All posts tagged: versions

John Grisham Would Prefer if You Didn’t Listen to AI Slop Versions of his Audiobooks

John Grisham Would Prefer if You Didn’t Listen to AI Slop Versions of his Audiobooks

Published by Jenni Sidey

In today’s book news, John Grisham rails against AI slop audiobooks, painted book covers make a comeback, lawsuits reveal the messiness of copyright, and more. John Grisham Would Prefer if You Didn’t Listen to AI Slop Versions of his Audiobooks If you want to listen to John Grisham’s audiobooks, you have a few options. You could buy the official audiobook with a professional human narrator or borrow it from the library. Alternatively, you could listen to an AI voice drone through it on YouTube, accompanied by unsettling AI-generated visuals. Unsurprisingly, John Grisham would prefer if you didn’t choose the latter option. The YouTube video, which violates copyright, has been up for six months and has accumulated almost 100,000 views. Music (and TV and movie) publishers use Content ID to automatically detect copyrighted work—but that strategy doesn’t work for AI audiobooks, because it’s searching for identical audio, not text. YouTube has responded by saying no one has issued a takedown notice for the video. I expect publishers will have to develop strategies to deal with this, …

Versions of You in Other Universes May Be Subtly Affecting Your Destiny, Oxford Physicist Says

Versions of You in Other Universes May Be Subtly Affecting Your Destiny, Oxford Physicist Says

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech You may think you’re the protagonist of your own story. According to Oxford physicist Vlatko Vedral, however, you’re more like a puppet — whose strings are being pulled into a million parallel universes at any given time. As Vedral argues in a recent issue of Popular Mechanics, the pop-sci version of the “observer effect” — where the act of observation or measurement affects a system — gets the cause-and-effect backward. The typical story goes something like this: quantum objects hang out in multiple states at once, until some observer glances over. At this point, the multiple states collapse and only one is left, an assumption that can lead various woo-woo interpretations, like that we create reality simply by observing it. Physics, Verdal says, does not support that idea. That collapse effect isn’t a special power of human consciousness, but rather a fact of physics that says interactions — any interaction — forces a quantum system to commit to …

US government warns of severe CopyFail bug affecting major versions of Linux

US government warns of severe CopyFail bug affecting major versions of Linux

Published by skeptic

A severe security vulnerability affecting almost every version of the Linux operating system has caught defenders off-guard and scrambling to patch after security researchers publicly released exploit code that allows attackers to take complete control of vulnerable systems. The U.S. government says the bug, dubbed “CopyFail,” is now being exploited in the wild, meaning it’s being actively used in malicious hacking campaigns. The bug, officially tracked as CVE-2026-31431 and discovered in Linux kernel versions 7.0 and earlier, was disclosed to the Linux kernel security team in late March, and patched after about a week. But the patches have yet to fully trickle down to the many Linux distributions that rely on the vulnerable kernel, leaving any system running an affected Linux version at risk of compromise. Linux is widely used in enterprise settings, running the computers that operate much of the world’s datacenters.  The CopyFail website says that the same short Python script “roots every Linux distribution shipped since 2017.”  According to security firm Theori, which discovered CopyFail, the vulnerability was verified in several widely used …

Nicolas Cage’s Spider-Man noir series debuts trailers for both color and black-and-white versions

Nicolas Cage’s Spider-Man noir series debuts trailers for both color and black-and-white versions

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Two trailers for the upcoming Spider-Noir televison series have been released, offering a first glimpse at Nicolas Cage‘s superhero private investigator in both black-and-white and full color. The show, which is set to debut on MGM+ on May 25 before arriving on Prime Video on May 27, will give streaming viewers the choice whether to watch a color or monochrome version of the show. The series, which also stars Lamorne Morris, Li Jun Li, Jack Huston and Karen Rodriguez, is produced by Sony Pictures Television and based on the Marvel comic series Spider-Man Noir. The story follows Cage as private investigator Ben Reilly, who finds himself as a superhero in 1930s New York City after suffering a deeply personal tragedy. It is being executive produced by Project Hail Mary directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who also worked on the animated …

This Startup Wants You to Pay Up to Talk With AI Versions of Human Experts

This Startup Wants You to Pay Up to Talk With AI Versions of Human Experts

Published by skeptic

The company isn’t exactly breaking new ground. The idea of a chatbot standing in for a human is fairly common. As is the idea of cashing in on it. For instance, Manhattan psychologist Becky Kennedy has built a parenting advice business that features a chatbot named Gigi trained on her acumen and knowledge. Kennedy’s company pulled in $34 million last year. So if you are an expert, Onix might sound pretty good—imagine a bot with your persona making money for you by interacting with thousands of clients with no effort on your part. As an Onix white paper puts it, “The expert’s knowledge base becomes a capital asset that generates revenue independent of their time.” Onix hopes to eventually have many thousands of experts offering versions of themselves. But for now, it’s starting with a highly vetted group of 17, with a concentration on health and wellness. Though most of these experts have impressive professional resumes, they are notable as marketers and influencers as well. Some have books or podcasts to promote, or supplements or …

Apple Urges iPhone Users Running Outdated iOS Versions to Update Immediately

Apple Urges iPhone Users Running Outdated iOS Versions to Update Immediately

Published by skeptic

Apple today urged iPhone users who are running iOS 13 or iOS 14 to upgrade to iOS 15 to protect themselves from being hacked through malicious web content. In a support document, Apple highlights recent reports about hacking tools that are effective against older versions of iOS. Hackers are using iOS exploit kits known as “Coruna” and “DarkSword,” which can take advantage of vulnerabilities in iOS 13 through iOS 17.2.1. “If your iPhone doesn’t have the latest software, update iOS to protect your data,” Apple says. Apple has patched the vulnerabilities as they have come to light over the last several months, so users who have already upgraded to the newest version of iOS available for their iPhone are protected from the malicious websites and links that are circulating right now. Users running updated versions of iOS 15 through iOS 26 are safe. Apple released new iOS 15 and iOS 16 updates on March 11 to address the security issue, and Apple says that devices still on iOS 13 or iOS 14 need to upgrade …

Enterprise AI agents keep operating from different versions of reality — Microsoft says Fabric IQ is the fix

Enterprise AI agents keep operating from different versions of reality — Microsoft says Fabric IQ is the fix

Published by skeptic

In 2026, data engineers working with multi-agent systems are hitting a familiar problem: Agents built on different platforms don’t operate from a shared understanding of the business. The result isn’t model failure — it’s hallucination driven by fragmented context. The problem is that agents built on different platforms, by different teams, do not share a common understanding of how the business actually operates. Each one carries its own interpretation of what a customer, an order or a region means. When those definitions diverge across a workforce of agents, decisions break down. A set of announcements from Microsoft this week directly targets that problem. The centerpiece is a significant expansion of Fabric IQ, the semantic intelligence layer the company debuted in November 2025. Fabric IQ’s business ontology is now accessible via MCP to any agent from any vendor, not just Microsoft’s. Alongside that, Microsoft is adding enterprise planning to Fabric IQ, unifying historical data, real-time signals and formal organizational goals in one queryable layer. The new Database Hub brings Azure SQL, Cosmos DB, PostgreSQL, MySQL and …

My Gen-Z daughter watched both versions of A Woman of Substance… but found one wanting

My Gen-Z daughter watched both versions of A Woman of Substance… but found one wanting

Published by Sam Flores

Remakes. They’re tricky territory for any broadcaster to explore, especially if the original was a rip-roaring success. In which case, you have to wonder (whisper it), why bother? Viewers – and I include myself very firmly in this category – can be quite protective of “our programmes” to the point where we stubbornly insist that they shouldn’t be monkeyed around with, on the grounds that they can’t possibly be bettered. But sometimes old favourites can be taken into a whole new captivating realm. Admittedly, Brideshead really didn’t need to be revisted in the 2008 film Brideshead Revisited, but sometimes it can be revelatory to watch a fresh lease of life being breathed into our best-loved classics. Think of Poldark with Aidan Turner, cutting a scythe through Sunday evening ratings, or the heart-warming return of All Creatures Great and Small – albeit this time to Channel 5 rather than the BBC. Then, there are those absolutely iconic series that capture not just a cultural moment, but have a huge emotional resonance to boot. A Woman of …

As Trump pressures Congress on the SAVE America Act, states push their own versions

As Trump pressures Congress on the SAVE America Act, states push their own versions

Published by Sam Flores

As a Republican push to pass the SAVE America Act has stalled in Congress, even amid escalating pressure from President Donald Trump, efforts are underway at the state level to fill in the gaps. Lawmakers in a dozen states have advanced legislation this year that would require residents to prove their U.S. citizenship to register to vote or bring photo ID to the polls, according to the Voting Rights Lab, a nonpartisan group that tracks election legislation. Those proposals are two of the central planks of the SAVE America Act at the national level. The latest example comes in Florida, where the Republican-led Legislature passed a bill this week to require election officials to confirm the citizenship of voters through government databases when they register to vote or update their registration, as well as during list maintenance. If a voter’s eligibility is in question, they would be asked for proof of citizenship. The legislation, once it reaches GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis’ desk for a signature, would largely go into effect next year, after the midterm …

Apple Urges iPhone Users Running Outdated iOS Versions to Update Immediately

Apple Releases New Versions of iOS for Older iPhones

Published by skeptic

Apple today released iOS 16.7.15, iPadOS 16.7.15, iOS 15.8.7, and iPadOS 15.8.7, updates designed for older iPhones and iPads that are not able to run newer versions of iOS and iPadOS. iPhone and iPad users can install the updates by opening up the Settings app, going to General, and selecting the Software Update option. Those with automatic updates turned on will see the new software installed automatically in the coming days. According to Apple’s release notes, the updates include important security fixes. Apple has committed to providing security updates for iPhones for at least five years after launch, but often Apple provides security fixes for a much longer period of time. Earlier this year, the iPhone 5s got a new software update 13 years after it initially launched. Update: Apple’s security notes for iOS/iPadOS 15.8.7 and iOS/iPadOS 16.7.15 disclose that the fixes are related to the sophisticated Coruna exploit that was disclosed by Google last week. Apple says that while all of the issues were previously fixed in various iOS 16 and iOS 17 updates, …