Amazon Delays AI Powered Alexa; Apple Cheaper Vision Headset Put off; X Updates Block to Not be As Blocky; Meta’s Nuclear Powered Data Center Stopped by Bees

Posted: November 4, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

Amazon is delaying its planned AI powered Alexa to 2025. Mashable.com reports that the online giant has run into problems in testing the AI powered Alexa. Apparently, it can give long, rambling answers that aren’t entirely relevant to the original query. Other alleged problems include hallucinations and, stunningly, a failure to work with connected smart devices like light switches consistently. Although Amazon hasn’t commented publicly, they have turned off beta access. 

Analyst and Apple watcher Ming-Chi Kuo said over the weekend that Apple has delayed its plan to release a more affordable Apple Vision headset in 2025. According to 9to5mac.com, Apple had previously planned such a device…rumored to be priced at around $2000. The cheaper one would have lower resolution displays and no support for EyeSight. Kuo does expect a freshened Vision Pro next year, with the M5 chip and support for Apple intelligence. Apple may actually be rethinking the less expensive Vision Pro. The cheaper HomePod Mini really failed to make the HomePods a big hit as a product line. 

As announced previously, X has started rolling out a mainly unwanted ‘feature.’ Techcrunch.com notes that now, blocked users will be able to see your public posts. Users have protested this change, but X is proceeding anyway. They claim that the logic behind this change was that the block feature can be used to share and hide harmful or private information about someone, and its new iteration would result in more transparency. This mostly falls flat, given that X allows users to make their accounts private and share information. As one software engineer and diversity advocate named Tracy Chou put it…“Making it easy for the creeper to creep is not a good thing.”

Meta had planned a massive data center powered by Nuclear power, but it has been shelved due to…bees. Gizmodo.com reports that the land for the planned data center was inhabited by a rare bee species, which would have complicated the whole process. All the big tech firms seem to be looking to nuclear power to feed their hungry data centers. Amazon had a setback a week ago when the government denied a request to use 480 megawatts of the Susquehanna nuclear power plant. Amazon will still be allowed to use 300 megawatts. Microsoft is pouring billions into re-commissioning the old Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania. 

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

Google Fires 28 Employees Over Protest; Media Coalition Asks Feds to Investigate Google Dropping Cal News Links; Algorithm May Double Lithium-Ion Battery Life; Boston Dynamics Robot Goes from Hydraulic to Electric

Posted: April 18, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

Google has fired 28 employees over the sit in protests at two of its offices this week. Theverge.com reports that 9 employees had been suspended and then arrested in both California and New York on Tuesday. The employees were protesting Google’s hand in Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion Israeli government cloud contract. Amazon is also involved in the Nimbus cloud project. The employees sitting in had to be forcibly removed by law enforcement from Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian’s office. There are claims that Project Nimbus has been used by the Israel Defense Force in its campaign against Hamas in Gaza, where thousands have died.

The News/Media Alliance, previously known as the Newspaper Association of America, has ask the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission…as well as the California  Attorney General…to investigate Google after Google removed links to California news media outlets. According to engadget.com, Google has acted in response to a pending legislative measure in Sacramento….which Google vociferously opposes. If the bill becomes law, it would require Google and other tech platforms to pay California media outlets in exchange for links. The bill passed the state Assembly last year. Heaven forbid that online platforms would have to actually PAY for news!

Researchers in Germany have come up with a new algorithm that may help double the life of lithium-ion batteries. Bgr.com says it works by changing the way electricity is sent to the batteries for charging. Right now, batteries get what’s called constant current. That tends to cause cracks in the battery electrodes over time. The new algorithm uses pulsed current. This results in a thinner interface and much less structural wear on the battery, allowing it to hold a higher energy capacity for longer. The researchers think the new algorithm can double the service life of lithium-ion batteries, keeping them at over 80% energy capacity retention. This will be particularly big for EVs, where the battery packs can be a huge expense to replace. 

Boston Dynamics has had their rather amazing Atlas robot for a while now…the one that can walk, stand, jump, and all. It has been cool…but noisy, with hydraulically actuated motors whirring away. Now, TechCrunch.com reports that the new version of Atlas is all electric, no hydraulics. You can still hear the motors humming, but it is much quieter, and a bit less jerky in movement than the old versions. It is smoother…no cables showing, and not such a top heavy torso. the Head is a bit freaky…it looks kind of like a giant searchlight…and it rotates 180 degrees. Boston still won’t say when it will be ready for production at scale.

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

Honda Goes Big on Hydrogen; TikTok Mutes More Songs; Meta’s 1st True AR Glasses Out This Year; Battery & Attached Phone

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

Honda has announced a hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicle for the US. It’s basically a 2025 CR-V, but with a crazy additional name…try saying Honda CR-V e:FCEV 3 times quickly. Theverge.com reports that the fuel cell electric vehicle will have an EPA range of 270 miles, including 29 miles of all-electric driving. The fuel cell is co-developed with General Motors, and built by the two companies’ Fuel Cell System Manufacturing venture in Michigan. No price as yet, but it will be available for lease in California later this year. It has 174 horses, and can be recharged on a normal wall outlet or a Level 2 charger. Honda had formerly sold the Clarity hydrogen car until 2017. 

TikTok continues to battle with Universal Music Group over royalties. Recently, UMG pulled some recordings it owns or distributes from TikTok including tracks from the likes of superstars Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish and The Weeknd. The standoff is now impacting songs published by UMG, with millions more tracks expected to be muted on TikTok by the end of this week. According to Engadget.com, the tussle is over split copyrights. UMG has now removed some 3 million songs. Besides that, UMG’s deal with TikTok over its publishing catalog expires later this week…that could mean some 4 million songs will disappear from the platform. 

Meta is aiming to unveil its first “true” augmented reality glasses this fall at the company’s Connect event for third-party developers. ZDnet.com reports that the glasses aren’t related to the Ray Ban/Meta glasses from 2019. They are coming out of Meta’s Reality Labs, which is the division that oversees all of the social media giant’s augmented reality, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence projects. CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a photo on Threads earlier this month, and from that it appears that they have built several prototypes. The upcoming glasses are expected to include spatial computing like Apple’s Vision Pro. If they can bring them out at a lot lower price point than Apple’s, Meta may really open up a wide market for AR glasses. 

If you are always worrying about running your smartphone battery down, this may be just the deal for you. It’s the Energizer Hard Case P28K. Arstechnica.com notes that it is nearly a battery pack with attached phone. The handset has a 28,000 mAh battery, so you won’t run out of juice soon, but it thicker than 3 iPhones! The handset is made by Avenir Telecom. Honestly, it is described as being just a budget phone, so if you are anywhere near a power user, it won’t be for you. On the other hand, it can go 5 days on a charge. If you want one, it drops in October for $273.

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

Samsung & Huawei Cut in To Apple’s Premium Phone Sales; Nikon, Sony, & Canon Fight AI Fakes With Tech; 40% of US Electricity is Now Emissions Free; First EV With Lithium-Free Sodium Battery Hits Market

Posted: January 2, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

Samsung and Huawei were able to shave off a few percentage points from Apple in the premium smartphone market in 2023. 9to5mac.com, citing a report from Counterpoint Research, says that almost a quarter of smartphones sold worldwide in the past year were so-called premium devices…defined as over $600 wholesale…which generally means a retail price of $800 or more. Don’t shed too many tears for Apple, though. They only dropped from 75% to 71% of the premium market! Samsung has 17%, and Huawei is up from 3% to 5%. 

It will likely be an ongoing cat and mouse game for decades to come…people putting out more fake images and videos, and companies and governments trying to stop or at least label them. Now, according to a report from nikkei.com, Nikon, Sony, and Canon are developing camera technology that embeds digital signatures in images so that they can be distinguished from increasingly sophisticated fakes. All three makers will roll out top end cameras with digital signatures. When a photographer sends images to a news organization, Sony’s authentication servers detect digital signatures and determine whether they are AI-generated. Sony and The Associated Press field-tested this tool In October. Besides these big 3 camera makers, in August, Google released a tool that embeds invisible digital watermarks into AI-generated pictures. I expect an ongoing battle between the fakers and the tech companies and governments…not unlike that which has gone on for years between the makers of police radar and the radar detection makers. 

In some good news over the holidays, the US Energy Information Agency dropped some data on US electrical generation. Arstechnica.com notes that the monthly data runs through October, so it doesn’t provide a complete picture of the changes we’ve seen in 2023. Some of the trends now seem locked in for the year though: wind and solar are likely to be in a dead heat with coal, and all carbon-emissions-free sources combined will account for roughly 40 percent of US electricity production. In addition, energy use is almost flat…only up 1% year over year. This is in keeping with a general trend of flat-to-declining electricity use as greater efficiency is offsetting factors like population growth and expanding electrification. That’s important because it means that any newly added capacity will displace the use of existing facilities. And, at the moment, that displacement is happening to coal.

A Volkswagen-backed Chinese car maker called JAC Motors is launching the first mass-produced EV with a sodium-ion battery instead of Lithium-Ion. Engadget.com reports that although sodium-ion battery tech has a lower density (and is less mature) than lithium-ion, its lower costs, more abundant supplies and superior cold-weather performance could help accelerate mass EV adoption. CarNewsChina reports that the JAC Yiwei EV hatchback deliveries will begin in January. There are several other types of batteries coming that are aimed at getting away from lithium, which is rare and environmentally unfriendly to mine. China has one of the largest known supply, with another large one in Southern California. A company says they have worked out an environmentally friendly way to mine the US cache of the metal, but has yet to begin.

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

Samsung & Huawei Cut in To Apple’s Premium Phone Sales; Nikon, Sony, & Canon Fight AI Fakes With Tech; 40% of US Electricity is Now Emissions Free; First EV With Lithium-Free Sodium Battery Hits Market

Posted: January 2, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

Samsung and Huawei were able to shave off a few percentage points from Apple in the premium smartphone market in 2023. 9to5mac.com, citing a report from Counterpoint Research, says that almost a quarter of smartphones sold worldwide in the past year were so-called premium devices…defined as over $600 wholesale…which generally means a retail price of $800 or more. Don’t shed too many tears for Apple, though. They only dropped from 75% to 71% of the premium market! Samsung has 17%, and Huawei is up from 3% to 5%. 

It will likely be an ongoing cat and mouse game for decades to come…people putting out more fake images and videos, and companies and governments trying to stop or at least label them. Now, according to a report from nikkei.com, Nikon, Sony, and Canon are developing camera technology that embeds digital signatures in images so that they can be distinguished from increasingly sophisticated fakes. All three makers will roll out top end cameras with digital signatures. When a photographer sends images to a news organization, Sony’s authentication servers detect digital signatures and determine whether they are AI-generated. Sony and The Associated Press field-tested this tool In October. Besides these big 3 camera makers, in August, Google released a tool that embeds invisible digital watermarks into AI-generated pictures. I expect an ongoing battle between the fakers and the tech companies and governments…not unlike that which has gone on for years between the makers of police radar and the radar detection makers. 

In some good news over the holidays, the US Energy Information Agency dropped some data on US electrical generation. Arstechnica.com notes that the monthly data runs through October, so it doesn’t provide a complete picture of the changes we’ve seen in 2023. Some of the trends now seem locked in for the year though: wind and solar are likely to be in a dead heat with coal, and all carbon-emissions-free sources combined will account for roughly 40 percent of US electricity production. In addition, energy use is almost flat…only up 1% year over year. This is in keeping with a general trend of flat-to-declining electricity use as greater efficiency is offsetting factors like population growth and expanding electrification. That’s important because it means that any newly added capacity will displace the use of existing facilities. And, at the moment, that displacement is happening to coal.

A Volkswagen-backed Chinese car maker called JAC Motors is launching the first mass-produced EV with a sodium-ion battery instead of Lithium-Ion. Engadget.com reports that although sodium-ion battery tech has a lower density (and is less mature) than lithium-ion, its lower costs, more abundant supplies and superior cold-weather performance could help accelerate mass EV adoption. CarNewsChina reports that the JAC Yiwei EV hatchback deliveries will begin in January. There are several other types of batteries coming that are aimed at getting away from lithium, which is rare and environmentally unfriendly to mine. China has one of the largest known supply, with another large one in Southern California. A company says they have worked out an environmentally friendly way to mine the US cache of the metal, but has yet to begin.

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