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Showing posts from September, 2024

Samsung’s AI chief predicts artificial intelligence in "every corner of life"

Web Hosting & Remote IT Support AI may seem like it's everywhere now, but you'll see a lot more embedded in people's lives before too long, according to YoungJip Kim, the head of AI for Samsung Electronics. Speaking in the evening after the unveiling of the Samsung Galaxy S24 FE and Galaxy Tab S10 and their many AI features , Kim shared his favorite aspects of the recent burst of AI interest and why it's only just beginning. Part of that is because of the rapid change in how people view AI assistants. "These days, people's expectation of this technology is very high compared to the several months back. So that's why most, I think most of the tech companies are working on that part very hard," Kim said. "I think people will be able to find more advanced experiences to use [AI with] soon because the AI technology will bring another way to interact with an assistant. And then behind the scenes, the AI assistants and smart devices user experie
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The Nvidia RTX 5090 and 5080 specs may have leaked, and the 5080's VRAM might be a huge disappointment for gamers

Web Hosting & Remote IT Support While there have been many leaks, rumors, and reports surrounding Nvidia’s upcoming flagship RTX 5090 and the 5080 graphics cards, we now have some definitive specs thanks to a recent and massive leak. Well-known and reliable Nvidia leaker kopite7kimi posted on their X (formerly known as Twitter) account specs for the forthcoming Blackwell graphics cards .  According to said leaks, the RTX 5090 will supposedly use the GB202-300 GPU with 21,760 FP32 CUDA cores (a decrease from the 24,576 of the whole chip), a 512-bit memory bus, 32GB of GDDR7 RAM, and use a whopping 600W of power. It’s still apparently using a two-slot cooler despite the power output increasing from the 4090’s 450 to 600, which most likely points to a differently designed cooling system. Meanwhile, the RTX 5080 is rumored to use the GB203-400 GPU with 10,572 FP32 CUDA cores, a 256-bit memory bus, 16GB of GDDR7 VRAM, and consuming 400W of power. The power usage is up from the 40
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Hacker creates false memories in ChatGPT to steal victim data — but it might not be as bad as it sounds

Web Hosting & Remote IT Support Security researchers have exposed a vulnerability which could allow threat actors to store malicious instructions in a user’s memory settings in the ChatGPT MacOS app. A report from Johann Rehberger at Embrace The Red noted how an attacker could trigger a prompt injection to take control of ChatGPT, and can then insert a memory into its long-term storage and persistence mechanism. This leads to the exfiltration of the conversation on both sides straight to the attacker’s server. From then on, the prompt is stored as ‘memory persistent’, so any future conversations with the chatbot will have the same vulnerability. Because ChatGPT remembers things about its users, like names, ages, locations, likes and dislikes, and previous searches, this exploit presents serious risk for users. Staying safe In response, OpenAI had introduced an API which means the exploit is no longer possible through ChatGPT’s web interface, and has also launched a fix to p
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SteelSeries announces new Arctis GameBuds designed for every beat of a modern gaming lifestyle

Web Hosting & Remote IT Support SteelSeries has announced its first-ever set of true wireless gaming earbuds and their features really look like they could offer a one-and-done solution for anyone scouting for the best gaming earbuds for their setup this year. Taking on the likes of Sony's Inzone Buds and PlayStation Pulse Explore earbuds , the Arctis GameBuds pack a bunch of premium features to offer a compelling package. SteelSeries is pushing this earbuds package as one that's not just great for gaming but one that'll drop into your day-to-day lifestyle too, offering something you can use anywhere for music, work, TV, and entertainment and so on. (Image credit: SteelSeries) Leading the feature set is the inclusion of neodymium (6mm) drivers that are tuned to SteelSeries' trademark high quality, providing "intense 360-degree audio" according to the brand. Complementing this is Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) powered by a four-microphone sy
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Scion of obscure OS that could have replaced Mac OS gets a rare update, almost 22 years after it started — Haiku carries on the minimalist philosophy of BeOS, the pet project of one of Apple's former executives

Web Hosting & Remote IT Support In the mid-1990s, former Apple exec Jean-Louis Gassée founded Be Inc., a company best known for its BeOS operating system. Despite its technical strengths, which included a responsive multitasking kernel, symmetric multiprocessing, and a 64-bit journaling file system called BFS, BeOS struggled to make a dent in a market dominated by Microsoft Windows. Apple briefly considered buying it but ultimately decided the price was too steep, and went on instead to acquire Steve Jobs' NeXT and use its OPENSTEP OS as the basis for what became Mac OS X. In 2001, Be Inc. was scooped up by Palm, and BeOS quietly disappeared. That should have been the end of the story, but shortly after, a community-driven project called OpenBeOS surfaced, aiming to keep the spirit of BeOS alive. In 2004, it rebranded as Haiku, complete with a new logo to mark the fresh start. Since then, the Haiku project has been steadily chugging along, and Haiku R1 Beta 5 has just been
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Citing security concerns, the US is now looking to ban Chinese and Russian-made vehicles

Web Hosting & Remote IT Support Electric vehicles made in China could be banned in the US from 2027 if a proposed new rule is passed. The US Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) has published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would prohibit the import and sale of vehicles and components made by manufacturers "with a sufficient nexus" to the People's Republic of China or Russia.  The proposed rule focuses on specific elements in electric vehicle (EV) hardware and software, and the potentially malicious use of the information and data required by them. The Vehicle Connectivity System (VCS) allows cars to communicate externally through Bluetooth, cellular, satellite or Wi-Fi modules, while the Automated Driving System (ADS) allows a car to operate without a driver. This ban would encompass any parts imported for use in American-made cars, as well as those built into vehicles from China and Russia. If passed without change, the only vehicles that would be exempt
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Alibaba's new AI video generator joins growing crowd of Sora competitors

Web Hosting & Remote IT Support It's a day ending in Y, so a new AI video generator is joining the ever-growing mass of similar tools. Alibaba is the latest to join the field with its new text-to-video model, part of its Tongyi Wanxiang portfolio. Announced at the Alibaba Cloud Apsara Conference, the AI video tool was only part of an avalanche of new AI options from the Chinese tech giant, including more than 100 new large language models (LLMs),  Tongyi Wanxiang is Alibaba's collection of synthetic media generation models, starting with an AI image creator last year. The new tool will produce high-quality videos from text prompts in both Chinese and English and still images. Alibaba's executives bragged that the company has some of the most advanced diffusion transformer (DiT) architecture, enabling it to make videos that maintain their quality regardless of the style requested by the user, including realistic live-action and many animation styles. Alibaba didn'
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Google Gemini Live's AI voice now comes in ten more styles that take inspiration from the stars

Web Hosting & Remote IT Support Google's Gemini Live AI assistant has a new range of voices for communicating with Android users . The ten new voices each have a unique way of speaking tied to personalities and accents.  Furthermore, in keeping with the astronomical theme of Gemini, the voices are all named for constellations, stars, or star-related phenomena, such as Orion, Capella, and Nova, respectively.  The voices were initially exclusive to Gemini Advanced subscribers but are now available to all users, which makes them more accessible and fits with Google's efforts to make Gemini a part of every user's experience. Google claims the speech engine used for the voices makes them more emotionally expressive and able to handle interactions in a way closer to human conversation.  Regardless of the voice you choose, the AI will still be able to talk and complete tasks at the same time. And if you didn't understand something the AI said, it keeps a text transcr
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AI-generated and edited images will soon be labeled in Google Search results

Web Hosting & Remote IT Support Google has announced that it will begin rolling out a new feature to help users "better understand how a particular piece of content was created and modified".  This comes after the company joined the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) – a group of major brands trying to combat the spread of misleading information online – and helped develop the latest Content Credentials standard. Amazon, Adobe and Microsoft are also committee members.  Set to release over the coming months, Google says it will use the current Content Credentials guidelines – aka an image’s metadata – within its Search parameters to add a label to images that are AI-generated or edited, providing more transparency for users. This metadata includes information like the origin of the image, as well as when, where and how it was created.  However, the C2PA standard, which gives users the ability to trace the origin of different media types, has b
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This AI can remake a song in any genre you like

Web Hosting & Remote IT Support Suno doesn't just produce AI-crafted songs anymore; it can also revamp them into new styles. The company has released a new feature called Covers that reinterprets your songs in new genres, almost like a photo filter or asking ChatGPT to mimic an author's style, but for audio. Currently in beta, the feature transforms audio inputs, whether it's you singing in the shower or produced tracks, into multiple musical forms while preserving the original melody.  The idea is to keep the essence of the original track, just with a new stylistic interpretation. To create a cover, you can select a song from your library and then choose the "Cover Song" option from the menu. The AI will process your track into the style you select.  One fun addition is that you can rework an existing song and add lyrics fitting the new genre to a track without any vocals. While the AI automatically generates lyrics that fit the new style, Suno does say
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New PS6 report claims AMD will be designing the console's chip

Web Hosting & Remote IT Support AMD has allegedly won out against Intel in the PS6 chip battle, meaning the manufacturer will continue to provide Sony with internal components for its next-generation console. That's according to Reuters , who state in a new PS6 report that AMD has been contracted by Sony for the design and fabrication of the chip for the next generation of PlayStation console. Sources claim that the deal was secured in 2022, with AMD winning out against rival chip manufacturer Intel in the bidding process. It seems like the decision making process eventually whittled down to both AMD and Intel. However, it's possible that backwards compatibility for PS6 may have been the deciding factor. "Moving from AMD, which made the PlayStation 5 chip, to Intel would have risked backwards compatibility, which was a subject of discussion between Intel and Sony engineers and executives," says the report. It continues: "ensuring backward compatibility
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Samsung shows insides of its 128TB SSD in all its glory but with a weird caveat — QLC-based BM1743 won't go on sale anytime soon and has a very short but strange 1-month retention

Web Hosting & Remote IT Support High capacity SSDs are becoming increasingly important as data storage demands continue to surge. Companies like Samsung, Huawei and Phison have been teasing future 128TB SSDs this year. These drives will provide a massive storage boost, essential for industries like AI, big data, and cloud services where vast amounts of information need to be processed and stored efficiently. Huawei's 128TB SSD , is set to be part of its Exabyte-capable OceanStor A800 range, highlighting the need for such drives in large-scale data environments. Phison’s enterprise SSD platform, with its potential for 128TB capacity , also demonstrates how these drives will play a critical role in handling high-performance, data-intensive applications. Samsung recently showcased its new 128TB SSD, the BM1743, at the Future of Memory and Storage 2024 event (formerly Flash Memory Summit). The drive, which features 122.88TB of usable storage, was displayed with an exploded view
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This 5K monitor can do something that no other 5K screen can — rival to Apple Studio Display matches it for price, but is a touchscreen with more ports and a far more versatile stand

Web Hosting & Remote IT Support Alogic, known for peripheral devices and displays, showed off a range of smart tech productivity devices at IFA 2024, including three premium displays. Particularly eye-catching among these is the Clarity 5K Touch 27” UHD Monitor, a device that is positioned to take on Apple’s Studio Display in home and workplace settings. As the name suggests, the Clarity 27 5K Touch Display has a 27-inch screen with an ultra-crisp 5120 x 2880 resolution, putting it on par with Apple’s Studio Display in terms of pixel density and image sharpness. But interestingly, it also boasts 10-point multi-touch functionality, making it one of the few high-resolution 5K monitors on the market to offer a touchscreen. Clarity 27 versus Apple Studio Display In addition to its high resolution and touchscreen capabilities, the Clarity 27 5K Touch Display offers 99% coverage of the sRGB color space, 350 nits brightness, and supports up to 1.07 billion colors. The touchscreen f
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The Steam update you've been waiting for is finally here

Web Hosting & Remote IT Support After a beta period earlier this year, Steam's new family sharing system and parental controls hub is now available for everyone . Steam Families is replacing both Family Sharing and Family View, creating a nucleus for all your game-sharing needs.  A Steam Family can comprise up to six members (including yourself), and the full libraries of all the users will be available to the 'family' unit, except for games where developers have opted out of sharing for whatever reason. No longer will you need to feel bad if you're watching your big brother play a game that you want – you can share the title across devices, just not at the same time. The most important upgrade to Steam's game-sharing update is the ability for you and your family to play games from your library at the same time. For example, your wife can play your copy of Cyberpunk 2077 while you play Warzone concurrently with no issues. And while playing one copy at the
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MI6 and CIA are combatting tech-savvy criminals with generative AI

Web Hosting & Remote IT Support Representatives from MI6 and the CIA have revealed the agencies have adopted generative AI in the fight to improve intelligence activities. In a joint opinion piece , the agencies pointed to the ‘sea of data’ they need to comb through in order to identify and tackle security threats. The intelligence chiefs describe the ‘accelerated’ challenges brought about by advances in technology, with an ‘unprecedented array of threats’ that the two countries face. The pair identify the war in Ukraine as the first of its kind in combining open-source warfare with ‘cutting-edge battlefield technology [..] high and low sophistication cyber warfare, social media, open-source intelligence” A special relationship The move is perhaps not hugely surprising, with Microsoft confirming it designed generative AI models specifically for use by intelligence services. For example, the large language model developed for data analysis uses an ‘air gap’ to ensure a separa
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Google’s new AI gaming engine can recreate DOOM and basically all your other favorite games too

Web Hosting & Remote IT Support DOOM, the 1993 cult classic, has turned into somewhat of an internet meme. Playable on nearly everything, from microwaves to electric toothbrushes , it’s more of a question of what can’t play DOOM rather than what can. Now, thanks to Google’s AI GameNGen, AI can even generate a playable version of one of the most beloved video games of all time, and it’s seriously impressive.  GameNGen is a new video game engine that is powered by a neural model able to generate gameplay based on different prompts. In the case of this recreation of DOOM, GameNGen is essentially learning to play the game as masterfully as possible, dodging bullets, slaying demons, and interacting with the environment. Once the AI has understood exactly how to play the game, GameNGen then uses a diffusion model to recreate a perfect image of the content it has just consumed. The game is produced in real-time with the AI model generating each individual frame based on the last one.
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Withings releases a Brilliant edition of the ScanWatch Nova, but I think its design is anything but

Web Hosting & Remote IT Support Hybrid smartwatch maker Withings has just announced a couple of fresh color options for the ScanWatch Nova and with it, a slightly new name in the ScanWatch Nova Brilliant. Intended to be more of an elegant, dress watch – as opposed to the more diver-centric style of the current ScanWatch Nova – customers in the US and Australia (UK availability is TBC) have the choice of titanium silver or “bicolor silver and gold” finishes.  To coincide with the new color options, Withings has also bestowed a white dial upon the ScanWatch Nova Brilliant, with a white sub-dial at 6 o’clock to track progress towards a goal you define in the companion app, and the now-customary OLED display at 12 o’clock to show notifications and other health-related information.  Adding to its dress-watch nature is a smaller watch face of 39mm compared to the standard Nova’s 42mm, making it not only easier to slip under a shirt cuff but making it better suited to smaller wrists,
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