About: blatcho

Sure, anyone can use OpenAI’s chatbot. But with smart engineering, you can get way more interesting results.

Wall Street Journal: Experts say some US suppliers plan to sidestep export controls by selling tech to the unlisted subsidiaries of Inspur and other Chinese firms on the Entity List  —  Suppliers can sell to unlisted subsidiaries of companies on Commerce Department list, officials say

Chloe Xiang / VICE: A look at the community of users who “jailbreak” GPT models to generate unfiltered content and see themselves as fighting back against OpenAI’s closed policies  —  “The problem is when GPT-X is released and we are unable to discern its values since they are being decided behind the closed doors of […]

Joe Brock / Reuters: Sources: concerned about Chinese spying, the US helped SubCom win its $600M bid for an Asia-Europe subsea cable project through incentives and investor pressure  —  Subsea cables, which carry the world’s data, are now central to the U.S.-China tech war.  Washington, fearful of Beijing’s spies …

High in the treetops of a Chinese rainforest, Ming Guo began to explore the influence of a single cell. A student in China’s Tsinghua University, Guo was studying the mechanical properties of plant cells. As part of his master’s thesis he took on an intriguing question: Does a cell’s physical integrity — its size, shape, […]

New tools like Adventure Game Studio are responsible for a thriving indie scene for the genre.

From charging adapters to external monitors, we’ve gathered the essential peripherals for your Apple laptop.

Plus new Framework laptops, and Europe drafts a law that would force companies to repair their products for up to 10 years.

Lawrence Abrams / BleepingComputer: Microsoft releases Windows 10 Snip & Sketch and Windows 11 Snipping Tool updates to fix the “Acropalypse” bug that could expose info edited out in some images  —  Microsoft released an emergency security update for the Windows 10 and Windows 11 Snipping tool to fix the Acropalypse privacy vulnerability.

Anna Tong / Reuters: Replika restores erotic roleplay for users who signed up before February 1, after complaints from some who considered themselves “married” to chatbot companions  —  AI chatbot company Replika is restoring erotic roleplay for some users, Replika CEO Eugenia Kuyda said late on Friday.

Stratechery: Q&A with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on AI’s iPhone moment, the DGX Cloud service, the US’ export controls, Nvidia’s position in the stack in an LLM world, and more  —  I first spoke with Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang after last March’s GTC conference, and again after last fall’s GTC …

As climate change makes storms warmer and wetter, the state’s flood control system is struggling to keep up.

Social media is full of bad takes and unsolicited advice. Silence it all on Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, and WhatsApp.

The game’s new mysteries, powers, and stories are exciting and challenging, even if there is some awkward pacing.

Irregular Ideas: LLMs will demolish barriers for software creation and unleash the next great technology cycle, marking a kind of Gutenberg moment for the software industry  —  There is immense hyperbole about recent developments in artificial intelligence, especially Large Language Models like ChatGPT.

Lisa Baertlein / Reuters: A look at Amazon’s efforts to offset its shipping costs by raising Prime subscription prices, increasing the minimum purchase free shipping threshold, and more  —  There is no such thing as free shipping.  —  Even so, Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) and other online retailers who use so-called free delivery …

The Verge: AI chatbots comparison test: ChatGPT is the most verbally dextrous, Bing is best for getting information from the web, and Bard is surprisingly limited  —  The web is full of chattering bots, but which is the most useful and for what?  We compare Bard, Bing, and ChatGPT.

Researchers created a plant-based robotic arm by connecting a Venus flytrap equipped with soft electrodes to a metallic structure and wirelessly commanding it to grab things

From Cargo to Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, here are our picks for the best streaming titles to feast your eyes on.

From The Legend of Korra to Wednesday, these are our picks for the best streaming titles to binge this week.

Save on Google Pixel and Samsung smartphones or camera bags and video games.

Gary Price / LJ Infodocket: A federal judge decides in favor of four publishers in their copyright infringement case against the Internet Archive and its Controlled Digital Lending program  —  This coverage is free for all visitors.  Your support makes this possible.  —  This coverage is free for all visitors.

TechCrunch: Sources: Fortra told GoAnywhere customers that their data was safe after a ransomware attack by the Clop gang, but two said they later received ransom demands  —  Software maker Fortra told its corporate customers that their data was safe — even when it wasn’t — following a ransomware attack on its systems, TechCrunch has […]

Drew Harwell / Washington Post: TikTok says Enes Freedom, a former NBA player critical of China, was banned for 12 days due to an error by US moderators before being reinstated on March 23  —  Enes Kanter Freedom, a popular figure on the right, had his account restored on the same day TikTok’s chief was […]

A stretchable sticking plaster detects whether an injury is healing well and uses stimulating electrodes and microinjections of drugs to speed up the process

A device that is worn around the forearm reduces anxiety during stressful tasks by gently dragging a small patch of fake fur across a person’s skin

Microsoft has created a series of tests for OpenAI’s GPT-4 that it claims show the artificial intelligence model is already displaying “sparks” of general intelligence

Researchers have developed a novel combination therapy using the anticancer agent mitoxantrone (MTX), together with an antibiotic, vancomycin, for treating bacteria that are resistant to the vancomycin, which are also known as vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecalis or VRE. The therapy uniquely targets both VRE and the host, stimulating the host immune system to more effectively clear […]

MIT initiated a new event series on Wednesday intended to enhance discourse across a wide range of perspectives on campus, strengthen connections among Institute community members, and demonstrate practical ways of engaging with difficult issues. The event, titled, “Dialogues Across Difference: Building Community at MIT,” featured remarks by philosopher John Tomasi; a dialogue between Tomasi […]

It became a fixture among startups because it understood their needs better than other banks.

Sponsor content from Medidata.

Seven potential applications — from better recommendations to fraud detection.

Want to quit Twitter but still keep that clever thing you tweeted once in 2019? Here’s how to download your quips and even share them on your own website.

The new algorithm is exclusive to ChatGPT Plus, OpenAI’s subscriber-only service. We signed up and put it to the test.

Most carbon emissions caused by businesses are hidden from sight. US and California regulators are pushing to require companies fully disclose them.

Casey Hall / Reuters: Meituan reports Q4 revenue up 21.4% YoY to ~$8.67B, above ~$8.4B estimates, and a ~$157M loss; core local commerce revenue grew 17.4% YoY to ~$6.3B  —  Chinese food delivery giant Meituan (3690.HK) posted a bigger-than-expected 21.4% rise in quarterly revenue on Friday as it fended off competition …

CoinDesk: Binance suspends spot trading on its exchange due to an “issue” and says it is working “to resolve this as soon as possible”  —  Bitcoin slightly dipped as Binance spot trading was suspended.  —  Join the most important conversation in crypto and Web3 taking place in Austin, Texas, April 26-28.

Nathan Grayson / Washington Post: Current and former Twitch staff describe how the service lost its way: out-of-touch leaders, losing big creators, cost cutting, many irrelevant ads, and more  —  The platform’s recent moves have confused and upset creators, fans and staff alike  —  For Twitch, the live-streaming platform watched …

Choosing a major was a long process for Mercy Oladipo. Coming into MIT, she was interested in both computer science and medicine, but a plan for how those passions would intersect took some time to coalesce. Oladipo finally settled on a joint major in computer science and molecular biology, which allowed her to dive into […]

The embattled social media company brought out the checkbook to ensure at least 30 of its biggest assets—creators—were in DC to help fend off critics.

Autonomous machines are still too clumsy for delicate tasks. But humans can operate mechanical arms from afar, turning physical labor into remote work.

This smart scale measures your body composition and nerve and artery health, and it includes a year’s subscription to Withings Health+.

Todd Spangler / Variety: Twitter plans to wind down its legacy verified program and remove legacy verified checkmarks starting on April 1, 2023  —  The social network, which the mega-billionaire bought last year in a debt-heavy $44 billion deal, announced on Thursday that starting April 1, it will remove …

Bryan Schott / Salt Lake Tribune: Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signs two bills regulating social media apps, including requiring age verification for all users and permission from parents for minors  —  Gov. Spencer Cox, who signed the bills on Thursday, said the state is prepared for a legal fight over the tech company regulations.

Ava Benny-Morrison / Bloomberg: US prosecutors in New York charge Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon with eight counts, including securities fraud, commodities fraud, and wire fraud  —  Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon, who presided over a more than $40 billion cryptocurrency implosion last year, was charged with fraud by US prosecutors in New York.

For all their unsettling emergent abilities, chatbots are still just next-word predictors. We need to remember this and avoid seeing human attributes where they don’t exist, warns Alex Wilkins

Real estate investors are increasingly putting sustainability at the center of their decision-making processes, given the close association between climate risk and real estate assets, both of which are location-based. This growing emphasis comes at a time when the real estate industry is one of the biggest contributors to global warming; its embodied and operational […]

Commencement 2022 marked a milestone in MIT’s history, as Stacy Godfreey-Igwe ’22 became the first student to graduate in African and African diaspora studies (AADS). Godfreey-Igwe also majored in mechanical engineering and is now a fellow at the Science Technology Policy Institute in Washington. She recalls that while she did not initially intend to major […]

Artificial intelligence tools help brands know their customers. They could also help customers better understand themselves.

When it’s worth it — and when it can backfire.