Most readers come away from George Orwell's classic dystopian novel 1984 with the same singular desire: to inhabit the world of the book by playing a late '90s first-person puzzle-adventure PC game that includes a "zero-g training sphere" for some reason. In 1998, publisher MediaX set out to satisfy that widespread literary desire with Big Brother, an officially licensed "sequel" game set in the 1984 universe.β
After appearing as a demo at E3 1998 and receiving somescatteredpress coverage, the Big Brother project fell apart before the game could see a full release. Now, though, you can experience a small taste of this ill-fated literary sequel thanks to a newly unearthed demo that was recovered and posted to the Internet Archive over the weekend.
Amazon has formed a new group within AWS dedicated to creating AI agents, systems that help people automate parts of their lives, Reuters reported on Tuesday. In an email to staff seen by Reuters, AWS CEO Matt Garman said agentic AI has the potential to be βthe next multi-billion business for AWS.β A longtime AWS [β¦]
X is bringing more attention to Communities, a feature that allows X users to connect and engage in discussions around a given topic, similar to how itβs done on Reddit. Today, tabs to access popular Communities are pinned to the top of the appβs homepage alongside your For You feed and other Lists. Now, youβll [β¦]
One of Africaβs most active investors, known for early bets on unicorns like Flutterwave, Andela, and Wave, has secured fresh capital to invest in startups across the continent. This comes as funding deals and volumes in Africa saw only a slight dip last year, according to a report by VC firm Partech. LoftyInc Capital, which [β¦]
A 200-year-old global investment company based in Edinburgh, Scotland came to the realization after four years that vowels aren't so bad, as Abrdn has once again rebranded as aberdeen. The company was founded in 1825 and became Standard Life Aberdeen in 2017, following a merger between two asset managers, according to the BBC, noting that...
YouTube is warning creators about a new phishing scam that attempts to lure victims using an AI-generated video of its CEO Neal Mohan. The fake video has been shared privately with users and claims YouTube is making changes to its monetization policy in an attempt to steal their credentials, according to an announcement on Tuesday.
βYouTube and its employees will never attempt to contact you or share information through a private video,β YouTube says. βIf a video is shared privately with you claiming to be from YouTube, the video is a phishing scam.β
In recent weeks, there have been reportsfloating around Reddit about scams similar to the one described by YouTube. One user said they received an email saying an account called βNotification for YouTube Creatorsβ shared a private video with them and instructed them to download a malicious file. Another noted they received a private video from βChannel for Creators,β which asked them to agree to a new monetization policy on a fake DocuSign site. In both of these cases, the email came from [email protected].
βMany phishers actively target Creators by trying to find ways to impersonate YouTube by exploiting in-platform features to link to malicious content,β YouTube adds. This kind of scam isnβt completely new, as one Reddit user spotted a deepfake video of Mohan going around in 2023. If you receive one of these fake videos, you can report it on YouTubeβs website.
The crypto market never closes, so it was fitting President Donald Trump made the announcement on a Sunday: he was going to reward the billionaires who funded his presidential run.
Γ’ΒΒA U.S. Crypto Reserve will elevate this critical industry after years of corrupt attacks by the Biden Administration,Γ’ΒΒ Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social, a social media website that he owns. His brilliant son Eric made a post suggesting that his fatherΓ’ΒΒs announcement qualified as market manipulation. Fantastic.
I know IΓ’ΒΒve been saying this a lot lately, but this is so stupid
Trump promised his crypto constituency a Γ’ΒΒstrategic national bitcoin stockpileΓ’ΒΒ on the campaign trail. The new post expands the plan to include Ethereum, Solana, RippleΓ’ΒΒs XRP, and Cardano. I am using Γ’ΒΒplanΓ’ΒΒ loosely. I donΓ’ΒΒt know whoΓ’ΒΒs going to buy and hold the tokens, or even if tokens need to be bought at all, or what kind of wallet will be used, or any of the rest of it. In a sane system, weΓ’ΒΒd have an inkling of these things, but this is Donald Trump.
Look, I know IΓ’ΒΒve been saying this a lot lately, but this is so stupid. The US dollar is a source of American soft power and a tool for setting fis …
Three critical vulnerabilities in multiple virtual-machine products from VMware can give hackers unusually broad access to some of the most sensitive environments inside multiple customersβ networks, the company and outside researchers warned Tuesday.
The class of attack made possible by exploiting the vulnerabilities is known under several names, including hyperjacking, hypervisor attack, or virtual machine escape. Virtual machines often run inside hosting environments to prevent one customer from being able to access or control the resources of other customers. By breaking out of one customerβs isolated VM environment, a threat actor could take control of the hypervisor that apportions each VM. From there, the attacker could access the VMs of multiple customers, who often use these carefully controlled environments to host their internal networks.
All bets off
βIf you can escape to the hypervisor you can access every system,β security researcher Kevin Beaumont said on Mastodon. βIf you can escape to the hypervisor, all bets are off as a boundary is broken.β He added: βWith this vuln youβd be able to use it to traverse VMware managed hosting providers, private clouds orgs have built on prem etc.β
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has dropped its lawsuit over peer-to-peer payment system Zelle, the latest in a series of dismissals from this department under President Donald Trump's administration. The agency had only just announced the suit β filed against Zelle's operating entity Early Warning Services and partner banks JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo β in December. According to the initial action, the CFPB said that customers of the three banks had lost more than $870 million during the seven years Zelle has been active.
The CFPB made several moves to increase oversight on the financial products offered by tech companies under its previous director, Rohit Chopra. However, the agency is now overseen by Acting Director Russell Vought, who ordered the CFPB to cease all "supervision and examination activity" last month. While employees of the bureau have sued to try to keep the CFPB alive, there have been conflicting messages from government leadership about the agency's status.
Since taking office, Trump and ally Elon Musk have taken sweeping actions to control and close federal government departments. Agencies that have historically regulated Musk's business activities have been among those with reduced powers, as have federal operations for cybersecurity, digital services and personnel management.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/cfpb-drops-zelle-lawsuit-in-latest-reversal-under-trump-administration-204639032.html?src=rss
FILE PHOTO: A special police member monitors a protest, while inside the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) building, the day after members of Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) moved into the CFPB, in Washington, U.S. February 8, 2025. REUTERS/Nathan Howard/File Photo
There's little that Internet denizens love more than a snazzy personality testβcat videos, maybe, or perpetual outrage. One trend that has gained popularity over the last several years is personality quizzes based on so-called ambiguous imagesβin which one sees either a young girl or an old man, for instance, or a skull or a little girl. It's possible to perceive both images by shifting one's perspective, but it's the image one sees first that is said to indicate specific personality traits. According to one such quiz, seeing the young girl first means you are optimistic and a bit impulsive, while seeing the old man first would mean one is honest, faithful, and goal-oriented.
But is there any actual science to back up the current fad? There is not, according to a paper published in the journal PeerJ, whose authors declare these kinds of personality quizzes to be a new kind of psychological myth. That said, they did find a couple of intriguing, statistically significant correlations they believe warrant further research.
In 1892, a German humor magazine published the earliest known version of the "rabbit-duck illusion," in which one can see either a rabbit or a duck, depending on one's perspectiveβi.e., multistable perception. There have been many more such images produced since then, all of which create ambiguity by exploiting certain peculiarities of the human visual system, such as playing with illusory contours and how we perceive edges.
βWeβre a long way from pants,β Andy Dunn, founder of online fashion retailer Bonobos, told TechCrunch. Now, the former CEO is taking on a completely different challenge: He wants to help people make friends. Dunnβs newest venture, Pie, is a social app focused on bringing people together in real life. With an $11.5 million Series [β¦]
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