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SpaceX is building a network of spy satellites

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On this day in 2012, "The new iPad" was released.


In today's Techpresso:

🛰️ SpaceX is building a network of spy satellites

⏳ BeReal has 10 months left before it runs out of money

🔍 FTC is probing Reddit’s AI licensing deals

💻 New jailbreak uses ASCII art to elicit harmful responses from leading LLMs

🎁 + 6 other news you might like

🔮 + 6 handpicked research papers and tools

🛰️ SpaceX is building a network of spy satellitesLINK

  • SpaceX is building a network of spy satellites for a US intelligence agency under a secretive $1.8 billion contract with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).
  • The project involves deploying hundreds of satellites with advanced imaging capabilities into low-Earth orbit
  • It also underscores SpaceX's deepening ties with US national security agencies and represents an effort to bolster the US as a dominant military power in space against rivals like China and Russia.
  • ⏳ BeReal has 10 months left before it runs out of moneyLINK

  • BeReal has approximately 10 months of financial runway remaining, as employees were informed in a February all-hands meeting, according to a report by Business Insider.
  • The company, known for its real-time photo-sharing feature and dubbed the "anti-Instagram," reached a $600 million valuation in 2022 but is now struggling to attract investor interest, with significant server costs and a team of 60.
  • Despite an increase in monthly and daily active users to 40 million and 25 million respectively, the app's recent growth is considered unimpressive by investors, and leadership is exploring a potential acquisition by major tech companies.
  • 🔍 FTC is probing Reddit’s AI licensing dealsLINK

  • Reddit is under investigation by the FTC for its data licensing practices concerning user-generated content being used to train AI models.
  • The investigation focuses on Reddit's engagement in selling, licensing, or sharing data with third parties for AI training.
  • Reddit anticipates generating approximately USD 60 million in 2024 from a data licensing agreement with Google, aiming to leverage its platform data for training Large Language Models (LLMs).
  • 💻 New jailbreak uses ASCII art to elicit harmful responses from leading LLMsLINK

  • Researchers identified a new vulnerability in leading AI language models, named ArtPrompt, which uses ASCII art to exploit the models' security mechanisms.
  • ArtPrompt masks security-sensitive words with ASCII art, fooling language models like GPT-3.5, GPT-4, Gemini, Claude, and Llama2 into performing actions they would otherwise block, such as giving instructions for making a bomb.
  • The study underscores the need for enhanced defensive measures for language models, as ArtPrompt, by leveraging a mix of text-based and image-based inputs, can effectively bypass current security protocols.
  • Other news you might like

    Microsoft is once again asking Chrome users to try Bing through unblockable pop-ups.LINK

    Former Blue Origin employees want to harvest helium-3 from the Moon.LINK

    OpenAI aims to make its own AI processors — chip venture in talks with Abu Dhabi investment firm.LINK

    Once “too scary” to release, GPT-2 gets squeezed into an Excel spreadsheet.LINK

    Starbucks abandons Odyssey NFT program, cites readiness for future evolution.LINK

    Sony’s PS5 Pro is up to three times faster, may arrive holiday 2024.LINK

    Latest research and tools

    Mozilla Location Service: a tool being retired by Mozilla that facilitates geolocation by crowdsourcing data, and now prompts users to discuss or inquire about it on GitHub with a free account.LINK

    OpenVPN Is Open to VPN Fingerprinting: the research discovers vulnerabilities in OpenVPN that could allow websites to determine whether a visitor is using a VPN.LINK

    AutoDev: Microsoft introduces an AI-driven approach to automate software development processes.LINK

    ArXiv Papers as Audiobooks Official Implementation: converts ArXiv papers into engaging video formats or audio files, utilizing latex conversion, HTML parsing, OpenAI GPT for paraphrasing and simplification, Google's text-to-speech for audio, and video mapping, offering both detailed and summarized versions with the option to upload audio to Google Drive.LINK

    deptry 0.14.0: a tool that detects unused Python dependencies up to 10 times faster by leveraging Rust for parsing and extracting import statements from Abstract Syntax Trees.LINK

    Flash Attention CUDA and PyTorch implementation: a simplified, educational re-implementation of Flash Attention using CUDA and PyTorch aimed at helping CUDA beginners understand the forward pass in about 100 lines of code.LINK


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