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Chinese AI developer DeepSeek said it spent $294,000 on training its R1 model, much lower than figures reported for U.S. rivals, in a paper that is likely to reignite debate over Beijing's place in the race to develop artificial intelligence. Reuters: The rare update from the Hangzhou-based company -- the first estimate it has released of R1's training costs -- appeared in a peer-reviewed article in the academic journal Nature published on Wednesday. DeepSeek's release of what it said were lower-cost AI systems in January prompted global investors to dump tech stocks as they worried the new models could threaten the dominance of AI leaders including Nvidia. Since then, the company and founder Liang Wenfeng have largely disappeared from public view, apart from pushing out a few new product updates. [...] The Nature article, which listed Liang as one of the co-authors, said DeepSeek's reasoning-focused R1 model cost $294,000 to train and used 512 Nvidia H800 chips. Sam Altman, CEO of U.S. AI giant OpenAI, said in 2023 that what he called "foundational model training" had cost "much more" than $100 million - though his company has not given detailed figures for any of its releases.

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Aussie CEO promises AI everywhere, and clearer views of what your devs are up to

Atlassian has continued its AI spending spree with a $1 billion takeover of developer analysis biz DX, a move it promised would give devs "less friction and more flow."…

Inject this synthetic phage into E. coli and it kills better than the real thing

A group of Stanford bioengineers claim that they've created synthetic bacteriophages using AI-generated designs that not only work in the real world, but are far more infectious than their naturally-occurring counterparts. …

Amazon violated consumer protection law by gathering Prime subscribers' billing information before disclosing the service's terms, a judge ruled on Wednesday, handing the U.S. Federal Trade Commission a partial win. From a report: The ruling by U.S. District Judge John Chun in the case accusing Amazon of deceptive practices to generate Prime subscriptions puts the company at a disadvantage at trial. The FTC is poised to argue that the online retailer signed up tens of millions of customers for Prime without their consent, and thwarted tens of millions of cancellation bids through complex cancellation methods. The agency says those actions violated the Restore Online Shoppers Confidence Act (ROSCA).

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Vendor pulls plug on cloud backup feature, urges admins to reset passwords and re-secure devices

SonicWall is telling some customers to reset passwords after attackers broke into its cloud backup service and accessed firewall configuration data.…

An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo today reiterated that a more affordable MacBook powered by an iPhone processor is slated to enter mass production in the fourth quarter of 2025, which points towards a late 2025 or early 2026 launch. Kuo was first to reveal that Apple is allegedly planning a more affordable MacBook. In late June, he said the laptop would have around a 13-inch display, and an A18 Pro chip. Kuo said potential color options include silver, blue, pink, and yellow, so the laptop could come in bright colors, like 2021-and-newer models of the 24-inch iMac. This time around, he only mentioned the MacBook will have an unspecific iPhone processor. Apple recently introduced the A19 Pro chip, which has 12GB of RAM, so it will be interesting to see if the lower-cost MacBook uses that chip instead. The entire Mac lineup has started with at least 16GB of RAM since last year, with the only option with 8GB being the MacBook with an M1 chip, which is sold exclusively by Walmart for $599.

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Copilot+ PC users can run the AI models locally. Others may need a subscription.

Microsoft is continuing to shovel AI functionality into its Notepad application, with Windows Insiders the first test subjects.…

Three US medical centers fess up to serious breaches

Cybercriminals broke in and stole nearly a million Americans' data in the space of a week, in the course of three digital burglaries at healthcare providers.…

Key takeaways from a new survey by Pew Research: 1. Americans are much more concerned than excited about the increased use of AI in daily life, with a majority saying they want more control over how AI is used in their lives. 2. Far larger shares say AI will erode than improve people's ability to think creatively and form meaningful relationships. 3. At the same time, a majority is open to letting AI assist them with day-to-day tasks and activities. 4. Most Americans don't support AI playing a role in personal matters such as religion or matchmaking. They're more open to AI for heavy data analysis, such as for weather forecasting and developing new medicines. 5. Americans feel strongly that it's important to be able to tell if pictures, videos or text were made by AI or by humans. Yet many don't trust their own ability to spot AI-generated content.

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Layoffs to stand following $1.1B AI acquisition

Activist investors have taken a $2 billion stake in Workday, signaling approval of its direction and saying they "look forward to continued collaboration with the company."…

Decisive action comes nearly a year after the attack and first arrest took place

Two teenagers are set to appear in court today after being charged with offences related to the cyberattack on Transport for London (TfL) in August 2024.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Gen Z borrowers took the biggest hit of any age group this year, helping pull overall credit scores lower in the worst year for US consumer credit quality since the global financial crisis roiled the world's economy. The average FICO score slipped to 715 in April from 717 a year earlier, marking the second consecutive year-over-year drop, according to a report released Tuesday by Fair Isaac Corp. The average score dropped three points to 687 in 2009. Gen Z borrowers saw the largest drop, not only this year, but of any age group since 2020, with their average score falling three points to 676, the Montana-based creator of the FICO credit score said. FICO scores are a measure of consumer credit risk and are frequently used by US banks to assess whether to provide loans. The scores typically range from 300 to 850. The credit scoring agency attributed the recent overall drop to higher rates of utilization and delinquency, including the resumption of reporting student loan delinquencies -- a category that hit a record high of 3.1% of the entire scorable population. [...] While the overall average score dropped, the median FICO score continued to rise to 745 from 744 a year ago, indicating that a large drop in scores at the low end dragged down the average.

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Dashboard loop caused API outage that was hard to troubleshoot

Cloudflare has confessed to a coding error using a React useEffect hook, notorious for being problematic if not handled carefully, that caused an outage for the platform's dashboard and many of its APIs.…

Nvidia has agreed to invest $5 billion in its struggling rival Intel [non-paywalled source] as part of a deal to develop new chips for PCs and data centres, the latest reordering of the tech industry spurred by AI. From a report: The deal comes a month after the US government agreed to take a 10 per cent stake in Intel, as Donald Trump's administration looks to secure the future of American chip manufacturing. However, the pair's announcement makes no reference to Nvidia using Intel's foundry to produce its chips. Intel, which has struggled to gain a foothold in the booming AI server market, lost its crown as the world's most valuable chipmaker to Nvidia in 2020. On Thursday Jensen Huang, Nvidia's chief executive, hailed a "historic collaboration" and "a fusion of two world-class platforms," combining its graphics processing units, which dominate the market for AI infrastructure, with Intel's general-purpose chips. Further reading: Intel Weighed $20 Billion Nvidia Takeover in 2005.

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Wake-up call for dozed and confused chap who had to turn on runway lights

In the high-stress and safety-critical world of air traffic control, "don't fall asleep" probably comes pretty far toward the top of the rule book, and yet that's apparently the reason for the landing delay of an Air Corsica Airbus A320 this week.…

VC giant rebuilt boxes, patched holes, and says it’s beefed up security – but won’t say who did it

Venture capital giant Insight Partners has confirmed that a January ransomware attack compromised the personal data of more than 12,000 people, including employees, former staff, and the firm's usually-secretive limited partners.…

Proofpoint spots efforts to spy on US economic policy nerds

Chinese state-aligned online attackers are back at it, targeting US trade policy wonks as Washington and Beijing spar over economic ties.…

LimeWire, once notorious for fueling online piracy, has acquired the rights to the infamously disastrous Fyre Festival brand. "LimeWire Acquires Fyre Festival Brand -- What Could Possibly Go Wrong?" the company titled its news release. LimeWire said it would "unveil a reimagined vision for Fyre -- one that expands beyond the digital realm and taps into real-world experiences, community, and surprise." No additional details were announced about the relaunch. "Fyre became a symbol of hype gone wrong, but it also made history," LimeWire CEO Julian Zehetmayr said. "We're not bringing the festival back -- we're bringing the brand and the meme back to life. This time with real experiences, and without the cheese sandwiches."

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Model can also explain its answers, researchers find

Chinese AI company DeepSeek has shown it can improve the reasoning of its LLM DeepSeek-R1 through trial-and-error based reinforcement learning, and even be made to explain its reasoning on math and coding problems, even though explanations might sometimes be unintelligible.…

And knits a graph DB out of LinkedIn cast-offs

Microsoft is extending its Fabric cloud-based data platform by including Oracle and Google's BigQuery data warehouse in its mirroring capability, and launching a new graph database based on an in-house LinkedIn project.…