Jason Parker, a software developer turned security researcher, has found and reported dozens of critical vulnerabilities in 19 commercial platforms used by hundreds of courts, government agencies, and police departments across the country. The vulnerabilities allowed attackers to falsify registration databases and add, delete, or modify official documents. One flaw was discovered in the voter registration cancellation portal for the state of Georgia, which allowed anyone to cancel the registration of any voter in that state.

Source: https://www.techmeme.com/river

Source: https://www.techmeme.com/river

Hurricane Helene has caused catastrophic damage to the communications infrastructure in western North Carolina, resulting in severe to total blackouts of cell towers and internet services. Edward Hinson, chief marketing and sales officer at SkyLine/SkyBest, a small telecommunications company, is assessing the damage. The company provides TV and internet service to rural areas.

Source: https://www.techmeme.com/river

Source: https://www.techmeme.com/river

Source: https://www.techmeme.com/river

Liquid AI, a startup co-founded by former MIT researchers, has debuted its first multimodal AI models, which are not based on the transformer architecture. The company aims to build foundation models beyond Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPTs) from first principles. The new models, called LFMs, are designed to explore alternative approaches to building AI models.

Source: https://www.techmeme.com/river

Source: https://www.techmeme.com/river

Google's NotebookLM has introduced a new feature called Audio Overview, which automatically generates podcasts based on provided content. The podcasts are around ten minutes long and feature a convincing conversation between two AI hosts. Users can customize the content by gathering multiple sources, including documents, text, and web links.

Source: https://www.techmeme.com/river

Source: https://www.techmeme.com/river

Cerebras Systems, an artificial intelligence chip startup, has filed its prospectus for an initial public offering (IPO) to trade under the ticker symbol "CBRS" on the Nasdaq. The company competes with Nvidia, whose graphics processing units are the industry's choice for training and running AI models. Cerebras' WSE-3 chip has more cores and memory than Nvidia's popular H100, and is a physically larger chip. The company had a net loss of $66.6 million in the first six months of 2024 on $136.4 million in sales.

Source: https://www.techmeme.com/river