Google is generally rolling out its Gemini AI-powered Vids app that lets you create video presentations using a prompt. From a report: Some of Vids' key features include letting Gemini auto-insert stock footage for you, generating a script, and making AI voiceovers so you don't have to speak. Google advertises that the tool can help turn customer support articles into videos, make training videos, share company announcements, create meeting recaps, and more. Vids will be available by default for Workspace organizations with access, but Google notes possible usage limits may apply to features like "Help me create" and AI voiceovers starting in 2026.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Anthropic has announced a partnership with Palantir and Amazon Web Services to bring its Claude AI models to unspecified US intelligence and defense agencies. Claude, a family of AI language models similar to those that power ChatGPT, will work within Palantir's platform using AWS hosting to process and analyze data. But some critics have called out the deal as contradictory to Anthropic's widely-publicized "AI safety" aims. On X, former Google co-head of AI ethics Timnit Gebru wrote of Anthropic's new deal with Palantir, "Look at how they care so much about 'existential risks to humanity.'"

The partnership makes Claude available within Palantir's Impact Level 6 environment (IL6), a defense-accredited system that handles data critical to national security up to the "secret" classification level. This move follows a broader trend of AI companies seeking defense contracts, with Meta offering its Llama models to defense partners and OpenAI pursuing closer ties with the Defense Department. In a press release, the companies outlined three main tasks for Claude in defense and intelligence settings: performing operations on large volumes of complex data at high speeds, identifying patterns and trends within that data, and streamlining document review and preparation.

While the partnership announcement suggests broad potential for AI-powered intelligence analysis, it states that human officials will retain their decision-making authority in these operations. As a reference point for the technology's capabilities, Palantir reported that one (unnamed) American insurance company used 78 AI agents powered by their platform and Claude to reduce an underwriting process from two weeks to three hours. The new collaboration builds on Anthropic's earlier integration of Claude into AWS GovCloud, a service built for government cloud computing. Anthropic, which recently began operations in Europe, has been seeking funding at a valuation up to $40 billion. The company has raised $7.6 billion, with Amazon as its primary investor.

UK government-appointed commissioners have labeled Birmingham City Council's Oracle Fusion rollout as "the poorest ERP deployment" they have seen. From a report: A report published by the UK council's Corporate Finance Overview and Scrutiny Committee found that 18 months after Fusion went live, the largest public authority in Europe "had not tactically stabilized the system or formulated clear plans to resolve the system issues and recover the operation."

The city council's cloud-based Oracle tech replaced the SAP system that it began using in 1999, but the disastrous project encountered a string of landmark failures. The council has failed to produce auditable accounts since Oracle was implemented in 2022, costs have ballooned from around 19 million pound to a projected estimate of 131 million pound and, because the council chose not to use system audit features, it cannot tell if fraud has taken place on its multibillion-pound spending budget for an 18-month period. In September last year, the council became effectively bankrupt due to outstanding equal pay claims and the Oracle implementation.

The report from "best value commissioners" appointed by central government to investigate struggling councils said that following the Oracle implementation, "a serious lack of trust had developed between members and officers driven by the failed implementation and subsequent lack of progress to resolve the situation."

An anonymous reader shares a report: AMD has gained a substantial 5.7 percentage points of share of the desktop x86 CPU market in the third quarter compared to Q2, the largest quarterly share gain since we began tracking the market share reports in 2016. It also represents an incredible ten percentage point improvement over the prior year. AMD also raked in a strong increase in revenue share, jumping 8.5 percentage points over the prior quarter, indicating that it is selling a strong mix of higher-end CPU models.

During the quarter, AMD launched its new Ryzen 9000-series family of processors amid a scandal related to stability issues with Intel's Raptor Lake chips, which generated a flood of negative press for the company over the course of several months, and inventory adjustments for one of Intel's customers. AMD now commands 28.7% of the desktop processor market. AMD also continued to gain share in the laptop and server markets, though its gains on the desktop side of the business were the most impressive, according to Mercury Research.

Block will abandon development of its Web5 decentralized internet project and reduce investment in music streaming service Tidal to focus on bitcoin mining hardware and self-custody wallets, the payments company announced in its third-quarter letter to shareholders. The Jack Dorsey-led firm cited strong market demand for its bitcoin mining products and Bitkey wallet as key drivers behind the strategic shift.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: If you voted in the U.S. presidential election yesterday in which Donald Trump won comfortably, or a previous election, a website powered by a right-wing group is probably doxing you. VoteRef makes it trivial for anyone to search the name, physical address, age, party affiliation, and whether someone voted that year for people living in most states instantly and for free. This can include ordinary citizens, celebrities, domestic abuse survivors, and many other people. Voting rolls are public records, and ways to more readily access them are not new. But during a time of intense division, political violence, or even the broader threat of data being used to dox or harass anyone, sites like VoteRef turn a vital part of the democratic process -- simply voting -- into a security and privacy threat. [...]

The Voter Reference Foundation, which runs VoteRef, is a right wing organization helmed by a former Trump campaign official, ProPublica previously reported. The goal for that organization was to find irregularities in the number of voters and the number of ballots cast, but state election officials said their findings were "fundamentally incorrect," ProPublica added. In an interview with NPR, the ProPublica reporter said that the Voter Reference Foundation insinuated (falsely) that the 2020 election of Joe Biden was fraudulent in some way. 404 Media has found people on social media using VoteRef's data to spread voting conspiracies too. VoteRef has steadily been adding more states' records to the VoteRef website. At the time of writing, it has records for all states that legally allow publication. Some exceptions include California, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. ProPublica reported that VoteRef removed the Pennsylvania data after being contacted by an attorney for Pennsylvania's Department of State. "Digitizing and aggregating data meaningfully changes the privacy context and the risks to people. Your municipal government storing your marriage certificate and voter information in some basement office filing cabinet is not even remotely the same as a private company digitizing all the data, labeling it, piling it all together, making it searchable," said Justin Sherman, a Duke professor who studies data brokers.

"Policymakers need to get with the times and recognize that data brokers digitizing, aggregating, and selling data based on public records -- which are usually considered 'publicly available information' and exempted from privacy laws -- has fueled decades of stalking and gendered violence, harassment, doxing, and even murder," Sherman said. "Protecting citizens of all political stripes, targets and survivors of gendered violence, public servants who are targets for doxing and death threats, military service members, and everyone in between depends on reframing how we think about public records privacy and the mass aggregation and sale of our data."

Microsoft is introducing a feature to Notepad called Rewrite that will let you use AI to "rephrase sentences, adjust tone, and modify the length of your content." The Verge reports: If you're a Windows Insider with early access to the feature, you can try it by highlighting the text you want to adjust in Notepad, right-clicking it, and choosing Rewrite. Notepad will then display a dialogue box where you can decide how they want to change their text -- for example, if it needs to be longer or shorter. Rewrite will then offer three rewritten versions that you can replace your work with.

It's worth noting that you'll have to sign in to your Microsoft account to use Rewrite, as it's "powered by a cloud-based service that requires authentication and authorization." Microsoft is launching this feature in preview on Windows 11 in the US, France, UK, Canada, Italy, and Germany. In July, Microsoft rolled out spellcheck and autocorrect for Notepad.

Software engineer David Gomes writes in a blog post: I sometimes need to search for a website that will "convert a PNG to SVG", or "remove page from PDF" or "resize svg". And these apps are... okay. I don't really trust most of them with my data, and also a lot of times they just don't work or have too many ads. So, I've been noticing a trend of people just using AI agents to create full blown apps for these simple use cases.

I decided to try it myself for a "resize SVG" app since I recently had to go through a bunch of websites to do this. So, I pulled up Replit Agent and even though I've used it before, it doesn't cease to amaze me just how insanely good it is. The level of polish on this product is unlike any other AI agent out there right now. It starts off by drawing up a plan and asking you for feedback on that plan. Then, it'll just go to town and try to build the app. But what's super clever about it is that the agent asks you for feedback along the way. Effectively, the Replit Agent guides you, not the other way around (as one might have expected).

A pre-dawn statewide alert about an officer shooting in Hall County triggered over 4,500 complaints to the Federal Communications Commission. The 4:52 a.m. "Blue Alert" on October 4 awakened millions of Texans, many living hundreds of miles from the incident location, to notify them about suspect Seth Altman. Air traffic controllers, healthcare workers, and other professionals reported safety concerns from sleep disruption, according to records obtained by 404 Media. Multiple residents told the FCC they disabled all emergency notifications in response, potentially compromising public safety for future alerts.

Nvidia will impose a 100-hour monthly limit on its GeForce Now cloud gaming service for new subscribers starting January 2025, with existing members facing the same restriction from 2026, the company said on Thursday.

The gaming giant aims to maintain current subscription prices by implementing the cap, which affects roughly 6% of users. Members can purchase additional 15-hour blocks for $2.99 on Performance tier or $5.99 for Ultimate tier once they exceed the limit.

The service, which allows users to stream games from remote servers, will also rebrand its Priority membership to Performance tier, adding 1440p streaming and ultrawide resolution support. Subscribers can carry over 15 unused hours monthly or switch to basic servers after reaching the cap, Nvidia said.

AI startup Perplexity demonstrated strong performance in real-time during Tuesday election coverage, while rivals failed by predicting wrong outcomes before polls closed, marking the first major test of AI systems in U.S. election reporting, TechCrunch reports.

Perplexity launched an election hub featuring live maps powered by Associated Press and Democracy Works data, contrasting with major competitors like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini, which declined to provide election information. Despite some minor data display issues and occasional inaccuracies in state-level analysis, Perplexity's coverage largely matched traditional media outlets, potentially intensifying its ongoing legal battle with Dow Jones over audience competition.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from PCMag: Have I Been Pwned has long been one of the most useful ways to learn if your personal information was exposed in a hack. But a new site offers its own powerful tool to help you check if your data has been leaked to cybercriminals. DataBreach.com is the work of a New Jersey company called Atlas Privacy, which helps consumers remove their personal information from data brokers and people search websites. On Wednesday, the company told us it had launched DataBreach.com as an alternative to Have I Been Pwned, which is mainly searchable via the user's email address. DataBreach.com is designed to do that and more. In addition to your email address, the site features an advanced search function to see whether your full name, physical address, phone number, Social Security number, IP address, or username are in Atlas Privacy's extensive library of recorded breaches. More categories will also be added over time.

Atlas Privacy has been offering its paid services to customers, such as police officers and celebrities, to protect bad actors from learning their addresses or phone numbers. In doing so, the company has also amassed over 17.5 billion records from the numerous stolen databases circulating on the internet, including in cybercriminal forums. As a public service, Atlas is now using its growing repository of stolen records to create a breach notification site, free of charge. DataBreach.com builds off Atlas's effort in August to host a site notifying users whether their Social Security number and other personal information were leaked in the National Public Data hack. Importantly, Atlas designed DataBreach.com to prevent it from storing or collecting any sensitive user information typed into the site. Instead, the site will fetch a hash from Atlas' servers, or a fingerprint of the user's personal information -- whether it be an email address, name, or SSN -- and compare it to whatever the user is searching for. "The comparison will be done locally," meaning it'll occur on the user's PC or phone, rather than Atlas's internet server, de Saint Meloir said.

A security update mislabeling by Microsoft led to Windows Server 2022 systems unexpectedly upgrading to Windows Server 2025, impacting 7 percent of Heimdal customers and leaving administrators scrambling to manage unexpected licensing and configuration challenges. The Register reports: It took Heimdal a while to trace the problem. According to a post on Reddit: "Due to the limited initial footprint, identifying the root cause took some time. By 18:05 UTC, we traced the issue to the Windows Update API, where Microsoft had mistakenly labeled the Windows Server 2025 upgrade as KB5044284." It added: "Our team discovered this discrepancy in our patching repository, as the GUID for the Windows Server 2025 upgrade does not match the usual entries for KB5044284 associated with Windows 11. This appears to be an error on Microsoft's side, affecting both the speed of release and the classification of the update. After cross-checking with Microsoft's KB repository, we confirmed that the KB number indeed references Windows 11, not Windows Server 2025."

As of last night, Heimdal estimated that the unexpected upgrade had affected 7 percent of customers -- it said it had blocked KB5044284 across all server group policies. However, this is of little comfort to administrators finding themselves receiving an unexpected upgrade. Since rolling back to the previous configuration will present a challenge, affected users will be faced with finding out just how effective their backup strategy is or paying for the required license and dealing with all the changes that come with Windows Server 2025.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Australia Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Thursday the government would legislate for a ban on social media for children under 16, a policy the government says is world-leading. "Social media is doing harm to our kids and I'm calling time on it," Albanese told a news conference. Legislation will be introduced into parliament this year, with the laws coming into effect 12 months after it is ratified by lawmakers, he added. There will be no exemptions for users who have parental consent.

"The onus will be on social media platforms to demonstrate they are taking reasonable steps to prevent access," Albanese said. "The onus won't be on parents or young people." Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said platforms impacted would include Meta Platforms' Instagram and Facebook, as well as Bytedance's TikTok and Elon Musk's X. Alphabet's YouTube would likely also fall within the scope of the legislation, she added.

The federal government of Canada has ordered TikTok to shut down its operations in the country, citing national security concerns. However, Canadians will still be able to access the app and use it to create content. "The decision to use a social media application or platform is a personal choice," said Innovation Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne.

"We came to the conclusion that these activities that were conducted in Canada by TikTok and their offices would be injurious to national security. I'm not at liberty to go into much detail, but I know Canadians would understand when you're saying the government of Canada is taking measures to protect national security, that's serious." CBC News reports: Champagne urged Canadians to use TikTok "with eyes wide open." Critics have claimed that TikTok users' data could be obtained by the Chinese government. "Obviously, parents and anyone who wants to use social platform should be mindful of the risk," he said. The decision was made in accordance with the Investment Canada Act, which allows for the review of foreign investments that may harm Canada's national security.

Former CSIS director David Vigneault told CBC News it's "very clear" from the app's design that data gleaned from its users "is available to the government of China" and its large-scale data harvesting goals. "Most people can say, 'Why is it a big deal for a teenager now to have their data [on TikTok]?' Well in five years, in 10 years, that teenager will be a young adult, will be engaged in different activities around the world," he said at the time. "As an individual, I would say that I would absolutely not recommend someone have TikTok."

OpenAI has acquired the chat.com domain name, likely for well over $10 million. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted a one-word tweet this morning, simply stating, "chat.com." Domain Name Wire reports: The chat.com domain name has changed hands for the third time in two years. HubSpot founder Dharmesh Shah kicked off the buying last year, plunking down over $15.5 million for the domain name. He turned around and sold the domain shortly thereafter for a profit.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The US supreme court grappled on Wednesday with a bid by Meta's Facebook to scuttle a federal securities fraud lawsuit brought by shareholders who accused the social media platform of misleading them about the misuse of user data. The justices heard arguments in Facebook's appeal of a lower court's decision allowing the 2018 class action suit led by Amalgamated Bank to proceed. The suit seeks unspecified monetary damages in part to recoup the lost value of the Facebook stock held by the investors. It is one of two cases coming before them this month -- the other one involving artificial intelligence chipmaker Nvidia on 13 November -- that could lead to rulings making it harder for private litigants to hold companies to account for alleged securities fraud.

At issue is whether Facebook broke the law when it failed to detail the prior data breach in subsequent business-risk disclosures, and instead portrayed the risk of such incidents as purely hypothetical. Facebook argued in a supreme court brief that it was not required to reveal that its warned-of risk had already materialized because "a reasonable investor" would understand risk disclosures to be forward-looking statements. "When we think about these questions, we're not looking only to lies or complete false statements," the liberal justice Elena Kagan told Kannon Shanmugam, the lawyer for Facebook. "We're also looking to misleading statements or misleading omissions." The conservative justice Samuel Alito asked Shanmugam: "Isn't it the case that an evaluation of risks is always forward-looking?" "It is. And that is essentially what underlies our argument here," Shanmugam responded.

The plaintiffs accused Facebook of misleading investors in violation of the Securities Exchange Act, a 1934 federal law that requires publicly traded companies to disclose their business risks. They claimed the company unlawfully withheld information from investors about a 2015 data breach involving British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica that affected more than 30 million Facebook users. Edward Davila, a US district judge, dismissed the lawsuit but the San Francisco-based ninth US circuit court of appeals revived it. The supreme court's ruling is expected by the end of June.

The UK will bring in legislation to safeguard against the risks of AI in the next year, technology secretary Peter Kyle has said, as he pledged to invest in the infrastructure that will underpin the sector's growth. From a report: Kyle told the Financial Times' Future of AI summit on Wednesday that Britain's voluntary agreement on AI testing was "working, it's a good code" but that the long-awaited AI bill would be focused on making such accords with leading developers legally binding. The legislation, which Kyle said would be presented to MPs in the current parliament, will also turn the UK's AI Safety Institute into an arms-length government body, giving it "the independence to act fully in the interests of British citizens."

At present, the body is a directorate of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. At the UK-organised AI safety summit last November, companies including OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Anthropic signed a "landmark" but non-binding agreement allowing partner governments to test their forthcoming large language models for risks and vulnerabilities before they were released to consumers. Kyle said that while he was "not fatalistic" about advancements in AI, "citizens need to know that we are mitigating the potential risks."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Curbside EV charging in Michigan should become easier in the coming months thanks to a new collaboration between telecom giant AT&T and lamppost EV charging startup Voltpost. The two have joined forces to bring internet connectivity to EV charging posts across Michigan and the Metro-Detroit area-this way, the operator knows immediately if a stall has gone offline and can send a team to fix it faster. Better uptime benefits both the company and the EV drivers who choose to top up their cars' batteries while parked.

Voltpost's lamppost charging solution essentially turns existing street lights into EV chargers. The startup claims the installation of a single stall takes anywhere from one to two hours and that the costs are much lower than a conventional EV charging station. However, the caveat here is that the charging speeds are limited to what one would experience with a home charger. The AC Level 2 lamppost chargers are powered by the street lighting grid, which was never designed to sustain high loads, so expect to keep the car plugged in for hours. That said, the system can still come in handy when the owner of an EV goes to work and parks the car on the street. Or during a lengthy shopping trip topped off with an evening movie. It's no DC fast charger, but it doesn't claim to be one.

A federal judge in California has dismissed most claims in a class-action lawsuit against Google over its handling of gift card scams, ruling the tech giant is not liable for millions in consumer losses. U.S. District Judge Beth Freeman found Google bears no responsibility for scam victims' losses since third-party fraudsters, not Google, induced the purchases.

The ruling came in a suit filed by Judy May, who lost $1,000 to scammers demanding Google Play gift cards for a fake government grant. The lawsuit cited Federal Trade Commission data showing Google Play gift card scams comprised 20% of reported gift card fraud between 2018-2021, totaling over $17 million in losses. Google earns 15-30% commission on gift card purchases but denies refunds, citing industry-standard policies. Freeman ruled Google had no duty to investigate reported scams or refund victims.