Russian nation-state hackers have followed an unusual path to gather intel in the country’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine—appropriating the infrastructure of fellow threat actors and using it to infect electronic devices its adversary’s military personnel are using on the front line. On at least two occasions this year, the Russian hacking group tracked under names including Turla, Waterbug, Snake, and Venomous Bear has used servers and malware used by separate…

The macOS 15.2 update that was released earlier today came with a handful of new features, plus something unexpected: an apparently accidental reference to the upcoming M4 MacBook Airs. MacRumors reports that the “Mac16,12” and “Mac16,13” model identifiers reference 13- and 15-inch models of the M4 Air and that both are coming in 2025. That a MacBook Air refresh is planned for next year isn’t much of a surprise at…

Advertising has become a focal point of TV software. We’re seeing companies that sell TV sets be increasingly interested in leveraging TV operating systems (OSes) for ads and tracking. This has led to bold new strategies, like an adtech firm launching a TV OS and ads on TV screensavers. With new short films set to debut on its free streaming service tomorrow, TV-maker TCL is positing a new approach to…

On Wednesday, Google unveiled Gemini 2.0, the next generation of its AI-model family, starting with an experimental release called Gemini 2.0 Flash. The model family can generate text, images, and speech while processing multiple types of input including text, images, audio, and video. It’s similar to multimodal AI models like GPT-4o, which powers OpenAI’s ChatGPT. “Gemini 2.0 Flash builds on the success of 1.5 Flash, our most popular model yet…

Startup Embodied is closing down, and its product, an $800 robot for kids ages 5 to 10, will soon be bricked. Embodied blamed its closure on a failed “critical funding round.” On its website, it explained: We had secured a lead investor who was prepared to close the round. However, at the last minute, they withdrew, leaving us with no viable options to continue operations. Despite our best efforts to…

Since the dawn of the generative AI era a few years ago, the march of technology—toward what tech companies hope will replace human intellectual labor—has continuously sparked angst about the future role humans will play in the job market. Will we all be replaced by machines? A Y-Combinator-backed company called Artisan, which sells customer service and sales workflow software, recently launched a provocative billboard campaign in San Francisco playing on…

One of the oldest maxims in hacking is that once an attacker has physical access to a device, it’s game over for its security. The basis is sound. It doesn’t matter how locked down a phone, computer, or other machine is; if someone intent on hacking it gains the ability to physically manipulate it, the chances of success are all but guaranteed. In the age of cloud computing, this widely…

There’s something liberating about traveling without your computer. Your load is lighter, your battery needs are fewer, and you don’t have to risk damaging or losing one of your most important and expensive devices. Besides, most of us are already carrying around a pretty powerful and conveniently compact computer 24/7: our smartphones. My problem, though, is that I prefer doing most things on a laptop rather than on a phone….

On Monday, Reddit announced it would test an AI-powered search feature called “Reddit Answers” that uses an AI model to create summaries from existing Reddit posts to respond to user questions, reports Reuters. The feature generates responses by searching through Reddit’s vast collection of community discussions and comments. When users ask questions, Reddit Answers provides summaries of relevant conversations and includes links to related communities and posts. The move potentially…

On Monday, OpenAI released Sora Turbo, a new version of its text-to-video generation model, making it available to ChatGPT Plus and Pro subscribers through a dedicated website. The model generates videos up to 20 seconds long at resolutions reaching 1080 p from a text or image prompt. Open AI announced that Sora would be available today for ChatGPT Plus and Pro subscribers in the US and many parts of the…