“MNT Reform Next” combines open source hardware and usable performance
Enlarge / More streamlined (but still user-replaceable) battery packs are responsible for some of the Reform Next's space savings.MNT Research The current booting prototype of the MNT Reform Next. MNT Research The casing prototype is still being prototyped with 3D prints, but the final version will be anodized aluminum. MNT Research One of three "port…
Roblox announces AI tool for generating 3D game worlds from text
On Friday, Roblox announced plans to introduce an open source generative AI tool that will allow game creators to build 3D environments and objects using text prompts, reports MIT Tech Review. The feature, which is still under development, may streamline the process of creating game worlds on the popular online platform, potentially opening up more…
Debate over “open source AI” term brings new push to formalize...
Enlarge / A man peers over a glass partition, seeking transparency. The Open Source Initiative (OSI) recently unveiled its latest draft definition for "open source AI," aiming to clarify the ambiguous use of the term in the fast-moving field. The move comes as some companies like Meta release trained AI language model weights and code…
The next Nvidia driver makes even more GPUs “open,” in a...
Getty Images You have to read the headline on Nvidia's latest GPU announcement slowly, parsing each clause as it arrives. "Nvidia transitions fully" sounds like real commitment, a burn-the-boats call. "Towards open-source GPU," yes, evoking the company's "first step" announcement a little over two years ago, so this must be progress, right? But, back up…
Here’s how carefully concealed backdoor in fake AWS files escaped mainstream...
Researchers have determined that two fake AWS packages downloaded hundreds of times from the open source NPM JavaScript repository contained carefully concealed code that backdoored developers' computers when executed. The packages—img-aws-s3-object-multipart-copy and legacyaws-s3-object-multipart-copy—were attempts to appear as aws-s3-object-multipart-copy, a legitimate JavaScript library for copying files using Amazon’s S3 cloud service. The fake files included all…
Samsung’s abandoned NX cameras can be brought online with a $20...
Enlarge / Under-powered Samsung camera, meet over-powered 4G LTE dongle. Now work together to move pictures over the air.Georg Lukas Back in 2010—after the first iPhone, but before its camera was any good—a mirrorless, lens-swapping camera that could upload photos immediately to social media or photo storage sites was a novel proposition. That's what Samsung's…
3 million iOS and macOS apps were exposed to potent supply-chain...
Aurich Lawson Vulnerabilities that went undetected for a decade left thousands of macOS and iOS apps susceptible to supply-chain attacks. Hackers could have added malicious code compromising the security of millions or billions of people who installed them, researchers said Monday. The vulnerabilities, which were fixed last October, resided in a “trunk” server used to…
Microsoft open-sources infamously weird, RAM-hungry MS-DOS 4.00 release
Microsoft has open-sourced another bit of computing history this week: The company teamed up with IBM to release the source code of 1988's MS-DOS 4.00, a version better known for its unpopularity, bugginess, and convoluted development history than its utility as a computer operating system. The MS-DOS 4.00 code is available on Microsoft's MS-DOS GitHub…
Home Assistant has a new foundation and a goal to become...
Open Home Foundation Home Assistant, until recently, has been a wide-ranging and hard-to-define project. The open smart home platform is an open source OS you can run anywhere that aims to connect all your devices together. But it's also bespoke Raspberry Pi hardware, in Yellow and Green. It's entirely free, but it also receives funding…
LLMs keep leaping with Llama 3, Meta’s newest open-weights AI model
On Thursday, Meta unveiled early versions of its Llama 3 open-weights AI model that can be used to power text composition, code generation, or chatbots. It also announced that its Meta AI Assistant is now available on a website and is going to be integrated into its major social media apps, intensifying the company's efforts…