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Hackers are using developing countries for ransomware practice

Cyber attackers are experimenting with their latest ransomware on businesses in Africa, Asia, and South America before targeting richer countries that have more sophisticated security methods.

Hackers have adopted a “strategy” of infiltrating systems in the developing world before moving to higher-value targets such as in North America and Europe, according to a report published on Wednesday by cyber security firm Performanta.

“Adversaries are using developing countries as a platform where they can test their malicious programs before the more resourceful countries are targeted,” the company told Banking Risk and Regulation, a service from FT Specialist.

Tesla’s Optimus robots to be sold soon? Elon Musk shares major update

Humanoid robots have been in development for many years by Japan’s Honda and Hyundai Motor’s Boston Dynamics. Earlier this year, Microsoft and Nvidia-backed startup Figure said it had signed a partnership with German automaker BMW to deploy humanoid robots in the car maker’s facility in the US.

Elon Musk said before that robot sales could become a larger part of the Tesla business. He said, “I think Tesla is best positioned of any humanoid robot maker to be able to reach volume production with efficient inference on the robot itself.”

Space is booming. Here’s how to embrace the $1.8 trillion opportunity

The LASSIE project is preparing for a time when people and robots explore space together.

Learn more about how the #space economy can improve life on #Earth from our new insight report, ‘Space: The $1.8 Trillion Opportunity for Global Economic Growth’:


Space is approaching a new frontier. The space economy is expected to be worth $1.8 trillion by 2035 as satellite and rocket-enabled technologies become increasingly prevalent, according to a new report.

Already, space-enabled technologies drive everything from weather forecasts to the increasingly ubiquitous smart gadgets such as smart watchs. Yet space technologies are also delivering benefits to a wider range of stakeholders, with industries such as retail, consumer goods and lifestyle; food and beverages; supply chains and transport; and disaster mitigation all set to benefit from space innovations.

“Space technologies are delivering greater value to a more diverse set of stakeholders than ever before,” said Sebastian Buckup, Member of the Executive Committee, World Economic Forum. “As costs reduce and accessibility rises, these technologies could reshape whole industries, and have as much impact on business and society as smartphones or cloud computing.”

TSMC Will Have An AI Business Bigger Than All Of Intel Foundry

Everyone is in a big hurry to get the latest and greatest GPU accelerators to build generative AI platforms. Those who can’t get GPUs, or have custom devices that are better suited to their workloads than GPUs, deploy other kinds of accelerators.

The companies designing these AI compute engines have two things in common. First, they are all using Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co as their chip etching foundry, and many are using TSMC as their socket packager. And second, they have not lost their minds. With the devices launched so far this year, AI compute engine designers are hanging back a bit rather than try to be on the bleeding edge of process and packaging technology so they can make a little money on products and processes that were very expensive to develop.

Nothing shows this better than the fact that the future “Blackwell” B100 and B200 GPU accelerators from Nvidia, which are not even going to start shipping until later this year, are based on the N4P process at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. This is a refined variant of the N4 process that the prior generation of “Hopper” H100 and H200 GPUs used, also a 4 nanometer product.

CEOs Suddenly Fear AI Will Take Their Jobs Too

As many CEOs gloat over the idea of replacing their human workers with AI, some of them are now starting to fear that they, too, may be on the chopping block.

Per a new report from the IT consulting firm AND Digital which surveyed hundreds of business leaders in the US, the UK, and the Netherlands, 43 percent of respondents said they believed AI could take their job as CEO.

Denizens of the C-suite aren’t making a strong case for keeping their positions, either. Embarrassingly, nearly that exact same proportion — 45 percent — admitted to secretly making major business decisions “based on data and information obtained using ChatGPT.” Strong evidence, perhaps, that maybe replacing CEOs with AI isn’t such a bad idea after all.

Are Fundamental Constants Fundamental? | Peter Atkins and Jim Baggott

Peter Atkins discusses the ideas in his book ‘Conjuring the Universe’ with fellow science writer Jim Baggott. They discuss how fundamental the various constants of the universe truly are.

https://global.oup.com/academic/produ

Professor Peter Atkins is a fellow of Lincoln College in the University of Oxford and the author of about seventy books for students and a general audience. His texts are market leaders around the globe. A frequent lecturer in the United States and throughout the world, he has held visiting professorships in France, Israel, Japan, China, and New Zealand. He was the founding chairman of the Committee on Chemistry Education of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry and was a member of IUPAC’s Physical and Biophysical Chemistry Division. Peter was the 2016 recipient of the American Chemical Society’s Grady-Stack Award for science journalism.

Jim Baggott is a freelance science writer. He was a lecturer in chemistry at the University of Reading but left to work with Shell International Petroleum Company and then as an independent business consultant and trainer. His many books include Mass: The quest to understand matter from Greek atoms to quantum fields; Higgs: The Invention and Discovery of the ‘God Particle’; and The Quantum Story: A History in 40 Moments.

© Oxford University Press

Voice Assistants Learn the Art of Small Talk

Voice assistants have already made significant strides in areas such as smart home integration, educational settings and business applications. However, their current capabilities are limited by a lack of robust reasoning and planning abilities.

In fact, just 7.8% of consumers believe voice technology is as smart and reliable as a real person today, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence report “ How Consumers Want to Live in the Voice Economy.”

Apple spotlights how businesses are adopting the Apple Vision Pro

Working to promote the Apple Vision Pro as a business tool instead of solely an entertainment one, Apple has highlighted half a dozen firms from Porsche to Microsoft, who have incorporated the headset into their work.

While perhaps most attention that the Apple Vision Pro has received concerns its immersive video for entertainment, Apple has always aimed it equally at businesses. Now Apple wants to press hard on the idea of Apple Vision Pro being a tool that companies need.

“There’s tremendous opportunity for businesses to reimagine what’s possible using Apple Vision Pro at work,” Susan Prescott, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations and Enterprise Marketing, said in a statement. “We’re thrilled to see the innovative ways organizations are already using Apple Vision Pro, from planning fire response operations to iterating on the most intricate details of an engine design — and this is just the beginning.”