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 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

Samsung’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.

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 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

OpenAI 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.

FCC Wants to Make Carriers Unlock Phones After 60 Days; SCOTUS Allows Administration to Jawbone Social Platforms; Amazon Now in $2 Trillion Club; Google Translate-Support for 110 New Languages

Posted: June 27, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

In a proposed rule, called in FCC lingo a ‘Notice of Proposed Rulemaking’, the Federal Communications Commission is looking to make phone carriers unlock phones from their service after 60 days. According to techcrunch.com, the Commission plans to further study how this will work out with current plans and phone buying trends. For years, carriers have subsidized phone prices if a customer signed up for say, a two year contract…and they made up the difference in the monthly payments for the phone plus the fees for the service. Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel wrote “When you buy a phone, you should have the freedom to decide when to change service to the carrier you want and not have the device you own stuck by practices that prevent you from making that choice. That is why we are proposing clear, nationwide mobile phone unlocking rules.” We should know more about the proposed rule when the full notice is published in July.

The Supreme Court yesterday tossed claims that the Biden administration coerced social media platforms into censoring users by removing COVID and election-related content. Arstechnica.com reports that the 6-3 vote found that none of the plaintiffs had standing to have brought the case in the first place. One individual was suing on behalf of his brother. Justice Barrett noted in the majority opinion that Facebook had actually been taking down false info about COVID and the election before the administration even asked them to do so. 

We’ve reported lately about the $2 trillion dollar companies, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Apple, and how Nvidia has passed up Apple, and even Microsoft for the top spot for a bit. Alphabet got into this high rolling club in April. Now, geekwire.com says Amazon has joined this rarified group of the world’s most valuable companies. Amazon stock is up over 30% this year, and over 50% the past 12 months. So there you have it….the top 5 most valuable companies on earth no longer include any oil companies, banks, or industrial firms…they are all tech: Microsoft, Nvidia, Apple, Alphabet, and Amazon. 

Google is adding 110 new languages to Translate. It’s the biggest expansion ever for Google Translate. Theverge.com notes that there were already 133 languages supported, so this brings the total up to 243 supported languages. A number of these languages are related to others, and Google used their PaLM 2 AI language model to help add them. One of the most requested languages was added…Cantonese. Issac Caswell of Google said “Because Cantonese often overlaps with Mandarin in writing, it is tricky to find data and train models.” Caswell also said that “about a quarter of the new languages come from Africa.”

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ’Technified’ for now.

EU Says Apple Breaches the DMA-Big Fine Looms; Amazon’s AI ‘Remarkable Alexa’-for a fee; Google Bringing Gemini Access to Teens in School; Dozens of Cybertrucks Vandalized 

Posted: June 24, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

The European Union has announced preliminary findings that Apple is in breach of its Digital Markets Act. 9to5mac.com reports that violating the DMA’s App Store anti-steering rules could get Cupertino socked with and enormous fine…up to 10% of the company’s worldwide revenue. A final decision is expected by March 2025. The DMA rules require that an app store should inform customers of alternative purchase options, direct them to those offers and make those purchases — free of charge. Apple doesn’t do that at present. The DMA does say Apple may charge a fee for facilitating ‘the initial acquisition of a new customer’ via the App Store…it just can’t charge for each ongoing transaction. Expect Apple to fight this. 

Amazon is getting set to unleash what they are calling ‘Remarkable Alexa.’ The AI powered version will hit users with a monthly fee of $5-10 a month. According to androidpolice.com, there will still be a free tier of Alexa. Amazon has been playing catch up on the AI front, as has Apple. Remarkable Alexa (sorry, sounds clunky Amazon) will feature improved home automation…although users will probably have to buy additional Alexa-branded hardware to use that. The paid tier won’t be bundled with your Prime subscription, it will be on top of that $139 per year. The company has apparently set a deadline of this August for Remarkable Alexa to be ready, so you early adapters be ready to shell out another $120 a year. 

Google has announced that it is bringing its Gemini AI tech to teens using their school accounts. This is in addition to allowing them to access it through personal accounts. Techcrunch.com says that Google believe3s this will help prepare them with skills they will need in the future when generative AI is more commonplace. Google also says it will not use data from chats with students to train and improve its AI models, and has taken steps to ensure it’s bringing this technology to students responsibly. Gemini has guardrails that will prevent inappropriate responses, such as illegal or age-gated substances, from appearing in responses. It will also actively recommend teens use its double-check feature to help them develop information literacy and critical thinking skills.

This was obviously not a Musk super fan or fans. Dozens of Cybertrucks in Fort Lauderdale got a paint job of sorts last week. Someone sprayed the tailgates with ‘EFF’ Elon. Theverge.com reports the trucks were being held on a public parking lot due to a reported warranty problem with the windshield wiper. The tagging was apparently easily removed from the stainless steel trucks. One reporter said it wouldn’t surprise him if Elon started selling EFF Elon decals for a price…as he has monetized insults in the past.

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now. 

New Anthropic AI Claims to Best ChatGPT; Amazon Drops Plastic Air Pillows for Recycled Paper in Most Packaging; Apple Intelligence Plans for China Unclear; Cleaning Up Cow Burps to Help Slow Global Warming

Posted: June 20, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

OpenAI rival Anthropic has released its latest generative AI model named Claude 3.5 Sonnet. Anthropic claims that its model is better than OpenAI’s latest ChatGPT or the models of Google and Microsoft. Techcrunch.com reports that while this appears to be true, Claude 3.5 Sonnet just barely beats OpenAI’s GPT-4o on the benchmark test they ran. Anthropic claims their model better understands nuanced and complex instructions, in addition to concepts like humor. Like other AI, however, it is still notoriously unfunny. It really is a sizable jump from the previous Anthropic model, but techcrunch.com says not as big a leap as OpenAI made going from GPT-3 to GPT-4. Most observers think we will see some large improvements in generative AI yet this year…which will hopefully avoid issues like the fellow at a McDonald’s who ordered some nuggets and the chatbot put in over 200 orders of them! Thankfully, there was human intervention!

In a move that could have a substantial effect on better recycling, Amazon has announced that they have eliminated 95% of the inflated plastic pillows used to cushion all the goodies that are shipped to us. According to geekwire.com, Amazon claims this is “largest plastic packaging reduction effort in North America and will avoid nearly 15 billion plastic air pillows annually.” On a personal note, I’m delighted. It’s not only better to use recycled paper for the environment, but no more deflating those stupid plastic pillows to put them in the garbage. As a bonus, my cat loves the paper almost more than the boxes it comes in. It has been estimated by environmental nonprofit Oceana that Amazon produced 208 million pounds of plastic packaging in 2022…enough to circle the globe over 200 times!

It was a big reveal at WWDC as Apple finally previewed its AI called Apple Intelligence. One thing that is still up in the air though is how they will bring the feature to China. As we reported, Apple will use ChatGPT for their most intense AI queries…and ChatGPT is not approved by the government in China. Now, 9to5mac.com says Apple is talking with Baidu, Alibaba, and another AI group to fill the gap. Another question is how Apple will be able to operate its Private Cloud Compute in China. Samsung has reportedly worked with Baidu, but hasn’t been happy with their AI performance. The net is, Apple Intelligence may debut this fall in the US and elsewhere, but for now…it looks like China will have to wait. 

As has been known for a while, livestock cause about 14.5% of greenhouse gasses…more than all the cars and trucks in the world combined. While it’s funny to say ‘cow burps,’ it remains a serious problem. Cattle provide us with both meat and milk…and that isn’t something most folks are willing to do without…to say nothing about the livelihood of farmers and stockmen who raise the beasts. Well arstechnica.com is reporting a way that could help reduce methane emissions from livestock by over 30%. It’s a synthetic feed additive that absorbs some of the hydrogen produced in the rumen of the livestock before methanogens can use it. It is already approved in the US and Canada. Other additives like red algae are also being looked at…that one can reduce emissions by up to 90%..BUT…it is toxic, and it’s not clear that alterations to get rid of the toxicity are safe in the long term. Still, the approved additive knocking down gasses by 30% is a really good start. It all makes me feel less guilty about grilling those steaks on the 4th of July!

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.

Nvidia Becomes Most Valuable Company; AT&T Bumps Prices $10 on Most Older Unlimited Plans; Amazon Fined Nearly $6 Million by California; 10 Most Popular AI Chatbots Spew Russian Disinformation 

Posted: June 19, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | 1 Comment

Based on demand for its chips used in data centers for AI, Nvidia has moved past Microsoft to become the most valuable publicly traded company in the world. CNBC reports that the chipmaker was up 3.2% Tuesday, taking its market cap to $3.33 trillion, passing up Microsoft. Earlier this month, Nvidia cleared the $3 trillion mark, passing up Apple, which dropped to #3. Nvidia shares are up over 170% so far this year. The company has about 80% market share for AI chips used in data centers. 

AT&T is socking $10 and $20 monthly price hikes to users of older unlimited wireless plans, starting in August. According to arstechnica.com, The single-line price of these 10 “retired” plans will increase by $10 per month, while customers with multiple lines on a plan will be hit with a total monthly increase of $20. AT&T has a large number of ‘unlimited’ data plans, all with varying limits and perks. To cushion the financial slam a bit, the telco says customers who keep their older plans have more high speed data and hotspot data. Customers may get a better price by switching to one of AT&T’s current unlimited plans, which range from $66 to $86 for a single line before taxes and fees. 

Amazon has been slapped with a nearly $6 million dollar fine over infractions related to a law designed to protect warehouse workers. Engadget.com notes that under the law…AB-701, large companies are required to tell warehouse or distribution center workers in writing what their expected quotas are, including how often they should perform particular tasks, and what consequences they may face for failing to meet those quotas. The California Labor Commissioner said  Amazon failed to meet those rules at two of its facilities in the cities of Moreno Valley and Redlands, with 59,017 violations logged during the labor office’s inspections. It’s one of the first big fines levied thanks to AB-701, which took effect in January 2022. The tech giant said it would appeal the fines and claimed it did not need to provide written information because it uses a “peer-to-peer system.”

NewsGuard, the media analyst, tested out the chatbots from the top 10 AI developers, and found all of them were spreading Russian disinformation to varying degrees. Theregister.com reports that the ‘bots included OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Google’s Gemini. Each chatbot was given 57 prompts. On average, they parroted false claims 31.75% of the time. Three of the ones tested gave out fake news about half the time. 

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.

Microsoft Concerned About OpenAI Helping Apple to Fix Siri; Amazon Gets FAA Permission to Fly Delivery Drones Further; Mining Lithium from Fracking Wastewater; Stem Cell Treatment Appears to Cure Type 2 Diabetes

Posted: May 30, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

As we have reported, OpenAI is working with Apple to make Siri work better…which Siri sorely needs. Reports have come out saying that Apple has been negotiating with OpenAI for a year. Now, 9to5mac.com reports that Microsoft is concerned about this partnership and how it might affect their own deal with OpenAI. Apparently, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman met recently with Microsoft CEO Nadella to discuss their reservations about the Apple deal. As Microsoft’s deal for a cut of OpenAI profits…which they got after investing $13 billion in the startup…means they will make money on an Apple-OpenAI deal, the downside for Microsoft is that Apple’s AI capabilities will directly compete with Microsoft’s. Hey, I thought in capitalism, competition was supposed to be good! 

Amazon has gotten Federal Aviation Administration permission to fly delivery drones beyond the visual sight line. According to engadget.com, this will allow the online giant to fly further and expand delivery drone service. Amazon says this will allow them to get deliveries to customers more quickly and with a larger selection of items. The breakthrough for flying beyond the ground based operators or spotters’ line of sight comes from Amazon’s new “onboard detect-and-avoid technology.” Amazon has discontinued drone shipments around Lockeford, California, but is expanding around College Station, Texas….and has now added deliveries to the West Valley area in the Phoenix metro.  

In an amazing discovery, researchers from the National Energy Technology Laboratory have found that wastewater produced by fracking wells found in the Marcellus Shale area in Pennsylvania may hold enough lithium to cover 38-40% of the current domestic consumption! Arstechnica.com says that right now, the US relies on imports from Argentina, Chile, and China to fully handle its lithium needs. Lithium, of course, is a crucial element for lithium-ion batteries like those used in electronic devices and especially in electric vehicles. A key will be the economic feasibility of extracting lithium from wastewater at the scale needed. Another issue is that the wastewater would still be highly toxic…with salts, metals, and radioactive elements. 

Doctors in Shanghai, China have apparently successfully cured a 59 year old patient’s type 2 diabetes. Bgr.com reports that they used stem cells from the patients blood to ‘kickstart’ the pancreas into producing its own insulin. The patient was taken off insulin at 11 weeks, and they later reduced oral drugs. The pancreas continues to produce. The patient is still free of insulin now for 33 months! Last year, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a similar stem cell treatment from a Chicago-based company for type 1 diabetes. It may be a while before this sees mainstream medicine, so Apple and Samsung are full speed ahead on incorporating blood sugar measurements via their watches. 

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now. 

OpenAI Board Learned of ChatGPT from Twitter; Apple Looks to Black Box AI Cloud Data for Users; Founder Calls for ‘Memetech’ 

Posted: May 29, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

I had originally done a story about a company starting with G, and how there was a large leak about their search algorithm, but after an hour of checking, they hadn’t ok’ed the video…a subtile way of censoring it looks like. Anyway, you will have to check elsewhere for that info. Sorry.

After all the drama of the OpenAI board canning CEO Sam Altman, then hiring him back, more trickles out about what was going on. With ChatGPT being hyped as the biggest thing since fire or electricity, it turns out OpenAI was kind of a snake pit. According to arstechnica.com, in an interview with ‘The Ted AI Show,’ former OpenAI board member Helen Toner said that the OpenAI board was unaware of the existence of ChatGPT until they saw it on Twitter. She went on to share that many at OpenAI were afraid to cross Sam…partially in fear that the company would fall apart. Toner’s main argument is that OpenAI hasn’t been able to police itself despite claims to the contrary. “The OpenAI saga shows that trying to do good and regulating yourself isn’t enough,” she said. This doesn’t bode well for the so-called ’Safety Committee’ formed at OpenAI being able to police anything. 

Although rumors have Apple doing a good deal of their AI right on the latest iPhones in order to keep your data secure, it is expected that at least some information crunching will be done in the cloud. The Information says that Apple plans to process AI applications in a virtual ‘black box’ in the cloud…one that even their employees will be unable to access. This is probably pretty accurate info, as it comes from 4 former Apple employees who worked on the project of integrating AI into Siri. Apple has been working secretly on AI for 3 years, but are still considered to be playing catch up with Google, OpenAI, and Microsoft.

Oh, here’s what we need….better and easier to modify and send memes. As a heavy user of memes, even I have to be skeptical. That said, Alex Taub, a founder of a number of tech startups says it’s time to disrupt the meme ‘industry.’ Techcrunch.com reports that Taub notes that memes are a key component of our online communications. He also says of course it isn’t a necessary thing….but goes on to say that neither are smart refrigerators! Taub says most people that use memes have a meme folder…yep, have a huge one myself. He forsees a program to catalog your memes so you can pull and send an appropriate one to a friend or post it in a good moment. Not just one to talk, Taub has launched Meme Depot…which will be a comprehensive archive of any meme imaginable! Right now he is funding Meme Depot from his past ventures, but expects if it takes off he will make some money from it either by subscription or ads…just like most of the rest of the internet sites do.

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now. 

Biggest Announcements from Microsoft Build; Apple COO in Taiwan Locking Down NexGen Chips;Scarlett Johansson Slams OpenAI for Mimicking Her Voice; Porsche Invests in Startup For Better Cold Weather Battery Performance

Posted: May 21, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

Microsoft just held a special event leading into Build 2024, and announced updates of Surface devices, and also teased some major developments in AI. Theverge.com reports that Microsoft CEO Nadella announced a new category of computers called Copilot Plus. The new units will run Arm based Snapdragon X Elite and Plus processors from Qualcomm, and down the road will run Intel and AMD chips. Microsoft claims Copilot Plus PCs will be 58% faster than the M3 MacBook Air. Besides Microsoft’s own Surface line, Copilot Plus devices are coming from Lenovo, Dell, Acer, Asus, and HP. One of the major AI features available within Copilot Plus PCs is Recall. The new tool runs locally on your device and logs everything you do on your computer, allowing you to search for and retrieve the content you’ve interacted with. That makes it possible to uncover a conversation you’ve had in apps like Discord, or even a specific PowerPoint slide you were working on. Copilot is getting OpenAI’s new GPT-4o model, which lets the AI answer questions based on what you see on your screen. So how much? The 13 inch Surface Pro starts at $999.99, and comes in blue, black, beige, and platinum. A new Surface Laptop 6 has 13.8 and 15 inch display options, and the lowball price model is also $999.99, with the same color choices as the Surface Pro. 

Apple COO Jeff Williams has reportedly been to Taiwan, working to lock down a supply of the upcoming 2 nanometer chips from Taiwan Semiconductor. According to macrumors.com, the COO and the president of TSMC discussed custom AI chips built on the chipmaker’s 2nm process…due to go into production next year. The iPhone 15 Pro runs on the A17 Pro chip, which is a 3nm chip from TSMC. The smaller footprint allows more transistors to be packed into less space, increasing both efficiency and performance. Even the latest Apple M4 chip is using the 3nm process. TSMC projects a 10 to 15% performance gain and power consumption reductions of up the 30% with the upcoming 2nm chips compared to the latest 3nm ones. 

Last fall, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI called Scarlett Johansson and pitched her on being the voice of the ChatGPT 4.0 system. The actress says she declined the offer after “much consideration and for personal reasons,” but when OpenAI demoed GPT-4o, the company’s latest large language model last week, “my friends, family, and the general public all noted how much the newest system named ’Sky’ sounded like me.” Engadget.com says that apparently Altman had called her 2 days before the debut and asked if she would reconsider…then put out the product before she could respond. The net is, Johansson hired an attorney, and now OpenAI is ‘pausing’ the use of “Sky”, the voice that sounds like Scarlett. Apparently it isn’t a clone of her voice, but another voice actor…and OpenAI claims it doesn’t mimic her voice. This is why SAG-AFTRA fought so hard in the strike last year for clauses it won that give actors, voice artists, and broadcasters under the new contracts the right to refuse a voice cloning, and if one is agreed to, a reasonable payment for the use of a person’s voice. 

It is pretty widely known that EV battery packs drop pretty dramatically in performance in very cold or very hot weather. Now, Porsche has invested in a startup that claims their tech will make cold weather charging and performance more reliable. TechCrunch.com reports that South 8 Technologies has developed a method of filling batteries with pressurized, liquified gas electrolyte instead of a liquid one. The cold weather issue occurs because the low temperature makes the liquid electrolyte thicken. This should avoid that issue, and as a bonus, South 8 says they think it wall cut the cost of lithium ion batteries by some 30%! That’s huge, because with EV’s, the battery costs about a third of the entire vehicle! The South 8 Tech also reduces the size of the battery pack. Porsche is mainly excited about the cold weather improvements at this point. Lots of improvements are in the pipeline for EV batteries, and they can’t get here too soon!

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now. 

Apple-Accessibility Eye Tracking for Recent iPhones & iPads; Google Opens Smart Home to Everyone; OpenA Chief Scientist Leaves; FTC Warns Car Makers About Selling User Data

Posted: May 15, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

Apple has announced new accessibility features. The biggie is built in eye tracking for iPhones and iPads. Engadget.com reports that devices with the A12 chip or later will gain the ability to use the front facing camera to navigate software without additional hardware or accessories. When enabled, people can look at their screen to move through elements like apps and menus…then linger on an item to select it. Another thing they are adding is vocal shortcuts. AI on the device creates personalized voice commands. You could maybe use Yo, and Siri will…or may…understand and then perform the shortcut or task you associated with the shortcut word.  Voice control and color filters are coming to the interface for vehicles, making it easier to control apps by talking and for those with visual impairments to see menus or alerts. To that end, CarPlay is also getting bold and large text support, as well as sound recognition for noises like sirens or honks. 

Google has announced it is opening API access to its Google Home Smart home platform. Now, according to theverge.com, any app maker, whether smart home related or not, can access the more than 600 million devices connected to Google Home and tap into the Google Home automation engine to make what they are calling smart solutions for users. Any device that uses the Matter protocol or which says Works with Google Home will be accessible. 

Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI co-founder and long time chief scientist has left the building…and company. Techcrunch.com says that CEO Sam Altman posted on X about the departure last night. Altman called it a very sad day, and praised Ilya as having easily one of the greatest minds of our generation, a guiding light of our field,” and he also called him “a dear friend.” The big brained chief scientist is reportedly planning on working on something he called ‘personally meaningful.’ Ilya did say in a statement that he is leaving OpenAI with the “belief the company will build artificial general intelligence — AI capable of accomplishing any task a human can — that’s “both safe and beneficial.”

A warning has come out for automakers that sell connected cars…that’s virtually all of them these days. It’s from the Office of Technology of the FTC, and they said in a statement that Companies that offer such products “do not have the free license to monetize people’s information beyond purposes needed to provide their requested product or service.” Arstechnica.com notes that the FTC went on to say Just because executives and investors want recurring revenue streams, that does not “outweigh the need for meaningful privacy safeguards.” This sounds like a shot over the bow to car makers that the feds will be coming after them if they don’t stop peddling car owners’ data to all sorts of data brokers and other third parties.

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.

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