Epic Games has announced a new, browser-based software tool powered by its Unreal Engine called the MetaHuman Creator that can craft highly realistic human faces and help power more realistic body movements and facial animations. The Verge reports: Epic says the MetaHuman Creator can be used in conjunction with modern motion capture and animation techniques for creating lifelike movements and human…
Tag: web
AI Program Claims To Predict COVID-19 Death Rate With 90 Percent Accuracy
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Next Web: Scientists from the University of Copenhagen have developed an AI tool that can predict who’ll die from COVID-19 with up to 90% accuracy. It also predicted whether someone who’s admitted to hospital with COVID-19 will need a respirator with 80% accuracy. The researchers fed the system health data from almost 4,000…
Can Artificial Intelligence Restore 85-Year-Old Popeye Cartoons?
A Slashdot reader shared an anonymous tip about “new consumer-grade artificial intelligence employed to restore 85 year-old Popeye cartoons, using only the available digital copies as sources for the remastering.” It’s eerie to see vintage cartoons like Popeye the Sailor meets Sindbad the Sailor upgraded to high resolution. It’s apparently the work of Cartoon Renewal Studios, a group “Dedicated to the…
Has Section 230 Created a ‘Vast Web of Vengeance’?
Slashdot reader GatorSnake shares “Another take of the implications of Section 230… One person poisoned the online personas of multiple people who had ‘wronged’ her, with it being nearly impossible to have the false accusations removed from the sites or from Google’s search results.” The New York Times reports:
Mr. Babcock, a software engineer, got off the phone and Googled himself. The…
Plex Media Servers Are Being Abused For DDoS Attacks
DDoS-for-hire services have found a way to abuse Plex Media servers to bounce junk traffic and amplify distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, security firm Netscout said in an alert this week. From a report: The company’s alert warns owners of devices that ship with Plex Media Server, a web application for Windows, Mac, and Linux that’s usually used for video…
Google Explores Alternative To Apple’s New Anti-Tracking Feature
Google is exploring an alternative to Apple’s new anti-tracking feature, the latest sign that the internet industry is slowly embracing user privacy, Bloomberg is reporting, citing people with knowledge of the matter. From the report: Internally, the search giant is discussing how it can limit data collection and cross-app tracking on the Android operating system in a way that is less…
Google Chrome Sync Feature Can Be Abused For C&C and Data Exfiltration
Threat actors have discovered they can abuse the Google Chrome sync feature to send commands to infected browsers and steal data from infected systems, bypassing traditional firewalls and other network defenses. From a report: For non-Chrome users, Chrome sync is a feature of the Chrome web browser that stores copies of a user’s Chrome bookmarks, browsing history, passwords, and browser and…
Google Launches News Showcase In Australia Amid Dispute Over Proposed Law
Google has launched a limited version of its News Showcase in Australia despite threatening to pull Search from the nation a fortnight ago. ZDNet reports: News Showcase, Google claims, provides an “enhanced view” of articles, and aims to give participating news publishers more ways to share important news to readers while having “more direct control of presentation and branding.” The product…
Google Boots ‘The Great Suspender’ Off the Chrome Web Store For Being Malware
Google has blocked The Great Suspender extension from the Chrome store “because it contains malware.” The extension was very popular for users running Chrome with 8GB or less of RAM, as it would automatically suspend tabs you hadn’t used in a while, freeing up precious memory and CPU power. It would then allow you to return to the tab and reload…
Parler CEO John Matze Says Company’s Board Fired Him
John Matze, CEO and co-founder of far-right friendly social media platform Parler, said on LinkedIn Wednesday that he has been terminated. Axios reports: Parler has been at the center of controversy since Amazon Web Services, Apple and Google unplugged the network last month for its lack of content moderation related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. In a memo obtained by…