How can you argue against these numbers? (credit: 20th Century Fox / Aurich Lawson)

According to one measurement by one firm, Linux reached 3.07 percent market share of global desktop operating systems in June 2023. It's a notable first for the more than 30-year-old operating system, though other numbers in Statcounter's chart open it up to many more interpretations. It's either the year of the Linux desktop or a notable asterisk—your call.

As Statcounter explains , its numbers come from tracking code installed on more than 1.5 million websites across the globe, capturing roughly 5 billion page views per month. Statcounter says it does not collate, weigh, or otherwise adjust its data aside from correcting for bots and Google Chrome's prerendering. Laptops are included in "desktop" because there is no easy way to separate them. And they're subject to revision for up to 45 days after publication.

Five years ago , Linux made up 1.69 percent of Statcounter's June numbers. In the year between June 2022 and 2023, Linux unsteadily crept up from 2.42 to 3.07 percent, jumping past 3 percent for the first time between May and June. If you regard Chrome OS as a Linux system, you could add that 4.13 percent and get to 7.2 percent.

Enlarge / Elon Musk speaks via video link at the opening ceremony of the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai on July 6, 2023. (credit: REBECCA BAILEY/AFP via Getty Images)

On Wednesday, Elon Musk formally announced the formation of xAI , a company aimed at understanding "the true nature of the universe" that will draw from a heavy bench of industry veterans to take on OpenAI's popular chatbot ChatGPT . Musk has criticized OpenAI publicly in the past.

The inception of xAI dates back to March when Musk and Jared Birchall, the operator of Musk's family office, incorporated a business named "X.AI" in Nevada, according to Bloomberg . In keeping with the unconventional name, the company's website domain name is "x.ai". In April, reports emerged of Musk's ongoing dialogues with investors from Tesla and SpaceX regarding the potential funding of a new AI startup. Around that time, we reported that Musk purchased thousands of GPUs from Nvidia for AI use.

The new company announced on its website that Musk will lead its core team himself, and it will rely on the talents of an array of AI industry veterans of tech giants such as Google's DeepMind, Microsoft, and Tesla, as well as academic institutions like the University of Toronto.

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Hackers are using open source software that’s popular with video game cheaters to allow their Windows-based malware to bypass restrictions Microsoft put in place to prevent such infections from occurring.

The software comes in the form of two software tools that are available on GitHub. Cheaters use them to digitally sign malicious system drivers so they can modify video games in ways that give the player an unfair advantage. The drivers clear the considerable hurdle required for the cheat code to run inside the Windows kernel, the fortified layer of the operating system reserved for the most critical and sensitive functions.

Researchers from Cisco’s Talos security team said Tuesday that multiple Chinese-speaking threat groups have repurposed the tools—one called HookSignTool and the other FuckCertVerifyTimeValidity. Instead of using the kernel access for cheating, the threat actors use it to give their malware capabilities it wouldn’t otherwise have.

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On Tuesday, Anthropic introduced Claude 2, a large language model (LLM) similar to ChatGPT that can craft code, analyze text, and write compositions. Unlike the original version of Claude launched in March, users can try Claude 2 for free on a new beta website . It's also available as a commercial API for developers.

Anthropic says that Claude is designed to simulate a conversation with a helpful colleague or personal assistant and that the new version addresses feedback from users of the previous model: "We have heard from our users that Claude is easy to converse with, clearly explains its thinking, is less likely to produce harmful outputs, and has a longer memory."

Anthropic claims that Claude 2 demonstrates advancements in three key areas: coding, math, and reasoning. "Our latest model scored 76.5% on the multiple choice section of the Bar exam, up from 73.0% with Claude 1.3," they write. "When compared to college students applying to graduate school, Claude 2 scores above the 90th percentile on the GRE reading and writing exams, and similarly to the median applicant on quantitative reasoning."

Enlarge / Attorneys carrying boxes arrive to court in San Francisco, California, US, on Tuesday, June 27, 2023. A judge has ruled that the FTC's reliance on the PlayStation chief's testimony was unpersuasive, while Microsoft and Activision's efforts will help avoid market concentration. (credit: Getty Images)

A federal judge in San Francisco today denied the Federal Trade Commission's motion to halt Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard, ruling that the FTC was unlikely to prove that the merger would "substantially lessen competition."

Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley's decision (PDF) is heavily redacted in sections covering the company's assets and performance in "AAA Content," "Exclusive Content," and "Cloud Gaming Subscription Services," among others. Segments of those redactions were likely seen in earlier filings, which were poorly redacted with a marker and revealed key financial figures.

The FTC's motion for a temporary restraining order and injunction was filed in an attempt to disrupt the deal before its purported July 18 deadline . The FTC had already initiated an administrative action to investigate the deal's effect on gaming markets, but it petitioned the US District Court for Northern California that Microsoft and Activision "may consummate the Proposed Acquisition at any time."

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On Thursday, OpenAI announced that all paying API customers now have access to the GPT-4 API. It also introduced updates to chat-based models, announced a shift from the Completions API to the Chat Completions API, and outlined plans for deprecation of older models.

Generally considered its most powerful API product, the GPT-4 API first launched in March but has been under closed testing until now. As an API, developers can use a special interface to integrate OpenAI's large language model (LLM) into their own products for uses such as summarization, coding assistance, analysis, and composition. The model runs remotely on OpenAI's servers and provides output to other apps over the Internet.

OpenAI says the GPT-4 API with 8K context is accessible to existing developers who have a successful payment history, with plans to open access to new developers by the end of July. And in a move to distance itself from older GPT-3-style models, OpenAI has also opted to begin retiring "Completions API" models in favor of newer Chat Completions API models. Since its March launch , OpenAI says that its Chat Completions API models now account for 97 percent of OpenAI's API GPT usage.

Enlarge / Comedian and author Sarah Silverman. (credit: Jason Kempin / Staff | Getty Images North America )

Enlarge (credit: AHMET YARALI/Getty )

Meta's long-awaited Twitter alternative is here, and it's called Threads . The new social media app launches at a time when alternatives, like Bluesky, Mastodon, and Spill, are vying for users who are dissatisfied with Elon Musk's handling of Twitter's user experience, with its newly introduced rate limits and an uptick in hate speech .

Meta owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, so the company’s attempt to recreate an online experience similar to Twitter is likely to attract plenty of normies, lurkers, and nomadic shitposters. Meta is working to incorporate Threads as part of the online Fediverse , a group of shared servers where users can interact across multiple platforms.

If you’re hesitant to share your personal data with a company on the receiving end of a billion-dollar fine , that’s understandable. For those who are curious, however, here’s what we know about the service’s privacy policy, what data you hand over when you sign up, and how it compares to the data collected by other options.

Enlarge (credit: Lino Mirgeler/picture alliance via Getty Images )

MOVEit, the file-transfer software exploited in recent weeks in one of the biggest cyberattacks ever , has received yet another security update that fixes a critical vulnerability that could be exploited to give hackers access to vast amounts of sensitive data.

On Thursday, MOVEit maker Progress Software published a security bulletin that included fixes for three newly discovered vulnerabilities in the file-transfer application. The most serious of them, tracked as CVE-2023-36934, allows an unauthenticated attacker to gain unauthorized access to the application database. It stems from a security flaw that allows for SQL injection, one of the oldest and most common exploit classes.

The vulnerability contains the same elements—and, likely, the same potentially devastating consequences—as one that came to light in late May when members of the Clop ransomware crime syndicate began mass-exploiting it on vulnerable networks around the world. To date, the Clop offensive has hit 229 organizations and spilled data affecting more than 17 million people, according to statistics tracked by Brett Callow, an analyst with security firm Emsisoft. Casualties include Louisiana and Oregon DMVs , the New York City Department of Education, and energy companies Schneider Electric and Siemens Electric.