Aggregator

Smoking rates in Essex have fallen to the lowest on record

A multi-agency federal investigation uncovered malicious North Korean cyber activity called 'TraderTraitor.'

Should generative AI be used for videogame development? Brandon Stirrup, a strategy manager at Xbox, claims Xbox is already using AI, reports Engadget. And he also says that those who say they aren't are merely "pretending." Stirrup deactivated his social media account shortly after (though his posts have been archived elsewhere), igniting conversations about what role generative AI actually has or should have in game development. In some ways, it would be unsurprising to learn that Xbox is using AI to the extent that Stirrup implies. Xbox recently announced the formation of Xbox Labs at least in part as a response to a rising trend of AI-coded game ports; the announcement heavily implied that the new team would use AI as well but didn't say it outright. Xbox owner Microsoft is also a major player in AI development... Developers including Capcom, Square Enix, Sega, Nexon and Activision have all either used AI in their games or pledged to do so. Fortnite developer Epic Games has been particularly up-front about its AI use, and CEO Tim Sweeney has aggressively promoted it on social media... On the other hand, there are large pockets of the game industry vocally opposed to generative AI. Notably, these tend to be smaller, independent studios without shareholders to impress by touting the cost-savings of AI. These studios include Tunic publisher Finji, Stardew Valley developer ConcernedApe and Clickolding developer Strange Scaffold, among many more. Due to the sheer number and variety of game studios, it's impossible to say just how much of the industry actually uses AI at this point, but claims that "everyone" is using it are clearly false. There's a similar divide among players about whether generative AI should be embraced or avoided at all costs. While some simply accept AI as part of games going forward, others have pledged to avoid games that use the technology outright due to its environmental costs, labor issues or pure aesthetic preference. That's led to the popularity of tools like a browser extension that makes Steam's AI disclosures more visible and grassroots efforts by developers to implement labels certifying their games as AI-free... Many players and developers alike justify the use of AI in generating code, even if they're opposed to it in other areas. "Gaming is the only industry slow-walking the transition," Xbox's Stirrup allegedly said, "because users have negative sentiment. Everyone else accepts reality." "Gaming is the only industry pretending to not use AI."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nobody could blame Romesh Ranganathan and Sebastian 'Bash' Croft for wanting to have a celebratory dinner following their triumph.

The Home Office has told Polish-born Pauline Al Said, 36 - who has been given a suspended jail term - that she will be kicked out of the country if she fails to launch an appeal by next month.

The charity, Choose Love, will receive half of actor Croft's £83,000 prize, despite claiming on its website that Palestinians 'are still experiencing a genocide'

Tory MP Ms Ghani won plaudits for 'witty' quips about rowdy MPs during Chancellor John Healey's speech.

They are said to have a standing invitation to spend their family holidays at a spectacular seaside palace belonging to Jordan's King Abdullah II.

As the largest supplier of milk to UK supermarkets, multi-billion-pound dairy conglomerate Arla Foods is keen to maintain its reputation for 'holistic' farming that puts animal welfare first.

It's the last Halloween that will land on a Saturday for over a decade and Brits have come out in their droves to party late into the night.

Among my friends, doomscrolling through anxiety porn seems to have taken over from property porn as a popular armchair activity.

'What is it?' That was the first question 35-year-old Milly asked when I told her she had Graves' disease.

Heaps Morris, a group from Bristol, said they had received an 'overwhelming' number of comments from 'male Morris dancers that have made us outright uncomfortable.'

The Chancellor has mounted another raid on our savings in a move that will punish prudent households

While big hitters like John Lewis, Waitrose, and M&S have yet to debut their signature tearjerkers, the race to deliver this year's most heartwarming Christmas advert is already well underway.

It was was a photograph, taken against the romantic backdrop of the 18th-century Sicilian mansion Villa Valguarnera this summer, that reignited an urgent conversation at Amazon HQ.

Both the Vice President and President Donald Trump were celebrating the holiday, thought Trump, in a Mar-a-Lago ceremony, admitted he'd dressed as himself.

"We've now replenished 90% of the stolen assets, and we're committed to covering the remaining 10%," Binance co-CEO Richard Teng posted on X, adding that "Our users will not bear the financial impact of this incident." "Binance said it was able to replace the funds taken in the record hack by using company money to buy new tokens," reports NBC News: The remaining 10% consists of tokens that are less liquid, meaning they may take longer to buy, it said in a statement posted on X... Binance said it has set aside around $6.34 billion of company funds internally to cover the losses. The money spent re-buying tokens came from using part of its $1 billion Secure Asset Fund for Users, a bitcoin reserve it holds to protect customers in the event of security breaches, as well as some of its Futures Insurance Fund, and the company's own corporate treasury, it said on X. NBC News reports that the FBI blames the breach on a North Korea-sponsored group known as TraderTraitor: Members of [TraderTraitor] were observed by law enforcement converting stolen assets into the cryptocurrency ethereum, the FBI said in a statement, adding that it expects "further laundering" of the assets through the use of related technology... After the hack, the exchange stopped allowing customers to withdraw their funds, but it said Saturday it was still on track to reopen withdrawals Sunday. CNBC reports: The world's largest crypto exchange initially said the hack may involve "a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop, which allowed an attacker to gain access to a service container and submit unauthorized withdrawal transactions." However, Co-CEO Richard Teng later said the attack involved a more complex process rather than the misuse of a single engineer's permissions. The New York Times describes what happened when Binance first spotted "a multibillion-dollar deluge of digital coins" pouring out of its accounts: As the news spread, Binance's top executives put together an informal war room on Wea, the company's internal messaging system, with about 100 participants, including specialized cryptocurrency tracers and security personnel. They eventually transitioned to a mass conference call, with 100 boxes on the screen, where employees took turns muting and then unmuting, communicating in a mixture of English and Chinese. Among them was He Yi, Binance's co-chief executive, who is seven months pregnant, and worked through the night from her base in Abu Dhabi, taking a call at 3 a.m. local time.... Much of the drama played out in public. Almost all crypto transactions are recorded on the blockchain, a ledger of money movements that anyone can look up. That meant crypto analysts could see funds leaving Binance in real time... North Koreans have targeted crypto companies for years, using the proceeds of those thefts to fund its nuclear program, according to Western officials. The hackers have developed increasingly complex strategies to steal crypto and launder the proceeds, a painstaking endeavor that can take months to complete. In a blog post on Friday, Chainalysis said the attackers had deployed "laundering patterns we have not seen before," conducting thousands of transactions over a short period, probably with the help of automation. At the same time, Binance's colleagues in the industry mobilized to intercept some of the laundered crypto. Certain digital coin issuers can freeze funds, allowing them to halt a money-laundering operation in its tracks. Soon after the hack, Tether and Circle, two major issuers, announced that they had frozen stashes of their own coins that the hackers had seized from Binance, a combined total of more than $2 billion in crypto. Binance is now working to gain access to those funds, the company said. But $2.4 billion in crypto is already "beyond any issuer's reach," according to [blockchain intelligence firmm] TRM. The article also includes President Trump's reaction when asked Friday about the breach. "I've always felt it was a little bit dangerous. But they say they have it pretty much under control. We'll see."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jack Martin-Harley, 33, used his privileged access at £37,000-a-year d'Overbroeck's in Oxford to help himself to pupils' cash, jewellery and electronic goods in a four-month spree.

The Mail on Sunday can reveal that the woman is thought to have joined the paedophile financier and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor at the Royal Family's Scottish retreat more than once.