Microsoft will bring select games on PC Game Pass to Nvidia’s GeForce Now in the coming months, letting subs stream games with RTX 4080 levels of performance (Tom Warren/The Verge)

Tom Warren / The Verge: Microsoft will bring select games on PC Game Pass to Nvidia’s GeForce Now in the coming months, letting subs stream games with RTX 4080 levels of performance  —  Microsoft is planning to bring PC Game Pass titles to Nvidia’s GeForce Now streaming service.  Sarah Bond, head of Xbox creator experience […]

a16z to open a crypto-focused London office and is leading a $44M investment in UK-based Gensyn, which offers a decentralized compute network for training AI (Dan Primack/Axios)

Dan Primack / Axios: a16z to open a crypto-focused London office and is leading a $44M investment in UK-based Gensyn, which offers a decentralized compute network for training AI  —  America’s largest investor in crypto startups believes that the industry’s future may be across the pond, and is opening …

Researchers of tech change and employment disagree on how many jobs AI will affect; one tricky factor is primarily tasks, not occupations, are being automated (Sarah Kessler/New York Times)

Sarah Kessler / New York Times: Researchers of tech change and employment disagree on how many jobs AI will affect; one tricky factor is primarily tasks, not occupations, are being automated  —  The tally of how many jobs will be “affected by” world-changing technology is different depending on who you ask.

A University of Vienna philosopher used ChatGPT to create a 40-minute church service, including the sermon, prayers, and music, led by four AI-generated avatars (Kirsten Grieshaber/Associated Press)

Kirsten Grieshaber / Associated Press: A University of Vienna philosopher used ChatGPT to create a 40-minute church service, including the sermon, prayers, and music, led by four AI-generated avatars  —  The artificial intelligence chatbot asked the believers in the fully packed St. Paul’s church in the Bavarian town of Fuerth to rise from the pews […]

Verizon report: median amount lost from business email compromise is $50K in recent years and median ransomware damage doubled to $26K over the last two years (Washington Post)

Washington Post: Verizon report: median amount lost from business email compromise is $50K in recent years and median ransomware damage doubled to $26K over the last two years  —  A smorgasbord of data in Verizon’s annual breach report  —  When a vulnerability in the ubiquitous open-source tool log4j …

While US schools debate what to teach students about AI’s promise and potential peril, universities, tech companies, and nonprofits offer ready-made curriculums (Natasha Singer/New York Times)

Natasha Singer / New York Times: While US schools debate what to teach students about AI’s promise and potential peril, universities, tech companies, and nonprofits offer ready-made curriculums  —  While schools debate what to teach students about powerful new A.I. tools, tech giants, universities and nonprofits are intervening with free lessons.

Embracing life’s surprises

Experiments often yield unexpected results. In research and in life, MIT Associate Professor Cem Tasan has learned to embrace that uncertainty. “Very often we start with an idea or a hypothesis, and to test that idea we design experiments, and when we run the experiments, we see something totally different,” says Tasan, the newly tenured […]

As major US banks abandon crypto companies during an expanding crackdown, a look at the emergence of smaller regional US lenders and Swiss, Asian, and UK firms (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg: As major US banks abandon crypto companies during an expanding crackdown, a look at the emergence of smaller regional US lenders and Swiss, Asian, and UK firms  —  Two months after the collapse of Silvergate Capital Corp. and Signature Bank, a new banking landscape for crypto companies …

In a test, researchers find that 90%+ of 1,008 jokes generated by GPT-3.5 were not new but rather the same 25 jokes likely learned during the model’s training (Benj Edwards/Ars Technica)

Benj Edwards / Ars Technica: In a test, researchers find that 90%+ of 1,008 jokes generated by GPT-3.5 were not new but rather the same 25 jokes likely learned during the model’s training  —  When tested, “Over 90% of 1,008 generated jokes were the same 25 jokes.”  —  On Wednesday, two German researchers …

A look at Realtek’s lawsuit accusing MediaTek of paying a company a “bounty” to file meritless US patent lawsuits to drive Realtek out of the TV chip market (Ashley Belanger/Ars Technica)

Ashley Belanger / Ars Technica: A look at Realtek’s lawsuit accusing MediaTek of paying a company a “bounty” to file meritless US patent lawsuits to drive Realtek out of the TV chip market  —  Lawsuit: Patent trolls created “harmful illusion” of unstable TV-chip market.  —  [Update, 8:10 pm ET …

A comparison between US data and 5,100 Stable Diffusion-generated images related to job title and crime finds the tool amplifies gender and racial stereotypes (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg: A comparison between US data and 5,100 Stable Diffusion-generated images related to job title and crime finds the tool amplifies gender and racial stereotypes  —  Heather Hiles, chair of Black Girls Code  —  At Canva, whose visual communication platform has 125 million active users …

An interview with Gary Gensler after the SEC’s Binance and Coinbase lawsuits, which have existential stakes for the companies and could define Gensler’s legacy (Wall Street Journal)

Wall Street Journal: An interview with Gary Gensler after the SEC’s Binance and Coinbase lawsuits, which have existential stakes for the companies and could define Gensler’s legacy  —  Agency chair focuses enforcement power on exchanges after earlier failures to subdue industry  —  WASHINGTON—Gary Gensler had seen enough.

Microsoft adds voice mode to Bing Chat on desktop, letting users ask questions using their voice in English, Japanese, French, German, and Mandarin (Emma Roth/The Verge)

Emma Roth / The Verge: Microsoft adds voice mode to Bing Chat on desktop, letting users ask questions using their voice in English, Japanese, French, German, and Mandarin  —  Microsoft is bringing Bing’s voice mode to Edge on desktop.  With this latest update, you can now ask Bing’s chatbot questions using your voice …

In an AMA about Reddit’s API changes, the company’s CEO said Reddit can’t “subsidize commercial entities”, criticized the Apollo developer’s behavior, and more (Karissa Bell/Engadget)

Karissa Bell / Engadget: In an AMA about Reddit’s API changes, the company’s CEO said Reddit can’t “subsidize commercial entities”, criticized the Apollo developer’s behavior, and more  —  “We’ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive,” he said.  —  Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has finally spoken publicly …

Kraken launches Kraken NFT, a marketplace with 250+ NFT collections across the Ethereum, Solana, and Polygon blockchains, after a beta started in November 2022 (Rosie Perper/CoinDesk)

Rosie Perper / CoinDesk: Kraken launches Kraken NFT, a marketplace with 250+ NFT collections across the Ethereum, Solana, and Polygon blockchains, after a beta started in November 2022  —  Now out of its public beta test, the platform has expanded to include over 250 NFT collections.

The Khan Lab School trials Khanmigo, an AI chatbot developed by Khan Academy to simulate one-on-one tutoring, one of the first such experiments in the US (Natasha Singer/New York Times)

Natasha Singer / New York Times: The Khan Lab School trials Khanmigo, an AI chatbot developed by Khan Academy to simulate one-on-one tutoring, one of the first such experiments in the US  —  Proponents see the tools as a way to automatically customize academic support.  They could also make children test subjects for A.I. experiments.

Barracuda asked its Email Security Gateway customers on June 6 to replace infected appliances immediately, after patching a zero-day vulnerability on May 20 (Brian Krebs/Krebs on Security)

Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security: Barracuda asked its Email Security Gateway customers on June 6 to replace infected appliances immediately, after patching a zero-day vulnerability on May 20  —  It’s not often that a zero-day vulnerability causes a network security vendor to urge customers to physically remove and decommission …

Spotify is testing a new feature called Your Offline Mix, which will automatically save a mix of users’ recently played songs for offline listening (Jon Porter/The Verge)

Jon Porter / The Verge: Spotify is testing a new feature called Your Offline Mix, which will automatically save a mix of users’ recently played songs for offline listening  —  / The playlist is described in the app as ‘a mix of recently played songs for when the vibe is high but your connection is […]

Bioinspired robotics class offers intriguing surprises

When MIT’s mini cheetah perfectly executed a backflip on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” the audience screamed and applauded wildly. If this machine — which also pranced around the stage like a show dog and stretched in several different directions — could perform such a difficult maneuver, one that is impossible for most humans, […]