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In the rapidly evolving field of natural language processing (NLP), integrating external knowledge bases through Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems has made significant progress. However, traditional RAG systems often fail to incorporate user context or personalized information retrieval strategies, resulting in a gap between general effectiveness and customized user experiences. To address this issue, researchers at … Read more

Most of the glyphosate found in European rivers does not come from farming, but rather from additives in detergents. A team of researchers at the University of Tübingen analyzed data from European and US water protection authorities to find that the main source of glyphosate is likely wastewater from sewage treatment plants. Until now, it … Read more

A critical vulnerability in the Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service (RADIUS) protocol has been discovered, affecting multiple Cisco products. The vulnerability, CVE-2024-3596, allows an attacker to forge RADIUS responses, potentially leading to unauthorized access to network resources. The vulnerability, known as “Blast-RADIUS,” exploits a fundamental flaw in the RADIUS protocol’s use of MD5 for response … Read more

New Specula tool uses Outlook for remote code execution in Windows A new post-exploitation framework called “Specula” was released by cybersecurity firm TrustedSec, which can turn Microsoft Outlook into a command and control (C2) beacon to remotely execute code. The C2 framework works by creating a custom Outlook Home Page using WebView, exploiting CVE-2017-11774, an … Read more

Meta’s AI safety system defeated by space bar ‘Ignore previous instructions’ thwarts Prompt-Guard model if you just add good ol’ ASCII code 32 Meta’s machine-learning model for detecting prompt injection attacks, Prompt-Guard-86M, is vulnerable to prompt injection attacks. The model was introduced by Meta with its Llama 3.1 generative model last week. It’s meant to … Read more

Skip, a wearable technology startup that started as a secretive project inside Alphabet, has come out of stealth mode to announce its partnership with outdoor clothing company Arc’teryx. The deal brings Skip’s “powered pants” to market. These special pants have a soft exoskeleton called MO/GO that helps people walk by providing 40% energy assistance and … Read more

A large team of chemists at Harvard University has found evidence that cloud-to-ground lightning strikes may have played a key role in generating building blocks for life on Earth. In their study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers set up an experiment to mimic early Earth conditions and simulated … Read more

Perplexity is launching a program to share ad revenue with publishing partners, following weeks of plagiarism accusations. The “Publishers’ Program” has recruited its first batch of partners, including prominent names like Time, Der Spiegel, Fortune, and others. Under this program, publishers will receive a share of the ad revenue when Perplexity features their content in … Read more

Microsoft is investigating a widespread outage affecting some Microsoft 365 and Azure services. Users are reporting issues connecting to the Microsoft 365 admin center, opening the Service Health Status page, and experiencing timeouts while using Azure services. The company says the incident only affects users worldwide and a subset of its services. Multiple engineering teams … Read more

Hey, remember Windows XP? That operating system from 2001 that’s still fondly remembered by many. But with no updates since 2014, it’s no longer safe or secure. YouTuber Eric Parker decided to test this by going online with an old Windows XP computer without any protection. He quickly found malware on his system – just … Read more