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AI data giant Alation confirms cyberattack
Enterprise data software company Alation has confirmed it suffered a cyberattack, days after first reporting an incident that disrupted service for some customers. Alation provides natural-language search and AI-driven data tools to more than 500 companies worldwide, including roughly half of the Fortune 1000, making the breach potentially significant given the sensitive corporate data its…
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Netflix’s ‘Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story’ Trailer Teases Ella Beatty, Charlie Hunnam, Rebecca Hall in Bloody Tale of Infamous Axe Murders
Netflix has released the full trailer for “Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story,” the fourth season of Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s true-crime anthology series, confirming the show’s cast and central themes. Ella Beatty stars as Lizzie Borden, the woman tried and acquitted over the notorious 1892 axe murders of her father and stepmother in Fall…
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Their cities dropped Flock surveillance cameras. They’re still being watched
Cities that dropped surveillance contracts with Flock Safety are discovering they remain under similar monitoring, either because a rival vendor has stepped in or because the original cameras have not been removed. In Longmont, Colorado, campaigners celebrated when the city let its Flock contract lapse in December, only to see the council approve a new…
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AI firefighting drones take aim at wildfires
Fire agencies in the United States are testing AI-powered drones designed to detect and suppress wildfires before they can spread, aiming to close the gap between a small ignition and firefighters arriving on scene. CAL FIRE has trialled autonomous suppression drones developed by Seneca in California, while separate teams competing in the $11 million XPRIZE…
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Grok exfiltrates user data when malicious instructions are encrypted
Security researchers have found a way to trick Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot into secretly stealing users’ chat history and personal data, using a technique that hides malicious instructions inside encrypted text on a webpage. The exploit works because Grok’s safety filters scan plain text for harmful commands but cannot inspect content that only becomes readable…
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US Video Game Spending Just Had One Of Its Worst Julys Ever
After a few solid months, it looks like video game spending hit a slump in July. That’s according to new data by Circana, with the analyst firm saying that total video game spending in the US fell 10% year-over-year in July to $4.5 billion. New physical software sales also hit an all-time July low of $85 million–since tracking…
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Grok chat duped into swallowing injected instructions
Security researchers at Adversa AI have found a new prompt-injection technique that successfully tricks xAI’s Grok web chat agent into following malicious instructions hidden on a web page. The method, dubbed “cryptographic context injection,” gets around guardrail filters by encrypting the malicious payload so it looks unreadable to input scanners, then supplying the model with…
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For a16z, AI gives foreign founders an advantage
Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) says the AI boom is levelling the playing field for founders outside the United States, giving international entrepreneurs a genuine edge over their American counterparts rather than merely accepting them as a matter of course. Partner Gabriel Vasquez, who works on the firm’s Apps Fund and global strategy alongside general partner Angela…
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Physical Video Game Dollar Sales Plunged to an All-Time July Low of Just $85 Million in the US
Physical video game sales in the US hit their lowest-ever July total, with just $85 million spent on physical software last month, the worst figure since Circana began tracking data in 1995. The slump underscores the industry’s accelerating shift towards digital distribution and lands shortly after Sony’s announcement that it will stop producing physical PlayStation…
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Felicia Day’s ‘The Guild’ Movie Breaks ‘Veronica Mars’ Kickstarter Record, Raising More Than $5.7 Million
Felicia Day’s Kickstarter campaign for “The Guild: Ren Faire’d”, a reunion film based on her popular web series, has become the highest-funded crowdfunded film in history, surpassing the record of $5.7 million set by the “Veronica Mars” movie in 2013. The milestone, reached with 38 hours still remaining in the campaign, underscores the enduring loyalty…