Criminals used artificial intelligence-based software to impersonate a chief executive’s voice and demand a fraudulent transfer of $243,000 in March in what cybercrime experts described as an unusual case of artificial intelligence being used in hacking. From a report: The CEO of a U.K.-based energy firm thought he was speaking on the phone with his boss, the chief executive of the…
Tag: voice
An Alternative for ‘Less Relevant’ Agile: the Studio Model
Last week Forbes ran an article by writer/data scientist Kurt Cagle arguing that Agile software development “was becoming less and less relevant.” Within five days it had racked up 300,000 hits, and “I’m still digging out from the deluge of email, Tweets and Linked In messages,” he wrote this week. But in a new follow-up, Cagle looks back over his 40…
Some Original Berkeley Unix Pioneers Still Work On The FreeBSD Project
Slashdot reader sfcrazy writes:
The Linux Foundation hosted the executive director of the FreeBSD Foundation, Deb Goodkin, at the Open Source Summit in San Diego. In this episode of Let’s Talk, we sat down with Goodkin to talk about the FreeBSD project and the foundation. “How did they let you in?” jokes their interviewer. “They didn’t realize that FreeBSD was not a…
Apple Contractors Were Each Listening To 1,000 Siri Recordings a Day, Says Report
According to The Verge, citing a report from the Irish Examiner, Apple used human contractors to listen to an arduous 1,000 Siri recordings every day to help make the digital assistant better at giving you what you want. Some of those recordings included personal data and snippets of conversations, one contractor says. An anonymous reader shares the report: Apple’s Siri assistant…
Alexa, Siri, and Google Home Can Be Tricked Into Sending Callers To Scam Phone Numbers
“Don’t ask your smart device to look up a phone number, because it may accidentally point you to a scam,” warn the consumer watchdogs at the Better Business Bureau: You need the phone number for a company, so you ask your home’s smart device — such as Google Home, Siri, or Alexa — to find and dial it for you. But…
US Navy Tests WWII-ERA Messaging Tech: Dropping Bean Bags Onto Ships
Long-time Slashdot reader davidwr writes: In World War II, pilots would air-drop messages onto ships using bean-bags. Just as with sextants a few years ago, the Navy is bringing back old tech, because it works. Just as during the Doolittle Raid of Tokyo, the purpose is to prevent eavesdropping. You can read more about the modern bean-bag-drop on Military.com or Popular…
Apple, Spotify Discuss Siri Truce, as Antitrust Battle Looms
Apple and Spotify are in talks about potentially enabling Siri to play songs, albums, and playlists from the leading subscription music service. The Verge: A new report from The Information confirms that Spotify would be taking advantage of new capabilities that Apple is introducing in iOS 13 and iPadOS 13, which allow other apps to be on equal footing with Apple…
Facebook Paid Contractors To Transcribe Users’ Audio Chats
Facebook has been paying hundreds of outside contractors to transcribe clips of audio from users of its services, Bloomberg reported Tuesday, citing people with knowledge of the work. From the report: The work has rattled the contract employees, who are not told where the audio was recorded or how it was obtained — only to transcribe it, said the people, who…
Another Google Service Closes: Texts with Voicemail Transcripts
Long-time Slashdot reader freelunch reports that Google Voice “has announced via email that they are ending one of their most popular features — sending transcripts of voice mails via text message. The cited reason is carrier message blocking.” From Google’s email: It has come to our attention that certain carriers are blocking the delivery of these messages because they are automated…
Microsoft Contractors Are Listening To Some Skype Calls
Contractors working for Microsoft are listening to personal conversations of Skype users conducted through the app’s translation service, according to a cache of internal documents, screenshots, and audio recordings obtained by Motherboard. From a report: Although Skype’s website says that the company may analyze audio of phone calls that a user wants to translate in order to improve the chat platform’s…