue administrator accounts for persistence. The remotely exploitable flaws "can give attackers full administrative control of the device, and subsequently allow attackers to create accounts on any F5 assets managed by the Next

Two security vulnerabilities have been discovered in F5 Next Central Manager that could be exploited by a threat actor to seize control of the devices and create hidden rogue administrator accounts for persistence. The remotely exploitable flaws "can give attackers full administrative control of the device, and subsequently allow attackers to create accounts on any F5 assets managed by the Next Newsroomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/[email protected]

Výrobci na Tchaj-wanu: Je to k ničemu, Intel nám jen přidělal práci a z Core i9-14900K udělal „třísekundového hrdinu“…

BogusBazaar ripped off shoppers and scraped card details, but not in China

A crime ring dubbed BogusBazaar has scammed 850,000 people out of tens of millions of dollars via a network of dodgy shopping websites.…

Úrokové sazby nad 6 % p.a. jsou už minulostí. Stále ale lze získat úrokovou sazbu nad 5 % p.a., zvláště u spořicích účtů. Zato termínované vklady s pětkou na začátku začínají rychle mizet.

Vedoucí zaměstnanec firmy vybíral její peníze prostřednictvím bankovní karty. Výběry formálně neproúčtoval, ale neporušil přitom žádnou svou povinnost, nic nezavinil, a tak není odpovědný za škodu. Jenže ještě platí, že obohacený zaměstnanec musí vydat bezdůvodné obohacení.

Zkusil jsem si objednat „zakázkový“ linuxový hardware a software z Německa. Vybral jsem si konkrétní notebook označený jako herní. Má koupě takového počítače smysl? Jaké má parametry a jak vypadá?

Na úterní článek, v němž jsme se mj. věnovali i moderním reinkarnacím klasického jazyka BASIC dnes částečně navážeme. Ukážeme si některé možnosti a omezení EndBASICu, což je nový příspěvek do světa interpretrů BASICu.

Toto je dodatek k předchozímu článku o parsování JSON pomocí korutiny. Původním záměrem byl spíš benefit asynchronního zpracování. Diskutéři pod článkem mě donutili podívat se na možnosti optimalizace na rychlost.

Máme tu patovou situaci. Pat Gelsinger, CEO Intelu, slíbil, že Xeon Granite Rapids zlepší Intelu podíl na trhu. Jenže zvýšení podílu na trhu očekává i CEO AMD díky Epycům Turin…

Hadrony, jako třeba protony či neutrony, jsou tvořeny kvarky, které drží pohromadě gluony, elementární částice, co zprostředkovávají silnou interakci. Když se k sobě slepí několik gluonů, měla by vzniknout svérázná částice glueball. Fyzici je doposud lovili bez úspěchu. Dokázali to na experimentu BES III?

O víkendu si ho můžete vyzkoušet na Maker Faire Prague.

…aneb Nové poznatky o vzniku i konci pozoruhodných tyreoforů

Izraelská společnost BaroMar navrhuje uskladňovat energii pro rozvodné sítě v bateriích se stlačeným vzduchem. Díky ponoření do několikasetmetrové hloubky mohou být jednoduché a tím pádem velmi levné. Vhodných lokalit u pobřeží je prý spousta. Brzy by měli spustit pilotní projekt na Kypru.

It's 'essential to national security' ex-Navy intel officer tells us

Interview  As undersea cables carry increasing amounts of information, cyber and physical attacks against them will cause a greater impact on the wider internet.…

Byl vydán Fedora Asahi Remix 40, tj. linuxová distribuce pro Apple Silicon vycházející z Fedora Linuxu 40.

There are well over a million asteroids in the solar system. Most don’t cross paths with Earth, but some do and there’s a risk one of these will collide with our planet. Taking a census of nearby space rocks, then, is prudent. As conventional wisdom would have it, we’ll need lots of telescopes, time, and teams of astronomers to find them.

But maybe not, according to the B612 Foundation’s Asteroid Institute.

In tandem with Google Cloud, the Asteroid Institute recently announced they’ve spotted 27,500 new asteroids—more than all discoveries worldwide last year—without requiring a single new observation. Instead, over a period of just a few weeks, the team used new software to scour 1.7 billion points of light in some 400,000 images taken over seven years and archived by the National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOIRLab).

To discover new asteroids, astronomers usually need multiple images over several nights (or more) to find moving objects and calculate their orbits. This means they have to make new observations with asteroid discovery in mind. There is also, however, a trove of existing one-time observations made for other purposes, and these are likely packed with photobombing asteroids. But identifying them is difficult and computationally intensive.

Working with the University of Washington, the Asteroid Institute team developed an algorithm, Tracklet-less Heliocentric Orbit Recovery, or THOR, to scan archived images recorded at different times or even by different telescopes. The tool can tell if moving points of light recorded in separate images are the same object. Many of these will be asteroids.

Running THOR on Google Cloud, the team scoured the NOIRLab data and found plenty. Most of the new asteroids are in the main asteroid belt, but more than 100 are near-Earth asteroids. Though the team classified their findings as “high-confidence,” these near-Earth asteroids have not yet been confirmed. They’ll submit their findings to the Minor Planet Center, and ESA and NASA will then verify orbits and assess risk. (The team says they have no reason to believe any pose a risk to Earth.)

While the new software could speed up the pace of discovery, the process still requires volunteers and scientists to manually review the algorithm’s finds. The team plans to use the raw data from the recent run including human review to train an AI model. The hope is that some or all of the manual review process can be automated, making the process even faster.

In the future, the algorithm will go to work on data from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, a telescope in Chile’s Atacama desert. The telescope, set to begin operations next year, will make twice nightly observations of the sky with asteroid detection in mind. THOR may be able to make discoveries with only one nightly run, freeing the telescope up for other work.

All this is in service of the plan to discover as many Earth-crossing asteroids as possible.

According to NASA, we’ve found over 1.3 million asteroids, 35,000 of which are near-Earth asteroids. Of these, over 90 percent of the biggest and most dangerous—in the same class as the impact that ended the dinosaurs—have been discovered. Scientists are now filling out the list of smaller but still dangerous asteroids. The vast majority of all known asteroids were catalogued this century. Before that we were flying blind.

While no dangerous asteroids are known to be headed our way soon, space agencies are working on a plan of action—sans nukes and Bruce Willis—should we discover one.

In 2022, NASA rammed the DART spacecraft into an asteroid, Dymorphos, to see if it would deflect the space rock’s orbit. This is a planetary defense strategy known as a “kinetic impactor.” Scientists thought DART might change the asteroid’s orbit by 7 minutes. Instead, DART changed Dymorphos’ orbit by a whopping 33 minutes, much of which was due to recoil produced by a giant plume of material ejected by the impact.

The conclusion of scientists studying the aftermath? “Kinetic impactor technology is a viable technique to potentially defend Earth if necessary.” With the caveat: If we have enough time. Such impacts amount to a nudge, so we need years of advance notice.

Algorithms like THOR could help give us that crucial heads up.

Image Credit: B612 Foundation

Generative AI (genAI) tools are becoming more common in the workplace, but business leaders are concerned that their organizations lack a strategy to deploy the technology across their workforce.

That’s according to a Microsoft survey of 31,000 employees in 31 countries, published in the company’s annual Work Trend Index report. 

The survey indicates strong demand from employee for access to genAI tools. Three quarters of respondents use the tools in their jobs, the report claims, double the usage of just six months ago. Employees say AI saves time, enables them to focus on more important tasks, allows for more creativity, and lets them enjoy work more. And more than three-quarters (78%) of office workers use their own AI tools —  a phenomenon known as bring your own AI (BYOAI).

Business leaders also see potential in the technology, with 79% of leaders surveyed believing AI use is needed for their organization to remain competitive. 

Microsoft itself has claimed several large-scale deployments of its own Copilot genAI assistant: Amgen, BP, and Koch Industries are among the enterprises that have purchased over 10,000 “seats” of Microsoft 365 Copilot, CEO Satya Nadella said during the company’s recently quarterly financial earnings call. 

But not all large businesses are keen to dive in quickly, however. The survey found that 60% of leaders believe their organization’s leadership lacks the vision to roll out AI across their workforce. 

“While leaders agree using AI is a business imperative, and many say they won’t even hire someone without AI skills, they also believe that their companies lack a vision and plan to implement AI broadly; they’re stuck in AI inertia,” Colette Stallbaumer, general manager of Copilot and Cofounder of Work Lab at Microsoft, said in a pre-recorded briefing.

“We’ve come to the hard part of any tech disruption, moving from experimentation to business transformation,” Stallbaumer said.

While there’s clear interest in AI’s potential, many businesses are proceeding with caution with major deployments, say analysts.

“Most organizations are interested in testing and deployment, but they are unsure where and how to get the most return,” said Carolina Milanesi, president and principal analyst at Creative Strategies.  

Security is among the biggest concerns, said Milanesi, “and until that is figured out, it is easier for organizations to shut access down.”  

As companies start to deploy AI, IT teams face significant demands, said Josh Bersin, founder and CEO of The Josh Bersin Company. Deploying genAI tools puts the onus on IT staff to ensure data quality and security standards are in place, as well as “getting up to speed on the European AI Act, implementing governance, and helping to standardize on vendors and tools, if possible,” he said. 

With all this groundwork required, it’s likely to take a year or more for businesses to develop a comprehensive strategy around genAI, said Bersin.

Does GenAI generate business value?

Another sticking point is determining value and ensuring a return on investment when investing in AI.

AI takes many forms, but genAI is the focus of most newer AI initiatives within organizations, according to a recent Gartner survey. The most common way employees interact with the technology is when it is embedded into existing productivity and line-of-business apps (34% of respondents), such as Microsoft’s 365 Copilot, Adobe Firefly, and many others. 

Other ways to interact with genAI, include prompt engineering (25%), training bespoke genAI models (21%), or using standalone generative AI tools, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini (19%).

These genAI features don’t come cheap. In most cases, digital work app vendors charge an additional fee for generative AI features within their paid products. This can be as much as an extra $30 per user each month for Microsoft and Google’s business-focused AI assistants, while those with a more limited focus can charge less, such as Slack AI, which costs a not-insignificant additional $10 per user each month. 

Alongside the challenges in measuring the impact of genAI, spending significant sums in training up employees can also be seen as a risk. 

Demonstrating the value of AI projects is cited as the biggest obstacle to AI adoption, according to the Gartner survey. “As organizations scale AI, they need to consider the total cost of ownership of their projects, as well as the wide spectrum of benefits beyond productivity improvement,” Leinar Ramos, senior director analyst at Gartner, said in a statement.

Microsoft’s survey paints a similar picture. The majority of leaders (59%) are unsure of their organization’s ability to quantify any productivity gains from employee use of AI.

“Cost is really where organizations are getting stuck,” Milanesi said, with companies unsure of what returns they can expect when deploying generative AI. 

Bersin said many organizations have seen productivity improvements in early trials of genAI tools, but a shift to broader, company-wide deployments requires greater consideration of the value it can deliver. “When it comes to massive purchases across the enterprise, I am sure there will be lots of discussions about ROI, because these tools are expensive,” he said.

In its report, Microsoft cited a six-month, randomized control trial of 60 Copilot customers involving 3,000 workers. Results included an 11% reduction in emails read and 4% less time interacting with them, as well as a 10% increase in the number of documents edited in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The impact on the number of meetings was less clear; some companies saw an increase, others, a drop. 

There’s a tendency to focus on time saved when assessing genAI tools, said Milanesi, but that might not be the best approach. The real value is in improved quality of work and increased worker satisfaction, she said.This drives “better engagement at work and, in turn, better work,” she said.

Where a tool boosts employee engagement, cost becomes less of a consideration. “Think about the cost of a worker quitting, or someone staying in the job and not being engaged,” she said.

It might be that some AI tools are better suited to certain job roles than others. “The question for any leader is to identify what level of AI is right for the talent. Like for PCs, not everybody needs the top of the line,” said Milanesi. 

Artificial Intelligence, Generative AI, IT Skills, IT Strategy, Microsoft