Sabotage

Tesla had to shut down Gigafactory Berlin today after a significant power outage that may have been caused by sabotage. It has been a difficult couple of weeks for Tesla’s Gigafactory Berlin, the automaker’s only factory in Europe. First, it had to halt production due to supply issues amid problems with cargo ships getting through the Gulf of Aden and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait due to the civil war in Yemen. Then, it was the local residents of Grünheide, the municipality where Tesla Gigafactory…

Hate speech, political propaganda and outright lies are hardly new problems online—even if election years such as this one exacerbate them. The use of bots, or automated social media accounts, has made it much easier to spread deliberately incorrect disinformation, as well as inaccurate rumors or other kinds of misinformation. But the bots that afflicted past voting seasons often churned out poorly constructed, grammatically incorrect sentences. Now as large language models (artificial intelligence systems that create…

As the artificial intelligence (AI) landscape continues to rapidly evolve, new risks and vulnerabilities emerge. Businesses positioned to leverage large language models (LLMs) to enhance and automate their processes must be careful about the degree of autonomy and access privileges they confer to LLM-powered AI solutions, wherein lies a new frontier of cybersecurity challenges.  In this article, we take a closer look at prompt hacking (or prompt injection), a manipulation technique through which users may potentially…

Three months before the Nord Stream pipeline exploded in what was almost certainly a brazen act of international sabotage, the Biden administration was briefed on a plot by the Ukrainian military to target the energy project for destruction, according to a new report from the Washington Post.Rob Savage on Collaborating with YellowJackets’ Sophie ThatcherThe warning about Ukraine’s plans came months before the oil pipeline—which stretched across the Baltic sea from Russia to Germany and delivered cheap natural gas to a…

Sony told regulators in the UK that they were “irrational” for having sided with Microsoft in the fight over the proposed Microsoft-Activision merger. One reason: Microsoft could sabotage future Call of Duty games by making performance even slightly worse on PlayStation — because gamers are apparently so perceptive that it might make them move to Xbox.Although Sony stated previously that Microsoft’s merger with Activision Blizzard, which makes Call of Duty games, could hurt the franchise on PlayStation, the company’s…

It’s been close to half a year since the Nord Stream pipeline—a controversial Russian energy project designed to bring cheap natural gas to European markets—mysteriously exploded. In the immediate aftermath of the pipeline’s destruction, sabotage seemed like the most likely explanation. But despite six months having passed since the pipeline burst, nobody seems to know who is responsible—and some don’t seem all tooeager to find out, either.Deadly Mississippi Tornado Kills More Than 2 Dozen | Extreme EarthThis week, the…

Texas leads the US in renewable electricity production, but Republican lawmakers want to curb that and boost fossil fuels instead. Texas is a leader in renewables… and fossil fuels Texas generated 136,118 gigawatt-hours from wind and utility-scale solar in 2022, according to the EIA. (Compare that to No. 2 California, with 52,927 gigawatt-hours.) Texas’ predominant renewable source was wind, and in fact, Texas produced about 26% of all US wind-powered electricity generation in 2021. But…

Microsoft is inching ever closer to its acquisition of Activision Blizzard, but as the two companies await regulatory approval, Sony has raised concerns about how the deal will affect its PlayStation business. This week, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) shared a new document containing Sony’s observations about the imminent takeover. Among Sony’s concerns is the worry that Microsoft could effectively sabotage future Call of Duty games on PlayStation consoles. Sony doesn’t want Microsoft to…

Sony has suggested a number of ways that Microsoft could harm PlayStation fans if the latter’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard is approved, including offering a poorer quality – or more expensive – version of Call Of Duty for PlayStation. Last month, The Competition and Markets Authority – a UK watchdog investigating Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard – published a series of potential remedies to address concerns over the acquisition’s scope. Yesterday (March 8) the CMA followed the report by…

Sony has laid out its concerns about Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard, including a host of fears about the future of Activision’s Call of Duty franchise. In new documents (pdf) submitted to the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), Sony says it’s worried that Microsoft could raise the price of Call of Duty, make it only available on its own Xbox Game Pass subscription service, and even strategically or incidentally degrade the quality and performance of Call of Duty on PlayStation.Sony cites…