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According to cybersecurity researchers at Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG), government-backed hackers from Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, as well as various unattributed groups and cyber-criminal gangs, are using various themes related to the war in Ukraine to lure people into becoming victims of cyberattacks. In just the last two weeks alone, Google has seen several hacking groups looking to take advantage of the war to fulfil their malicious aims, whether that’s stealing information, stealing money, or something else....

To help with this, Google announced it has trained its systems to detect when a topic is rapidly evolving and a range of sources are yet to weigh in. Google Search will now display a notice indicating that it may be best to check back later when more information from a wider range of sources might be available. “Accessing timely, relevant and reliable information is increasingly important in our current environment,” Google wrote in a blog announcing the new feature....

The general availability release includes a new TPU embedding API, which Google Cloud claims can accelerate large-scale, ML-based ranking and recommendation workloads Google Cloud said embedding acceleration with Cloud TPU can help businesses lower cost associated with ranking and recommendation use-cases which commonly rely on deeply neural network-based algorithms that can be costly to run. “They tend to use large amounts of data and can be difficult and expensive to train and deploy with traditional ML infrastructure,” Google Cloud said in a blog post....

Over the past year, a series of external events – like the Covid-19 pandemic, climate-related disasters and the blockage in the Suez Canal – have underscored the vulnerability of global supply chains. As companies race to improve their resiliency, Google is pitching better supply chain visibility. The Supply Chain Twin should help companies bring together data from a variety of sources, including enterprise business systems like ERPs, supplier and partner systems, and public sources such as weather data....

Kicked off in August, the experiment randomly assigned users to test whether it could help users spot phishing sites. “Delete simplified domain experiment,” Google engineer Emily Stark wrote in a Chromium commit. “This experiment didn’t move relevant security metrics, so we’re not going to launch it. :(” Starting with Chrome 90, if a user did not specify the protocol to be used when accessing a site, Chrome would try first using HTTPS, before falling back to HTTP....

“We’re investing in helping developers solve problems that don’t always necessarily differentiate their products, like building backend infrastructure and scaling it, things like security, or having to integrate with third-party APIs,” Firebase Product Lead Francis Ma said to ZDNet. That way, he said, developers can stay focused on what they “need to do to keep pace with consumer expectations and to reach users where they are.” The updates, announced at the Google I/O conference on Wednesday, largely focus on making Firebase work better with some of Google’s most popular developer products, as well as with a broader open ecosystem of tools....

According to 9to5Google, a new job listing for a senior engineering manager posted by the tech company hints at Google’s renewed focus on tablets. The listing points to growing out the “Android Tablet App Experience.” “We believe that the future of computing is shifting towards more powerful and capable tablets,” Google’s job listing reads. “We are working to deliver the next chapter of computing and input by launching seamless support across our platforms and hero experiences that unlock new and better ways of being productive and creative....

Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said in an email to staff that, while over the past two years the company had seen periods of dramatic growth, “To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today.” “This will mean saying goodbye to some incredibly talented people we worked hard to hire and have loved working with. I’m deeply sorry for that....

These plasma-confining devices, called tokamaks, are formed using a series of high-power magnetic coils to create a vessel in which plasma is controlled at temperatures as hot as the sun’s core. Correctly confined plasma can allow nuclear fusion to occur between hydrogen atoms and is being studied as a sustainable method of generating electricity. Researchers from DeepMind and EPFL’s Swiss Plasma Center (SPC) detail in a new paper in Nature how they helped create a set of DeepMind AI algorithms capable of controlling the shape of plasma inside the vessel....

Internal documents seen by CNBC indicate Google is urgently working on an answer to Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s ChatGPT. In Depth: These experts are racing to protect AI from hackers. Time is running out The Google chatbot “Apprentice Bard” offers similar prompt and response functionality to ChatGPT, but would one-up the OpenAI chatbot by offering responses about recent events. OpenAI acknowledges that ChatGPT “has limited knowledge of world and events after 2021” because of its training data and the fact that it is not connected to the internet....

According to research by cybersecurity company Cymulate, 39% of companies were hit by cybercrime over the past 12 months – and of those, two-thirds were hit more than once. Of those hit more than once, one in 10 fell victim to further cyberattacks 10 or more times. “It wasn’t one and done – in fact, if you were hit, you had much more chance of being hit a second time or multiple times,” Dave Klein, director of cyber evangelism at Cymulate told ZDNet....

Little wonder, then, that criminals are turning to cheap GPS jamming devices to ransack the cargo on roads and at sea, a problem that’s getting worse but may be ameliorated with a new generation of safety technology designed to overcome threats from jamming. In case you aren’t a master criminal or a secret agent, here’s some background. The core problem for any system using GPS is that the signals are extremely weak, an inevitable byproduct of the vast distances those signals need to travel....

These initiatives would aim to lower the barriers of entry, including reducing the total cost of ownership, the partners said in a joint statement Tuesday. The alliance would include Hyundai’s affiliate Kia. Citing a 2020 survey of its drivers, Grab said costs, lack of charging locations, and long wait times to charge vehicles were top concerns that pulled drivers back from adopting electric vehicles. It added that its partnership with Hyundai would aim to address some of these issues through pilots of new service offerings, such as leasing electric vehicles on a car-as-a-service model and electric vehicle financing....

LifeLong Medical Care, a California health center, is sending letters to about 115 000 people about a ransomware attack that took place on November 24, 2020. The letter does not say which ransomware group was involved but said Netgain, a third-party vendor that provides services to LifeLong Medical Care, “discovered anomalous network activity” and only determined it was a ransomware attack by February 25, 2021. It took until August 9, 2021, for Netgain and LifeLong Medical Care to complete their investigation, and the companies eventually found that full names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, patient cardholder numbers, treatment and diagnosis information were “accessed and/or acquired” during the attacks....

Armis and Censuswide spoke with 400 IT professionals working in healthcare organizations across the US as well as 2,030 general respondents, finding that nearly 60% of IT respondents had dealt with a ransomware incident at their organization over the last year. According to Armis, there are about 430 million connected medical devices already in deployment worldwide, leaving many hospitals vulnerable to a variety of cybersecurity flaws in pneumatic tubes, technologies used in HVAC systems, B....

“With our stockpile, it’s not getting any younger,” Jim Lujan, the HPC platforms program director at Los Alamos National Lab (LANL), tells ZDNET. As the warheads get older, he says, the LANL has the responsibility of assessing how the aging process may impact their safety or performance. Of course, you can’t exactly test nuclear warheads – at least, not under the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1996. To fulfill its mission, the Los Alamos lab uses modeling and 3D simulations....

A few weeks ago, the company reached out and asked if I wanted to evaluate one of its many models. Since I ride an e-bike as part of my daily commute, I decided to test out the Heybike Cityrun in orange. It comes in orange, green, and black colors with a current price of $1,299. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the Heybike Cityrun, so I was pleasantly surprised to discover it is optimized for the commuter with a few safety and convenience features, including the outstanding high-quality front and rear lights, turn signal indicators in the rear light, leather handlebar grips, water bottle cup holder, and very comfortable swept-back-style handlebars....

Here is the executive summary of the 2021 Connected Student Report: Here is a deeper look into each of the key takeaways from the 2021 Connected Student Report: Supporting student and staff wellbeing is critical 34% of students said they need more help managing their course load.76% of staff said maintaining their work/life balance is a top challenge.40% of students said their institution can best support their wellbeing by offering more flexible learning options....

The IDMS was established to prevent the use of false and stolen identities, provide law enforcement with tools to help identify persons of interest, and enable other government agencies to deliver services. This was established after the political heads of Australia’s states and territories unanimously agreed to it in 2017. It comprises three components, with one being the documentation verification service (DVS), a national online service used to check in real time whether a particular evidence-of-identity document that has been presented is authentic, accurate, and up to date....

There are limitations and we are very early in understanding the effects of generative AI on businesses. The information produced can be wrong, full of biases and unethical, potentially exposing reputational and legal risks associated with the content. The source of initial data, the training models, and ethical and humane use of software development guidelines and governing principles can help mitigate risks associated with use of generative AI. Also: ChatGPT maker OpenAI has a free tool that can spot AI-written text Research from CBInsights shows that 2022 was a record year for investment in generative AI startups, with equity funding topping $2....