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Sonda do světa otevřeného softwaru. Dnes vyzkoušíme e-mailového klienta pro GNOME, podíváme se na další hudební přehrávač, řekneme si o nativním linuxovém klientu pro Nextcloud a taky o klientu pro sociální síť Mastodon.

Intel s Xeony Diamond Rapids neměl moc štěstí. Chybí HT, pro urychlení příprav padla 8kanálová verze, instrukce APX byly omezeny a procesory čeká zpoždění. Přesto mají dva světlé body…

WIMPům, hypotetický částicím temné hmoty, které by byly masivní a současně netečné, se poslední dobou příliš nedařilo. Čínský výzkumným tým detekoval silný gama signál z několika kup galaxií, který by podle nich mohl být důkazem existence WIMPů. Zatím je to ale jenom nápad. Další výzkum by měl napovědět víc.

V hrobě 75 v Pieńi v centrálním Polsku byla v době Polsko-litevské unie, někdy mezi lety 1620 až 1674 pohřbena dívka s nápadnými protivampýrskými rituály. Polští vědci neohroženě analyzovali dostupné důkazy a pokusili se osvětlit osud dívky, která byla v temném 17. století z nějakého důvodu považována za upírku.

Klimatologické předpovědi vychází z předpokladu, že nárůst CO2 se na úživnosti oblastí strádajících suchem projeví negativně. Realita je ale nejspíš přesně opačná. Nárůst se na produkci zelené hmoty podepisuje blahodárně i v těch nejsušších podmínkách africké savany.

Po celé Evropě se našlo přes 130 těchto bronzových předmětů, ale ani jeden jediný se nenašel v samotné Itálii nebo v Římě. Všechny nálezy pocházejí z okrajových, severních provincií - z Galie (Francie), Británie, Germánie a rýnského pohraničí. To znamená, že šlo o záležitost specifickou pro keltské a germánské oblasti pod římskou nadvládou. O dvanáctistěnech neexistuje v celém římském písemnictví ani jedna zmínka. Římané přitom pedantsky zapisovali vše od vojenských řádů po lékařské příručky. Proč o tomto předmětu mlčeli?

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has announced that a breach last year exposed customer and employee information. [...]

Threat actors are abusing npm and its mirrors to host malicious HTML pages that impersonate Cloudflare CAPTCHAs to redirect visitors to attacker-controlled websites. [...]

Perplexity on Tuesday rolled out an offering that runs the AI entirely on a local machine, and that, it said, will keep “private data local and escalating to the cloud only when a task needs it.”

The service, called simply Portable Computer, is a local version of Perplexity Computer that runs on the Nvidia DGX Spark with Qwen 3.8 27B or with PPLX 27B, a post-trained version of the Qwen model, Perplexity said, adding that a 30B open model is coming soon to the model picker. The orchestrator, planner, tool router, scheduler, durable task queue, and local search index all run on device.

Portable Computer requires Linux as its underlying OS, with Windows support “coming soon.”

The most critical benefits for enterprise IT are the Perplexity promise that data stays local, and that on-device work doesn’t consume token credits. Customers are only charged if the system is explicitly told to move compute to the cloud “for more advanced research and reasoning.”

Doing as much work as possible locally is becoming a trend, as users seek to lower token costs and minimize their need for increasingly expensive high-end AI systems.

“A user might want the confidential details of a term sheet to stay local, but escalate to the cloud to get current market comps or recent precedent deals,” the Perplexity announcement noted. “Portable Computer’s local orchestrator can escalate a task to the cloud for current information, browser use, connected apps, or one of 15+ frontier models for advanced reasoning. Through app connectors, Portable Computer works with Google Drive, Gmail, Slack, and GitHub.”

Aman Mahapatra, chief strategy officer for Tribeca Softtech, a New York City-based technology consulting firm, said that he liked the comprehensive capabilities included in the offering. 

“Running a model locally has been table stakes for two years,” Mahapatra said. “Running the entire agentic control plane locally means the decision about whether a task needs the cloud is itself made on device, by a model post-trained to keep work local and escalate when necessary.”

Hardware demands

However, some consultants and analysts questioned whether the economics, as well as the data and token control features, are truly ready for the enterprise at this point.

Nader Henein, a Gartner VP analyst, said that some of the announced Perplexity models can be run today on high-end laptops with off-the-shelf GPUs, “but until we see the price [of Portable Computer], it’s going to be hard to get excited about this.”

Flavio Villanustre, CISO for the LexisNexis Risk Solutions Group, also noted, “the hardware demands are quite steep, especially with the current hardware costs including RAM, GPU, and so forth. It needs at least a local GPU with 24GB of VRAM as a minimum.”

“Although it may help lower ongoing expenses, it does require an initial investment on this specialized hardware,” he said.

Concerns over control of cloud usage

But multiple consultants expressed concerns about the lack of details of how the local-versus-cloud decisions are enforced. For example, users might agree to a pop-up offering cloud compute reflexively, just as they simply agree to any software terms and conditions that pop up. Or an attacker could use prompt engineering or other tactics to place hidden commands that tell the system to move to the cloud without the user knowing. 

Justin Greis, CEO of consulting firm Acceligence, pointed out, “local-first should not be confused with local-only and that distinction is going to matter tremendously. Users routinely approve prompts they do not fully understand, and increasingly autonomous AI agents are operating across files, applications, connectors, and workflows that may be far more complicated than the user can see. The AI should be able to ask for permission, but the enterprise needs the ability to say, ‘You are not permitted to ask.’”

Mike Wilkes, enterprise CISO at Aikido Security, suggested that one way to prevent cloud usage would be for IT to lock down these systems so that they cannot have any external access, a technique that he doubted would be tolerated. 

“I would not expect either the agents or their users to be particularly happy if enterprises solve the security problem simply by denying network access. For many valuable use cases, connectivity is the point,” Wilkes said. “A proprietary trading firm, for example, may want confidential models and positions processed locally while still consuming current market data, SEC filings, news or research feeds.”

And, Mahapatra noted, although the built-in controls will not prevent unauthorized cloud escalation, “the reason is structural rather than a knock on Perplexity’s engineering. The gate is a permission prompt, which is consent, not control. It depends on a probabilistic model correctly classifying sensitive content and correctly scoping an escalation payload, and on a user judging a request they cannot fully inspect. Both fail adversarially.”

He pointed out that, with Gmail, Drive, Slack, and GitHub connectors on a device that also holds an authorized cloud path, “this is the same connector-plus-egress combination behind every Copilot exfiltration chain published this year. What would satisfy an enterprise security review is network-layer, not application-layer, and it does not exist in the product.”

It would need a mandatory egress proxy, DLP inspection on every escalation payload, deterministic classification rules that block defined data categories regardless of the model’s judgment, and immutable logging of what left the device, he said. “Sandboxed execution addresses code isolation and does nothing for data egress governance.”

His question to Perplexity is whether an enterprise administrator can define escalation policy centrally in a way the local model cannot override, and produce a full audit log of what crossed the boundary. “If escalation is governed by user consent and model judgment, this is a consumer product with a strong privacy story rather than an enterprise product with a compliance story,” he said, adding, “Whoever ships centrally managed escalation policy with enforceable egress inspection and tamper-evident audit will own the regulated-industry local AI market.”

Perplexity responds

In response to a request for an interview, Perplexity Communication Manager Beejoli Shah instead provided an emailed statement pushing back on the idea that data could travel to the cloud without deliberate permission. She wrote, “content in a local document can’t authorize an escalation by itself, nor can it override product controls. Escalation to the cloud requires explicit per-action approval in addition to toggling the app out of default local-only mode.”

Shah said such a data migration can only happen if the user has already toggled “allow advisor escalation” to “on” in app settings. “When that isn’t toggled on, no work can proceed to the cloud,” she said, pointing out that the product enforces restrictions on what local data and outbound actions are available to the agent.

She added that the user must also review a request in-app to send a piece of the task to the cloud, and that, she said, as illustrated in the introductory video, the request pop-up is the same size as prompt input. Furthermore, she said, “Escalation is only allowed once, not across the remainder of the task, or in future sessions.”

These lab-grown balls of brain tissue could help researchers study a host of disorders that emerge as the brain ages.

Five years is an eternity for brain organoids. Also called mini brains, these blobs of tissue have taken neuroscience by storm for their ability to capture the intricacies of developing brains.

Organoids begin life as a collection of stem cells. Within weeks, they spontaneously produce a range of brain cells. Neurons form circuits that spark with electrical activity. Gene expression resembles that of early fetal brains. Some organoids learn to control small, isolated muscles. Others link to spinal cord organoids and process pain signals.

Over time, they grow more sophisticated in both structure and function—eerily similar to near-term fetuses—prompting bioethicists to ask if they could one day become conscious.

But time isn’t on their side. Most mini brains survive only a few months before their sensitive neurons start to wither. Circuits break down, structures collapse, and eventually the organoids die. As a result, they can model only the early stages of human brain development, leaving what happens during the later months of pregnancy and after birth largely mysterious.

These periods are especially relevant to schizophrenia, epilepsy, severe autism, and a host of other disorders. Scientists have studied late-stage development using donated tissue, but samples are scarce and raise ethical concerns.

A team led by Harvard’s Paola Arlotta is now pushing the boundaries with organoids. Last week, they described a method that kept mini brains alive for over five years—the longest yet—and tracked their development throughout. Despite growing outside the body, the organoids matured on a timetable similar to normal brains. Genetic activity in the oldest ones resembled that of a typical 4-year-old.

The findings were originally reported in a preprint and have now been peer-reviewed and published in Nature.

The developmental lockstep surprised the team. Cells from older organoids, when mixed with younger ones, continued maturing on schedule, suggesting they carried an internal developmental clock that keeps track of their progress.

“The brain doesn’t develop in a vacuum. It’s an organ of incredible complexity that interacts with so many other systems,” study author Irene Faravelli said in a press release. “It was not a given at all that our simplified model would match natural development in this many ways.”

Brain, Interrupted

Because mini brains generate nearly the full range of human brain cells, they’re promising models for the study of early brain development. But early versions survived only a few weeks. Without blood supply, cells at their centers starved and died.

Through trial and error, researchers learned to coax them into increasingly sophisticated structures that included layers resembling the cortex and had integrated blood vessels. This vastly extended their lifespan.

In 2021, a study kept mini brains alive for up to two years, capturing cortical development from pregnancy to roughly a year after birth. Four years later, Arlotta’s team announced a way to extend organoid lives to a staggering seven years. Roughly the size of a pea, each nugget was packed with some two million healthy neurons and other brain cells.

Following these organoids for years offers an unprecedented window into how the brain grows and wires itself—and how genetic changes early on might contribute to diseases later in life.

Our brains take roughly two decades to mature. Throughout this period, neurons constantly rewire their connections. Scientists have long known that conditions such as schizophrenia and some forms of epilepsy first emerge during adolescence. Because mini brains can be grown from a person’s skin cells and retain genetic mutations associated with neurodevelopmental disorders, they offer a way to probe how, and when, neural wiring goes awry.

But timing matters. The question is, how faithfully does a growing blob in a dish follow the developmental journey of a human brain?

Time Stamp

To answer that question, the team grew 34 organoids and tracked them at regular intervals. They collected data every three to six months for the first 18 months, then annually until the organoids were over five years old.

Crucial to the brain blobs’ longevity was switching the growth medium—a nutrient- and protein-rich slurry—halfway through development. The new recipe kept neurons alive longer, giving them time to support increasingly complex activity.

The team then tracked changes in gene activity and epigenetic markers (chemical tags that control which genes are turned on or off). They then compared the findings with data from younger organoids—ranging from 15 days to six months old—and donated human tissue.

The developmental timeline was surprisingly similar to that of a human brain. Young organoids showed gene activity resembling the first trimester; by three to six months, they looked more like second-trimester brains. After a year, their gene activity profiles resembled those of newborns. By the end of the experiment, they most closely matched a typical 4-year-old.

The team also tested them with epigenetic methods used to gauge biological age as opposed to calendar years. The organoids gained and shed epigenetic markers in patterns that broadly tracked those seen in natural brain development.

The organoids seemed to retain a “sense” of time. The team mixed cells from year-old organoids with those from 15-day-old organoids. Both followed their usual trajectory: The younger cells developed into early-stage neurons. But the older ones skipped those stages and rapidly produced more mature neurons often requiring months to grow.

“I like to think of this as a sort of ‘warping of developmental time’ indicating that the organoid cells record and recall the time they have already spent in culture,” said Arlotta.

In other words, the cells seem to carry an internal developmental clock, which could be especially useful for studying disorders with symptoms emerging long after the early stages of development.

To be clear, though, a mini brain resembling a 4-year-old’s brain at the molecular level doesn’t mean it has the same wiring or computational capabilities. Gene activity only captures part of a brain’s development; real brains are shaped by experiences and interactions with the rest of the body. Without input, mini brains can only offer a molecular blueprint of brain development, not its entire rich tapestry.

Still, long-living organoids are a breakthrough. Researchers could freeze cells from organoids at different developmental stages and later thaw them for experiments. This could speed up discoveries because scientists wouldn’t have to grow new organoids from scratch for each new study. Think of it as a save point in video games.

The team plans to grow long-lived organoids from people with schizophrenia or epilepsy and use them to study disease progression and screen drugs. Keeping ethics in mind, they’re also considering exposing mini brains to sensory stimuli such as sight, sound, or touch.

“There is still much to learn about how the embryo naturally builds a progressively more complex and mature brain,” Arlotta said. “Applying these lessons to organoids will allow us to model unexplored events of human brain maturation that occur after birth.”

The post Mini Brains Grown for Five Years Matured Like Human Brains appeared first on SingularityHub.

A newly uncovered phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) platform called AnonyMousKIT automates the retrieval of codes used to unlock stolen Apple devices and disable the Activation Lock feature. [...]

AI has already begun to impact the job market and primarily affects young people early in their careers, according to a recent study by researchers at Stanford University. The researchers analyzed anonymized salary data from the HR platform ADP and compared occupations that are affected by AI to varying degrees to develop their findings, Ars Technica reported.

Among people aged 22 to 25, employment in the occupations most exposed to AI is now 19% lower than in positions less exposed to AI. Last year, the difference was 13%.

When looking at the labor market more broadly, the differences are significantly smaller. Older and more experienced workers have not been affected in the same way. According to the researchers, this is primarily because fewer young people are being hired in AI-exposed occupations, rather than existing employees being laid off.

The decline among young people is also most evident in occupations where AI can be used to replace specific tasks. In cases where AI is used instead to complement employees’ work, the picture is significantly more mixed.

Apple představil čipy M6 a M5 Ultra, Mac mini s M6 nebo M5 Pro a Mac Studio s M5 Max nebo M5 Ultra. Fedora Asahi Remix zatím podporuje jenom M1 a M2.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury has announced fresh sanctions on Iranian cyber actors as part of what it called an "unprecedented, whole-of-government, economic campaign" against the nation and its enablers. "We are launching an economic onslaught against Iran's financial connections around the globe. Our objective is to sever every economic lifeline that sustains this tyrannical regime

The U.S. Department of the Treasury has announced fresh sanctions on Iranian cyber actors as part of what it called an "unprecedented, whole-of-government, economic campaign" against the nation and its enablers. "We are launching an economic onslaught against Iran's financial connections around the globe. Our objective is to sever every economic lifeline that sustains this tyrannical regime Ravie Lakshmananhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/[email protected]

Call of Duty dávno překročilo hranice běžné herní série. Každý nový díl je událostí, ať už jej hráči milují, nebo nenávidí. Modern Warfare 4 je navíc pokračováním jedné z nejúspěšnějších podznaček, takže očekávání jsou obrovská.

** Za posledních 14 let se ne vždy všechno vydařilo podle plánu ** Vzpomínáme na průšvihy značek i systémů ** A zmíníme i telefon, který se nechtěně stal velmi populárním

Za posledních 14 let se ne vždy všechno vydařilo podle plánu • Vzpomínáme na průšvihy značek i systémů • A zmíníme i telefon, který se nechtěně stal velmi populárním

Apple představil nové Macy mini a Macy Studio. • Vypadají stejně jako předchůdci, ale jsou výkonnější a dražší. • Poprvé v nich vidíme čipy Apple M6 a M5 Ultra.