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[31]Close binspamdupenotthebestofftopicslownewsdaystalestupid freshfunnyinsightfulinterestingmaybe offtopicflamebaittrollredundantoverrated insightfulinterestinginformativefunnyunderrated descriptive typodupeerror Unlock seamless, secure login experiences with [32]Auth0—where authentication meets innovation. Scale your business confidently with flexible, developer-friendly tools built to protect your users and data. [33]Try for FREE here [34]× 175896567 story [35]Microsoft [36]Microsoft Is Testing 45% M365 Price Hikes in Asia [37](theregister.com) Posted by msmash on Monday January 13, 2025 @12:30PM from the shape-of-things-to-come dept. Microsoft is raising Microsoft 365 subscription prices by [38]up to 46% across six Asian markets to fund AI features. In Australia, annual Microsoft 365 Family subscriptions will increase to AU$179 ($110) from AU$139, while Personal subscriptions will jump to AU$159 ($98) from AU$109. The price hikes also affect New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand customers. apply tags__________ 175896269 story [39]AI [40]Companies Deploy AI To Curb Hiring as 'Cost Avoidance' Gains Ground [41](msn.com) [42]12 Posted by msmash on Monday January 13, 2025 @11:50AM from the state-of-things dept. U.S. companies are increasingly using AI to [43]curb hiring plans, citing "cost avoidance" as a key metric to justify AI investments amid pressure to show returns. At software firm TS Imagine, AI-powered email sorting saves 4,000 work hours annually at 3% of employee costs, while Palantir reported AI reduced future headcount needs by 10-15%, according to company executives. The trend is most pronounced in software development and customer service sectors, where companies are deferring or scaling back hiring plans, said Gartner analyst Arun Chandrasekaran. This shift comes as long-term unemployment in the U.S. has risen more than 50% since late 2022, though tech sector unemployment dropped to 2% in December. apply tags__________ 175896091 story [44]Businesses [45]Ghost Jobs Haunt Online Listings [46](msn.com) [47]21 Posted by msmash on Monday January 13, 2025 @11:13AM from the closer-look dept. One in five online job postings may be "ghost jobs" that companies [48]never intend to fill, according to new data from hiring platform Greenhouse examining its clients' recruitment patterns in 2024. The analysis found that 18-22% of advertised positions across technology, finance, and healthcare sectors went unfilled, while nearly 70% of companies posted at least one ghost job in the second quarter of 2024. Construction, arts, food and beverage, and legal industries showed the highest rates of ghost listings. In response, Greenhouse and LinkedIn have introduced verification systems for job postings. LinkedIn reports more than half its listings are now tagged as "verified," indicating confirmed open positions. Companies maintain ghost listings for various reasons, including projecting growth, keeping options open for exceptional candidates, or meeting federal posting requirements, said Jon Stross, Greenhouse's president and co-founder. apply tags__________ 175895791 story [49]AI [50]Nvidia Snaps Back at Biden's 'Innovation-Killing' AI Chip Export Restrictions [51](theregister.com) [52]22 Posted by msmash on Monday January 13, 2025 @10:27AM from the how-about-that dept. Nvidia has [53]hit back at the outgoing Biden administration's AI chip tech export restrictions designed to tighten America's stranglehold on supply chains and maintain market dominance. From a report: The White House today unveiled what it calls the Final Rule on Artificial Intelligence Diffusion from the Biden-Harris government, placing limits on the number of AI-focused chips that can be exported to most countries, but allowing exemptions for key allies and partners. The intent is to work with AI companies and foreign governments to initiate critical security and trust standards as they build out their AI infrastructure, but the regulation also makes it clear that the focus of this policy is "to enhance US national security and economic strength," and "it is essential that ... the world's AI runs on American rails." Measures are intended to restrict the transfer to non-trusted countries of the weights for advanced "closed-weight" AI models, and set out security standards to protect the weights of such models. However GPU supremo Nvidia claims the proposed rules are so harmful that it has published [54]a document strongly criticizing the decision. apply tags__________ 175895525 story [55]China [56]FBI Chief Warns China Poised To Wreak 'Real-World Harm' on US Infrastructure [57](cbsnews.com) [58]52 Posted by msmash on Monday January 13, 2025 @09:45AM from the not-mincing-words dept. FBI Director Christopher Wray, in his final interview before stepping down, warned that China poses the greatest long-term threat to U.S. national security, calling it "[59]the defining threat of our generation." China's cyber program has stolen more American personal and corporate data than all other nations combined, Wray told CBS News. He said Chinese government hackers have infiltrated U.S. civilian infrastructure, including water treatment facilities, transportation systems and telecommunications networks, positioning themselves to potentially cause widespread disruption. "To lie in wait on those networks to be in a position to wreak havoc and can inflict real-world harm at a time and place of their choosing," Wray said. The FBI director, who is leaving his post nearly three years early after President-elect Donald Trump indicated he would make leadership changes, said China has likely accessed communications of some U.S. government personnel. He added that Beijing's pre-positioning on American civilian critical infrastructure has not received sufficient attention. apply tags__________ 175895345 story [60]Businesses [61]Sonos CEO Patrick Spence Steps Down After Disastrous App Launch [62](theverge.com) [63]21 Posted by msmash on Monday January 13, 2025 @09:10AM from the how-about-that dept. Sonos Chief Executive Patrick Spence [64]stepped down on Monday, following a tumultuous period marked by [65]a botched app rollout that angered customers and hurt sales of its new headphones. Board member Tom Conrad, a former Pandora chief technology officer, will serve as interim CEO while the audio equipment maker searches for a permanent replacement, the company said. Spence's departure comes eight months after Sonos released a revamped app that launched with missing features and technical problems, leading to widespread customer complaints and necessitating an extensive fix-it effort. The company will pay Spence, who joined Sonos in 2012 as chief commercial officer, a $1.875 million severance package. He will remain as a strategic advisor until June 30, earning $7,500 monthly, according to a regulatory filing. apply tags__________ 175892409 story [66]Biotech [67]Neuralink Implants Third Brain Chip. Plans '20 or 30' This Year, Eventually 'Blindsight' Devices [68](yahoo.com) [69]41 Posted by EditorDavid on Monday January 13, 2025 @07:34AM from the in-the-chips dept. "Neuralink Corp.'s brain-computer device has been implanted in a third patient," [70]reports Bloomberg, "and the company has plans for about 20 to 30 more implants in 2025, founder Elon Musk said." In an interview streamed on X.com, Musk says "We've got now three humans with Neuralinks implanted and they're all working well," [71]according to The Times of India: "We upgraded the devices, they'll have more electrodes, basically higher bandwidth, longer battery life and everything. So, expect 20 or 30 patients this year with the upgraded Neuralink devices...." "[O]ur next part will be Blindsight devices where even if somebody has lost both eyes or has lost the optic nerve, we can interface directly with the visual cortex in the brain and enable them to see. We already have that working in monkeys," Musk added. apply tags__________ 175892611 story [72]Oracle [73]Oracle Won't Withdraw 'JavaScript' Trademark, Says Deno. Legal Skirmish Continues [74](infoworld.com) [75]51 Posted by EditorDavid on Monday January 13, 2025 @03:34AM from the see-you-in-court dept. "Oracle has informed us they won't voluntarily withdraw their trademark on 'JavaScript'." That's the word [76]coming from the company behind Deno, the alternative JavaScript/TypeScript/WebAssembly runtime, which is pursuing a formal cancellation with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. So what happens next? Oracle "will file their Answer, and we'll start discovery to show how 'JavaScript' is widely recognized as a generic term and not controlled by Oracle." Deno's social media posts show a schedule of various court dates that [77]extend through July of 2026, so "The dispute between Oracle and Deno Land could go on for quite a while," [78]reports InfoWorld: Deno Land co-founder Ryan Dahl, creator of both the Deno and Node.js runtimes, said a formal answer from Oracle is expected before February 3, unless Oracle extends the deadline again. "After that, we will begin the process of discovery, which is where the real legal work begins. It will be interesting to see how Oracle argues against our claims — genericide, fraud on the USPTO, and non-use of the mark." The legal process begins with a discovery conference by March 5, with discovery closing by September 1, followed by pretrial disclosure from October 16 to December 15. An optional request for an oral hearing is due by July 8, 2026. Oracle took ownership of JavaScript's trademark in 2009 when it purchased Sun Microsystems, InfoWorld notes. But "Oracle does not control (and has never controlled) any aspect of the specification or how the phrase 'JavaScript' can be used by others," argues an official petition filed by Deno Land Inc. with the United States Patent and Trademark Office: Today, millions of companies, universities, academics, and programmers, including Petitioner, use "JavaScript" daily without any involvement with Oracle. The phrase "JavaScript" does not belong to one corporation. It belongs to the public. JavaScript is the generic name for one of the bedrock languages of modern programming, and, therefore, the Registered Mark must be canceled. An open letter to Oracle discussing the genericness of the phrase "JavaScript," published at [79]https://javascript.tm/, was signed by 14,000+ individuals at the time of this Petition to Cancel, including notable figures such as Brendan Eich, the creator of JavaScript, and the current editors of the JavaScript specification, Michael Ficarra and Shu-yu Guo. There is broad industry and public consensus that the term "JavaScript" is generic. The seven-page petition goes into great detail, reports InfoWorld. "Deno Land also accused Oracle of committing fraud in its trademark renewal efforts in 2019 by submitting screen captures of the website of JavaScript runtime Node.js, even though Node.js was not affiliated with Oracle." apply tags__________ 175893285 story [80]Space [81]Blue Origin Livestreams - But Postpones - Its First Orbital Rocket Launch [82](blueorigin.com) [83]30 Posted by EditorDavid on Monday January 13, 2025 @01:30AM from the countdown dept. "We're standing down on today's launch attempt," Blue Origin [84]posted late last night, "to troubleshoot a vehicle subsystem issue that will take us beyond our launch window. We're reviewing opportunities for our next launch attempt." But soon Blue Origin will again attempt its very first orbital flight. And they'll also attempt to land their reusable Stage 1 on a drone in the Atlantic ocean... Several hours Sunday night their rocket was fueled on its launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida, awaiting ignition. Its three-hour launch window had just opened. And Blue Origin was [85]webcasting it all live on their web page... But whatever happened, Ars Technica's senior space editor Eric Berger [86]got to talk to an "affable and anxious" Jeff Bezos: "It's pretty exciting, isn't it?" Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and Blue Origin, said by way of greeting... I asked what his expectations were for the launch of New Glenn, which has a three-hour window that opens at 1 am ET (06:00 UTC) on Monday, January 13... "We would certainly like to achieve orbit, and get the Blue Ring Pathfinder into orbit," Bezos said. "Landing the booster would be gravy on top of that. It's kind of insane to try and land the booster. A more sane approach would probably be to try to land it into ocean. But we're gonna go for it." Blue Origin has built a considerable amount of infrastructure on a drone ship, Jacklyn, that will be waiting offshore for the rocket to land upon. Was Bezos not concerned about putting that hardware at risk? "I'm worried about everything," he admitted. However, the rocket has been programmed to divert from the ship if the avionics on board the vehicle sense that anything is off-nominal. And there is, of course, a pretty good chance of that happening. "We've done a lot of work, we've done a lot of testing, but there are some things that can only be tested in flight," Bezos said. "And you can't be overconfident in these things... The reality is, there are a lot of things that go wrong, and you have to accept that, if something goes wrong, we'll pick ourselves up and get busy for the second flight." Bezos also pointed out that 7% of all the people who have ever flown into space have done so on a Blue Origin vehicle — including himself, an experience he told Ars Technica "is kind of hard to beat... That really was very meaningful for a whole bunch of reasons. "But this is, you know, the culmination of a lot of hard work by a lot of people. And it's a really big deal. You know, you don't get very many first flights, yeah, and here we go." The rocket's payload nose cone (or fairing) has the signatures of thousands of Blue Origin employees, according to [87]a Blue Origin post on Instagram, calling it "a tribute to the hard work and passion for mission we all have here..." More details about the launch: * [88]Space.com notes that the launch "was initially scheduled for Jan. 10 and then Jan. 12, but Blue Origin postponed it due to rough offshore weather that could affect a rocket landing on the company's recovery ship in the Atlantic." Space Force officials forecast the chance of good liftoff conditions Sunday night were 50%. * "We want to be clear about our objectives," Blue Origin posted Sunday [89]on X.com. "This is our first flight and we've prepared rigorously for it. But no amount of ground testing or mission simulations is a replacement for flying this rocket. Our key objective today is to reach orbit safely. Anything beyond that is icing on the cake. We know landing the booster on our first try offshore in the Atlantic is ambitious — but we're going for it. No matter what happens, we'll learn, refine, and apply that knowledge to our next launch." * While Blue Origin's "New Shephard" capsule can hold up to six passengers, the New Glenn's capsule [90]has 30 times that capacity. * Space.com notes the rocket [91]is carrying a payload: a test version of the company's new 'Blue Ring' spacecraft platform to [92]validate its orbit-to-ground communications capabilities. * To get the next generation excited about space travel, Blue Origin's web site is selling an [93]11.5-inch , 636-piece model of the New Glenn rocket (complete with a retractable launch tower). apply tags__________ 175892223 story [94]The Internet [95]Starlink's Satellite Internet is Cheaper than Leading ISPs in Five African Countries [96](restofworld.org) [97]85 Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday January 12, 2025 @10:34PM from the down-in-Africa dept. "In at least five of the 16 African countries where the service is available, a monthly Starlink subscription is cheaper than the leading fixed internet service provider," [98]reports Rest of World. "Starlink, launched in 2019 by Elon Musk's SpaceX, has become the leading satellite internet provider in the world." Now available in more than 100 countries, Starlink can also be a relatively affordable option for users trying to log on in countries with limited internet service providers... A Rest of World analysis indicates that in at least five of the 16 African countries where the service is available, a monthly Starlink subscription is cheaper than the leading fixed internet service provider... [Kenya, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Cape Verde — though not including the upfront costs of Starlink hardware.] Historically, internet connections around the globe have typically been enabled by ground-based internet service providers using fiber-optic cables and mobile base stations. But in many parts of the world, that infrastructure is sparse or nonexistent. "This is where satellite providers come in," said Nitinder Mohan, a computer science professor at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands who has studied Starlink's performance around the world. "I can be in the middle of a forest and, if I have a direct view of the sky, I can get my internet connectivity," he told Rest of World. "Regions which are previously underconnected — where there was no way of getting internet connectivity to them — now with these satellites, you can actually enable that...." According to the latest figures by the International Telecommunication Union, a U.N. agency focused on information and communication technologies, 38% of the population in Africa uses the internet, compared to 91% of Europe... Since launching in Kenya in July 2023, Starlink has disrupted the existing internet service provider industry. Starlink offers high connectivity speeds and wide availability in remote areas, along with dramatically lower prices. The company also introduced a rental option... Starlink has become so popular in Kenya that the company [99]paused new subscriptions in major cities in early November due to network overload. The company plans to deploy more infrastructure in Nairobi and Johannesburg in order to bring more people online, said Mohan, the computer science professor at Delft University. Starlink is less than half the cost of the leading ISP in Kenya Ghana, and especially in Zimbabwe (where the difference is dramatic): Starlink: $30 Leading ISP in Zimbabwe: $633.62 Now in Kenya legacy telecom providers like Safaricom "have responded by [100]lowering prices and [101]increasing internet speeds," according to the article. The head of the research wing of the Global Systems for Mobile Communications Association even told Rest of World ISPS are also developing their own satellite networks (like Vodacom's partnership with satellite mobile network AST SpaceMobile) — though ironically, AST SpaceMobile launched its first satellites with the help of SpaceX. apply tags__________ 175891709 story [102]Linux [103]Will Nvidia Spark a New Generation of Linux PCs? [104](zdnet.com) [105]68 Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday January 12, 2025 @08:07PM from the sparking-speculation dept. "I know, I know: 'Year of the Linux desktop ... yadda, yadda'," [106]writes Steven Vaughan-Nichols, a ZDNet senior contributing editor. "You've heard it all before. But now there's a Linux-powered PC that many people will want..." He's talking about [107]Nvidia's newly-announced Project Digits, describing it as "a desktop with AI supercomputer power that runs DGX OS, a customized Ubuntu Linux 22.04 distro." Powered by MediaTek and Nvidia's Grace Blackwell Superchip, Project DIGITS is a $3,000 personal AI that combines Nvidia's Blackwell GPU with a 20-core Grace CPU built on the Arm architecture... At CES, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang confirmed plans to make this technology available to everyone, not just AI developers. "We're going to make this a mainstream product," Huang said. His statement suggests that Nvidia and MediaTek are positioning themselves to challenge established players — including Intel and AMD — in the desktop CPU market. This move to the desktop and perhaps even laptops has been coming for a while. As early as 2023, [108]Nvidia was hinting that a consumer desktop chip would be in its future... [W]hy not use native Linux as the primary operating system on this new chip family? Linux, after all, already runs on the Grace Blackwell Superchip. Windows doesn't. It's that simple. Nowadays, Linux runs well with Nvidia chips. Recent benchmarks show that [109]open-source Linux graphic drivers work with Nvidia GPUs as well as its proprietary drivers. Even Linus Torvalds thinks Nvidia has gotten its open-source and Linux act together. In August 2023, Torvalds said, "[110]Nvidia got much more involved in the kernel. Nvidia went from being on my list of companies who are not good to my list of companies who are doing really good work." Canonical, Ubuntu Linux's parent company, has long [111]worked closely with Nvidia. Ubuntu already provides Blackwell drivers. The article strays into speculation, when it adds "maybe you wouldn't pay three grand for a Project DIGITS PC. But what about a $1,000 Blackwell PC from Acer, Asus, or Lenovo? All three of these companies are already selling MediaTek-powered Chromebooks...." "The first consumer products featuring this technology are expected to hit the market later this year. I'm looking forward to running Linux on it. Come on in! The operating system's fine." apply tags__________ 175891441 story [112]United Kingdom [113]Britain Seeks to Build a Homegrown OpenAI Rival, Become a World Leader in AI [114](cnbc.com) [115]53 Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday January 12, 2025 @07:07PM from the rule-Britannia dept. "The U.K is looking to build a homegrown challenger to OpenAI and drastically increase national computing infrastructure," [116]reports CNBC, "as Prime Minister Keir Starmer's government sets its sights on becoming a global leader in artificial intelligence." The government is primarily seeking to expand data center capacity across the U.K. to boost developers of powerful AI models which rely on high-performance computing equipment hosted in remote locations to train and run their systems. A target of increasing "sovereign," or public sector, compute capacity in the U.K. by twentyfold by 2030 has been set... To further bolster Britain's computing infrastructure, the government also committed to setting up several AI "growth zones," where rules on planning permission will be relaxed in certain places to allow for the creation of new data centers. Meanwhile, an "AI Energy Council" formed of industry leaders from both energy and AI will be set up to explore the role of renewable and low-carbon sources of energy, like nuclear... Britain plans to use the AI growth zones and a newly established National Data Library to connect public institutions — such as universities — to enhance the country's ability to create "sovereign" AI models which aren't reliant on Silicon Valley... Last month, the government announced a consultation on [117]measures to regulate the use of copyrighted content to train AI models. apply tags__________ 175891229 story [118]EU [119]Germany Hits 62.7% Renewables in 2024 Electricity Mix, with Solar Contributing 14% [120](pv-magazine.com) [121]138 Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday January 12, 2025 @06:06PM from the going-green dept. Due to a "rapid expansion of solar capacity," Germany generated 72.2 TWh of solar power in 2024, [122]reports PV magazine, "accounting for 14% of its total electricity output, according to Germany's Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems. "Wind power remained Germany's largest source of electricity in 2024, generating 136.4 TWh..." Hydropower also saw a slight increase, contributing 21.7 TWh in 2024. Total renewable energy generation reached 275.2 TWh, up 4.4% from 2023. Biomass plants, with an installed capacity of 9.1 GW, generated 36 TWh of electricity. Generation from coal-fired power plants declined sharply in Germany in 2024, with lignite production dropping 8.4% and hard coal falling 27.6%, according to Energy Charts. Lignite-fired plants produced 71.1 TWh, roughly matching the total output from photovoltaic systems, while hard coal plants generated 24.2 TWh... Germany's CO2 emissions continued their downward trend, falling to 152 million tons in 2024, a 58% reduction from 1990 levels and more than half of 2014 levels... Battery storage capacity saw substantial growth, with installed capacity rising from 8.6 GW to 12.1 GW and associated energy storage increasing from 12.7 GWh to 17.7 GWh. Germany's battery storage capacity now surpasses pumped storage by approximately 10 GW, underscoring the shift toward renewable energy integration. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader [123]AmiMoJo for sharing the article. apply tags__________ 175891153 story [124]Science [125]'Snowball Earth' Evolution Hypothesis Gains New Momentum [126](quantamagazine.org) [127]38 Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday January 12, 2025 @05:03PM from the this-snowball-earth dept. The [128]University of Colorado Boulder's magazine recently wrote: What happened during the "Snowball Earth" period is perplexing: Just as the planet endured about 100 million years of deep freeze, with a thick layer of ice covering most of Earth and with low levels of atmospheric oxygen, forms of multicellular life emerged. Why? The prevailing scientific view is that such frigid temperatures would slow rather than speed evolution. But fossil records from 720 to 635 million years ago show an evolutionary spurt preceding the development of animals... Carl Simpson, a macroevolutionary paleobiologist at CU Boulder, has found evidence that cold seawater could have jump-started — rather than suppressed — evolution from single-celled to multicellular life forms. That [129]evidence is described in Quanta magazine: Simpson proposes an answer linked to a fundamental physical fact: As seawater gets colder, it gets more viscous, and therefore more [130]difficult for very small organisms to navigate. Imagine swimming through honey rather than water... To test the idea, Simpson, a paleobiologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and his team conducted an experiment designed to see what a modern single-celled organism does when confronted with higher viscosity... In an enormous, custom-made petri dish, [grad student Andrea] Halling and Simpson created a bull's-eye target of agar gel — their own experimental gauntlet of viscosity. At the center, it was the standard viscosity used for growing these algae in the lab. [Green algae, which swims with a tail-like flagellum.] Moving outward, each concentric ring had higher and higher viscosity, finally reaching a medium with four times the standard level. The scientists placed the algae in the middle, turned on a camera, and left them alone for 30 days — enough time for about 70 generations of algae to live, swim around for nutrients and die... After 30 days, the algae in the middle were still unicellular. As the scientists put algae from thicker and thicker rings under the microscope, however, they found larger clumps of cells. The very largest were wads of hundreds. But what interested Simpson the most were mobile clusters of four to 16 cells, arranged so that their flagella were all on the outside. These clusters moved around by coordinating the movement of their flagella, the ones at the back of the cluster holding still, the ones at the front wriggling. "One thing that you learn about small organisms from a physics point of view is that they don't experience the world the same way that we do, as larger-bodied organisms," Simpson says in [131]the university's article. It says that instead unicellular organisms are specifically "affected by the viscosity, or thickness, of sea water," and Simpson adds that "basically, that would trigger the origin of animals, potentially." Last year Simpson posted [132]a preprint on biorxiv.org. (And he also [133]co-authored an article on "physical constraints during Snowball Earth drive the evolution of multicellularity.") There's a video showing algae in Simpson's lab clumping together in viscous water. "This observed behavior adds evidence to Simpson's hypothesis that single-celled organisms clumped together to their mutual advantage during the 'Snowball Earth' period," says the video's description, "thus adding momentum to the rise of multicellular organisms." But Simpson says in the university's article, "To actually see it empirically means there's something to this idea." Simpson and colleagues have now received a $1 million grant to study grains of sand made from calcium carbonate and called [134]ooids, since their diameter "could be a proxy measurement of Earth's temperature for the last 2.5 billion years," according to the university's article. Geologist Lizzy Trower says the research "can tell us something about the chemistry and water temperature in which they formed." And more importantly, "Does the fossil record agree with the predictions we would make based on this theory from this new record of temperature?" Trower and Simpson's work also has potential implications for the human quest to find life elsewhere in the universe, Trower said. If extremely harsh and cold environments can spur evolutionary change, "then that is a really different type of thing to look for in exoplanets (potentially life-sustaining planets in other solar systems), or think about when and where (life) would exist." apply tags__________ 175890601 story [135]AI [136]New LLM Jailbreak Uses Models' Evaluation Skills Against Them [137](scworld.com) [138]30 Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday January 12, 2025 @03:13PM from the prompt-response dept. SC Media reports on [139]a new jailbreak method for large language models (LLMs) that "takes advantage of models' ability to identify and score harmful content in order to trick the models into generating content related to malware, illegal activity, harassment and more. "The '[140]Bad Likert Judge' multi-step jailbreak technique was developed and tested by Palo Alto Networks Unit 42, and was found to increase the success rate of jailbreak attempts by more than 60% when compared with direct single-turn attack attempts..." For the LLM jailbreak experiments, the researchers asked the LLMs to use a Likert-like scale to score the degree to which certain content contained in the prompt was harmful. In one example, they asked the LLMs to give a score of 1 if a prompt didn't contain any malware-related information and a score of 2 if it contained very detailed information about how to create malware, or actual malware code. After the model scored the provided content on the scale, the researchers would then ask the model in a second step to provide examples of content that would score a 1 and a 2, adding that the second example should contain thorough step-by-step information. This would typically result in the LLM generating harmful content as part of the second example meant to demonstrate the model's understanding of the evaluation scale. An additional one or two steps after the second step could be used to produce even more harmful information, the researchers found, by asking the LLM to further expand on and add more details to their harmful example. Overall, when tested across 1,440 cases using six different "state-of-the-art" models, the Bad Likert Judge jailbreak method had about a 71.6% average attack success rate across models. Thanks to Slashdot reader [141]spatwei for sharing the news. apply tags__________ [142]« Newer [143]Older » Slashdot Top Deals Slashdot Top Deals [144]Slashdot Deals Slashdot Poll Your main desktop OS at home is: (*) Windows ( ) Mac ( ) Linux ( ) Other (Whatever Cowboy Neal uses) (BUTTON) vote now [145]Read the 49 comments | 16448 votes Looks like someone has already voted from this IP. If you would like to vote please login and try again. Your main desktop OS at home is: 0 Percentage of others that also voted for: * [146]view results * Or * * [147]view more [148]Read the 49 comments | 16448 voted Most Discussed * 158 comments [149]Ford's EV Sales Spiked 34.8% in 2024. Electric 'Mustang Mach-E' Outsells Gas-Powered Mustangs * 144 comments [150]California's Wildfires: Livestreams from Burning Homes and Dire Text Messages - Sometimes Erroneous * 133 comments [151]Germany Hits 62.7% Renewables in 2024 Electricity Mix, with Solar Contributing 14% * 120 comments [152]JPMorgan Chase Disables Employee Comments After Return-to-Office Backlash * 88 comments [153]California's Wildfires Still Burn. Prison Inmates Join the Fight Hot Comments * [154]Works on toddlers too! (5 points, Funny) by burtosis on Sunday January 12, 2025 @04:01PM attached to [155]New LLM Jailbreak Uses Models' Evaluation Skills Against Them * [156]You're my twin, no joke (5 points, Interesting) by wattersa on Sunday January 12, 2025 @11:44AM attached to [157]Ask Slashdot: What's the Best Way to Transfer Legacy PHP Code to a Modern Framework? * [158]Some TFA detail is missing (5 points, Informative) by ClickOnThis on Sunday January 12, 2025 @01:19PM attached to [159]California's Wildfires Still Burn. Prison Inmates Join the Fight * [160]Re:Probably, but still hoping... (5 points, Informative) by Rei on Monday January 13, 2025 @03:13AM attached to [161]Blue Origin Livestreams - But Postpones - Its First Orbital Rocket Launch * [162]Just call it ECMAScript (5 points, Informative) by Neuroelectronic on Monday January 13, 2025 @03:44AM attached to [163]Oracle Won't Withdraw 'JavaScript' Trademark, Says Deno. 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