Meta Connect Coming Up; Disney & Direct TV Finally Make Nice; US Moves to Crack Down in Temu; Microsoft Launches Copilot Pages
Posted: September 16, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: AI, Artificial Intelligence, copilot, Microsoft, microsoft-365 Leave a commentMeta Connect ’24 is coming up on September 25th. The two day extravaganza will lean into AI heavily, of course, as Apple just did, and as Google and Microsoft are doing. Engadget.com reports that after dropping their expensive mixed reality headset…that was aimed at the crazy expensive Apple Vision Pro, Meta will focus on their augmented reality glasses…which are code named Orion. Unlike the Quest 3, which covers all your vision and uses cams to get you a low quality view of the world, Orion may be set for you to view the real world like through a regular pair of glasses…BUT with a layer of holographic imagery on top of the reality up ahead. The company plans to release a new pair of Ray-Ban smart glasses next year, that will have a small built-in screen along with the existing camera, speaker, and microphone. Most Meta-watchers also think we will see a stripped down version of the Quest 3 called the 3S. Meta is aiming to have this sell for $300-$400. It may at least partially replace the Quest 2, which has been priced at $299 for some time now. Naturally, AI will be woven into practically everything they show or mention…much like Apple. You can’t over-buzz that buzzword, apparently.
After 2 weeks of blackout of ESPN, ABC, Disney+ and other Disney products, the House of Mouse and DirecTV finally cut a deal. According to variety.com, the deal was announced Saturday, and just in time for the first full day of college football on ABC and ESPN, not to mention the Prime Time Emmy show, which aired last night. All the Disney streams should be up and running on DirecTV now while the companies finish hammering out the final details. The new deal apparently gives users more flexible options for viewing. Meanwhile. DirecTV has boosted prices starting on October 6th.
The feds have proposed new rules that could make it harder and more expensive for Chinese e-commerce platforms like Tee Moo…or Teh Moo, depending on what you call it…to ship goods to the US. Arstechnica.com notes that the platform has been selling cheap goods using what is called the ‘de minimus exception’ that makes shipments valued at under $800 duty-free. Platforms taking advantage of the exemption can share less information on packages and dodge taxes. President Biden warned that “over the last 10 years, the number of shipments entering the United States claiming the de minimus exemption has increased significantly, from approximately 140 million a year to over 1 billion a year.” The government would exclude the exemption for goods covered by tariffs under laws from 1974 and 1962.
Microsoft has unveiled Copilot Pages today. The feature is supposed to be a so-called ‘canvas for multiplayer AI collaboration.’ Theverge.com says Pages lets you use Microsoft’s Copilot chatbot and pull responses into a new page where they can be edited collaboratively with others. Jared Spatero, corporate VP of AI said “You and your team can work collaboratively in a page with Copilot, seeing everyone’s work in real time and iterating with Copilot like a partner, adding more content from your data, files, and the web to your Page. This is an entirely new work pattern — multiplayer, human to AI to human collaboration.” Pages is rolling out to Microsoft 365 Copilot customers today and should be available to all subscribers later this month.
I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.’
Google-New Tack on Reigning In Explicit Deepfakes; Feds Rule Amazon Responsible for Defective 3rd Party Products on Platform; Meta Blames ‘Hallucinations’-It’s AI Claimed Trump Shooting Fake; Tesla Recall-1.8 Million Vehicles
Posted: July 31, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: AI, Artificial Intelligence, deepfake, deepfakes, technology Leave a commentGoogle is updating its ranking systems, in an effort to limit deepfakes. Explicit deepfakes have been a particularly vexing problem for female celebrities. Mashable.com reports that the Google change will do this: When someone uses terms to seek out nonconsensual deepfakes of specific individuals, the ranking system will attempt to instead provide “high-quality, non-explicit content,” such as news articles, when it’s available. Google product manager Emma Higham wrote in a blog post that “With these changes, people can read about the impact deepfakes are having on society, rather than see pages with actual nonconsensual fake images.” The ranking update has already decreased exposure to explicit image results on deepfake searches by 70%. Additionally, Google is updating systems that handle requests for removing nonconsensual deepfakes from Search. The changes should make the request process easier.
The US Consumer Product Safety Commission has ruled..unanimously…that Amazon is a distributor, and that it bears responsibility for faulty products it has sold on its marketplace. According to geekwire.com, this puts Amazon on the hook for recalled products sold by third-party sellers…that amounts to over half the company’s e-commerce sales. Amazon has always claimed that they shouldn’t be held liable for defective product sold by third party merchants on amazon.com…saying that the liability falls to the seller, not the marketplace ‘facilitating’ the sale. Amazon, as you might presume, plans to appeal.
We just wrote about several professors publishing a paper about AI lying last week…or ‘bullshitting,’ as they termed it. Now Meta is blaming its AI assistant’s so-called ‘hallucinations’ for saying incorrectly that the assassination attempt on former President Trump didn’t happen. Theverge.com says that the company termed the screw up ‘unfortunate’ in a company blog post. Meta claims that Meta AI was first programmed to not respond to questions about the attempted assassination but the company removed that restriction after people started noticing. It’s not just Meta that is caught up here: Google on Tuesday also had to refute claims that its Search autocomplete feature was censoring results about the assassination attempt. Since ChatGPT burst on the scene, the tech industry has been grappling with how to limit generative AI’s propensity for falsehoods. It’s apparently still hard to overcome what large language models are inherently designed to do: make stuff up.
Tesla has recalled over 1.8 million US cars, due to a risk of software not notifying individuals of a detached hood. Engadget.com notes that if a hood isn’t latched properly, it can blow up and block the driver’s field of view. Tesla is sending out an over the air software update that is supposed to fix the issue. The recall is for 2021 to 2024 Models 3, S, and X. It also includes Model Y vehicles from 2020 to 2024.
I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.
Grok Chatbot Trains on X User Data; Apple Intelligence Delayed Until October in iOS 18.1; DOJ says TikTok Collected User Data on Controversial Issues; Microsoft Will Make Windows Security more Mac-Like
Posted: July 29, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: AI, Apple, Microsoft, security, technology Leave a commentThe Grok chatbot Elon Musk has is apparently training on data from any and all X users. According to thenextweb.com, this could get Musk into trouble with the European Union. The data use may be in violation of EU rules. You can make sure you are not included in this. Go to settings in X, and look for a box that is checked by default…it says “Allow your posts as well as your interactions, inputs, and results with Grok to be used for training and fine-tuning.” This may violate the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. That law restricts companies from expanding data collection without telling users, and providing users a clear opt-out.
Apparently Apple Intelligence won’t graduate in time to make it for the rollout of iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia. If you were all pumped about that shiny new iPhone 16 using Apple Intelligence, macrumors.com reports that you will have to wait until the operating systems’ first updates in October. Apple Intelligence should be released in the upcoming beta versions of the software, probably next week, but Apple must feel it isn’t quite ready for prime time yet. The upgraded Siri with AI was already scheduled to bow next spring.
The Department of Justice went to court late Friday to ask the bench to reject the TikTok bid to have the law to ban it overturned. Engadget.com says the feds name national security concerns that include its alleged use of internal search tools to collect information on users’ views around sensitive topics. The government wrote in its filing that ByteDance has been using a search tool within their Lark suite of tools that “allowed ByteDance and TikTok employees in the United States and China to collect bulk user information based on the user’s content or expressions, including views on gun control, abortion, and religion.” The DOJ also argues in the filings that TikTok could be using the data to subject US users to content manipulation, and that their sensitive information could end up stored on servers in China. TikTok has denied the allegations.
After the CrowdStrike mess, Microsoft has indicated it will make Windows security more Mac-like. What does that mean? 9t5mac.com reports that Redmond will limit kernel access. Microsoft wrote about it on their IT blog. The company won’t be stripping away kernel privileges in a forthcoming Windows update. A shift like this will take significant time. But Microsoft’s direction for the future appears clear. Apple’s strict Mac security protocols don’t allow the same kind of kernel access to third parties as Windows does. This is why Macs weren’t impacted by the CrowdStrike outage. Let’s hope that another CloudStrike-type event doesn’t occur before Microsoft gets restricting kernel access in place.
I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.
Apple-May Finally Use Own Modem Chip; Google Gemini AI Gets Speed Boost; Data Breach Exposes US Spyware Maker; CrowdStrike Offed $10 Uber Eats Voucher-Some Didn’t Work
Posted: July 25, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: AI, Apple, Google, Internet, technology Leave a commentApple has been toiling away on its own in-house 5G modem for iPhones for the last 6 years at least. Now, it looks like they finally may be getting near using it in the handsets. Macrumors.com reports that iPhone 17 may get the modem chip in 2025. Apple has been using Qualcomm modems for cellular for quite a while, and they have a deal with Qualcomm that runs through 2026. Apple had scooped up most of Intel’s smartphone modem business back in 2019 for the purpose of making their own 5G modem chips.
Google has upgraded Gemini AI to 1.5 Flash. According to theverge.com, you should see “across-the-board improvements in quality and latency, with especially noticeable improvements in reasoning and image understanding.” The upgrade is available in the free version starting today on both Gemini web and mobile. Google is also going to start rolling out Gemini ‘gradually’ in google Messages in Europe and the UK, and Gemini for teens will be available in over 40 languages ‘in the coming week.’
You have to laugh when a hack exposes a spyware maker! An under the radar Minnesota company called Spytech, which snooped on thousands of devices around the world remotely, was the victim of the hack. Techcrunch.com says the breach of Spytech’s servers contained detailed device activity logs from the phones, tablets, and computers that Spytech monitors, with some of the files dated as recently as early June. The company makes products called Realtime-Spy and SpyAgent, and some others. They have apparently been used to compromise over 10,000 devices since 2013…including Androids, Chromebooks, Macs, and PCs all over the world. The company has advertised the products as keeping tabs on your kids’ devices or ‘on your spouse’s suspicious behavior.’ Sometimes the programs have been called stalker ware. They almost always have to be loaded in by someone with physical access to the device and knowledge of the password. Once installed, they are difficult to detect and remove. The company wouldn’t say that they would notify customers, the people whose devices were monitored, or the US government…as required by law.
In an almost silly move, CrowdStrike offered a $10 voucher for UberEats…some small consolation after more than 8 million had their PCs screwed up by their buggy software update. As Ron Popiel of the Pocket Fisherman and Hollywood Grill used to say…’But wait, there’s more!’ Mashable.com reports that some the vouchers didn’t actually work. Some journalists at TechCrunch.com discovered the secondary fail that came with CrowdStrike’s ‘heartfelt thanks.’ CrowdStrike blames Uber. They say apparently Uber flagged the gifts as fraud because of high usage rates.
I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.
Samsung-Big Increase in Galaxy Ring Production; Alphabet Pours $5 Billion More into Waymo; Meta Drops Biggest & Allegedly Best Open Source AI; Ocean Battery Rocks Make Oxygen
Posted: July 24, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: AI, Artificial Intelligence, News, technology, Waymo Leave a commentSamsung’s Galaxy Ring appears to be a big hit, just as it has become available for general sale, following the preorder period. 9to5google..com reports that Samsung has increased production of the Ring by 150%, adding 600,000 more units this year. Samsung will crank out over a million Rings by the end of the year. That may not seem like a lot with it comes to consumer electronics, but for comparison, the number is equal to the number of Oura Rings sold in the last six years! the Ring starts at $399, and is available at several retailers in addition to Samsung’s website.
The push for self-driving vehicles rolls on. Alphabet is getting set to pump another $5 billion into its Waymo self-driving subsidiary the next several years. According to techcrunch.com, the multi year investment was announced but Ruth Porat, the company’s Chief Financial Officer. Alphabet expects with the added cash, that Waymo will continue as the world’s leading autonomous driving tech company. Waymo is presently delivering over 50,000 paid rides a week, with their fully driverless ride-hail service in San Francisco and Phoenix…and they have now added Los Angeles and Austin. Waymo just started with paid rides in LA the first of July, and will add paid trips in Austin later this year.
Meta has just released their open sourced AI model, Llama 3.1, the largest open source model ever. Meta claims that it outperforms OpenAI’s Chat GPT-4o and Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet as measured by several benchmarks. Theverge.com notes that those large language models are private models…not open source. Meta has dropped millions into the project, and Mark Zuckerberg says that they see open source underpinning most AI moving forward, much like how Linux has become the open source operating system that powers most phones, servers, and gadgets today. Meta is working with Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Nvidia, and Databricks to help them deploy their own versions. They think their open source AI will surpass Chat GPT as the most widely used model by the end of the year.
As mining firms and nations around the world go big on deep sea mining, an interesting discovery has indicated that we should hit the brakes a bit. Thenextweb.com reports that the huge cache of potato-sized rocks on the ocean floor hold a treasure trove of manganese, nickel, and cobalt…all crucial ingredients of lithium-ion batteries. Now, scientists from the Scottish Association of Marine Science has discovered that the rocks contain a very high electric charge….like natural rock batteries. They naturally cause seawater to split into hydrogen and oxygen in a process called seawater electrolysis. It only takes 1.5 volts to split seawater…same juice as a AA battery. Considering that the rocks produce what is called ‘dark oxygen,’ that is oxygen produced without light, the scientists say we should back off a bit on the major mining of them.
I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.
Samsung All In With Google Messages; CrowdStrike Mess-Delta Cancels 1,000 More Flights; Astronomers Find New Way to Spot AI Deepfakes; EVs-New Battery Tech is 50% Lighter
Posted: July 22, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: AI, News, Samsung, Tech, technology Leave a commentSamsung will stop pre-installing Samsung Messages on Galaxy phones, and just go with Google Messages. 9to5google.com reports that…starting with the Z Fold 6 and Z Flip 6, you will just get Googles Messages. RCS will be enabled by default on the phones in the Google Messages app. The Samsung app will still be available for download at the Galaxy Store, but with a note that ’some features will be excluded.’
Although it’s been since Thursday, some users are still dealing with the aftermath of the corrupt CrowdStrike download that screwed up what Microsoft claims was a little over 8 million computers. Microsoft says that is about 1% of the installed base. That noted, according to engadget.com, Delta has had to cancel over 1,000 more flights…it’s a total of about 5,000 flights cancelled now, and around 1,700 delayed. That amounts to around a third of Delta’s scheduled flights. Delta was the worst hit US airline, with United a distant second…at 266 flights cancelled on Sunday. At first, United and Delta told stranded travelers that they wouldn’t cover bills since the CrowdStrike crash was out of their control. However, US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg later stepped in and said that he considered the situation self-inflicted, so carriers would need to cover food, transportation and lodging costs for any delays longer than three hours as required by law. Secretary Pete also said don’t let them talk you into a credit…you can get the cash back…that’s the law!
In an interesting application of one tech to another, astronomers and researchers at the University of Hull have shown a novel way to detect AI Deepfakes. Arstechnica.com says it involves analyzing the reflections in human eyes. The technique was shown at the Royal Astronomical Society meeting last week. It utilizes tools used by astronomers. A pair of eyes being illuminated by the same set of light sources will normally have similarly shaped light reflections in each eyeball. Most AI deepfakes so far don’t account for eyeball reflections, so they show up inconsistently between the eyes. Some differences can be detected with the naked eye…like when one eye has white lights and the other red, but the astronomical tools can detect automatically and much faster…and with detail that a person can’t match. One down side…the technique requires a clear, up-close view of the eyeballs to work. It isn’t 100% yet…there are a few false negatives and false positives…but it’s a new tool in the battle against deepfakes.
A Swedish firm, using research from Chalmers University of Technology, has developed carbon fiber-based structural batteries that not only store energy but also become an integral part of a product’s structure. Their possible span of energy density is said to be around 25-50% of a conventional lithium-ion battery at current technology level. Bgr.com notes that by integrating the batteries into the actual structure of the car (or aircraft), these batteries could lighten the weight of the vehicle by up to 50%! This tech is the first that has given good mechanical strength plus good electrical properties. Previous tries have had one or the other, but not both.
I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.
OpenAI Offering GPT-4o Mini-Cheaper, Stripped Down Version; Meta Has Looked at Investing Billions in Eyewear Giant; Amazon Partners with Better Business Bureau Over Fake Review Brokers; Apple Says It Didn’t Use YouTube Subtitles for its AI
Posted: July 18, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: AI, Artificial Intelligence, chatgpt, openai, technology Leave a commentOpenAI has rolled out a stripped-down version of the ChatGPT-4o large language model. Dubbed GPT-4o Mini, it is claimed to have better accuracy than GPT-4 on tasks, and costs substantially less than GPT-3.5 Turbo. Zdnet.com reports that OpenAI is claiming that the new AI model is “the most cost-efficient small model in the market.” It is worth noting that there aren’t any parameters defining large or small models, so this may just be puffing. At any rate, GPT-4o Mini is priced at 15 cents per million input tokens and 60 cents per million output tokens…vastly more affordable than the previous models and 60% cheaper than GPT-3.5 Turbo. The model only offers text and image support right now, with audio and video expected to be added at a later date. Its training data is current through October 2023.
Meta has looked at investing billions in eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica. According to theverge.com, the blast of cash would be in furtherance of Meta’s partnership with the owner of Ray-Ban and numerous other eyewear brands. The Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses released last year now support multimodal AI to identify what wearers are seeing. They also sold more in a few months than the previous pair did in two years, according to EssilorLuxottica’s CEO.
Amazon is teaming up with the Better Business Bureau to fight fake review brokers…starting off with a lawsuit against a firm called ReviewServiceUSA.com. Geekwire.com says the suit claims that Review Services allegedly facilitates the selling of fake positive reviews for products on Amazon listings or Better Business Bureau profile pages. Amazon said it blocked more than 250 million suspected fake reviews in 2023.
We had reported yesterday that Apple was among some firms that used its OpenELM model to train AI on YouTube Subtitles. Now, 9to5mac.com reports that Apple says that’s not true. Cupertino claims that the subtitles were only used for research purposes, and that the YouTube subtitles were not used to power Apple Intelligence. Apple has said that Apple Intelligence models were trained “on licensed data, including data selected to enhance specific features, as well as publicly available data collected by our web-crawler.” Apple also stated that it has no plans to build new versions of the OpenELM model.
I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.
Google In Talks to Acquire Cloud Security Firm Wiz; AT&T Paid Hackers $370,000; OpenAI Whistleblowers-NDA Blocked Security Complaints; Meta Lifts Restrictions on Trump Facebook & Instagram Accounts
Posted: July 15, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: AI, Cloud, Google, openai, technology Leave a commentGoogle, through parent Alphabet, may be about to make its largest acquisition ever. According to techcrunch.com, Alphabet is quite a ways along into talks to acquire cloud security company Wiz for $23 billion. Wiz offers an all-in-one approach to cloud security, ingesting data from Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and other cloud platforms, then scanning it all for security risk factors. Wiz was founded just 4 years ago by 4 former Microsoft employees. No comment on the possible acquisition by either Alphabet or Wiz at the moment.
It has been widely reported since Friday that a hacker stole call records for tens of millions of AT&T customers. Now, according to wired.com, the telco has paid the hackers some $370,000 to delete the data and provide video demonstrating proof of deletion. The hacker, who is part of the notorious ShinyHunters hacking group that has stolen data from a number of victims through unsecured Snowflake cloud storage accounts, tells WIRED that AT&T paid the ransom in May. He provided the address for the cryptocurrency wallet that sent the currency to him, as well as the address that received it. AT&T has not commented so far.
Whistleblowers at OpenAI have fired off a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission, calling for the Commission to take ‘swift and aggressive steps’ to enforce the rules they say OpenAI has violated. Engadget.com says the employees allege that they were made to sign ‘illegally restrictive’ agreements preventing them from speaking out on the potential harms of the company’s technology. They claim the employee agreements “failed to exempt disclosures of securities violations to the SEC.” The SEC has apparently responded, but no details have been released yet.
Meta has taken restrictions off former President Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts. Engadget.com reports that the former president was banned for a time from Meta platforms after January 6, 2021 and the attack on the Capitol. That suspension was lifted in January 2023, but restrictions remained. Now, those final guardrails are gone, with Trump just subject to the same standard as every other user.
I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.
Apple Watch 10 Grows & Siri Gets Smarter-Later; Amazon Updates Echo Spot; MS Notepad Finally Gets Spellcheck; YouTube Improved Eraser Tool
Posted: July 8, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: AI, Apple, iPhone, News, technology Leave a commentThere has been more and more buzz about the upcoming Apple Watch 10. Now, 9to5mac.com reports that Mark Gurman in his PowerOn newsletter is confirming that both models of the Watch will have bigger screens…the larger one will be about the size of the Apple Watch Ultra screen. As others have leaked, the new Watch 10 series will be thinner, and will have a more powerful processor…possibly one that can run some of the Apple AI features coming soon. It looks like health features like blood pressure monitoring and sleep apnea monitoring won’t make it by the rollout in September. Apple has hit some speed bumps. Back to the Apple AI…word is, the fully upgraded Siri with AI won’t be ready for September, either. Now, it appears the better Siri will drop with iOS 18.4 in the spring of 2025. There will be some features like Chat GPT integration that will make the big fall Apple extravaganza.
Aș a lead in to Prime Day, Amazon has bowed a refreshed version of the Echo Spot. According to TechCrunch.com, the Alexa-enabled smart alarm clock will sell for $79.99, but Prime members can pick it up on sale right now for $44.99. The upgraded Spot has better visuals and improved audio. It comes in Black, White, or Blue. The display shows alarms, the time, weather, and song titles. There’s a 1.73” front-firing directional speaker that Amazon says delivers ‘clear vocals and deep bass.’ The camera for video calling has been dropped…who ever wanted this in their bedroom, really? It relies on Alexa to set your time, alarms, play songs, make a phone call, or make intercom announcements through your home.
As amazing as it seems, Microsoft Notepad has been around 40 years, and Redmond has never gotten around to giving it spellcheck…until now. Engadget.com says the functionality has just been rolled out in the Notepad app for Windows 11. Not to snark too much, but I write these reports in Apple’s TextEdit, which has had spellcheck for years, and also has other correction features…some of which are irritating when writing about tech….it will un-helpfully change a word that is correct which it doesn’t know. Anyway, back to Microsoft…the spell check works the same as the one in Word or Edge…you see a red underline, then you can right click on the word and get a list of correct spellings. Amazingly, Microsoft has also just now added autocorrect! Maybe it will be smarter than Apple’s…which with some new AI seems to be less helpful than before!
YouTube released an updated eraser tool late last week. The tool makes it easy to remove copyrighted material from a video without affecting other audio like spoken word or sound effects. YouTube chief Neal Mohan posted about the tool on X and said, “Good news, creators: our updated Erase Song tool helps you easily remove copyright-claimed music from your video (while leaving the rest of your audio intact).” They have designed a new AI-powered algorithm that specifically detects and removes the song without impacting other audio in the clip. Note that YouTube says it still isn’t perfect, but it goes a long way towards removal without having to recut the whole video.
I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.
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