TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Bleeping Computer: Microsoft pushes OOB security updates for Windows Snipping tool flaw. “Now tracked as CVE-2023-28303, the Acropalypse vulnerability is caused by image editors not properly removing cropped image data when overwriting the original file. For example, if you take a screenshot and crop out sensitive information, such as account numbers, you should have reasonable expectations that this cropped data will be removed when saving the image. However, with this bug, both the Google Pixel’s Markup Tool and the Windows Snipping Tool were found to be leaving the cropped data within the original file.”

USEFUL STUFF

WIRED: How to Mute Everyone. “Free yourself from manufactured outrage and the fear of missing out. Life is too short to subject yourself to the ravings of every misguided relative, drunk friend, or semi-acquaintance. It’s time you learned how to mute.”

The Verge: AI chatbots compared: Bard vs. Bing vs. ChatGPT. “The web is full of chattering bots, but which is the most useful and for what? We compare Bard, Bing, and ChatGPT.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Techdirt: Game Jam Winner Spotlight: The Pigeon Wager. “Jason Morningstar seems to have a knack for Deep Cut games: last year he handily snagged the prize with The Obstruction Method, and this year’s entry has once again demonstrated why the category is one of our favorites. The Pigeon Wager takes its inspiration from ‘The Military Use Of The Homing Pigeon’, an article published in a 1927 issue of an ornithology quarterly. On this humble foundation, the game builds a live-action roleplaying exercise full of drama and creativity.”

Motherboard: The Amateurs Jailbreaking GPT Say They’re Preventing a Closed-Source AI Dystopia. “OpenAI’s latest version of its popular large language model, GPT-4, is the company’s ‘most capable and aligned model yet,’ according to CEO Sam Altman. Yet, within two days of its release, developers were already able to override its moderation filters, providing users with harmful content that ranged from telling users how to hack into someone’s computer to explaining why Mexicans should be deported. This jailbreak is only the latest in a series that users have been able to run on GPT models.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Wall Street Journal: U.S. State-Government Websites Use TikTok Trackers, Review Finds. “More than two dozen state governments have placed web-tracking code made by TikTok parent ByteDance Ltd. on official websites, according to a new report from a cybersecurity company, illustrating the difficulties U.S. regulators face in curtailing data-collection efforts by the popular Chinese-owned app.”

Ars Technica: “Click-to-cancel” rule would penalize companies that make you cancel by phone. “Canceling a subscription should be just as easy as signing up for the service, the Federal Trade Commission said in a proposed ‘click-to-cancel’ rule announced today. If approved, the plan ‘would put an end to companies requiring you to call customer service to cancel an account that you opened on their website,’ FTC commissioners said.”

The Record: BreachForums says it is closing after suspected law enforcement access to backend. “In an abrupt about-face, the new administrator of popular cybercriminal platform BreachForums said they plan to shut down the site after its previous administrator was allegedly arrested last week.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Arizona: Confused by quantum computing? Students are developing a puzzle game to help. “University of Arizona students have developed a computer game to make complex quantum computation concepts easier to grasp. The game challenges users to arrange puzzle pieces into a shape that models a quantum computing circuit. The game was designed to teach students, and even quantum researchers, an unconventional model of quantum computation.”

SiliconAngle: Databricks open-sources an AI it says is as good as ChatGPT, but much easier to train. “Big-data analytics firm Databricks Inc. has emerged as an unlikely player in the generative artificial intelligence space, open-sourcing a new AI model that it claims is ‘as magical as ChatGPT,’ despite being trained on far less data in less than three hours using a single machine.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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