Technology

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/76636743

A new fleet of AI agents is making its presence felt on the internet. On Sunday, a group of independent researchers posted preliminary findings about the agents, observing that they seem to be running on Tencent’s infrastructure and targeting Alibaba’s map service, Amap.

Researchers, however, resisted the term “swarm,” noting that there seems to be little coordination between their different queries. “‘Agent fleet,’ not ‘swarm:’” one researcher wrote in the preliminary report, “many parallel agents on the same kind of task, with no sign of communication between them.”

The agents were discovered by monitoring traffic to the domain-scanning service urlquery, a technique that previously revealed long-running activity by OpenAI agents. AI agents often use urlquery to load websites that they cannot access directly, leaving a record of their activities that can be valuable to researchers.

In this case, the record showed queries to Alibaba’s Amap service, seeking directions to different entrances of various public places, including a park, a zoo, and a hospital.

The research is ongoing and so few details are available, but the behavior shows how persistent AI agent activity has become on the internet. In the wake of the Hugging Face incident, many researchers are actively monitoring for rogue agent activity on the internet. Much of that activity has been easy to find because agents tend to use the same techniques and make little effort to conceal themselves.

In this case, the agents don’t seem to have been doing anything more nefarious than side-stepping Alibaba’s API rules — but we may not always be so lucky.

VMware customers face multiple obstacles as they rethink their virtualization strategy to reduce dependence on VMware.

Today, Rimini Street published its “2026 IT Virtualization Survey – What’s Next for VMware Users.” The survey examined 300 organizations worldwide that use VMware.

Notably, Rimini sells third-party support for VMware and other software, including Oracle and SAP. That means there’s an incentive for Rimini to portray VMware users as experiencing obstacles. However, the survey was also conducted by a third-party research company, Unisphere Research, and the results align with other recent reports about VMware customers.

For example, 90 percent of participants in Rimini’s survey said they’re exploring VMware alternatives due to VMware’s higher licensing costs, while 54 percent pointed to Broadcom killing support for perpetual license holders.

Since Broadcom took over VMware, customers have said that their VMware costs increased by as much as 1,000 percent, with many more pointing to more modest price hikes of around 100 to 300 percent. In Rimini’s survey, 73 percent of participants pointed to cost savings as a top priority in their virtualization roadmap decisions.

“Significant barriers”

In today’s announcement, Rimini pointed to “significant barriers to progress” for organizations exploring virtualization options, with the most cited barriers being operational complexity (named by 40 percent of respondents), multi-vendor management challenges (38 percent), securing the increased attack surface (37 percent), and team skills requirements (37 percent).

“These findings suggest that while organizations are actively pursuing change, they are also looking for ways to reduce risk and avoid unnecessary disruption,” Rimini’s announcement said.

Broadcom’s takeover has spotlighted the challenges of being overly reliant on a single vendor.

“Many clients are looking … at this [as] a wake-up call to how dependent they had become on a single vendor and are looking for more diversity in their on-premises environments,” Tony Harvey, a senior director analyst at Gartner, previously told Ars, referring to Broadcom’s acquisition.

Rimini reported that 60 percent of the organizations it surveyed are considering a multi-hypervisor strategy, which is indicative of “growing interest in more flexible, mixed environments that support both operational and financial goals.”

“In addition, 47 percent are favoring a hybrid IT virtualization environment consisting of hypervisors and containers for ‘best of both worlds’ workload placement,” the announcement said.

Rimini noted that 48 percent of respondents aren’t planning to move any of their assets to VMware’s hybrid cloud platform, Cloud Foundation.

“The trend shows increasing diversification in enterprise virtualization strategies with a longer-term transition toward bespoke, multi-platform IT virtualization environments. As organizations reevaluate their paths to modernization, they are increasingly adopting approaches that combine on-premises infrastructure, private cloud, public cloud and alternative hypervisors to support workload flexibility, operational efficiency and better cost control,” the announcement says.

In its “Magic Quadrant for Distributed Hybrid Infrastructure” released last month, Gartner predicted that 55 percent of enterprises will make “proofs of concept for alternative distributed hybrid infrastructure products to replace their VMware-based deployments and embrace hybrid cloud infrastructure delivery” by 2029, which is an increase from 25 percent in 2026.

In a statement today, Joe McKendrick, lead analyst at Unisphere Research, pointed to interest among VMware users to do more than just replace their virtualization vendor.

“[The survey] reflects a broader effort by enterprises to reduce dependency on a single provider, maintain continuity for mission-critical systems and modernize at a pace that fits their own business requirements,” he said. “For many organizations, that means balancing support for existing environments with new investments designed to improve resilience, security and scalability over time.”

https://archive.ph/5m4x5

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/76516412

https://youtube.com/shorts/kOoD85gynhc

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/76486627

What just happened? Another incident has taken place that illustrates the need to be careful what you tell AI. A Florida woman is facing felony charges after she used Claude as a diary and allegedly wrote that she planned to "shoot up" the Sheriff's office. After a human reviewer examined the statements, they were reported to police.

According to the arrest report, Carli Michelle Heller, of Bonita Springs, Florida, wrote on September 26 that she would attack the Sheriff's office. She later said that she uses Anthropic's chatbot like a "diary."

Claude's safety systems flagged the entry and it was escalated to a human reviewer. After deciding it was a credible threat, the reviewer reported it to law enforcement.

The company says it may share user information in limited emergencies if it believes disclosure is necessary to prevent death or serious physical injury.

Deputies identified Heller and visited her home. She was detained without incident before an LCSO intelligence detective took over the investigation.

Heller faces a charge of making a written threat of violence under Florida law. Florida Statute 836.10 makes it a second-degree felony to send, post, or transmit a written or electronic record threatening to kill or injure someone, carry out a mass shooting, or commit an act of terrorism. The communication must be made in a manner in which another person may view it.

Anthropic isn't going to be taking any chances when it comes to anything it deems a potential threat. Last month, it was reported that OpenAI and Sam Altman are being sued by British Columbia over claims that the company could have prevented a mass shooting in the Canadian province.

The shooter, eighteen-year-old former pupil Jesse Van ⁠Rootselaar, had previously been flagged by OpenAI's safety team for her conversations about gun violence, but OpenAI never alerted police because the conversations did not meet the threshold for legal referral.

In June, Florida also sued OpenAI and Altman, alleging that ChatGPT had contributed to real-world harms, including the 2025 Florida State University shooting.

The latest incident is another reminder to think before you enter something into a chatbot that could get you into trouble. It's certainly not a private diary whose contents are for your eyes only.

Reports last month revealed that human contractors reviewing Microsoft Copilot's image editor can see users' prompts, uploaded photos and AI-generated edits. Documents show that some of those assignments contain sexual, disturbing or potentially illegal material, though the reviewers are not there to flag the content – only to assess whether the output is accurate.

With this innovative thermal management, the Mini PC replaces conventional fan-based cooling with ultrasonic-frequency membrane vibration technology to generate high-speed pulsating airflow to provide high-capacity heat dissipation without the added height that comes with a heatsink.

AAEON has positioned the system as an ultraslim Mini PC suited for integration in space-constrained applications such as ultra-thin kiosk setups, low-clearance AMR housing, and compact mobile healthcare units. One feature that stands out for each of these verticals is its elimination of fan-induced vibration.

AAEON note that the UP Xtreme PTL Edge Air operates at less than 21 dBA, resulting in it being a quieter, more stable platform for robotic controllers, actuators, sensors, and cameras. For robotics applications, AAEON state that combined, these features can reduce torque around moving joints and minimize mechanical disturbance for precision sensing equipment.

Crossposted from https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/48779421

I'm writing a program that can find info about a phone number. One problem appears to be that Google's phone number library doesn't provide enough info. For instance, take this number: +1 (613) 745-1576. My iPhone correctly says "Ottawa, Ontario, Canada", while Google's library doesn't return the city? How does my iPhone pick this up but not Google's own library? Is this provided by cell carriers? Is it something with the 745 block? If so, where can I find this info?

BRUSSELS — The European Commission has rolled out an alternative to Microsoft Teams — but officials using it aren't impressed, with one describing the tool as “absolute shit.”

The Commission introduced Element Pro over the summer as a “sovereign back-up to Teams,” according to an internal staff memo seen by POLITICO. The platform is intended to provide a fallback for Commission communications if U.S.-based Teams becomes unavailable.

While Teams remains the Commission’s main communications tool, Element Pro is an “internal back-up ... that helps ensure our business continuity” in the event of a “disruption,” the memo says.

But three officials have questioned why the Commission needs the new system — and whether it works well enough to serve as a genuine backup.

“I don’t understand the added value here,” one official wrote on an internal staff message board, seen by POLITICO. Another described the tool as “absolute shit.”

A third official said that, judging matters on how well Element Pro works compared to Teams, the U.S. would “instantly win the war” if it ever decided to switch off its technology. All the officials were granted anonymity to speak freely.

The rollout comes as the Commission seeks to reduce its reliance on U.S. technology amid a broader push for European “digital sovereignty.”

“In recent months, digital sovereignty has become increasingly important,” the Commission told staff in a July memo. “In practice, this means having greater control over our data and systems so that we can reduce risks and limit disruption to our work, wherever possible.”

The Commission hosts the Element system on its own infrastructure rather than relying on Microsoft’s cloud. That gives the institution greater control over its communications data and systems.

“That is not the case with Teams, where all we have is a guarantee that Microslop will not peek inside,” a fourth official wrote, presumably referring to Microsoft, in internal communications viewed by POLITICO.

Element is a U.K. company whose software is used by governments and public-sector organizations in Europe. The application works much like Teams, allowing staff to hold “audio and video calls with Commission colleagues, send and receive files, and create dedicated ‘rooms’ for projects and conversations, much like chats and channels in M365 Teams,” according to the Commission memo.

The Commission is not alone in reducing reliance on U.S. technology. Earlier this year, France announced that millions of civil servants will stop using American video-conferencing tools, including Microsoft Teams and Zoom, by 2027 and switch to a homegrown alternative. Austria's military also replaced Microsoft Office with the German-made LibreOffice last year. The Commission hosts the Element system on its own infrastructure rather than relying on Microsoft’s cloud. | Nicolas Tucat/AFP via Getty Images

Element CEO Matthew Hodgson told POLITICO in a call using Element software that the Commission is still trialing it.

“Obviously there are going to be some teething issues,” he said, adding there will always be “cognitive dissonance” when switching to a new app, if only because the “buttons” are in a different place. He noted that the United Nations and NATO also use Element Pro.

“Change is always painful, particularly if it's a switch from a much-used program like Teams,” he said, adding that Element was supporting the EU throughout the rollout and wanted to hear all feedback, good or bad.

The Commission asked Element not to share certain details with POLITICO regarding its subscription to the software, a spokesperson for the company said.

The Commission did not immediately respond to requests for comment.