MSI Net, Inc. & mCloudServ

Researchers: an updated Chameleon trojan uses an HTML page trick to disrupt biometrics on Android like Face Unlock to steal PINs and unlock the device at will (Bill Toulas/BleepingComputer)

Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer: Researchers: an updated Chameleon trojan uses an HTML page trick to disrupt biometrics on Android like Face Unlock to steal PINs and unlock the device at will — The Chameleon Android banking trojan has re-emerged with a new version that uses a tricky technique to take over devices …

How to create your own chatbot with OpenAI custom GPTs

For nearly a year after its release, ChatGPT behaved the same way for everyone. With the exception of the paid ChatGPT Plus tier and the optional GPT-4 language model, there weren’t many ways in which you could customize the chatbot. However, that finally changed when ChatGPT introduced custom instructions, which let you specify the chatbot’s

Researchers extract business and personal email addresses for 30+ NYT staff by fine tuning GPT-3.5 Turbo, bypassing the safeguards for privacy-related queries (Jeremy White/New York Times)

Jeremy White / New York Times: Researchers extract business and personal email addresses for 30+ NYT staff by fine tuning GPT-3.5 Turbo, bypassing the safeguards for privacy-related queries — This is a visualization of a large email database from the Enron Corporation, which is often used to train artificial intelligence systems, like ChatGPT.

Absorbing Traffic Noise With Bricks Using Helmholtz Resonators

One inevitable aspect of cities and urban life in general is that it is noisy, with traffic being one of the main sources of noise pollution. Finding a way to attenuate especially the low-frequency noise of road traffic was the subject of [Joe Krcma]’s Masters Thesis, the results of which he gave a talk on

A profile of Yi He, a former talk-show host, who co-founded Binance with Changpeng Zhao and has sweeping control over its marketing and investment divisions (Wall Street Journal)

Wall Street Journal: A profile of Yi He, a former talk-show host, who co-founded Binance with Changpeng Zhao and has sweeping control over its marketing and investment divisions — Yi He, a former talk-show host, has sweeping control over the crypto giant’s marketing and investment divisions.

Hackaday Links: December 24, 2023

Back near the beginning of the current Solar Cycle 25, we penned an article on what the whole deal is with solar cycles, and what could potentially lie in store for us as the eleven-year cycle of sunspot population developed. Although it doesn’t really come across in the article, we remember being somewhat pessimistic about

DIY Cleats Give You Traction In Ice And Snow

It’s getting into the cold and snowy season for much of the world, and that means it can be slippy when you go walking outside. If you need more traction, but your shoes don’t have spikes, fear not. You can build yourself a set of these nifty strap-on cleats designed by [Zero To Infinity]. The

What to watch on Netflix, Disney+ and Apple TV in January 2024

Christmas is fast approaching, but that means so is January. For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere it brings more bleak, long, cold nights of winter without the buzz and sparkle of the holiday season to get us through it. But fear not. It’s also the perfect time to snuggle up on the sofa

Nvidia and its staff donated $15M to Israeli nonprofits helping civilians affected by the Israel-Hamas war, the largest humanitarian fundraiser for the company (Steven Scheer/Reuters)

Steven Scheer / Reuters: Nvidia and its staff donated $15M to Israeli nonprofits helping civilians affected by the Israel-Hamas war, the largest humanitarian fundraiser for the company — U.S. chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA.O) and its employees have donated $15 million to Israeli non-profit organisations …

Researchers from Apple and Columbia University released Ferret, an open source multimodal LLM that can recognize and describe any shape in an image, in October (Sharon Goldman/VentureBeat)

Sharon Goldman / VentureBeat: Researchers from Apple and Columbia University released Ferret, an open source multimodal LLM that can recognize and describe any shape in an image, in October — With little fanfare, researchers from Apple and Columbia University released an open source multimodal LLM, called Ferret, in October 2023.

The DJI Osmo Pocket 3 is my favorite gadget of the year

Credit: C. Scott Brown / Android Authority Opinion post by C. Scott Brown We focus a lot on Android phones here at Android Authority. To cap off every year, we hand out an Editor’s Choice award for what we think is the best phone. We also run a multi-day event where you pick the Reader’s

A look at Sam Altman’s history at Loopt and Y Combinator, where his side activities and personal projects riled colleagues and forced his departure from YC (Wall Street Journal)

Wall Street Journal: A look at Sam Altman’s history at Loopt and Y Combinator, where his side activities and personal projects riled colleagues and forced his departure from YC — The OpenAI CEO lost the confidence of top leaders in the three organizations he has directed, yet each time he’s rebounded to greater heights

How Does a Sewing Machine Sew?

Like all Hackaday readers, we pride ourselves on having at least a passing acquaintance with how most things work. But we suspect to a lot of people, things we take for granted — computers, air conditioning, motors, and cell phones — are just black magic. That’s how we feel about sewing machines. Sure, there’s a

The biggest smartphone flops and fails of 2023

Credit: Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority There were plenty of bright spots for the smartphone industry in 2023. We finally got more foldable phone competition for Samsung, mid-range phones continued to bring the heat, and software update policies saw a major upgrade. It wasn’t all good, though. For every major win in the mobile space

Nvidia and its staff donated $15M to Israeli nonprofits helping civilians affected by the Israel-Hamas war, the largest humanitarian fundraiser for the company (Steven Scheer/Reuters)

The biggest smartphone flops and fails of 2023

The PlayStation Portal is flawed but fun

It does one thing well, and yet there are other multi-use devices that are arguably better, but dammit sometimes I’m lazy. Continue reading…

10 Best Strollers for Almost Every Budget and Need (2023)

Whether you’re pushing your kid down the street or running on a trail, we have a stroller for you.

9 iPad resolutions to get the most out of your tablet in the New Year

9 tips to keep your iPad running fast and smooth in the new year.

The most intriguing phone I tested in 2023 was the Fairphone 5

Credit: Rita El Khoury / Android Authority Opinion post by Rita El Khoury I still remember the days when taking apart a phone was a matter of removing the battery cover, turning a few very obvious screws, and pulling plastics and metal bits apart to reveal the board, charging connector, screen, and speaker. With the

10 great shows from 2023 to watch on Hulu

The Verge / Photo Courtesy of IMDB and Hulu Hulu got a big price hike this year, but it’s getting increasingly harder to cancel (at least for me) thanks to the overwhelming number of shows and movies to watch on the Disney-owned service. While those of us in the US can currently access Hulu separately

A look at Take-Two’s $12B Zynga deal in 2022, just as casual games peaked post pandemic, Apple introduced ATT, and the mobile game market headed into a downturn (Cecilia D’Anastasio/Bloomberg)

Cecilia D’Anastasio / Bloomberg: A look at Take-Two’s $12B Zynga deal in 2022, just as casual games peaked post pandemic, Apple introduced ATT, and the mobile game market headed into a downturn — Video-game giant’s push into smartphone titles was expensive and late. — Excitement over the upcoming release of Grand Theft Auto VI …

The Tantalizing Mystery of the Solar System’s Hidden Oceans

The moons orbiting Jupiter and Saturn appear to have subsurface oceans which could support life beyond Earth. But it’s not clear why these seas exist at all.

AI Is Telling Bedtime Stories to Your Kids Now

Artificial intelligence can now tell tales featuring your kids’ favorite characters. It’s copyright chaos—and a major headache for parents and guardians.

Talking Ohmmeter Also Spits Out Color Bands For You

If you’ve got a resistor and you can’t read the color bands (or they’re not present), you can always just grab a multimeter and figure out its value that way. [Giacomo Yong Cuomo] and [Sophia Lin] have built an altogether different kind of ohmmeter, that can actually spit out color values for you, and even

Blog