Last week, Apple teased an ‘exciting week of announcements,’ and they didn’t mess around…a new M4 iMac was unveiled this morning. 9to5mac.com reports that the freshened iMac not only runs the more powerful M4 chip, but it has new color choices, as well as a nano-texture display option. The base model has 16 gigs of ram, doubling the former model. It can have up to 4 Thunderbolt ports, and comes in new colors…new shades of green, yellow, orange, pink, purple, and blue…and of course, silver. With the M4 chip, and the 16 gigs of ram, the all-in-one Mac will have no problem running Apple Intelligence. The base model starts at $1299 with 16 gigs of unified memory. Preorders are open now, with availability starting Friday, November 8th.
Google is working on a new custom Tensor chip for the Pixel Watch. The present Watch has been running on off-the-shelf chips from Samsung and Qualcomm. According to 9to5google.com, the Watch 2 and Watch 3 have both been running Snapdragon W5+ chipsets. This chipset from Qualcomm has dramatically improved battery life over the outdated Exynos chip that ran the original Pixel Watch. The Tensor powered Watches could come in 2026.
Meta is reportedly working on an AI search engine to cut reliance on Google and Microsoft. Theinformation.com says that Meta is designing the search engine and web crawler to return conversational answers about current events to folks using its Meta AI chatbot. Meta currently supplies news, sports and stock info to users that is provided by Google Search and Microsoft’s Bing. Meta may be concerned that either Google or Microsoft may want to pull out of these arrangements, and hopes the AI search engine/chatbot will be able to take their place.
A coalition of international law enforcement agencies have managed to disrupt two very prolific information thieves that have stolen data from thousands. Techcrunch.com reports that the Dutch National Police, the lead agency, gained full access to the servers used by the Redline and Meta info stealers. Infostealers are a kind of malware designed to extract sensitive information, such as passwords, credit card data, search histories, and the contents of cryptocurrency wallets, from an infected system. Redline has been widely used by crooks, while Meta is a relatively new info stealer (not to be confused with the company of the same name that owns Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp.
If you use Meta’s AI on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, or Threads, you may get more of a ‘shrimp on the barbie’ flavor in your replies. Engadget.com reports that Meta scraped data on every one of their Australian users to train its AI! After initially denying this, Meta’s global privacy director Melinda Claybaugh had to cop to it…apparently they scraped every photo and text back to 2007 from every user…unless the user had set their posts to private. Right now, Meta isn’t offering Australians an opt-out option like it does for European Union users. Meta did say they didn’t and won’t scrape the accounts of those under 18, but it will use the info the kids post on their parents’ or guardians’ accounts.
Sony did make its brief announcement about the PS5 Pro yesterday. There wasn’t really much new to report except the price…Sony surprised analysts with a $699.99 price…making the Pro their most expensive console ever. The PS3 adjusted for inflation would be $779 with added disk drive, by the way. According to theverge.com, the Pro still may be the ticket if you aren’t up to building your own PC gaming machine. In addition, the easy plug-and-play model, simplified UI, and hassle-free warranty process are all big benefits over having to build or find a good prebuilt PC and then deal with Windows and driver updates. Consoles sell in their millions because they’re far more consumer-friendly than PCs. If you can’t see that price point, look into rolling your own…or see if you don’t have a friend who can do it for you on the cheap.
In an effort to add more context to search results, Google will now link results directly to The Internet Archive to help add historical context to the links in your results. 9to5google.com says the new feature is live as of today. In order to access The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine links through Google Search you will need to click the three dots menu button that shows up by all search results, then click in ‘More about this page.’ The Internet Archive is a nonprofit research library that stores and preserves giant chunks of the web for easy reference later.
A data center at the bottom of San Francisco Bay? That’s what a couple of entrepreneurs are thinking, and their company NetworkOcean plans to submerge a small capsule filled with GPU servers into the Bay within a month. Arstechnica.com reports that they think this will help solve the thirst of data centers for water and electricity. The founders contend that moving data centers off land would slow ocean temperature rise by drawing less power and letting seawater cool the capsule’s shell, supplementing its internal cooling system. A couple flies in the ointment: scientists who study the hundreds of square miles of brackish water say even the slightest heat or disturbance from NetworkOcean’s submersible could trigger toxic algae blooms and harm wildlife.There is also the issue that no agencies that oversee the bay have heard of this plan, let alone issued the needed permits. Of course NetworkOcean is crying ‘over regulation.’
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