Month: December 2024

Microsoft Copilot eröffnet neue Wege zur Effizienzsteigerung in Unternehmen. Dieser Workshop zeigt, wie Copilot in Microsoft 365 integriert und verantwortungsbewusst in Unternehmen implementiert werden kann. (Golem Karrierewelt, KI)

A new investigation from The New York Times suggests that SpaceX founder Elon Musk has not been reporting his travel activities and other information to the Department of Defense as required by his top-secret clearance.

According to the newspaper, concerns about Musk's reporting practices have led to reviews by three different bodies within the military; the Air Force, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, and the Defense Department Office of Inspector General.

However, none of the federal agencies cited in the Times article has accused Musk of disclosing classified material.

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Teen drug use continued to fall in 2024, extending a dramatic decline spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic that experts expected would reverse now that the acute phase of the global crisis is well over.

But, according to data released Tuesday, the number of eighth, 10th, and 12th graders who collectively abstained from the use of alcohol, marijuana, or nicotine hit a new high this year. Use of illicit drugs also fell on the whole and use of non-heroin narcotics (Vicodin, OxyContin, Percocet) hit an all-time low.

"Many experts in the field had anticipated that drug use would resurge as the pandemic receded and social distancing restrictions were lifted," Richard Miech, team lead of the Monitoring the Future survey at the University of Michigan, said in a statement. "As it turns out, the declines have not only lasted but have dropped further."

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When Nvidia replaced the longstanding GeForce Experience App with a new, unified Nvidia App last month, most GPU owners probably noted the refresh and rebranding with nothing more than bemusement (though the new lack of an account login requirement was a nice improvement). Now, testing shows that running the new app with default settings can lead to some significant frame rate dips on many high-end games, even when the app's advanced AI features aren't being actively used.

Tom's Hardware noted the performance dip after reading reports of related problems around the web. The site's testing with and without the Nvidia App installed confirms that, across five games running on an RTX 4060, the app reduced average frame rates by around 3 to 6 percent, depending on the resolution and graphical quality level.

The site's measured frame rate drop peaked at 12 percent for Assassin's Creed Mirage running at 1080p Ultra settings; other tested games (including Baldur's Gate 3, Black Myth: Wukong, Flight Simulator 2024, and Stalker 2) showed a smaller drop at most settings.

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Last week, Canada’s original site blocking order against pirate IPTV provider GoldTV expired, after rightsholders decided not to ask for any further extensions.

Overall interest in site blocking hasn’t waned, however. There are still several live-streaming orders in place, protecting sports content including football, hockey, and rugby.

Soap2Day Lawsuit

Meanwhile, Netflix, Bell, and several major Hollywood studios including Disney and Universal, prepared the first blocking order against a traditional pirate streaming site, Soap2Day. That request was granted by Canada’s Federal Court yesterday.

As is typical in Canada, the case started as a lawsuit against the “John Doe” operator of Soap2Day. In a statement of claim filed in May 2023, the rightsholders accused the site of flagrant copyright infringement.

The owner was served via email and this had an immediate impact. Instead of ignoring the matter or fighting back in court, Soap2Day.to and various related domains were shut down by their operator. The lawsuit wasn’t mentioned as a reason, but the timing was evident.

Soap2Day Judgment

With the initial goal already achieved, one might assume that the plaintiffs were satisfied, but that certainly wasn’t the case. While the main Soap2Day threat was gone, sites using the same name remained active.

Soap2Day is a popular pirate ‘brand’ that’s often used to lure visitors. The Fmovies piracy ring, for example, used Soap2dayx.to until it was shut down a few months ago. Others, including Soap2day.day and Soap2day.rs remain active today.

Netflix, Disney and the other rightsholders filed a motion for default judgement against the operators of Soap2day.to, Soap2dayX.to, Soap2day.day, and Soap2day.rs, which was granted yesterday.

Judge Simon Fothergill concludes that the “John Doe” defendants engaged in blatant, notorious and intentional misconduct. As punishment, and to deter further copyright infringement, each defendant was ordered to pay millions of Canadian dollars in damages.

– John Doe 1: $6,080,000 as statutory damages
– John Doe 2: $5,820,000 as statutory damages
– John Doe 3: $5,840,000 as statutory damages
– John Doe 4: $4,520,000 as statutory damages

In addition, the defendants were ordered to pay $1,000,000 as punitive and exemplary damages, as well as $400,000 for which they are held jointly liable.

The Site Blocking Order

These damages are substantial but since the operators remain unidentified, the plaintiffs may be unable to collect. The rightsholders are aware of this so to ensure that their efforts have impact, they also requested a site blocking order.

Justice Fothergill of the Federal Court approved this request yesterday and issued a blocking order similar to that against GoldTV. This effectively means that all major Canadian ISPs must block access to specified Soap2Day domains.

The order specifically lists Soap2day.day and Soap2day.pe, but new domains may be added in the future, as the blocking order broadly targets platforms that use the ‘Soap2Day brand’.

If new Soap2Day domains appear online in the future, rightsholders can request an update to the blocklist. This will then be reviewed by the court which can grant the amendment, when appropriate.

The blocking-related costs incurred by ISPs must be paid by the rightsholders and the blocking measures will remain active for two years. After that, Netflix and the other plaintiffs can request an extension.

As far as we know, none of the parties involved has issued a press release on this blocking order. Whether there are plans to target other pirate sites in the future is unknown but since additional blockades are typically more effective, that would make sense.

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A copy of the default judgment and the blocking order, both issues by the Honorable Mr. Justice Fothergill, are available here (1 & 2).

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

How do you fit 32 terabytes of storage into a hard drive? With a HAMR.

Seagate has been experimenting with heat-assisted magnetic recording, or HAMR, since at least 2002. The firm has occasionally popped up to offer a demonstration or make yet another "around the corner" pronouncement. The press has enjoyed myriad chances to celebrate the wordplay of Stanley Kirk Burrell, but new qualification from large-scale customers might mean HAMR drives will be actually available, to buy, as physical objects, for anyone who can afford the most magnetic space possible. Third decade's the charm, perhaps.

HAMR works on the principle that, when heated, a disk's magnetic materials can hold more data in smaller spaces, such that you can fit more overall data on the drive. It's not just putting a tiny hot plate inside an HDD chassis; as Seagate explains in its technical paper, "the entire process—heating, writing, and cooling—takes less than 1 nanosecond." Getting from a physics concept to an actual drive involved adding a laser diode to the drive head, optical steering, firmware alterations, and "a million other little things that engineers spent countless hours developing." Seagate has a lot more about Mozaic 3+ on its site.

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How do you fit 32 terabytes of storage into a hard drive? With a HAMR.

Seagate has been experimenting with heat-assisted magnetic recording, or HAMR, since at least 2002. The firm has occasionally popped up to offer a demonstration or make yet another "around the corner" pronouncement. The press has enjoyed myriad chances to celebrate the wordplay of Stanley Kirk Burrell, but new qualification from large-scale customers might mean HAMR drives will be actually available, to buy, as physical objects, for anyone who can afford the most magnetic space possible. Third decade's the charm, perhaps.

HAMR works on the principle that, when heated, a disk's magnetic materials can hold more data in smaller spaces, such that you can fit more overall data on the drive. It's not just putting a tiny hot plate inside an HDD chassis; as Seagate explains in its technical paper, "the entire process—heating, writing, and cooling—takes less than 1 nanosecond." Getting from a physics concept to an actual drive involved adding a laser diode to the drive head, optical steering, firmware alterations, and "a million other little things that engineers spent countless hours developing." Seagate has a lot more about Mozaic 3+ on its site.

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Return-to-office (RTO) mandates have caused companies to lose some of their best workers, a study tracking over 3 million workers at 54 "high-tech and financial" firms at the S&P 500 index has found. These companies also have greater challenges finding new talent, the report concluded.

The paper, Return-to-Office Mandates and Brain Drain [PDF], comes from researchers from the University of Pittsburgh, as well as Baylor University, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business. The study, which was published in November, spotted this month by human resources (HR) publication HR Dive, and cites Ars Technica reporting, was conducted by collecting information on RTO announcements and sourcing data from LinkedIn. The researchers said they only examined companies with data available for at least two quarters before and after they issued RTO mandates. The researchers explained:

To collect employee turnover data, we follow prior literature ... and obtain the employment history information of over 3 million employees of the 54 RTO firms from Revelio Labs, a leading data provider that extracts information from employee LinkedIn profiles. We manually identify employees who left a firm during each period, then calculate the firm’s turnover rate by dividing the number of departing employees by the total employee headcount at the beginning of the period. We also obtain information about employees’ gender, seniority, and the number of skills listed on their individual LinkedIn profiles, which serves as a proxy for employees’ skill level.

There are limits to the study, however. The researchers noted that the study "cannot draw causal inferences based on our setting." Further, smaller firms and firms outside of the high-tech and financial industries may show different results. Although not mentioned in the report, relying on data from a social media platform could also yield inaccuracies, and the number of skills listed on a LinkedIn profile may not accurately depict a worker's skill level.

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Return-to-office (RTO) mandates have caused companies to lose some of their best workers, a study tracking over 3 million workers at 54 "high-tech and financial" firms at the S&P 500 index has found. These companies also have greater challenges finding new talent, the report concluded.

The paper, Return-to-Office Mandates and Brain Drain [PDF], comes from researchers from the University of Pittsburgh, as well as Baylor University, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business. The study, which was published in November, spotted this month by human resources (HR) publication HR Dive, and cites Ars Technica reporting, was conducted by collecting information on RTO announcements and sourcing data from LinkedIn. The researchers said they only examined companies with data available for at least two quarters before and after they issued RTO mandates. The researchers explained:

To collect employee turnover data, we follow prior literature ... and obtain the employment history information of over 3 million employees of the 54 RTO firms from Revelio Labs, a leading data provider that extracts information from employee LinkedIn profiles. We manually identify employees who left a firm during each period, then calculate the firm’s turnover rate by dividing the number of departing employees by the total employee headcount at the beginning of the period. We also obtain information about employees’ gender, seniority, and the number of skills listed on their individual LinkedIn profiles, which serves as a proxy for employees’ skill level.

There are limits to the study, however. The researchers noted that the study "cannot draw causal inferences based on our setting." Further, smaller firms and firms outside of the high-tech and financial industries may show different results. Although not mentioned in the report, relying on data from a social media platform could also yield inaccuracies, and the number of skills listed on a LinkedIn profile may not accurately depict a worker's skill level.

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Application developers who access OpenAI through its long-running API will now have access to the company's latest full o1 model, rather than the months-old o1-preview. The upgrade is one of a number of new features being rolled out to OpenAI's developer customers starting today.

OpenAI announced during a livestream today that the new o1 model would bring back many of the "core features you've been missing" from the API during o1-preview. This includes the ability to use developer messages to help guide your particular chatbot (i.e. "You are a helpful assistant for tax professionals.") and access to a "reasoning effort" parameter that tells the API how long to think about specific queries, saving time and money on simple problems so they can be used on the tougher ones. API users can also use visual information like scans of documents as input.

OpenAI also highlighted improvements to the new API's use of internal function calling, where the OpenAI model decides to call functions pre-written by outside developers to generate answers to certain queries, when appropriate. The new API is also more accurate in its use of structured outputs, which use a JSON schema to present information in a specific format outlined by the developer, OpenAI said.

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