Author: Vidya Saras

Echoes of McCarthyism Ring in Charges of Israeli 'Entanglement'

When investors poured $6.6 billion into OpenAI last week, they seemed largely unbothered by the latest drama, which recently saw the company’s chief technology officer, Mira Murati, along with chief research officer Bob McCrew and Barret Zoph, a vice president of research, abruptly quit.And yet those three departures were just the latest in an ongoing exodus of key technical talent. Over the past few years, OpenAI has lost several researchers who played crucial roles in developing the algorithms, techniques, and infrastructure that helped make it the world leader in AI as well as a household name. Several other ex-OpenAI employees…

Dense geometry prediction in computer vision involves estimating properties like depth and surface normals for each pixel in an image. Accurate geometry prediction is critical for applications such as robotics, autonomous driving, and augmented reality, but current methods often require extensive training on labeled datasets and struggle to generalize across diverse tasks. Existing methods for dense geometry prediction typically rely on supervised learning approaches that use convolutional neural networks (CNNs) or transformer architectures. These methods require large amounts of labeled data and often fail to perform well in zero-shot scenarios, where models are expected to generalize to new tasks without…

India’s hill state of Uttarakhand’s entire IT infrastructure came to a standstill on Friday after malware was detected on systems at the State Data Center. The shutdown impacted several critical services, including government websites, the Chief Minister’s helpline, and land registration services. Officials, suspecting a cyberattack, launched an investigation into the breach, while IT Secretary Nitesh Jha ordered the shutdown of all services to mitigate potential damage. Key systems, such as the State Wide Area Network (SWAN) and Secure Internet Service, went offline, affecting day-to-day operations across the state. “During routine scanning on Gandhi Jayanti [October 2], malware was discovered…

Netflix Warning: this article contains spoilers for “The Platform 2” Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia’s “The Platform 2” debuted on Netflix on Friday, October 4, and it was a slight improvement over the original. Frustratingly, “The Platform 2” didn’t do much to expand on the mythology of the original film, or extend outside the same prison where the first “Platform” takes place, merely telling a very similar story in a slightly more dynamic way. To reiterate the premise: “The Platform 2” takes place in a futuristic, tower-like prison with one cell occupying each floor. There…

The UK risks losing its leadership position in artificial intelligence (AI) without a clear national strategy for data centres, a key player in the sector has warned. Data centres, essential for powering cloud computing and AI applications, have become central to the digital economy. However, without a cohesive plan, the UK could fall behind in the global AI race, according to industry experts. The UK is currently Europe’s largest data hub, with more than 500 data centres, the majority concentrated in the South East. These facilities are critical to everything from personal device browsing to AI learning, providing the power,…

This is a really easy slow-cooker salsa chicken recipe that makes a versatile meal. It tastes very similar to the chicken used in Mexican restaurants in their chicken taco salads. My kids eat it plain, but I like it on a large salad with avocado and sour cream! Crock pot salsa chicken has the flavors of a fajita and tastes great in salads, quesadillas, or on top of burrito bowls. This easy recipe is naturally gluten-free and makes for a simple weeknight dinner. We’ll often eat it for a quick lunch too. This recipe freezes and reheats extremely well for…

Space archaeology needs to mix new and old missions to protect ancient sites, scientists urged at a recent NASA conference.Take the example of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California. The facility is best known for helping to chart unknown worlds, leading the missions of rovers on Mars and sailing the Voyager spacecraft by all the major outer planets. “But we also look at the Earth, because the Earth is a planet, too,” said Ronald Blom, retired principal scientist of JPL, at the NASA and Archaeology From Space symposium on Sept. 18, to which Space.com received an exclusive invite.Studying…

Ball adds that the speed at which brands wanted to act, without a real plan or understanding of the space, created issues for its longevity: “There was definitely a lot of, ‘We need to do this because everyone’s doing it,’ and ‘We need to do this because shareholders expect us to be doing it.’ There were many that overestimated the relevance of their brand in these 3D spaces.”A Pivot to AINow, many of the chief metaverse officers, who had been so quickly installed, scrambled to reinvent themselves—or otherwise found themselves out of a job entirely. Coca-Cola’s Pratik Thakar swiftly pivoted…

Photo by Michael Steele/Getty Images. Liverpool have multiple players who are facing uncertain futures.Mo Salah, Trent Alexander-Arnold and captain Virgil Van Dijk are all out of contract at the end of the season.Although the trio remain heavily linked with summer exits, including Alexander-Arnold to Real Madrid to replace the recently injured Dani Carvajal, Liverpool are believed to want to extend all three’s stays at Anfield.Van Dijk, for example, is rumoured to have told close friends that he is hopeful ‘positive talks’ will take place soon, keeping him at the club beyond next summer.Liverpool open Ibrahima Konate contract talksHowever, while the…