Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

MiniMax released MiniMax-Music3, an open-weights text-to-music model. The model takes two separate inputs: lyrics carrying section tags, and a detailed music description. It returns a complete song of up to five minutes in a single generation, as 32 kHz, 16-bit stereo WAV. The architecture pairs a Hybrid-LM, an 8B Global LLM with a 0.6B Local LLM, with a continuous synthesis stack built on flow matching and a Flow-VAE. Weights, inference code and three documented serving paths shipped the same day. Is it deployable? Yes, MiniMax published usable weights, inference code and three documented serving paths on day one, so this…

Hackers started exploiting a critical vulnerability in SAP Commerce Cloud just three days after its public disclosure, according to threat intelligence organizations. The vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2026-58231 and is described as an issue involving insufficient authorization checks and input validation.  An attacker can exploit the vulnerability, which has a CVSS score of 10, to execute arbitrary code and compromise internal components. SAP announced patches for CVE-2026-58231 on August 11 and Defused reported that its honeypots had started seeing exploitation attempts on August 14. The security firm noted that there had been no public PoC exploit and no prior reports…

Bybit has given some Brazilian business users until Aug. 21 to complete additional verification. Accounts that miss a requested update will first face access restrictions, then, from Sept. 21, could have remaining positions on restricted products forcibly liquidated at market prices and unsupported fiat balances converted to USDT.The deadline applies only to business users who received a request to supplement existing Business Verification information, according to Bybit’s notice.Bybit began sending those requests in-app and by email from Aug. 1. Recipients must follow the deadline in their individual notification and finish no later than Aug. 21 unless the company specifies otherwise.…

Caltech researchers have found a way to move light across silicon wafers with exceptionally little signal loss, reaching levels at visible wavelengths that approach those of optical fiber. The advance could support a new generation of highly coherent and energy-efficient photonic integrated circuits (PICs), with potential uses ranging from optical clocks and gyroscopes to AI data center communications and quantum computing. Optical fiber already forms much of the hidden infrastructure behind modern communications. It allows information to travel over long distances at high speed because the glass inside the fiber is extremely pure and its surface is engineered to be…

NKT’s new cable-laying vessel (CLV) NKT Eleonora, which will be able to run on both methanol and HVO/marine diesel oil, has arrived from Romania to Norway for the next phase of outfitting and commissioning.Source: VARD via LinkedIn (Screenshot) The official keel laying for the vessel took place in January 2025, some two months after the first steel was cut. It was then reported in April 2026 that its hull had been launched into the water at Vard’s shipyard in Tulcea, Romania. NKT announced on July 20 that NKT Eleonora had departed Vard Shipyards Romania in Tulcea and is on its way to Vard Brattvaag, Norway, for the next…

On Aug. 10, the Turkish parliament passed a bill providing limited amnesty for demobilized militants of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). After waging an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984, the PKK announced it was formally dissolving last year, following an order from its imprisoned founder, Abdullah Ocalan. Now Ocalan, who won’t be included in the amnesty, has praised the bill as heralding a process of democratization that is “as significant as the founding of the [Turkish] republic.” On Aug. 10, the Turkish parliament passed a bill providing limited amnesty for demobilized militants of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).…

Search efforts to recover the remaining victims are still underway.Published On 17 Aug 202617 Aug 2026Police in Zimbabwe have recovered eight more bodies after a ferry capsized on Lake Kariba six days ago, increasing the death toll to at least 92.The national police service confirmed the latest casualty count in a social media post on Monday after declaring on Sunday that 84 bodies had been found. Search efforts to find the remaining victims are still underway.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of listPolice noted that a large number of resources have been deployed, including four boats and more than 40…

A Cabinet Office press release about the alert, posted to its website at about 18:45 on Friday, was missed by many in the media, which meant there was little warning to the public.Some campaigners have said this potentially jeopardised domestic abuse victims trying to hide secret phones they use to seek support and try to escape abusers.Women’s Aid, the national charity aiming to end domestic abuse, is calling for more forewarning of alerts wherever possible.Veronica Oakeshott, the charity’s head of external affairs, told BBC News: “Survivors of domestic abuse frequently turn to second phones to help them access lifesaving support…

Hundreds of thousands of children would be tipped into poverty and destitution under plans unveiled by Reform UK to slash £50bn a year from the UK benefits bill, campaigners have warned.The warnings came after Reform published plans to drastically reduce disability payments, ban non-UK citizens from claiming benefits and introduce compulsory 20 hours a week unpaid workfare for thousands of long-term unemployed people.An overhaul of the sick pay system would require employers to cover an employee’s benefit payments for the first two years of their illness, the plans propose, while the two-child benefit limit scrapped by Labour last year would…

Like many of us, Sam Rosenthal plays games like Wordle every day, chasing after good scores and sharing the results with friends and family. But he’s also a game designer, the creative director at Blaseball developer The Game Band, and so this regular habit got him thinking about what else could be done in the space. “When I was a kid and I played word games with my family, they weren’t the New York Times puzzle games,” Rosenthal explains. “We were sitting in a car on a road trip playing these really loose games that couldn’t be made digitally before.…