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Few debates have raged longer and more controversially in the computing industry than one: Is “open source” better than “closed” when it comes to software development?This debate was revived as companies like Google, Meta, OpenAI, and Microsoft differed on how to compete for supremacy in artificial intelligence systems. Some choose a closed model while others embrace an open approach.Here's what to know.What does open source software mean?Source code is the underlying building blocks of the apps you use. Developers can write tens of thousands of lines of source code to create programs that will run on a computer.Open source software is any computer code that can be freely distributed, copied, or modified for the developer's purposes. The nonprofit Open Source Initiative, an indu...

The temporary pier that the US military built and put in place to deliver much-needed humanitarian aid to Gaza broke due to rough seas, the Pentagon said Tuesday.The latest calamity to befall the pier venture has punctuated several particularly grim days in Gaza, where Israeli forces have stepped up attacks on the city of Rafah just two days after carrying out a deadly attack that killed dozens of people .“Unfortunately, we had a perfect storm in high seas conditions and then, as I said, this North African weather system also came through at the same time, creating a suboptimal environment to operate,” Sabrina Singh, Pentagon deputy press secretary. , he said at a press conference.Army engineers are working to put the pier back together, and Defense Department officials hope "it will be f...

Fluctuating disease rates, innovative treatments and talk of “moonshots” at the White House could make cancer seem like a modern plague. But a new discovery sheds light on how humans dealt with disease and sought cures as far back as ancient Egyptian times.Scientists led by Edgard Camarós, a paleopathologist at the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, were studying an Egyptian skull about 4,600 years old when they found signs of brain cancer and its treatment.“There was an uncomfortable silence in the room, because we knew what we had just discovered,” Dr. Camarós said.Using a microscope, he and Tatiana Tondini of the University of Tübingen in Germany and Albert Isidro of the Sagrat Cor University Hospital in Spain, the study's other authors, found cut marks around the edges...

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken plans to spend this week showing U.S. support for nations facing a hostile Russia during visits to Moldova and the Czech Republic, where he will participate in a meeting of NATO foreign ministers discussing on how to strengthen Ukraine.Mr. Blinken, who stopped in Kiev more than two weeks ago, is expected to fly to Chisinau, Moldova's capital, on Wednesday and meet with Maia Sandu, the nation's president, who is running for re-election. Ms. Sandu supported Moldova's membership of the European Union and scheduled a referendum vote on EU membership on the same day as October's general elections.He is expected to run against a pro-Russian candidate, and U.S. and European analysts say Moscow will likely try to interfere in the election, as i...

Ryan Salame, a top executive at collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison on Tuesday, making him the first of Sam Bankman-Fried's circle of advisors at FTX to receive a prison sentence.Salame, 30, a trusted lieutenant of Bankman-Fried, the exchange's founder, pleaded guilty last year to violating campaign finance law and a charge of operating a money transfer business without license. He is one of four top deputies in the FTX empire who have pleaded guilty to crimes since the company imploded in November 2022.Mr. Salame's sentence exceeded the five to seven years recommended by prosecutors. Defense lawyers had asked for 18 months.Wearing a blue suit and socks emblazoned with the Bitcoin logo, Salame stood before Judge Lewis A. Ka...

WEWorldBusinessArtsLifestyleOpinionAudioGamescookingNippersAtleticoMay 28, 2024Updated 2.42pm ETA Gaza official says at least 21 people have been killed and dozens injured on Tuesday, when strikes hit an area of ​​tents housing displaced people in Al-Mawasi, a coastal area in southern Gaza where Israel has designated a humanitarian safe zone, not far from the city of Rafah. The Israeli army immediately denied carrying out attacks inside the area. Videos verified by the New York Times show several people dead and injured in a farming region near the area where people were living in tents. Gaza civil defense official Dr Mohammed Al Moghayer said most of the dead and wounded were taken to nearby field hospitals, and others to a hospital in the town of Khan Younis. The Times verified the l...

Louisiana lawmakers passed legislation Thursday making the state the first in the nation to designate abortion pills as controlled dangerous substances. Possession of the drugs without a prescription would be a crime punishable by prison time and thousands of dollars in fines.The legislation, which passed the state Senate by a vote of 29-7, now goes to Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican who previously defended the state's strict abortion ban in court as attorney general. You are expected to sign it.By classifying the abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol as Schedule IV drugs — a category of drugs with some potential for abuse or addiction that includes Ambien, Valium and Xanax, among others — state lawmakers say they aim to curb the illicit distribution of the drugs for abortions. ...

Calls are growing among Western nations to allow attacks on Russian territory using weapons they have sent to the Ukrainian military, a measure that Ukraine says will allow it to better prevent Russian attacks.NATO's Parliamentary Assembly, made up of lawmakers from countries belonging to the military alliance, adopted a statement on Monday calling on NATO members to lift the ban on firing Western weapons at Russia. This came after similar calls from NATO's top official, Jens Stoltenberg, and ministers from Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Sweden.Calls to allow Ukraine to expand its use of Western weapons are mostly directed at the United States, the largest arms supplier to the Ukrainian government. Washington has repeatedly asked Ukraine not to launch American-made weapons on Russ...

OpenAI said Tuesday that it has begun training a new flagship artificial intelligence model that will succeed the GPT-4 technology that drives its popular online chatbot, ChatGPT.The San Francisco start-up, one of the world's leading artificial intelligence companies, said in a blog post that it expects the new model to bring "the next level of capability" as it strives to build "artificial general intelligence" , or AGI. , a machine that can do everything the human brain can do. The new model would be an engine for artificial intelligence products including chatbots, digital assistants similar to Apple's Siri, search engines and image generators.OpenAI also said it is creating a new safety and security committee to explore how to manage the risks posed by the new model and futur...

A member of the Egyptian security forces was killed near the Rafah border with the Gaza Strip and an investigation is ongoing, an Egyptian army spokesman said on Monday, after the Israeli army reported a shooting at the border .Al Qahera News, Egypt's state television station, quoted an anonymous, "well-informed" security official as saying that there appeared to have been an exchange of gunfire between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian fighters and that the battle that that followed resulted in the death of the soldier. The New York Times could not independently verify the circumstances of the shooting.The shooting reflects growing tension at the border since early May, when the southern Gaza city of Rafah became the hub of Israel's military campaign to defeat Hamas, an armed grou...