One French company is using visual effects editing to promote the Women's World Cup, putting out a now-viral video showing the French men's soccer team playing at their best — until it is revealed that the footage is actually of the French women's team.

A cyber attack which disrupted access to a council website and its systems is being investigated with the relevant authorities to establish the full impact of the crime, officials have said. On Tuesday, Comhairle nan Eilean Siar (Western Isles Council) suffered a suspected ransomware attack. The website remains down and the local authority says it is currently uncertain of the extent of the damage caused by the attack. A ransomware attack is where hackers maliciously infiltrate an organisation’s website or systems, stealing sensitive data which they in turn use for monetary gain. While investigative work continues, the Comhairle’s priority in response to this incident remains to restore and secure services, ensuring their continued delivery to those in our communities who need them most Comhairle nan Eilean Siar spokesman The council says it is working alongside Police Scotland, the Scottish Government and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) to establish the full impact of Tuesday’s incident. A council spokesperson said: “While investigative work continues, the Comhairle’s priority in response to this incident remains to restore and secure services, ensuring their continued delivery to those in our communities who need them most. “One key aspect of achieving this aim has been work on the processing of benefit and support payments. “While payments have been made to the public, restrictions to file access has affected other scheduled payments. “The impact to IT systems has also meant that invoices due to creditors cannot be paid at this time.” The spokesperson added: “The Comhairle appreciates the impact late payments can have and is working to resolve these issues as soon as possible. “The Comhairle will be in contact with the affected individuals to provide updates and support. “The Comhairle’s email system is now restored and work is ongoing to redirect numbers for key public services. “A temporary website is also in development which will allow members of the public to access key information.” Temporary phone numbers for social care and social work services can be found on Comhairle nan Eilean Siar’s page on X, formerly known as Twitter. The council says its human resources, occupational health and ardseileach care home can be contacted on their usual telephone numbers. A spokesperson for NCSC said: “We are working with Comhairle nan Eilean Siar to fully understand the impact of an incident.” Police Scotland and the Scottish Government were contacted for comment. Read More Setback for Ireland as EU legal adviser recommends revisit of Apple tax case Smartphones ‘may be able to detect how drunk a person is with 98% accuracy’ Ireland and Apple await major development in long-running EU tax dispute Guidance urges parents not to buy smartphones for primary school children William ‘blown away’ by futuristic technology from Singapore start-ups Return of original Fortnite map causes record traffic on Virgin Media O2 network

OpenAI has integrated its AI image generator into its hugely popular ChatGPT chatbot. The Microsoft-backed company unveiled its latest version of DALL-E, named DALL-E 3, on Wednesday, allowing users to generate images with “significantly more nuance and detail” compared to previous systems By converging the capabilities of its two distinct generative AI tools, OpenAI researchers claim that users will now be able to “brainstorm” ideas with the artificial intelligence. OpenAI boss Sam Altman gave an example of how the dual functionality could be used, saying that it could write and illustrate a children’s bedtime story from a few simple prompts. Current text-to-image systems, such as Midjourney or OpenAI’s Dall-E 2, often misinterpret commands from users due to their inability to understand specific requests. This has resulted in the emergence of prompt engineers, also known as prompt wizards, who train to optimise the results of generative artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT and Dall-E. “Our new text-to-image model, DALL-E 3, can translate nuanced requests into extremely detailed and accurate images,” OpenAI stated. “DALL-E 3 is built natively on ChatGPT, which lets you use ChatGPT as a brainstorming partner and refiner of your prompts. Just ask ChatGPT what you want to see in anything from a simple sentence to a detailed paragraph.” The latest version of DALL-E will only be available for paying users, with ChatGPT Plus and ChatGPT Enterprise receiving the upgrade in October. OpenAI has also introduced improved safety features to its AI image generator, which it claims will prevent people from creating lewd or hateful images. These protections include ignoring certain words and denying requests to depict public figures. Earlier this month, AI pioneer Mustafa Suleyman warned that AI could be misused to potentially generate synthetic viruses that could trigger pandemics. “The darkest scenario is that people will experiment with pathogens, engineered synthetic pathogens that might end up accidentally or intentionally being more transmissible or more lethal,” he told The Diary of a CEO podcast. “That’s where we need containment. We have to limit access to the tools and the know-how to carry out that kind of experimentation.” Read More Amazon Alexa gets new AI powers, with the same kind of brain as ChatGPT Amazon Alexa is getting the same brain as ChatGPT UK competition regulator proposes guiding principles to make AI market safe Chatbots ‘able to outperform most humans at creative thinking task’

You know how anytime you go onto Wikipedia you're asked to donate? Elon Musk could get rid of that once and for all, on one condition. Wikipedia is run by a team of volunteers and is free to access. Volunteers help keep the site up to date as well as write numerous translations for various articles to increase the accessibility. Now, Elon Musk is offering the site $1 billion dollars, but only if they change their name. Musk, who clearly has the same humour as a 12-year-old, is prepared to give out a large cheque if Wikipedia becomes... 'D**kipedia'. Musk was seemingly inspired after seeing the standard appeal for donation on the site, although was unsure why the site was asking for money. "Have you ever wondered why the Wikimedia Foundation ants so much money?" The Twitter/X CEO asked. "It certainly isn't needed to operate Wikipedia. You can literally fit a copy of the entire text on your phone! "So, what's the money for? Inquiring minds want to know..." But a quick Google and Musk could have found the answer himself. Samantha Lien, a spokeswoman for the Wikimedia Foundation, told The Washington Post: "Based on guidance from the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, our reserve amounts to one year of operating budget. "If there were circumstances that affected our ability to raise those funds during that period, we could end up in an urgent situation - the reserve is a safety net to protect Wikipedia against such as possibility." Although, the large donation perhaps isn't the best use of Musk's money after his wealth dropped by $16 billion after shares in Tesla dropped by 9.3 percent since the company released its 2023 third-quarter earnings report. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s e-commerce division will make “huge” investments in its Taobao shopping app, as the newly

CITY OF INDUSTRY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jun 14, 2023--

By Jane Lanhee Lee OAKLAND, California Silicon Valley automotive ethernet chip startup Ethernovia Inc said on Monday it

The virtual protest over Reddit’s API changes caused the social media platform to briefly crash

Scientists have cooked up the "alien haze" of distant planets, in an effort to help with the search for alien life. The haze is a simulation of the hazy skies that appear on water-rich exoplanets, or worlds outside of our solar system. That haziness can get in the way of observations of those planets, making it difficult to understand what is happening there. Haze can also affect conditions on the planet themselves. If the atmosphere has hazes or other particles then it can drastically change the temperature, amount of light an other factors – some of which might be make or break for alien life there. Scientists hope the homemade haze will let them better understand the atmospheres of other planets, and model how the planets themselves form and grow. They could allow us to better understand how the have distorts our picture of those planets – distortions that could give us the wrong understanding of the makeup of their atmospheres. Getting that wrong could mean potentially missing habitable worlds, for instance. The observations are used to come up with the estimates about the temperature and atmospheric conditions that are then used to determine whether a planet might be able to host alien life. “The big picture is whether there is life outside the solar system, but trying to answer that kind of question requires really detailed modeling of all different types, specifically in planets with lots of water,” said co-author Sarah Hörst, from Johns Hopkins University. “This has been a huge challenge because we just don't have the lab work to do that, so we are trying to use these new lab techniques to get more out of the data that we’re taking in with all these big fancy telescopes.” The team cooked up the haze using a custom-designed chamber in Hörst’s lab. The haze they made is formed out solid particles, suspended in gas, which changes how light interacts with the gas itself. To test the hazes they made, scientists shot ultraviolet light through them, measuring how much they absorbed and reflected. They found that hate haze matched the chemical signatures of a well-studied exoplanet. Scientists hope to develop yet more hazes, with different gas mixtures, that will let them better understand different atmospheres. The work is described in a new paper, 'Optical properties of organic haze analogues in water-rich exoplanet atmospheres observable with JWST', published in the journal Nature Astronomy. Read More SpaceX rockets are punching holes in atmosphere, causing blood-red ‘auroras’ Chinese rocket that slammed onto Moon may have carried mysterious undisclosed payload Nasa’s ‘Message in a Bottle’ will send your name into space

The HP Z2 G9 desktop workstation packs a serious punch, but the Z4 G5 under

Instagram’s Threads app has reached 100 million users, making it easily the fastest growing app ever. The site reached the number early on Monday morning, according to a tracker that looks at the numbers that are made public on each Threads account.

Generative AI is a high-stakes, no-limit poker game that requires not just capital but also labor—mainly costly coders.