According to recent data from content detector Originality.AI, nearly 20% of the top 1000 websites in the world are restricting crawler bots that collect web data for AI services.AI.

Websites, big and small, are taking matters into their own hands because there are no clear legal or regulatory guidelines limiting AI's usage of intellectual information.

Early in August, OpenAI unveiled its GPTBot crawler, claiming that the information obtained "might improve future models," assuring that pay-walled content will be omitted, and providing instructions on how to block the crawler on websites.

Several of well-known news outlets, including the New York Times, Reuters, and CNN, started blocking GPTBot shortly after, and many more have subsequently done the same.

According to Originality, the percentage of websites censoring OpenAI's ChatGPT bot has climbed from 9.1% on August 22 to 12% on August 29 among the top 1000 most popular websites.

Amazon, Quora, and Indeed are the three major websites that prohibit ChatGPT's bot. The analysis shows that larger websites are more likely to have AI bots stopped already. In the top 1000 websites, the Common Crawl Bot—another crawler that regularly collects web data used by some AI services—is blocked 6.77% of the time.

This is how it goes. Any webpage that can be accessed by a web browser can also be "scraped" by a crawler, which works just like a browser but stores the content in a database rather than showing it to the user. That is how information is gathered by search engines like Google.

The ability to publish instructions telling these crawlers to leave has long been available to site owners, but compliance is entirely voluntary, and malicious users can choose to disregard the advice.

Although many publishers and owners of intellectual property have long objected, Google and other web companies view the activity of their data crawlers as fair use. As a result, the company has been involved in many legal battles over the practice. As generative AI and huge language models gain popularity, this issue has once again come to light as AI businesses send out their own crawlers to gather information for their chatbot feeds and to train their models.

Since Google and other search engines directed consumers to these publishers' ad-supported websites, some publishers found at least some value in allowing search crawlers access to their websites. However, in the age of AI, publishers are more adamantly rejecting crawlers because there is now no benefit to providing their data to AI firms.

Many media businesses are currently in discussions with AI companies about paying a price to license their data to AI companies, but these discussions are still in the early stages. While this is going on, some websites and owners of intellectual property are suing or considering suing AI businesses that may have misused their data.

The increasing commercialization of AI services like OpenAI is being viewed with anger and a "we won't get fooled again" attitude by media organizations that feel they were duped by Google over the past 20 years. According to The Information, OpenAI is expected to earn more than $1 billion in revenue over the coming year.

Particularly, news organizations are having trouble striking the correct mix between embracing AI and resisted it. On the one hand, the sector is desperately trying to come up with new ideas to increase profit margins in their labor-intensive operation. On the other hand, integrating AI into a newsroom's workflow when public confidence in media organizations is at an all-time low raises difficult ethical issues.
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If too much of the web bans AI crawlers, the owners of those crawlers may find it more difficult to update and improve their AI products, and good data is getting tougher to find.

On all iPhones and iPads, the default image format is HEIC. Along with Apple, HEIC files are supported by Canon, Sony, Qualcomm, and Samsung. Here is all the information you need about the HEIC file format.

The HEIC format was developed by the Moving Pictures Expert Group (MPEG) in the middle of 2015. One reason Apple made HEIC the default format on all iPhones is because it requires around half the storage of a JPG file of comparable quality. A HEIC file also contains an alpha channel for transparent images, a depth map for LiDAR scans, depth estimates, and more. It provides more versatility overall than a JPG file.

For example, a JPEG file needs 10MB of space to have the same visual quality as a 5MB HEIC file. Even though 5MB on today's smartphones doesn't sound like much, when you consider thousands of images, the overall space-saving can reach gigabyte levels. Additionally, it causes speedier upload and file transfer rates on the internet. The HEIC file format is supported by Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom, two standard editing programs used by photographers.
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Although HEIC format capture is enabled by default on iPhones and iPads, you can disable it. To turn on or off the HEIC format on your iOS device, Open Settings/Camera/Formats/Most Compatible.

Those incredibly cheap entry-level printers you find when sorting your options by "price lowest" can be very alluring if you're in the market for a new inkjet printer. However, don't assume it shows you're getting a good deal. Just as a drug dealer can offer a cheap initial "sample" to get you hooked before raising the price on all subsequent transactions, printer manufacturers use a similar business strategy. They can easily make up any loss from the printer's discounted sale by offering its ink cartridges for exorbitantly high prices. The printer firms then keep you on the hook for paying these outrageous ink rates for the duration of the printer, which is a very lucrative revenue stream for them.

Original cartridges from manufacturers like Canon and Epson are also likely to include electronic chips on the cartridge body that code them to the printer and prohibit you from using less expensive third-party cartridges in their place. This is done to prevent you from trying to take your repeat ink business elsewhere.
Despite this, you at least get the amount of ink you pay for when you purchase one of these fake cartridges, right? However, it now seems that even this may not be the case. An ink cartridge gets disassembled in a really eye-opening Fstoppers exposé to reveal how much ink is actually inside.

The cartridge in question is made of opaque black plastic, which could be a cause for worry because it conceals the ink (or lack thereof) within. This cartridge's advertised ink capacity is 11.9 milliliters. Given how much the cartridge probably costs, it is already a disgracefully tiny amount, but when the casing is cracked open, not a single drop of ink leaks out. Instead, two pieces of foam, each softly and only partially covered in ink, fill the entire inside space. Only a tiny drop of foam is released when it is squeezed.

And don't believe that this was one of those "sample" cartridges that came with the printer and only had enough ink to start it up. No, this was a 'XL' cartridge with a huge capacity.
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We already knew that printer ink was a rip-off, but it now seems clear that it's a very obvious one. So please, please, resist the temptation of an inexpensive inkjet printer. Spend more up front on a printer that uses refillable ink tanks, like an Epson EcoTank or a Canon MegaTank. They may not be inexpensive, but at least you get what you pay for. As an alternative, think about using one of the top online photo printing services.

An artificial intelligence (AI) platform developed by a British health tech business can analyze MRI data to look for early signs of sickness. The company's strategy, which employs imaging biomarkers, promises better disease diagnosis and treatment decision-making.

Twinn Health claims to be advancing longevity and preventive healthcare thanks to a $500 million venture capital fund from Saudi Aramco.

Using MRI technology in the medical field is nothing new. Developments in AI have made it easier to identify specific disorders in MRI scans. Their wider applicability in disease detection and lengthening lifespan is still in its infancy.

“Usually, when you do an MRI today, it’s one MRI scan for one single diagnosis,” Wareed Alenaini, founder and CEO of Twinn Health, explains in an interview with Longevity Technology, citing kidney stones as an example.

“You do the MRI. The doctor looks at the kidney stones, writes the report, and then the scan data gets archived, and will probably never be checked again,” Alenaini continues. “That’s where Twinn comes in: we’re extracting additional insights from MRI scans that may not have been the primary focus of the physician.”

By combining MRI and AI, Twinn Health hopes to usher in a new era in healthcare by identifying and treating age-related disorders at an early stage. The company's aggressive strategy calls for addressing liver disease and age-related weakness.

“We’re using technology to make chronic disease prevention scalable,” Alenaini told the website, which is published by First Longevity and backed by Marco Polo Securities.

Alenaini, a Saudi native with a doctorate in bioimaging from Imperial College London, developed the idea for Twinn Health while researching the patterns of the human body in MRI pictures and their relationship to illness progression.

Twinn's primary area of interest is metabolic disease, which is a trifecta of diabetes, high blood pressure, and obesity. Because of how susceptible these disorders make people are to serious health problems like coronary heart disease and stroke. Twinn's AI platform examines MRI pictures for potentially dangerous hidden fatty deposits surrounding organs, which are an important sign of heart disease even in healthy people.

Alenaini asserted initial tests had produced encouraging findings, with a 95% accuracy rate in 2021, which were later corroborated by actual data and NHS doctors in the UK in 2022.

Alenaini claims that Twinn's patented artificial intelligence algorithm can predict metabolic abnormalities up to a half-decade in advance.

Alenaini told Longevity Technology that the company aims to hold four additional patents, address three more conditions, and amass a million data points to showcase their scalability and accessibility.

Twinn's idea is completely in line with the growing global interest in longevity.

“As the longevity field evolves and with the emergence of more healthy longevity clinics, we see ourselves as the most accurate diagnostic platform that can support this,” she said. “We are currently focusing on getting FDA approval for the American market, but our next focus will be the Middle East because we have seen a very significant push into longevity in that part of the world.”

Future disease targets include age-related frailty (sarcopenia) and liver disease.
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Twinn Health is currently looking for more funding as it aims to expand into more illness indications. Early funding efforts were concentrated on metabolic disease, but the company is now prepared to expand into additional disease pathways, further solidifying its dedication to longevity.

Cement and carbon black are two of the most widely utilized materials in human history. Scientists believe they may potentially pave the way for future energy usage.

By combining cement, water, and carbon black, MIT researchers have created a unique, energy-storing substance. The design is adaptable, and it might be used to convert highways or buildings into renewable energy sources. The way of mixing the base materials to generate a supercapacitor, according to the experts, is the key to the novel design.

Researchers have already sought to imbue structural materials with battery-like capabilities by combining concrete with graphene-based carbon nanotubes. However, nanotubes are costly to manufacture and are not easily scalable for real-world applications. Carbon black, on the other hand, is a substance made from the incomplete combustion of coal, vegetable waste, or fuel, and it provides a more cost-effective alternative to nanotubes due to its widespread availability.

The researchers discovered that when carbon black is combined with water and cement, it produces a "fractal-like," electron-conducting network. They then formed the final product into small plates 1mm thick by 10mm wide and enclosed it in a potassium chloride membrane, a common electrolyte material, to form a sandwich-like structure.

According to the researchers, two electrodes composed of this material are separated by an insulating layer, allowing them to form a very powerful supercapacitor. When powered, the plates can illuminate a succession of LED lights. The researchers believe that the new substance might be used to store a day's worth of energy in roadways or buildings.

Even if the basic combination functions as a supercapacitor, keeping its energy-storing capability as well as structural strength can be difficult. Increasing the amount of carbon black increases the amount of stored energy, but the concrete weakens. The researchers discovered that using roughly 10% carbon black in the mix is the sweet spot for foundations or other structural elements.
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When structural strength is not an issue, the amount of carbon black in the supercapacitors could be raised to make even more potent supercapacitors. Franz-Josef Ulm, a civil engineer at MIT, is now working on developing a 12V battery comparable for automotive purposes. The prototype might be ready in 18 months and could even be used as an elemental brick for energy storage in homes.

Even by Wyoming standards, Kemmerer is far away—it's a 50-mile diversion from Interstate 80.

It draws tourists who stop by to look for local fossils, even though its elevation is higher than its population. However, different types of fossils, or fossil fuels, produce the best jobs. Three power plants are powered by a coal mine and gas wells, which together employ around 450 people. However, Kemmerer officials see the writing on the wall with declining use of fossil fuel and all the efforts to migrate to cleaner energy.

In a recent interview on CBS Sunday Morning, Bill Gates talked about his decision to bring his new nuclear energy to this remote part of Wyoming. Kemmerer will be the site of his ten-year-old energy company TerraPower’s first power plant.

Kemmerer Mayor Bill Thek says his town is no stranger to American entrepreneurs. JC Penny opened its first store in Kemmerer in 1902 before going nationwide. Now, the town has a 21st-century business hero.

 Since Wyoming is a conservative state, you wouldn’t expect much positive would be said about Bill Gates, but his new nuclear technology is part of a green energy push that much of the town sees as a positive move forward.

Solar and wind only work when the weather is right, but nuclear works 24 hours a day without spewing out climate-changing greenhouse gasses. The new plant could be in operation by 2029, using a next-generation technology called natrium, which is the Latin name for sodium. Sodium-cooled reactors are three times more efficient than traditional water-cooled reactors, which means significantly less nuclear waste.

Gates told his interviewer that the amount of nuclear waste generated over the plant’s first decade would be less than the size of a big room. So, waste disposal is also not an issue.

The promise of a new plant has bulldozers at work as out-of-town developers like David Jackson think they're building into a boom. The first of 2,500 workers who will construct the plant are already doing site surveys. There will be 300 workers running the plant once it comes online.

Today's coal plant workers may also win by getting new jobs, says Roger Holt, a manager at the coal plant, and Mark Thatcher, a retired coal miner.

"You know, this is a new design nuclear reactor, but it's still going to end up generating steam, turning a steam turbine," Holt said. "You're gonna have a lot of the same equipment that we use right now to generate power. So, a lot of what we do will be transferable."

"Isn't jobs the real answer here, that what you're bringing to this community is a chance to continue going on after their legacy of coal and gas is over?" the interviewer asked Gates.
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"Exactly. You know, when that coal plant is shutting down, the ability of this community to keep young people and still be vibrant is under threat," Gates said.

Any pictures of your boarding pass should be excluded when choosing which travel photos to share on social media.

The documents may appear to be nothing more than travel souvenirs outside of their primary use at the airport, but they are much more informative than many travelers realize.

If cybercriminals can get a picture of a boarding pass, they can exploit travelers in several ways.

Even while the information on the documents appears to be sparse, bad actors "can very easily bring up the rest of the things they need to know about you from public records, like your date of birth, your address, your phone number, or your email address," according to Amir Tarighat, CEO of cybersecurity company Agency.

“Frequent flyer miles are actually really easy to steal, and they don't have the same protection that banks have,” Tarighat said, adding that travel accounts are commonly sold on the Dark Web.

Hackers may be able to access your account using information from a boarding pass, such as your rewards account and confirmation numbers. According to Tarighat, information can also be removed by third parties using the barcodes on boarding passes.

According to him, social engineering assaults, which are " tricking people," can also be created using the information on the boarding pass.

So, he explained, "you might work for a company, and someone notices that, 'Oh, this individual is traveling. They can use that knowledge to trick you into doing something by sending spam, phishing, and social engineering emails to other firm employees saying things like, "Amir's in Paris this week," or something similar. This can entail granting them access to a specific account or sending them money.
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The details may also leave behind digital breadcrumbs that attackers can use to trace the traveler's web connections and launch additional attacks.

Microsoft has recently dominated the tech news cycle as a result of its $10 billion investment in OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT, and a flurry of new products like Bing Chat. The Redmond behemoth isn't done either; it's getting ready to introduce a brand-new AI-powered assistant to its office suite. Dubbed Microsoft 365 Copilot, the feature will automate tasks like writing emails, summarizing meetings, and even making beautiful PowerPoint presentations. Even though it all seems too good to be true, Microsoft's initial demos show promise.
Microsoft Copilot 365 is a brand-new generative AI technology that helps with office chores including document drafting, spreadsheet updating, and meeting summaries. It can be found in a number of Microsoft 365 applications, such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.
Here is a brief summary of Microsoft 365 Copilot's features:

• Copilot may generate a whole document from a brief prompt. Write a cover letter for the position of a senior software developer, for instance.
• Copilot for PowerPoint can assist cut down on text in slides, add AI-generated visuals, and condense a lengthy presentation into a small number of slides.
• If you're working with a lot of data in Excel, Copilot can swiftly analyze it and produce a comprehensible graphic.
• If your company utilizes Microsoft Teams, Copilot lets you ask about specific team members, catch up on unread chats, and summarize meetings.
• In Microsoft's email software Outlook, Copilot can change the tone of your writing to appear formal, approachable, or any other way you like.
• Microsoft has also incorporated Copilot into OneNote and Loop for digital note-takers. This integration might be compared to a virtual assistant you can ask to rapidly categorize, search for, and summarize your notes.

In addition to these instances, Microsoft has created Copilot to operate throughout the whole app library. As an illustration, you could ask Copilot to produce a report based on a different Excel file in a new Word document that you have created. Similar to this, you may request that Copilot import Microsoft Teams notes into OneNote and condense the text before adding it to a new note.
Microsoft 365 Copilot's approach may sound familiar because Google already offers Duet AI for Workspace, a service that competes with it. It's not as feature-rich as the Microsoft examples shown thus far, though. Here is a brief comparison of the AI-powered productivity features offered by Google and Microsoft today. Things may change in the future.
Microsoft 365 Copilot
Google Duet AI for Workspace
Supported apps
Entire Microsoft 365 Office suite plus Microsoft Teams
Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Google Meet

Interoperability
Can reference files across other Microsoft apps
Currently limited; Duet AI cannot see the contents of a different document or file

Image generation
Yes, via OpenAI’s Dall-E 2 image generator
Yes, presumed via Adobe Firefly

Language model
OpenAI GPT-4
Google PaLM 2

Current availability
Closed, private testing for paid customers
Available to general public for free via waitlist

 
On paper, Microsoft 365 Copilot appears to be quite promising, but the company hasn't yet made it available to the public. When the feature was first revealed in March 2023, a specific release date was not specified. A few months later, Microsoft has only recently begun distributing the functionality to a select set of trusted testers. In the beginning, Google used a similar approach with their generative AI feature.

The Microsoft 365 Copilot Early Access Program has been publicized by the firm thus far. However, Microsoft isn't allowing members of the general public to sign up for access to Copilot, in contrast to the Bing Chat waitlist or Google's Bard chatbot that slowly became live. Instead, it's a limited-access program open exclusively to 600 paying users. That's correct, neither you nor I can just sign up to utilize Microsoft 365 Copilot for nothing.

It's unclear if Microsoft 365 Copilot will be free to use.

It's not yet known if Microsoft 365 Copilot will ever be available for free. It might nevertheless occur given the firm's aggressive AI effort with its chatbot and Bing Image Creator. Google is another rival of Microsoft, where anyone may freely sign up for a waitlist to immediately get generative AI in Google Search, Gmail, and Docs.

On the other hand, operating Microsoft's AI features is expensive. Large language models use up a lot of computational power, especially sophisticated ones like GPT-4. So it's simple to understand why using Copilot could require a revised Microsoft 365 subscription.

A seven-month congressional investigation found that three of the biggest tax preparation firms in the country may have shared Americans' private financial information with Google and Meta for years in a possible violation of federal law. The information, in some cases, was used for targeted advertising.

The investigation's findings reveal a "five-alarm fire" for taxpayer privacy that, according to legal experts, could result in public and private lawsuits, criminal penalties, or even a "mortal blow" for some major industry players like TaxSlayer, H&R Block, and TaxAct.

According to a congressional study, the three tax preparation organizations allegedly transmitted tens of millions of Americans' personal information to the tech industry without their knowledge or proper disclosures using visitor tracking equipment integrated on their websites.

The report states that besides standard personal information like names, phone numbers, and email addresses, the list of data shared also included taxpayer data. This included information about people's filing status, adjusted gross income, the size of their tax refunds, and even information about the buttons and text fields they clicked on while completing their tax forms, which could reveal what tax breaks they may have claimed or which government programs they use.

The research also discovered that every taxpayer who used TaxAct's IRS Free File service when the tracking was enabled would have had their information shared with the tech companies. The analysis was based on congressional interviews and written testimony from Meta, Google, and the tax-preparation firms. According to the research, several tax preparation businesses are still unsure of the status of the data they supplied with tech platforms.

“On a scale from one to 10, this is a 15,” said David Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University and a former consumer protection chief at the Federal Trade Commission, the country’s top privacy watchdog. “This is as great as any privacy breach that I’ve seen other than exploiting kids. This is a five-alarm fire, if what we know about this so far is true.” 

It also serves as an illustration, according to Vladeck, of the necessity for federal law, giving every American a fundamental right to data privacy. Although electronic data is becoming an increasingly significant component of the global economy, this subject has been stalled in Congress for years.

According to the article, the tax preparation firms at the focus of the probe informed lawmakers that the acquired data had been scrambled to assist preserve privacy. The study highlighted prior FTC studies that found that even "anonymized" data may be easily reverse-engineered to identify a person, but it also claimed that some tax-prep services themselves were not entirely aware of how much information was being given to the digital platforms.

H&R Block said in a statement that it takes customer privacy "very seriously" and that it has taken precautions to stop information exchange through pixels. According to [the new] report, H&R Block stated they had been used the tracking technology for "at least a couple of years."

A request for comment was not immediately answered by TaxAct or TaxSlayer. According to the research, TaxSlayer started using Meta's tools in 2018 and Google's in 2011, although TaxAct has been using both since around 2014. The research discovered that all three tax preparation businesses had stopped using Meta's pixel because of The Markup's initial investigative article from last November.

The study discovered that Intuit, the firm that produces TurboTax, did not use tracking pixels to the same level as other companies and was not the subject of the most recent report despite receiving an initial inquiry letter from the senators in December.

According to a former FTC official who asked to remain anonymous to talk more freely, the tax-preparation companies may be quickly forced into a legally enforceable settlement depending on the gravity of the claims.
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“If the facts are really strong, these companies would probably rather settle than go to court. This is very embarrassing,” the former official said. “It could be a mortal blow to the tax prep companies.”

In the posh seaside town of Santa Monica, California, when someone dials 911 for police, a drone is instantly launched from the station's roof.

Officers also respond. However, most of the time, the drone arrives first, flying directly to a set of GPS coordinates the controller entered. Sometimes, it arrives in less than 30 seconds.

“It’s a fundamental change in the way that we can bring policing services to our city,” said Peter Lashley, a veteran of the force who often pilots the drone from a screen-filled command center inside the police station.

The drone's robust camera can zoom in close enough to read a license plate or provide a view of several square blocks. The drone camera was the lone eyewitness to a horrific heist in Santa Monica, and one of the two culprits was caught and found guilty. It gave responding cops crucial information—that what appeared to be guns in victims' hands weren't firearms—on at least three occasions. Officers could respond far less forcefully thanks to that information.

Police believe drones could have a significant impact by diffusing potentially violent situations when law enforcement agencies are experiencing a crisis of legitimacy because of several high-profile murder cases involving cops. Their spread is also expected to ignite concerns about privacy hazards and a fresh discussion about the relationship between the public and their government.

The government is eager to stress out that drones are not used for surveillance but for incident response.
Drone use by the police has been experimented with for a while, although it is uncommon and relatively new. The first-responder program began in 2018 in Chula Vista, close to San Diego, where officials received a waiver from the Federal Aviation Administration to fly outside a pilot's line of sight. Drones may now cover the entire city. The initiative has swiftly spread throughout Los Angeles County over the past two years; besides Santa Monica, Beverly Hills and Redondo Beach have also adopted it, along with about a dozen other departments nationally. The Los Angeles Police Department, which runs a fleet of helicopters, does not deploy drones for 911 calls, despite claims from department officials that they do so in tactical scenarios occasionally.

As technology advances, so does the usage of tactical drones. The Lemur, a reinforced quadcopter that can fly into buildings, break glass, push open doors, and allow authorities to speak to hostage-taking suspects who are blocked, was recently shown to reporters. Although Santa Monica hasn't yet adopted one, many other departments have.

The catastrophic shooting in his hometown of Las Vegas inspired Blake Resnick, then 17 years old, to start BRINC, which is the company that produces the Lemur.

“What we found in tactical situations is if we can communicate with a person, we can de-escalate it much quicker and bring the situation to resolution,” said Don Lemond, a retired Chula Vista police officer who now works for BRINC. “But we also deployed it during the Surfside condo collapse in Florida to look for people that were trapped inside the building.”

As a senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington, Jay Stanley has studied government drone use. He claims his group is not against using drones to respond to emergencies or rescue hostages.

"Our stance is that it's legitimate for police departments to use drones for raids, accidents, and crime scenes, as well as to find a lost child in the woods," he said.

However, he noted police drone use raises "all the same questions body cameras raise." What occurs to the video? Who is permitted access? Will the cops broadcast the video when it bolsters their image of heroism and bury it when it doesn't?
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“It’s an incredible resource that’s going to potentially reduce risk and liability and ultimately make policing safer for not only the community but also for the officer,” he said. “It’s amazing what you can see from the air,” Redondo Police Capt. Stephen Sprengel said.