ChatGPT sets record for fastest-growing user base in history, report says

Intense demand for AI chatbot breaks records and inspires new subscription plan.

An artist's depiction of ChatGPT Plus.

Enlarge / A realistic artist's depiction of an encounter with ChatGPT Plus. (credit: Benj Edwards / Ars Technica / OpenAI)

On Wednesday, Reuters reported that AI bot ChatGPT reached an estimated 100 million active monthly users last month, a mere two months from launch, making it the "fastest-growing consumer application in history," according to a UBS investment bank research note. In comparison, TikTok took nine months to reach 100 million monthly users, and Instagram about 2.5 years, according to UBS researcher Lloyd Walmsley.

“In 20 years following the Internet space, we cannot recall a faster ramp in a consumer internet app," Reuters quotes Walmsley as writing in the UBS note.

Reuters says the UBS data comes from analytics firm Similar Web, which states that around 13 million unique visitors used ChatGPT every day in January, doubling the number of users in December.

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Teasing out the secret recipes for mummification in ancient Egypt

Most ingredients weren’t available locally—more evidence of a long-distance trade network.

Illustration of an embalming scene in an underground chamber.

Enlarge / Illustration of an embalming scene in an underground chamber. (credit: Nikola Nevenov)

Most of what we know about ancient Egyptian mummification techniques comes from a few ancient texts. In addition to a text called The Ritual of Embalming, Greek historian Herodotus mentions the use of natron to dehydrate the body in his Histories. But there are very few details about the specific spices, oils, resins, and other ingredients used. Fortunately, science is helping fill in the gaps. A team of researchers used molecular analysis to identify several basic ingredients used in mummification, according to a new paper published in the journal Nature.

Egyptian embalming is thought to have started in the Predynastic Period or even earlier, when people noticed that the arid heat of the sand tended to dry and preserve bodies buried in the desert. Eventually, the idea of preserving the body after death worked its way into Egyptian religious beliefs. When people began to bury the dead in rock tombs, away from the desiccating sand, they used chemicals like natron salt and plant-based resins for embalming.

The procedure typically began by laying the corpse on a table, removing the internal organs—except for the heart. Per Herodotus, "They first draw out part of the brain through the nostrils with an iron hook, and inject certain drugs into the rest" to liquefy the remaining brain matter.

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Lilbits: SH1MMER lets you jailbreak enterprise-managed Chromebooks

Chromebooks have grown in popularity over the past decade in part because they’re easy to use and tend to offer decent performance even if you opt for a cheap model with low-power hardware. But a big part of the reason there are so many Chromebo…

Chromebooks have grown in popularity over the past decade in part because they’re easy to use and tend to offer decent performance even if you opt for a cheap model with low-power hardware. But a big part of the reason there are so many Chromebooks these days is that they’ve made inroads with education and […]

The post Lilbits: SH1MMER lets you jailbreak enterprise-managed Chromebooks appeared first on Liliputing.

Unofficial Link to the Past PC port is a reverse-engineered gem

More than 70,000 lines of disassembled code teach an old game useful new tricks.

Zelda running on a Windows PC window with a file directory next to it.

Enlarge / Among the many upgrades made possible by this project, A Link to the Past is now a game you can Alt+Tab out of when a supervisor comes near. (credit: Nintendo / Kevin Purdy)

It's a sad reality among retro emulation enthusiasts: You often spend far more time crafting your perfect setup than playing the games. You get your controller, linear filtering, sound engine, and everything else just right, and then you discover that your favorite game of yesteryear is far slower and more annoying than you remember.

That's why the hard work of reverse engineers is so valuable. Hobbyist decompilers have worked to turn ROM binaries into thousands of lines of human-readable code, allowing for far deeper audiovisual upgrades, features, and other tweaks. It's resulted in some impressive new takes on games, including Ocarina of Time, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Grand Theft Auto. And unlike many fan-based projects, reverse engineering generally passes legal muster as long as no copyrighted assets are distributed along with the decompiled code.

And they often far outshine game publishers' official offerings, which usually amount to little more than officially licensed, lightly tweaked emulation.

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Bethesda’s Redfall needs to be online for single-player mode

Shooter continues the controversial history of the “always online” solo game.

Artist's conception of a single player (foreground) trying to access <em>Redfall</em> without an Internet connection.

Enlarge / Artist's conception of a single player (foreground) trying to access Redfall without an Internet connection.

Bethesda's upcoming supernatural shooter Redfall will require "a persistent online connection," even for the single-player experience. That's according to an FAQ posted by Bethesda last week, which also confirms that players will need an active Bethesda.net account to play the game.

Many modern single-player games require an online check-in (or even a text message confirmation) the first time they're launched, and some require periodic online anti-piracy checks. Games that require a persistent online connection for solo play are rarer, though significant exceptions do exist.

While Bethesda has not responded to a request for comment on the decision, game publishers often cite piracy or cheating concerns as reasons to require players to connect to the Internet for solo play. In 2013, for instance, Blizzard's Mike Morhaime said an online connection was "critical to the long-term integrity of the game experience" for Diablo III and its controversial (and later removed) real-money auction house.

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Up to 29,000 unpatched QNAP storage devices are sitting ducks to ransomware

QNAP storage devices are a frequent target of criminal hackers.

Up to 29,000 unpatched QNAP storage devices are sitting ducks to ransomware

As many as 29,000 network storage devices manufactured by Taiwan-based QNAP are vulnerable to hacks that are easy to carry out and give unauthenticated users on the Internet complete control, a security firm has warned.

The vulnerability, which carries a severity rating of 9.8 out of a possible 10, came to light on Monday, when QNAP issued a patch and urged users to install it. Tracked as CVE-2022-27596, the vulnerability makes it possible for remote hackers to perform a SQL injection, a type of attack that targets web applications that use the Structured Query Language. SQL injection vulnerabilities are exploited by entering specially crafted characters or scripts into the search fields, login fields, or URLs of a buggy website. The injections allow for the modifying, stealing, or deleting of data or the gaining of administrative control over the systems running the vulnerable apps.

QNAP’s advisory on Monday said that network-attached storage devices running QTS versions before 5.0.1.2234 and QuTS Hero versions prior to h5.0.1.2248 were vulnerable. The post also provided instructions for updating to the patched versions.

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Netflix stirs fears by using AI-assisted background art in short anime film

Netflix cites labor shortage, kicks hornets nest with AI-assisted 3-minute short.

A still image from the short film

Enlarge / A still image from the short film Dog and Boy,, which uses image synthesis to help generate background artwork. (credit: Netflix)

Over the past year, generative AI has kicked off a wave of existential dread over potential machine-fueled job loss not seen since the advent of the industrial revolution. On Tuesday, Netflix reinvigorated that fear when it debuted a short film called Dog and Boy that utilizes AI image synthesis to help generate its background artwork.

Directed by Ryotaro Makihara, the three-minute animated short follows the story of a boy and his robotic dog through cheerful times, although the story soon takes a dramatic turn toward the post-apocalyptic. Along the way, it includes lush backgrounds apparently created as a collaboration between man and machine, credited to "AI (+Human)" in the end credit sequence.

In the announcement tweet, Netflix cited an industry labor shortage as the reason for using the image synthesis technology:

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(Most of) AMD’s gaming-centric Ryzen 7000 X3D CPUs launch February 28

7800X3D launches in April for $449, while 7900X3D and 7950X3D are coming soon.

AMD has announced pricing and availability for its newest 3D V-Cache desktop CPUs.

Enlarge / AMD has announced pricing and availability for its newest 3D V-Cache desktop CPUs. (credit: AMD)

AMD's pumped-up, 3D V-Cache-equipped Ryzen 7000 desktop processors will be available to buy on February 28, the company announced today. The rollout will start with the 12-core Ryzen 9 7900X3D and the 16-core Ryzen 9 7950X3D, which will start at $599 and $699, respectively. A cheaper model, the eight-core Ryzen 7 7800X3D, will be available for $449 but won't launch until April 6.

All of these CPUs are successors to the original Ryzen 7 5800X3D, and their sales pitch is similar. AMD is stacking 64MB of additional L3 cache on top of the regular Ryzen 7000 CPUs, which can provide a big performance bump for software (like games) that is especially sensitive to cache sizes and speeds.

These prices are actually not all that much higher than the launch prices for the original Ryzen 7000 CPUs back in August—the 7950X3D has the same launch price as the 7950X, and the 7900X3D and 7800X3D are only $50 more expensive than their counterparts. But prices have come down a lot since then; the 7950X usually costs between $550 and $600 now, and non-X-series CPUs like the Ryzen 7 7700 and Ryzen 9 7950 are even cheaper. The X3D chips' prices will eventually come down, too, but they're still significantly more expensive than the versions without the extra cache.

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U.S. Identifies Top Pirate Sites and Other ‘Notorious Markets’

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has published its annual list of the largest piracy websites and other “notorious markets.” This year’s overview includes usual suspects The Pirate Bay, FMovies, and Rapidgator, but several IPTV services and even hosting companies are mentioned as well. The USTR hopes that by highlighting the threats, platform operators or foreign authorities will take action.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

notoriousEvery year, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) publishes a list of ‘notorious markets’ that facilitate online piracy and related intellectual property crimes.

Drawing on input from copyright holders, the report includes a non-exclusive overview of sites and services that are believed to be involved in piracy or counterfeiting.

For more than a decade we have covered the online part of the report. Traditionally, that includes prominent torrent sites, download portals, cyberlockers, and streaming services that offer copyrighted content without obtaining permission from rightsholders.

In recent years, the scope of the report has broadened. For example, we have seen hosting companies, advertisers, and social media platforms being added. These don’t have piracy as their core business, but they allegedly facilitate infringing activity.

2022 Notorious Markets Review

Yesterday, the USTR published its 2022 Review of Notorious Markets. According to Ambassador Katherine Tai, the annual overview will help companies and countries to take proper action, where needed.

“The Notorious Markets List is an important tool that urges the private sector and our trading partners to take action against these harmful practices,” Tai notes, commenting on the release of the report.

The importance and political clout of the report shouldn’t be understated. However, the fact that some names have been listed for over a decade, shows that there are no guarantees for improvement.

Famialiar Names

Looking at the 2022 Review of Notorious Markets, we see the usual suspects, including The Pirate Bay, RARBG, Rapidgator, Fmovies, Sci-Hub and 2Conv. These all come with a short description of the sites and why they are deemed problematic by rightsholders.

Some dedicated IPTV services and related companies such as Globe IPTV are called out as well, while ‘bulletproof’ hosting companies (Amaru / Flokinet) and even social media platforms (VK / WeChat) get mentioned too.

The same is true for popular foreign e-commerce platforms such as Aliexpress, Baidu Wangpan and Shopee.com. These stores are often linked to the sale of counterfeit goods. Meanwhile, there is no mention of anime piracy sites, which are massively popular.

Newcomers

This year’s overview only delivers a few new names, including torrent sites Rutracker and YTS. The latter was noticeably missing last year, despite being the most visited torrent site on the Internet.

yts new

Russia-based classified advertisement platform Avato is another newcomer. The same is true for hosting company Amarutu, which hosts many of the largest pirate sites according to rightsholders.

The fifth and final addition is an interesting one. The USTR lists Lalastreams / istream2watch.com as a family of sports streaming sites. And indeed, these were reported by the UK Premier League a few weeks ago.

What the USTR report fails to mention is that the istream2watch.com domain was seized by U.S. law enforcement authorities last December. Other domains from the same group are not called out and remain online.

Dropouts

We expect that istream2watch.com won’t be used as an example next year. And while we’re on the topic, it’s worth mentioning the sites that have been removed from the notorious markets list following appearances last year.

These are:

-Blueangelhost (reason unknown)
-Chomikuj.pl (started filtering)
-Dytt8.net (reason unknown)
-Phimmoi (original site shut down)
-Popcorn Time (popular fork shut down)
-Private Layer (reason unknown)
-Revenuehits.com (reason unknown)
-Uploaded.net (shut down voluntarily)

Finally, it’s worth noting that there are no immediate legal consequences for sites and services that appear on the USTR’s list. That said, over the past year, we have seen several requests in US courts where rightsholders asked intermediaries including ISPs to block domains that appear on the USTR’s annual list.

As far as we know, none of these requests have been granted, but that could change in the future.

A copy of the USTR’s 2022 Review of Notorious Markets is available here (pdf). The full list of highlighted online sites/services, including those focused on counterfeiting, is as follows:

Torrent Sites
-1337x.to
-Rarbg.to
-Rutracker.org (new)
-Thepiratebay.org
-YTS.mx (new)

Cyberlockers
-1Fichier
-Rapidgator.net

E-commerce
-Aliexpress
-Baidu Wangpan
-Bukalapak.com
-DHgate.com
-Indiamart
-Pinduoduo.com
-Shopee.com
-Taobao.com
-Tokopedia.com

PaaS
-2Embed

Advertising
-Avito (new)

Streaming / IPTV
-Bestbuyiptv.store
-Chaloos
-Cuevana3.io
-Egy.best
-Fmovies / Bmovies / Bflix
-Globe IPTV
-Istar
-Lalastreams / Istream2watch.com (new)
-Pelisplus.icu
-Shabakatv
-Spider

Hosting
-Amaratu (new)
-FlokiNET

Social Media
-VK.com
-WeChat

Gaming
-Mpgh.net

Music
-Flvto.biz and 2Conv.com
-MP3juices.cc
-Newalbumreleases.net

Publishing
-Libgen
-Sci-Hub

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Won’t somebody please think of the insects?!

Global protected areas safeguard many plants and animals, but insects? Not so much.

image of a yellow and blue butterfly perched on a plant.

Enlarge / This butterfly is also referred to as the Cairns Birdwing. (credit: Jodi Jacobson)

Nearly 17 percent, or 22.5 million square kilometers, of the world’s land now falls within protected areas. Countries have established laws that safeguard these parcels of land—or in some cases, aquatic areas—to ensure that the natural ecosystems and their respective species and functions remain in good health. Creating protected areas has clearly helped some species, like the Asian elephant, survive.

But protected areas around the globe—at least as they stood in 2019—are failing to account for some of the world’s smallest, most vulnerable, and most fundamentally icky denizens: insects. New research sheds light on this issue, suggesting more than three-quarters of known insect species are not adequately protected by current dedicated conservation areas.

According to Shawan Chowdhury, a conservation biologist at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research and one of the paper’s authors, there are also likely many more species of creepy crawlies we don’t know about and that are likely also being failed by existing protected areas.

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