NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 24, 2023--

Square, the digital payments company, experienced outages on several services Thursday.

Elon Musk is by far the most followed user on X, the social media platform

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Settling on a scanner that meets your specific day-to-day scanning needs can be challenging. Most

Since the passage of its landmark climate regulations 17 years ago, California has been a leader in the

Andrew Tate promptly responded to MrBeast's challenge, expressing his acceptance and committing to donating the prize money to a charitable cause

Earth has been hit by a blast from a dead star so energetic that scientists cannot explain it. The burst of gamma rays, originating in a dead star known as a pulsar, is the most high energy of its kind ever seen. It was equivalent about ten trillion times the energy of visible light, or 20 tera-electronvolts. Scientists are unable to explain exactly what kind of a scenario could lead a pulsar to emit such intense energy, and the researchers behind the breakthrough say that it “requires a rethinking of how these natural accelerators work”. Scientists hope that they can find yet more powerful energy blasts from pulsars, with a view to better understanding how they are formed. Pulsars are formed when a star dies, exploding in a supernova and leaving behind a tiny, dead star. They are just 20 kilometres across, and spin extremely fast with a powerful magnetic field. “These dead stars are almost entirely made up of neutrons and are incredibly dense: a teaspoon of their material has a mass of more than five billion tonnes, or about 900 times the mass of the Great Pyramid of Giza,” said Emma de Oña Wilhelmi, a scientist at the High Energy Stereoscopic System observatory in Namibia that detected the blast. As pulsars spin, they throw out beams of electromagnetic radiation, throwing it out like a cosmic lighthouse. That means that someone in one spot – like the Earth – will see the radiation pulses flash in a regular rhythm as they spin past. The radiation is thought to be the result of fast electrons that are produced and thrown out by the the pulsar’s magnetosphere, which is made up of plasma and electromagnetic fields that surround the star and spin with it. Scientists can search the radiation for different energy bands within the electromagnetic spectrum, helping them understand it. When scientists previously did that with the Vela pulsar examined in the new study, they found that it was the brightest everseen in the radio band, and the brightest persistent source in the giga-electronvolts. But the new research found that there is a part of the radiation with even more high energy components. “That is about 200 times more energetic than all radiation ever detected before from this object,” said co-author Christo Venter from the North-West University in South Africa. Scientists don’t know exactly how that could happen. 
“This result challenges our previous knowledge of pulsars and requires a rethinking of how these natural accelerators work,” says Arache Djannati-Atai from the Astroparticle & Cosmology (APC) laboratory in France, who led the research. “The traditional scheme according to which particles are accelerated along magnetic field lines within or slightly outside the magnetosphere cannot sufficiently explain our observations. “Perhaps we are witnessing the acceleration of particles through the so-called magnetic reconnection process beyond the light cylinder, which still somehow preserves the rotational pattern? But even this scenario faces difficulties to explain how such extreme radiation is produced.” An article describing the findings, ‘Discovery of a Radiation Component from the Vela Pulsar Reaching 20 Teraelectronvolts’, is published today in the journal Nature Astronomy. Read More ‘Ring of fire’ solar eclipse this month will be last until 2046 Mystery behind massive star suddenly vanishing decoded New discovery is ‘holy grail’ breakthrough in search for aliens, scientist say ‘Ring of fire’ solar eclipse this month will be last until 2046 Mystery behind massive star suddenly vanishing decoded New discovery is ‘holy grail’ breakthrough in search for aliens, scientist say

Microsoft stock has hit a record high after hiring sacked OpenAI boss Sam Altman and other key figures from the AI firm. The US tech giant, which is a key investor in OpenAI, is the second most valuable company in the world behind Apple. The firm’s market cap on 21 November reached above $2.8 trillion – up $1 trillion since the start of the year. Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella announced that Mr Altman, who headed ChatGPT creator OpenAI until he was ousted on Friday, would join Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team alongside fellow OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman “We’re extremely excited to share the news that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, together with colleagues, will be joining Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team,” Mr Nadella wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “We look forward to moving quickly to provide them with the resources needed for their success.” Despite his new role, Mr Altman is reportedly keen on returning to his former company following a revolt among OpenAI employees against the board. More than 700 OpenAI workers signed a letter threatening to quit unless the board resigns and reappoints Mr Altman as chief executive. “The process through which you terminated Sam Altman and removed Greg Brockman from the board has jeopardised all of this work and undermined our mission and company,” the open letter stated. “Your conduct has made it clear you did not have the competence to oversee OpenAI.” OpenAI board member Ilya Sutskever said on Monday that he “deeply regrets” his role in Mr Altman’s sacking, adding that he was now working to reunite the company. Following his exit from OpenAI last week, Mr Altman wrote on X: “I loved my time at OpenAI. It was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. Most of all I loved working with such talented people. Will have more to say about what’s next later.” After rumours emerged that he was looking to rejoin his former company after being hired by Microsoft, Mr Altman wrote: “Satya [Nadella] and my top priority remains to ensure OpenAI continues to thrive. “We are committed to fully providing continuity of operations to our partners and customers. The OpenAI/ Microsoft partnership makes this very doable.” Read More Microsoft chief hints Sam Altman may return as OpenAI staff demand board resignation OpenAI staff ‘threaten to quit over ousting of Sam Altman’ Microsoft’s new AI tool cleans up messy backgrounds in video calls

The White House has challenged hackers to break ChatGPT and other AI chatbots in order to better understand the risks that the technology poses. The test of generative artificial intelligence will take place at the Def Con 31 hacker convention in Las Vegas this August, with leading AI developers like Google, Microsoft and OpenAI all agreeing to let their products be tested. “AI is one of the most powerful technologies of our time, but in order to seize the opportunities it presents, we must first mitigate its risks,” the White House said in a statement. “The Administration is announcing an independent commitment from leading AI developers, including Anthropic, Google, Hugging Face, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, and Stability AI, to participate in a public evaluation of AI systems.” The event was announced during a meeting between US Vice President Kamala Harris and tech executives at the White House, which aimed to address concerns about fast-growing AI technology. The hacking contest aligns with the Biden Administration’s AI Bill of Rights announced last year, which aims to protect citizens against potential harms associated with AI. “This independent exercise will provide critical information to researchers and the public about the impacts of these models, and will enable AI companies and developers to take steps to fix issues found in those models,” the White House’s statement read. Last week, a blog post from the White House Domestic Policy Council and White House Office of Science and Technology Policy warned that the technology currently poses a significant risk to workers. Longer term, technologists and policy makers warn that advanced artificial intelligence could have catastrophic consequences for society. A former OpenAI researcher recently said that he believed there was a “50/50 chance of doom” if AI systems reach and surpass the cognitive capacity of humans. “I tend to imagine something like a year’s transition from AI systems that are a pretty big deal, to kind of accelerating change, followed by further acceleration, et cetera,” Dr Paul Christiano, who now runs AI research non-profit Alignment Research Center, said last month. “I think once you have that view then a lot of things may feel like AI problems because they happen very shortly after you build AI.” Read More 10 ways AI will change the world – from curing cancer to wiping out humanity Google and ChatGPT are facing a major threat, leaked document warns Microsoft lets the world access its controversial Bing chatbot DeepMind boss says human-level AI is just a few years away

Apple has been told it must recall every iPhone 12 sold in the country if it cannot fix the problem.

This year's buzzword is undoubtedly AI, and major tech companies are inserting the technology into