Synology BeeStation review: A great way to start getting real about backups

Synology BeeStation review: A great way to start getting real about backups

Enlarge / In this handout image from Synology, a thoughtful worker uses BeeFiles on their MacBook and BeePhotos on their iPhone, always keeping their BeeStation close at hand. They might have important thoughts about the books “Island” or “DECO” to keep stored privately, redundantly, forever. Synology Dropbox is not backup. A portable hard drive is…

Union game performers strike over AI voice and motion-capture training

Union game performers strike over AI voice and motion-capture training

Enlarge / One day, using pixellated fonts and images to represent that something is a video game will not be a trope. Today is not that day. SAG-AFTRA has called for a strike of all its members working in video games, with the union demanding that its next contract not allow “companies to abuse AI…

X is training Grok AI on your data—here’s how to stop it

X is training Grok AI on your data—here’s how to stop it

Enlarge / An AI-generated image released by xAI during the open-weights launch of Grok-1. Elon Musk-led social media platform X is training Grok, its AI chatbot, on users’ data, and that’s opt-out, not opt-in. If you’re an X user, that means Grok is already being trained on your posts if you haven’t explicitly told it…

97% of CrowdStrike systems are back online; Microsoft suggests Windows changes

97% of CrowdStrike systems are back online; Microsoft suggests Windows changes

Enlarge / A bad update to CrowdStrike’s Falcon security software crashed millions of Windows PCs last week. (credit: CrowdStrike) CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said Thursday that 97 percent of all Windows systems running its Falcon sensor software were back online, a week after an update-related outage to the corporate security software delayed flights and took…

Hang out with Ars in San Jose and DC this fall for two infrastructure events

Hang out with Ars in San Jose and DC this fall for two infrastructure events

Enlarge / Infrastructure! Howdy, Arsians! Last year, we partnered with IBM to host an in-person event in the Houston area where we all gathered together, had some cocktails, and talked about resiliency and the future of IT. Location always matters for things like this, and so we hosted it at Space Center Houston and had…

Google claims math breakthrough with proof-solving AI models

Google claims math breakthrough with proof-solving AI models

Enlarge / An illustration provided by Google. (credit: Google) On Thursday, Google DeepMind announced that AI systems called AlphaProof and AlphaGeometry 2 reportedly solved four out of six problems from this year’s International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO), achieving a score equivalent to a silver medal. The tech giant claims this marks the first time an AI…

OpenAI hits Google where it hurts with new SearchGPT prototype

OpenAI hits Google where it hurts with new SearchGPT prototype

Enlarge (credit: Benj Edwards / OpenAI) Arguably, few companies have unintentionally contributed more to the increase of AI-generated noise online than OpenAI. Despite its best intentions—and against its terms of service—its AI language models are often used to compose spam, and its pioneering research has inspired others to build AI models that can potentially do…

Chrome will now prompt some users to send passwords for suspicious files

Chrome will now prompt some users to send passwords for suspicious files

(credit: Chrome) Google is redesigning Chrome malware detections to include password-protected executable files that users can upload for deep scanning, a change the browser maker says will allow it to detect more malicious threats. Google has long allowed users to switch on the Enhanced Mode of its Safe Browsing, a Chrome feature that warns users…