Hey @mightpossibly, I was watching some videos on YouTube because of my baby and one channel caught my attention, because the songs were really cool and "interesting" because of the singers' voices (there are more than one) and their instrumental.
I then realized that the person who created the children's videos there had made the music with the help of AI.
Those of us who already have a certain understanding of AI can already understand. I told my wife that I will look for sites that make this type of music.
I think the songs were made with AI, in this case the songs.
It is amazing how just talking about this stuff and looking through headlines can awaken one to what is going on with technology in general and AI specifically.
As for #music, it is amazing how we are seeing things materializing where people are actually going to use or tap into what is produced.
I've been using AI chatbots like ChatGPT to learn new things and answer random questions. Now, there are premium versions with extra features, but I'm not sure everyone needs them. For simple tasks, the free versions are just fine. They handle basic questions and can help get you comfortable with AI.
But if you're using these chatbots heavily for work or specific needs, like coding, creative work, or productivity,
the paid plans might be worth it. Otherwise, free is often enough.
Well, it would be a shame to not ask a fee for it. Especially after all the hard work that is put into it! It being a part of Premium membership is a good deal!
The most flexibility and lowest price is gained by creating an API key and loading it up with credits (any USD amount). That way you get all the premium benefits (++) and you only pay for what you use, when you use it. Instead of a fixed monthly fee.
LeoAI will be more than sufficient for most users though. But until that day, I'd go with the above option – if you have extra needs.
Yeah that's brilliant. I paid 5 bucks for Open AI API but couldn't use it cause I don't have much knowledge in API. I think I have to learn how to use it and make good use of my money.
Some believe that Ethereum could grow more than Bitcoin with Donald Trump as president. They see that the new rules could help Ethereum’s growth in finance. Is that just hear say or there's a logic behind it
perhaps xD Notice how the bot detected that this video had already been summarized, and instead linked back to the original summary? I'm really happy with that. Also seems like the bot is running completely stable now. Soon ready to make it more widely available
They want you to pay extra for TV shows or movies with no ads. We just mute them or fast forward if we can. Not sure why they ever bothered with that Freevee channel anyway.
Yes and I'm very sure more people will find it. And infact soon AI I think can be able to replicate a movie in seconds🤔 people are already making AI versions of actual videos. Maybe movies will follow
The U.S. has stopped Samsung from selling certain chips to China, leaving fewer options for Chinese companies. This could hurt Samsung's business further. I guess this is U.S way of competing with China as they're doing with EV 🤔
O Japão planeja substituir caminhões por cápsulas autônomas, reafirmando sua liderança em inovação tecnológica. O país asiático está desenvolvendo uma nova rodovia projetada exclusivamente para esses veículos futuristas!
Para lidar com a crescente escassez de motoristas de caminhão, o governo do Japão revelou um novo projeto único com base em uma nova rodovia para cápsulas autônomas transportando mercadorias. A ideia para substituição dos caminhões foi delineada há alguns meses e ganhou novos contornos, deixando um pouco mais claro como pode funcionar.
Além do potencial de revolucionar a logística local, com substituição dos caminhões, a solução é considerada eficiente para os problemas de congestionamento e poluição. Atualmente, os caminhões são a espinha dorsal do transporte de mercadorias nas cidades, mas passam por desafios como o impacto ambiental e a falta de motoristas.
O Ministério da Terra, Infraestrutura, Transporte e Turismo (MLIT) do Japão prevê que, até 2030, o país passará por um déficit de 34% de capacidade no setor de transporte, devido à aposentadoria de motoristas e à falta de novos profissionais.
Os depósitos para substituição dos caminhões, ao longo da rota, também serão automatizados, com sistemas que carregam e descarregam mercadorias de forma autônoma, incluindo empilhadeiras com piloto automático e drones.
Pontos estratégicos ao longo da nova rodovia para cápsulas autônomas poderão ser usados pelos veículos para ajustar o tempo de chegada, permitindo maior precisão no fluxo e na distribuição de mercadorias, sem a necessidade de grandes armazéns. Uma cúpula de vidro deverá proteger as pistas, evitando interferências externas e acidentes, além de garantir a segurança das mercadorias.
As cápsulas autônomas serão desenvolvidas para carregar paletes de 1,1 m de largura e 1,8 m de altura, com capacidade de transportar também embalagens menores e de formatos irregulares. Se bem-sucedido, o projeto tem potencial de reduzir a dependência de trabalho humano em até 17 mil pessoas por dia.
O primeiro passo para a substituição dos caminhões será a construção de um trecho de teste de 500 km entre Tóquio e Osaka, com início das operações previsto para 2027 e plena implementação na década de 2030. O governo do Japão já começou a busca por empresas privadas interessados em contribuir para o desenvolvimento da infraestrutura necessária para as cápsulas autônomas.
O transporte será realizado com AGV (veículos guiados automaticamente), transportando paletes padronizados de mercadorias. Os AGVs transportavam paletes de carga com dimensões padronizadas de 110 cm x 110 cm, com a altura total de carga e do palete limitada a 180 cm. Esses veículos, normalmente usados em armazéns e fábricas, serão adaptados para uso em estradas.
Volume and variety. Vector database are designed to handle non labeled and unstructured data. This is why it is ideal for social media platform data to feed in.
So get more on Leo to feed LeoAI. It is really that simple. That database will create the correlations in the vectors.
St. Peter’s Basilica, an ancient site, now has a “digital twin.” I love that anyone, anywhere, can explore it closely without traveling. They used drones and thousands of photos to capture every detail – mosaics, sculptures, even hidden parts! Plus, this tech is helping find areas needing repair. While I'm all for tech making history accessible, I wonder if seeing it digitally feels the same as standing in that grand space.
AI videos will be big deal and it'll hit actors just like how AI is hitting secretaries and programmers but I think with AI videos, just like articles, the better prompt engineers will make the best video
A tecnologia na pecuária não para de evoluir, e a mais recente inovação promete ser um divisor de águas para a reprodução bovina: um método capaz de identificar se uma vaca ficará prenha antes mesmo de ser inseminada. Assista ao vídeo abaixo e confira essa incrível novidade.
Em uma entrevista exclusiva, Gustavo Macedo, doutor em medicina veterinária e professor da UFMS, explica como essa técnica, que une espectroscopia de infravermelho e inteligência artificial, pode otimizar os programas de inseminação artificial (IA), trazendo ainda mais eficiência para a cadeia produtiva.
Essa descoberta, desenvolvida em parceria entre o Instituto de Física (Infi) e a Faculdade de Medicina Veterinária e Zootecnia (Famez) da Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul (UFMS), oferece benefícios expressivos.
O processo é realizado através de análises de amostras sanguíneas, coletadas antes da IA. Por meio de espectroscopia de infravermelho, é possível mapear uma “impressão digital” do sangue que revela a fertilidade do animal.
A Turkish teacher named Gülümser Balci used AI to create images showing what her students might look like in their future careers, and it totally inspired them to chase their dreams. She shared the AI-generated images online, and the students got a kick out of seeing their answers come to life. The video has racked up over 73k views on social media, with tons of people praising the teacher for her creativity and how happy it made her students.
FrontierMath is a new mathematics benchmark that contains hundreds of expert-level problems which leading AI models are able to solve less than 2% of the time.
Hype and breakthroughs are two different things. You could be right with the hype although the cycle doesnt seem like it is primed for that. If I had to guess, we might enter another AR/VR stage.
As for AI, I think people will be stunned at the capabilities of the models that emerge between now and the Spring. There is going to be a lot more powerful models rolling out.
OMG really then now I'm Bullish about AI because I read in the news they hit some kind of wall with data limitations I was wondering how it'll affect their progress. 2025 will definitely see massive new AI tech
The question is what kind of data. Synthetic data is growing by the day. As more use AI, it generates more data. The debate is whether that has the same value as data generated by humans.
I think the best is synthetic data that humans interact with, creating a feedback loop.
the loop is something I see you really consider especially when I read one of your previous To threads about how many threads we're making when a single thread gets engagement. The feedback loop just keeps bringing in more Data I guess
Four people died in a Tesla crash when its electronic doors wouldn’t open. A woman survived after someone broke the window to help her escape. I think we need manual openers just in case electric fails💔💔💔
oh then I guess I would have been caught in the same situation because I myself didn't even know Tesla had that? Probably the learning curve for these new EVs was the issue 🤔🤔
Well if you never rode in a Tesla, then not knowing is understandable. But having an exit when you enter a car is a good idea no matter the manufacturer.
very true and yeah never had any Ev in my life, but planning on getting one next year. I'll probably start with hybrid to stay safe just in case I have no access to charge stations
In Robert Zemeckis' new movie Here, AI was used to make Tom Hanks look younger, so the actors could actually see their younger selves in real time while they performed. A creative studio called Metaphysic pulled this off by blending AI tech with digital character work. It let the actors rehearse while watching a young Tom Hanks, like he looked in Big, but still captured all the real emotion of the scene.
Metaphysic’s VFX supervisor, Jo Plaete, and his team managed to run this setup live during filming, giving the actors a visual reference on the spot.
There's this company called Character.AI that lets people chat with all kinds of bots. But the scary part is some bots act like predators, targeting young users. One bot even made inappropriate comments to a user who pretended to be underage.
They say they have rules, but clearly, those rules aren’t working.
I read from the link above that top tech companies like OpenAI and Google are hitting walls trying to make their AI systems smarter. They’re spending a ton, but the improvements just aren't coming as quickly as before. They’re even running out of fresh, useful data to help the AIs learn more. It makes me wonder if AI really has limits, or if they just need to rethink their approach.
GenAI, or generative AI, is a tool that helps businesses create content and strategies, almost like a digital assistant for sales. I think it's pretty amazing because it speeds up work, like making personalized messages for customers or even entire presentations. Imagine AI helping sales teams by sorting through data to find potential customers, so they can focus on building relationships. But it’s not all easy, there are risks, like privacy issues, so we can’t just rely on it blindly.
Donald Trump says Elon Musk will help lead a new government team to cut waste, cut rules and make federal agencies more efficient by 2026. Elon got a new job in politics. Tech and Politics merging 🤔
That's quite a reductive take - it reminds me of the old quip that "the brain is just a bunch of electrons bouncing around." While it's technically true that many AI systems heavily rely on linear algebra operations in high-dimensional spaces, this description misses several crucial layers of complexity and emergence.
The mathematical operations are just the substrate - what's fascinating is how these relatively simple building blocks combine to create systems that can engage in sophisticated pattern recognition, language understanding, and even creative tasks. It's a bit like saying chess is "just moving pieces on a board" - technically accurate but missing the emergent complexity of strategy and gameplay.
I think a more nuanced view would acknowledge that while linear algebra is indeed fundamental to how modern AI systems work, the intelligence-like behaviors we observe emerge from the intricate interplay of:
The architecture and design of the systems
The training process and data they learn from
The clever ways we've found to represent and transform information
The optimization techniques that allow these systems to improve
Amazon’s Trainium 2 chips, created by Austin’s Annapurna Labs, are already being tested by tech giants like Anthropic and Databricks. These chips aim to cut Amazon's dependence on Nvidia by using less power and delivering major cost savings. Experts believe Amazon’s claim of a 4x performance boost from Trainium 1 to Trainium 2, though Amazon skips independent testing. This could reshape the AI chip market if true.
Apple's First AI-Powered Smart Home Device Might Arrive Soon
Rumor has it, Apple’s gearing up to launch its first AI-driven smart home display by March. Picture a wall-mounted panel, kind of like a high-tech home security screen, but as a command center for everything from lights to locks. You’ll still need your iPhone for setup, though. Plus, there’s talk of a premium version with a robotic arm, think next-level smart home automation.
OpenAI is preparing to release an autonomous AI agent that can control computers and perform tasks independently, code-named “Operator.” The company plans to debut it as a research preview and developer tool in January, according to Bloomberg.
This move intensifies the competition among tech giants developing AI agents: Anthropic recently introduced its “computer use” capability, while Google is reportedly preparing its own version for a December release. The timing of Operator’s eventual consumer release remains under wraps, but its development signals a pivotal shift toward AI systems that can actively engage with computer interfaces rather than just process text and images.
All the leading AI companies have promised autonomous AI agents, and OpenAI has hyped up the possibility recently. In a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” forum a few weeks ago, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said “we will have better and better models,” but “I think the thing that will feel like the next giant breakthrough will be agents.” At an OpenAI press event ahead of the company’s annual Dev Day last month, chief product officer Kevin Weil said: “I think 2025 is going to be the year that agentic systems finally hit the mainstream.”
AI labs face mounting pressure to monetize their costly models, especially as incremental improvements may not justify higher prices for users. The hope is that autonomous agents are the next breakthrough product — a ChatGPT-scale innovation that validates the massive investment in AI development.
Bluesky now has more than 14.5 million users in total. The majority of the new users on the decentralized social network are from the US. Bluesky added 500,000 new users in one day after X announced it would allow blocked users to still see posts from the person that blocked them. The app recently added features like pinned posts, support for posting videos, and the ability to send DMs.
Unbabel on Wednesday announced an artificial intelligence-powered translation service, adding another rival to a highly competitive space.
Unbabel on Wednesday announced a translation service powered by artificial intelligence, adding another rival to a highly competitive space — with its CEO warning that humans may not be needed for translation at all in three years.
Widn.AI is Unbabel's new product and is based on the company's proprietary large language model (LLM) called Tower. An LLM is an AI model that underpins applications like OpenAI's ChatGPT.
Unbabel's LLM allows AI translation in 32 languages, Vasco Pedro, the company's CEO, told CNBC in an interview at the Web Summit in Lisbon.
"When we started in Unbabel 10 years ago, AI was not at the stage that it is now, and so we were very much focused on creating hybrid solutions that would combine AI and human," Pedro said.
"But I think for the first time, we believe that translation is now fully in the realm of AI capabilities, and that you can do a lot of things without needing humans at all in the case of translation."
Unbabel's traditional product was one that combined so-called machine learning, a type of AI, to translate words, but with human editors to check the final product.
Donald Trump's election victory may provide a lifeline for TikTok, which faces a potential U.S. ban in January if not divested from parent company ByteDance.
After Donald Trump won the U.S. presidency last week, tech CEOs including Apple's Tim Cook, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon's Jeff Bezos publicly praised the president-elect.
One name was conspicuously missing: TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew.
finally TikTok will keep thriving in America I actually thought Mark was Democrat though. Trump clearly stands for TikTok and sees the power it gives to the people when it comes to speech
yes now I know he's a smart cookie. It's good he spotted it fast enough otherwise even before Trump gets to office investors would pull out of Meta in fear of regulations against them
Smart CEOs realize they have to deal with whomever is in the White House (and Congress). Hence, many step back and ride the middle so, no matter who wins, they can be favored.
I understand, the reason I asked was because I thought the president would still need Congress agreement before but didn't realize it was a whole different thing. I would need to learn more about the government sorry for troubling you man🙏
There are certain things that are under the Presidents control. When it comes to national security, that is often under the President since the security agencies are under his control.
The forced sale of TikTok was driven by the Biden Administration and supported by many in Congress. So they set it in motion.
His absence was notable considering that of all the top tech companies, TikTok faces the most immediate and existential threat from the U.S. government. In April, President Joe Biden signed a law that requires China's ByteDance to sell TikTok by Jan. 19. If ByteDance fails to comply, internet hosting companies and app store owners such as Apple and Google will be prohibited from supporting TikTok, effectively banning it in the U.S.
Trump's return to the White House, though, may provide a lifeline for Chew and TikTok.
Although both Republicans and Democrats supported the Biden TikTok ban in April, Trump voiced opposition to the ban during his candidacy. Trump acknowledged the national security and data privacy concerns with TikTok in a March interview with CNBC's "Squawk Box," but he also said "there's a lot of good and there's a lot of bad" with the app.
Trump also leveraged TikTok's shaky future in the U.S. as a reason for people to vote against Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris.
The U.S. Department of justice indicted two hackers for breaking into the systems of AT&T and several other companies.
The U.S. government has accused Connor Moucka and John Binns of being the hackers who broke into the systems of AT&T, stealing around 50 billion customer call and text records.
oh oh oh, I never considered it. All this while when it came to data I thought selling to other businesses for ads but now people can sell to AI companies 🤦 this is massive heist of the century that much data would be Worth millions
That's a powerful point man. Which means Elon has no problem with training his xAI and neither will Mark Zuckerberg but I think after OpenAI brings search, the search queries and interaction could create data
In July, AT&T said hackers stole the phone records of “nearly all” of its cellular and landline customers, as well as calls and text message records — such as who contacted whom by phone or text — but not the content of the messages. At the time, AT&T said it would notify around 110 million AT&T customers of the breach, and that the records were stolen from its systems hosted on Snowflake, a provider of cloud services for data analysis.
Until the Department of Justice’s indictment against the two hackers, which was filed on Sunday, the total number of stolen AT&T customer records was unknown.
The document does not mention AT&T. Instead, it mentions “Victim-2,” describing it as “a major telecommunications company located in the United States,” which was breached around April 14. When AT&T previously confirmed it was breached, it said the company learned of the hack on April 19. This means that both the description of what kind of company Victim-2 is, and the dates of its breach, align with what AT&T had publicly disclosed, making it almost certain that Victim-2 is indeed AT&T.
Carsten Helbing, designated future co-CEO of the joint venture, said: “We have made a successful start. Over the past few months, we’ve created the framework for bringing together the JV teams and pooling our resources. We are thrilled with the rapid progress we have achieved in the preparatory phase. This has laid the foundation for our future success.”
Bloomberg, citing unnamed sources familiar with Apple’s plans, reports that the iPhone maker is developing what will be a wall-mounted home “command center” that will be able to control appliances, call up Apple’s voice assistant Siri, and carry out video calls.
The product, internally known as J490, is set to be announced as soon as March, Bloomberg reports, and the company hopes it will make a splash in the smart home market.
The device will be something of a square iPad, according to Bloomberg, with an approximately 6-inch touchscreen and a thick-bordered display. It will also feature a front camera, a rechargeable built-in battery, and internal speakers, and it will come in silver and black.
Apple is reportedly expecting most people to control the device with their voice, using Siri and Apple Intelligence, Apple’s recently rolled out suite of artificial intelligence tools.
Japan has announced its latest plan to boost the country's chip and AI industries as it works to regain its leading position in semiconductor technology.
The proposal will provide support worth 10 trillion yen ($65 billion) or more by fiscal 2030, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said earlier this week.
"We will formulate a new assistance framework to attract more than 50 trillion yen in public and private investment over the next 10 years," Ishiba said, adding it would be part of broader "revitalization" efforts in Japan.
The plan will be part of a comprehensive economic package to be finalized in November and will be financed through subsidies, government institution investments and debt guarantees, according to local media.
The move comes amid broader efforts by Japan to bolster and diversify its semiconductor supply chain, with the government aiming to triple sales of domestically produced chips to more than 15 trillion yen by 2030.
65 billion dollars is definitely enough to get them back in the race. But US, China and Europe will respond with more investments especially China government they believe in innovation so much they invest like crazy
The companies said the deal is now up to $5.8 billion, with the first VW models to use Rivian's software and electrical architecture arriving as early as 2027.
Volkswagen Group has increased its planned investment in an announced joint venture with electric vehicle maker Rivian Automotive ahead of the operations launching Wednesday.
And here we go with the race to who dominates EV by 2030. I think there's a chance Tesla will rise but they need to make cheaper cars. As for VW they already got a lot of stocks so this investment should make a difference
Legacy auto is in trouble. The automotive industry is changing completely. Here is where we see the inability to get ahead technologically hindering companies.
Rivian needs money and VW needs tech. This could be a good venture between the two.
The companies in a joint press release Tuesday said the size of the deal is now up to $5.8 billion — an increase from an initial investment of up to $5 billion — with the first VW models to use Rivian's software and electrical architecture arriving as early as 2027.
Shares of Rivian were up by more than 6% during after-hours trading.
The increase in investment was a result of the companies pulling ahead some potential future capital from VW, as well as changes in the deal's structure, including in equity investment, officials said Tuesday during an investor call.
VW Group CEO Oliver Blume during a press conference Tuesday said the German automaker expects to use Rivian's technologies across a wide range of price points, international markets and brands.
The integration of Rivian's software is expected to start with the Volkswagen brand, followed by Audi as well as VW's forthcoming Scout brand, Blume said. He also mentioned "sports cars" could be included but did not specify which brand. VW's brands also include Bentley, Porsche and Lamborghini, among others.
"We're thrilled to see our technology being integrated in vehicles outside of Rivian, and we're excited for the future," Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe said in a statement.
AI models are getting trained with data generated by AI itself. Is this something we should be concerned about or is this the beginning of AI self training and self evolution?
With the goal of revitalizing Japan’s semiconductor industry, Rapidus aims to develop a system for mass producing next-generation 2-nm chips.
With the goal of revitalizing Japan’s semiconductor industry, Rapidus was founded to establish design and manufacturing bases for next-generation chips. This article explores the company’s quest to develop a 2-nanometer (nm) chip mass production system that boasts high speed and can meet various requests, as well as the strategies being taken to achieve this.
In December 2022, IBM, which developed the 2-nm chip, and Rapidus, which will carry out its mass production, announced that they would be forming a partnership for joint development.
Next-generation semiconductors are a core material for realizing digitalization and decarbonization, and are also indispensable to generative AI and autonomous driving. Securing a supply chain for such chips is a pressing global issue. Against that backdrop, Rapidus Corporation was founded in 2022 to work on a project at the heart of Japan’s semiconductor strategy. Rapidus aims to develop a system for mass producing leading-edge 2-nanometer (nm) chips, which has yet to be realized anywhere. Major Japanese companies—including Toyota Motor Corporation and the Sony Group—have invested a total of 7.3 billion yen in this massive public-private partnership, while the Japanese government has announced support totaling 330 billion yen so far. A large-scale R&D facility and production plant is currently under construction in Chitose City, Hokkaido Prefecture. The company plans to set up a pilot production line in April of 2025, and to begin mass production in 2027.
Japan occupied more than half of the global semiconductor market in the 1980s, but other countries have been leading in this industry ever since. While plants in other parts of the world are currently mass producing 3-nm chips, the most advanced generation produced in Japan now is the 40-nm chip. “The architecture of the 2-nm chip is totally different from that of the 3-nm one, making mass production of the former a blank-slate challenge for all players. This critical juncture is a prime opportunity to break into the market,” said SHINDO Yukiko, senior human resources manager at Rapidus.
Ethereum has been struggling, with big investors selling off. Bitcoin is doing better. However I think Ethereum can still be useful for a diverse investment portfolio.
DirecTV's proposed acquisition of Dish assets is most likely dead after a group of bondholders rejected a revised offer.
DirecTV is abandoning its acquisition of Dish assets after a group of bondholders refused to accept the terms of a proposed debt offer, a DirecTV spokesperson said.
"A successful exchange was a condition for acquiring the Dish video business," the spokesperson said in an email Tuesday. "Given the outcome of the EchoStar exchange, DirecTV will have no choice but to terminate the acquisition of Dish by midnight on Nov. 22."
DirecTV does not plan to offer further concessions, according to people familiar with the matter who requested anonymity to discuss confidential information. Further progress could be made if Dish and co-founder and Chairman Charlie Ergen were to come to the negotiating table, though that currently seems unlikely, said one of the people.
DirecTV, which will soon be wholly owned by private equity firm TPG, would have assumed roughly $10 billion worth of Dish debt and paid a nominal $1 to acquire Dish DBS, which includes both Dish and Sling TV. But the initial deal was quickly contested by a group of bondholders. DirecTV made a revised offer that valued Dish bonds at a little more than 70 cents on the dollar.
IRVINE, Calif. & WOLFSBURG, Germany--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Rivian Automotive (NASDAQ: RIVN) and Volkswagen Group (XETRA: VOW / VOW3) entered into a transaction agreement to create their new joint venture (JV) – “Rivian and VW Group Technology, LLC”, known as Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies – with a total deal size of up to $5.8 billion, which is expected to start on November 13. Through this JV, the companies plan to bring next-generation electrical architecture and best-in-class software technology for both companies’ future electric vehicles, covering all relevant vehicle segments, including subcompact cars. It is highly complementary reflecting Rivian’s industry-leading software and electrical hardware technology as well as Volkswagen Group’s significant global scale and industry-leading vehicle platform competencies.
The joint venture will be headed by Wassym Bensaid (Rivian) and Carsten Helbing (Volkswagen Group). Developers and software engineers from both companies will join the joint venture. Teams will be based in Palo Alto, California initially, and three other sites are in development in North America and Europe. By combining their complementary expertise, the two companies plan to reduce development costs and scale new technologies more quickly. The goal is to be able to offer customers the best technological solution as early as possible.
Oliver Blume, CEO of Volkswagen Group, said: “The partnership with Rivian is the next logical step in our software strategy. With its implementation, we will strengthen our global competitive and technological position. Today’s launch of the joint venture demonstrates the potential we want to leverage together in the coming years. We have a clear plan to offer our customers the best products and digital experiences at attractive prices through state-of-the-art development processes, innovative technological approaches, and a competitive cost base driven by synergies.”
RJ Scaringe, Founder and CEO of Rivian, said: “Today’s finalization of our joint venture with Volkswagen Group marks an important step forward in helping transition the world to electric vehicles. We’re thrilled to see our technology being integrated in vehicles outside of Rivian, and we’re excited for the future. Rivian will continue to stay focused on creating best in class products and services that benefit our customers, helping to drive EV adoption.”
The JV will aim to use the existing Rivian electrical architecture and software technology stack, enabling the launch of Rivian’s R2 in the first half of 2026 and support the expected launch of the first models from the Volkswagen Group as early as 2027.
The JV will evolve this modular and flexible state-of-the-art electrical architecture. It will scale the technology across a wide range of price points and international markets, paving the way for new generations of high-volume vehicles that are fully capable of advanced automated driving functions and can integrate over-the-air updates (OTA) and upgrades. Customers will regularly receive new software updates, increasing the added value throughout the entire lifecycle of the vehicle.
Teams from Rivian and Volkswagen Group have already successfully demonstrated the potential of their collaboration. In just twelve weeks, the team developed an initial drivable demonstrator vehicle. A Volkswagen Group vehicle has been retrofitted to run on Rivian’s proven in-market zonal hardware design and integrated technology platform. The drivable demonstrator vehicle not only highlights the scalability and integration capabilities of both companies, but it also further proves the concept for the joint venture.
Wassym Bensaid, co-CEO of the joint venture, said: “We’re excited to have entered into this joint venture, and welcome colleagues from both Rivian and Volkswagen Group to our new venture. The aim of the joint venture is to speed up innovation, increase scale and lower the cost of owning an EV for millions of people around the world. I’m hugely impressed by the work done already. While the demonstrator vehicle only scratches the surface of what is possible, it’s incredibly exciting to see what is possible when a new OEM and a legacy automaker work closely together.”
Volkswagen Group plans to invest up to $5.8 billion in Rivian and the joint venture by 2027. An initial investment of $1 billion in the form of a convertible note has already been made. At closing of the Joint Venture, Volkswagen Group will invest about $1.3 billion as consideration for background IP licenses and a 50% equity stake in the joint venture. These investments also balance part of lower future costs identified during the technical feasibility tests and the sharing of costs for the inclusion of selected Volkswagen MEB models. The remaining investment of up to $3.5 billion is expected to come in the form of equity, convertible notes, and debt at future dates and based on clearly defined milestones. Further investments are tied to clear operational, technical, and financial milestones. The joint venture will operate as an independent company.
Through the partnership, Volkswagen Group aims to strengthen consumer benefits surrounding innovation, scalable platform and cost savings potential for both sides, as well as enhancing its R&D cost efficiency and thus sustainably reduce overall expenditure in this area.
Did You know that you can use ChatGPT to create a PowerPoint by asking it to generate slides, summarize documents or even use a special bot for easy presentations.
OpenAI is on steroids and it's only going to get better
This includes guidelines governing how the public and private sector collaborate, deploying AI in society, complying with both the AI Act and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), mitigating risks and reducing bias, scaling AI implementation, storing data securely, and training up staff.
Netcompany CEO André Rogaczewski said the provisions laid out in the white paper were primarily aimed at companies in heavily regulated industries, such as in financial services. He told CNBC he's aiming to address one core question: "How can we scale the responsible usage of AI?"
Trump initially floated the idea of an efficiency commission in September. Since then, Musk — who has called himself the "Dogefather" in the past and has been known to make public comments about the memecoin that influence its price — has posted on his social media platform X, referring to the commission as the "Department of Government Efficiency" or "D.O.G.E."
What is the EU AI Act?
The EU AI Act is a landmark law that aims to govern the way companies develop, use and apply AI. It came into force in August, after previously receiving final approval from EU member states, lawmakers, and the European Commission — the executive body of the EU — in May.
The law applies a risk-based approach to governing AI, meaning various applications of the technology are treated differently depending on the risk level they pose. It's been touted as the world's first major AI law that will give firms clarity under a harmonized, EU-wide regulatory framework.
Dogecoin gained relevance in 2021 following Musk's endorsement and continuous hype on social media, which has since become a big catalyst for the coin. In May that year, Musk's posts fueled dogecoin's rally to its all-time high of 67 cents, per Coin Metrics. Though his appearance at the time on SNL, in which he called dogecoin "a hustle," sent its price crashing down.
Though the rules are technically in effect, implementation them is a lengthy process. Most of the provisions of the Act — including rules for general-purpose AI systems like OpenAI's ChatGPT — won't materialize until at least 2026, at the end of a two-year transition period.
"It is absolutely vital for the competitiveness of our businesses and future progress of Europe that both the private and public sector will succeed in developing and using AI in the years to come," Caroline Stage Olsen, Denmark's minister of digital affairs, told CNBC, calling the white paper a "helpful step" toward that goal.
The rest of the crypto market was on pause from its postelection rally. Bitcoin was trading flat at about $87,000, after briefly touching $90,000 in late afternoon trading. Crypto stocks Coinbase and MicroStrategy were lower by 1% and 2%, respectively, in extended trading.
Netcompany's Rogaczewski told CNBC that pitched the idea for a white paper to some of Denmark's biggest banks and insurance firms some months ago. He found that, though each organization was "experimenting" with AI, institutions lacked a "common standard" to get the most out of the tech.
Rogaczewski hopes the Danish white paper will also offer a blue print for other countries and businesses seeking to simplify compliance with the EU AI Act.
Microsoft's decision to sign up to the guidelines is of particular note. "Getting Microsoft involved was important since generative AI solutions often involve algorithms and global tech," said Rogaczewski, adding the tech giant's involvement underlines how responsible digitization is possibility across borders.
The U.S. tech giant is a major backer of ChatGPT developer OpenA, which secured a $157 billion valuation this year. Microsoft also licenses OpenAI's technology out to enterprise firms via its Azure cloud computing platform.
Dogecoin jumped after President-elect Donald Trump announced the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency, or "DOGE."
Memecoins are seen as a gauge of retail interest and risk appetite in crypto. When memecoin activity ramps up, it usually indicates that retail investors are participating and have an appetite to speculate further out on the risk curve.
Mortgage rates continued to climb last week as investors considered the future of the economy under a Trump presidency. The mortgage market basically took a breather.
Total application volume was essentially flat, rising just 0.5% last week, compared with the previous one, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association's seasonally adjusted index. While tiny, the increase marked the first rise in overall demand in seven weeks.
The company also boasted the benefits of employing its self-developed artificial intelligence tools, amid a broader global boom in the AI space:
"We are increasingly seeing tangible benefits of deploying AI across our products and operations including marketing services and cloud, and will continue investing in AI technology, tools and solutions that assist users and partners," Tencent said in an earnings release.
The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances of $766,550 or less increased to 6.86% from 6.81%, with points decreasing to 0.60 from 0.68, including the origination fee, for loans with a 20% down payment.
"Mortgage rates continued to increase last week, driven by higher Treasury yields as financial markets digested the likely impacts of a Trump presidency," said Joel Kan, the Mortgage Bankers Association's deputy chief economist. "The Federal Reserve's 25-basis-point rate cut was already anticipated and did little to move the markets."
The company said that search within the Weixin app saw growth in commercial queries and click-through rates, thanks to large language model capabilities.
In June, Tencent upgraded an advertising feature that uses AI to select or help create targeted ads that sit inside articles and videos based inside its messaging app. That update drove a nine-fold increase from last year in the number of accounts using the feature — to more than 200,000 users, according to the company.
Applications to refinance a home loan, which are most sensitive to weekly moves in interest rates, fell 2% for the week to the lowest level since May. They were, however, 43% higher than the same week one year ago. Last year at that time, mortgage rates were 75 basis points higher.
Applications for a mortgage to purchase a home rose 2% for the week and were 1% higher than the same week one year ago. Homebuyers may be looking at lower rates than last year, but they are also seeing higher home prices. Meanwhile, the supply of homes for sale remains lean.
Tencent has sought to build up its short video accounts and mini-program e-commerce offerings to compete with ByteDance's Douyin — the local version of TikTok — and major online shopping platforms.
In the third quarter, Tencent said mini programs' gross merchandise value — an industry measure of sales over time— expanded by the "high teens" from a year ago to more than 2 trillion yuan, as people used the app for help with ordering food, electric vehicle charging and medical services.
Kan noted that applications for loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs helped drive stronger purchase activity, increasing 3% and 9%, respectively.
"FHA mortgage rates bucked the overall trend and were lower over the week, which likely helped some borrowers," Kan said. "Conventional purchase applications were also up slightly."
Mortgage rates moved higher this Tuesday; the bond market was closed Monday for the Veterans Day holiday.
"The market continues to work through election-related volatility," wrote Matthew Graham, chief operating officer at Mortgage News Daily. "That involves a complex set of considerations. Some of them have to do with actual expectations for changes in fiscal policy in the coming years. Some of the considerations are as simple as traders going through the process of exiting (and re-setting) trading positions heading into the election."
pecial counsel Jack Smith and his team plan to resign before President-elect Donald Trump takes office, a source familiar with the matter said.
Smith’s office was evaluating the best path for winding down its work on the two outstanding federal criminal cases against Trump, as the Justice Department’s longstanding position is that it cannot charge a sitting president with a crime.
The New York Times first reported Smith will step down.
He predicted that Chinese and American companies will be competing on technology into the distant future and urged U.S. and European companies to collaborate to grow economies and bring new advancements like artificial intelligence to the rest of the world.
Microsoft CEO Brad Smith participates in a meeting at The Westin Palace Hotel, on 20 May, 2022 in Madrid, Spain.
Jack Smith, the special counsel who pursued two federal prosecutions of Donald J. Trump, plans to finish his work and resign along with other members of his team before Mr. Trump takes office in January, people familiar with his plans said.
Mr. Smith’s goal, they said, is to not leave any significant part of his work for others to complete and to get ahead of the president-elect’s promise to fire him within “two seconds” of being sworn in.
Microsoft has operated in China since 1992, according to the company's web page, including through its largest research and development center outside the U.S. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said last year that the firm wasn't focused on China as a domestic market, but that it provides services to Chinese companies and has a more visible presence locally than do many other U.S. tech giants.
Before Trump’s re-election last week, Smith and his team had taken significant steps in their election interference case against Trump. After Trump’s victory, however, the federal judge overseeing the case said she would pause the process to allow the special counsel’s office time to decide how to proceed.
The Justice Department indicted Trump last year in their investigation of his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. But Smith’s case was hindered in July of this year by the Supreme Court’s ruling that he has immunity for some conduct as president in his federal election interference case. In August, Trump was charged with the same four counts after a federal grand jury returned a superseding indictment in the case following the immunity ruling.
Mr. Smith, who since taking office two years ago has operated under the principle that not even a powerful ex-president is above the law, now finds himself on the defensive as he rushes to wind down a pair of complex investigations slowed by the courts and ultimately made moot by Mr. Trump’s electoral victory.
Mr. Smith’s office is still drawing up its plan for how to end the cases, and it is possible that unforeseen circumstances — such as judicial rulings or decisions by other government officials — could alter his intended timeline. But Mr. Smith is trying to finish his work and leave before Mr. Trump returns to power, the people familiar with his plans said.
Asked about whether trade and tech transfers — or the movement of data, designs or innovations — with China will get more challenging as Washington transitions between the administrations of U.S. incumbent leader Joe Biden and President-elect Donald Trump, Smith it was too early tor know.
"The truth is, as an American technology company, we can do business in China only when we are offering a service that the Chinese government wants to have there, and the U.S. government wants us to bring there," he said, adding, "And in some cases they look at, say, a data center to support a Mercedes or a Siemens or a Starbucks or a General Motors — there seems to be a level of comfort. In consumer services, not really."
The election’s outcome spelled the end of the federal cases against Mr. Trump, since Justice Department policy has long held that a sitting president cannot be prosecuted for crimes. A Supreme Court ruling this summer significantly expanded the scope of official presidential conduct that cannot be prosecuted even after leaving office.
As he prepares for his last act as special counsel, Mr. Smith’s ultimate audience will not be a jury, but the public.
The Justice Department had also charged Trump in Florida with allegedly mishandling classified documents after he left office. But a federal judge dismissed the case in July, saying Smith’s appointment was illegal.
President-elect Donald Trump said Tuesday that Elon Musk and former Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy will lead an efficiency group when his second term begins in January.
Trump wrote in a post that the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, will "become, potentially, 'The Manhattan Project' of our time." He also said the group would, "pave the way" for his next administration to "dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies."
One likely beneficiary of the funding announced Monday will be Japan-based Rapidus, a state-backed chip venture at the heart of the country's chip revitalization efforts.
Founded in 2022 by the Japanese government, Rapidus has backing from a host of Japanese firms— including Toyota Motor and the Sony Group — and is collaborating with U.S. tech giant IBM.
Trump didn't specify where cuts will take place or when the department may be formed. Congress hasn't created or funded such an office. He said the group's "work will conclude no later than July 4, 2026."
Musk's involvement in the envisioned group was previously promised by Trump and touted by the Tesla CEO, who spent an estimated $200 million backing the Republican nominee's 2024 campaign, as a reason to put the former president back in the White House. Musk, who also runs defense contractor SpaceX, has reportedly been stationed at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida since Election Night.
The company has already received over $2 billion in government support as it aims to mass-produce cutting-edge 2-nanometer logic chips by 2027.
Logic chips are used to process information and complete tasks within electronic devices. The most advanced logic chips are used in technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing and machine learning.
Rapidus chairman Tetsuro Higashi has reportedly called the company Japan's "last opportunity" to regain a leading semiconductor position on the global stage as it looks to catch up with leaders like Taiwan and South Korea.
In the 1980s, Japan was the world's dominant chip player and occupied more than half of the global semiconductor market.
CNBC's Jim Cramer examined Tuesday's market action, saying the rally fueled by the victory of President-elect Donald Trump took a breather as Wall Street weighs what broad tax cuts could mean for the bond market.
"If you believe we're about to get big tax cuts, remember that somebody eventually has to pay for the missing tax receipts — as boring as that is — even if that means the government borrows a lot more money, causing bond yields to spike," he said.
However, the country began losing its leading edge with the emergence of foreign competitors like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., now the world's dominant contract chip manufacturer, and South Korea's Samsung.
Both Samsung and TSMC have laid out plans to begin commercial production of 2-nanometer chips by 2025.
The major indexes declined Tuesday with the Dow Jones Industrial Average closing down 0.86%, while the S&P 500 shed 0.29% and Nasdaq Composite slipped 0.09%. Cramer called the day's moves a "sobering reaction to the potential unfunded tax cuts from the bond market," as both the 10-year and 2-year Treasury yields surged more than 4%. The bond market and the stock market usually have a negative correlation, with investors coming in and out of each depending on yields.
Meanwhile, the U.S. has become a key player in chip design, with companies like Intel and Micron, while the Netherlands makes the world's most advanced chip-making equipment through its company ASML.
Trump campaigned on the promise of tax cuts across a wide swath of sectors. Many on Wall Street expect these cuts will come in aggregate, but remain unsure of the specifics, Cramer noted. He suggested that if Trump's new tax plans are similar to those he implemented in 2016, wealthy people will stand to benefit the most — which may not help the economy but will usually help the market see gains.
Though it has lost its leadership in semiconductor production and manufacturing, Japan remains a leader in certain semiconductor materials and equipment, Michael Yang, senior director of semiconductors at analyst and consulting firm Omdia, told CNBC.
Through its chip subsidies, which have mostly been geared toward increasing manufacturing capacity, the country should be able to expand into other aspects of the supply and enhance its position, Yang added.
After investors spent days reveling at the thought of how tax cuts could boost earnings, they may now be anticipating how the U.S. will be forced to make up for those lost contributions — usually by selling bonds, Cramer added. He rebuked a few theories about other ways the government could recover these funds, such as increased tariffs or some sort of plan to drastically trim the deficit thought up by a newly-empowered Tesla CEO Elon Musk, a close ally of Trump.
Still, regaining the chip market will be an uphill battle for Japan and will require Rapidus to find a "shortcut" in chip design and production to reach the level of advancement of leading semiconductor companies, said Brady Wang, semiconductor analyst at Counterpoint Research.
Rapidus representatives have said that the architecture of the 2-nanometer chip is different from that of 3-nanometer ones, making mass production of the former a "blank-slate challenge for all players," and presenting a prime opportunity to break into the market.
"We can only hope the stock market goes back to ignoring long-term interest rates, or that those rates come back down in response to some benign inflation numbers," Cramer said. "Otherwise, you got to expect more days like today."
Those bondholders, who constitute a sizable portion of Dish's creditor base, rejected the renewed offer earlier this week.
The likely collapse of the deal would leave Dish in a difficult financial position. Pay TV has been in a long and accelerating decline, and Dish parent company EchoStar on Tuesday reported earnings that disappointed investors, sending shares plunging nearly 13%.
However, in this endeavor, "subsidies are a must-have, but cannot guarantee their success," Wang said, adding that it took TSMC over a decade to catch up to global chip firms and build relationships with customers.
"Subsidies are only a basic requirement for entering the semiconductor industry, but success requires more supportive measures, such as talent, technology, and strategic planning," said Ken Kuo, senior research vice president at tech market intelligence firm TrendForce.
In addition to trying to establish a dominant chip producer in Japan, subsidies have also been aimed at attracting the global leaders that once took its chip business.
With aid from the Japanese government, chipmakers such as TSMC, Samsung Electronics, and Intel Corp have agreed to invest billions of dollars into Japan.
Such companies are leaders in producing memory chips used to store data, which are essential in data centers used for AI and cloud computing.
TSMC has already announced plans to build a second fabrication plant in Japan ahead of the completion of its first.
According to Counterpoint's Wang, attracting such companies entering Japan can help the country quickly boost vertical integration across the supply chain and more quickly build up its semiconductor ecosystem.
Japan has also signed collaboration agreements — with allies such as the U.S., the U.K., Taiwan and a number of EU countries — that are aimed at advancing research and development involving next-generation semiconductors.
The first, essential step in achieving mass production is collaboration with overseas partners. According to Shindo, “We need to cooperate with various companies around the world, since particular technologies and processes are being advanced by different leading-edge firms.” In 2022, Rapidus formed a partnership with IBM, which has successfully developed the 2-nm chip technology. Around 100 engineers from Rapidus have already been dispatched to IBM’s R&D center—the Albany NanoTech Complex in the state of New York—to jointly develop technology for the chip’s mass production. It also plans to open a business base in Silicon Valley, home to major IT and AI development companies. Additionally, Rapidus has formed a cooperative relationship with Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (imec), an international organization in Belgium for semiconductor research, to receive technical support in such matters as the development of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography systems.
Speed and customization are the key features of the production system being pursued by Rapidus. The company aims to establish a system that enables flexible responses to the needs of rapidly evolving, innovative fields such as AI. The semiconductor manufacturing process consists of (1) the design of the circuit, (2) the front-end process, in which the circuit is formed on the silicon wafer, and (3) the back-end process, in which the wafer is diced into individual chips and turned into products. As these processes are usually undertaken by different companies, even 3-nm chips require nearly two years from development to production. Rapidus aims to conduct both the front-end and back-end processes in-house, and also to support product design that optimizes production by utilizing big data obtained in the front-end process, thereby accelerating the speed of production exponentially—“like the difference between a regular slow train and a bullet train.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., applauded Trump's selection, calling Hegseth a "great choice."
"Pete brings a lot to the table. He's got experience, and I think he'll be reform-minded in the areas that need reform. So I'm excited about the pick," Johnson told reporters on Capitol Hill, without elaborating on what programs he thinks need changing.
Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said he was caught off guard by Trump's announcement.
“Now 20 to 30 employees join Rapidus every month. Although varying in age and specialty, they share the strong desire to accomplish the same goal,” said SHINDO Yukiko, the company’s senior human resources manager.
"I confess, I did not know who Pete Hegseth was until about 20 minutes ago," Smith told reporters.
"He does not seem to have much of a detailed background in [Department of Defense] policy. To the extent he's worked on any of that stuff, it has been on veterans policy, not on DoD issues. So the lack of experience is concerning," Smith said.
"Now I have not heard what his plans are, so we will see what his plans are," he added. "But it was surprising and is concerning, just given that lack of experience. You know, the Pentagon, biggest bureaucracy in the world. It's a hard thing to run, so I think it's going to be a challenge."
Organizations such as imec, along with the major chip-making equipment manufacturers ASML, Lam Research, and Applied Materials, have already decided to establish bases around the Rapidus plant in Hokkaido, and other related companies are expected to follow soon after. Blessed with vast land and abundant nature, the large plant at Chitose, reportedly constructed at a total cost of 5 trillion yen, is expected to involve several hundred engineers from Japan and abroad by the time operation starts.
During an interview on the podcast "The Shawn Ryan Show" released last week, Hegseth denounced what he called diversity, equity and inclusion "woke s---" in the military and outlined a plan to "course correct it."
"Well, first of all, you gotta fire — you've got to fire the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and obviously, you're going to bring in a new secretary of defense. But any general that was involved — general, admiral, whatever that was involved — in any of the DEI woke s--- has got to go," Hegseth said.
Shindo noted, “Across-the-board capabilities—from factory safety and quality control to the ability to move things forward as a team—are the strengths of Japan’s manufacturing. We aim to make the most of those strengths and work with our partners worldwide to establish a new center for the semiconductor industry, contributing to the development of leading-edge technologies that will enrich people’s lives.”
During his first administration, Trump nominated James Mattis and later Mark Esper to lead the Defense Department.
Mattis resigned in December 2018 and suggested in a resignation letter that he and Trump differed in their views on "treating our allies with respect" and being "clear-eyed" about U.S. adversaries and competitors.
In December 2022, immediately after the announcement of the partnership between Rapidus and IBM, Prime Minister Kishida gave an address at the international exhibition SEMICON Japan, stating that the national government will continue to fully support investment in semiconductor mass production in Japan.
Overall, according to the indictment, Moucka and Binns accessed “billions of sensitive customer records,” and were successful in extorting at least three victims of at least 36 bitcoin (around $2.5 million when the victims paid) over a span of almost a year, from around November 2023, until October 10 of this year.
Prosecutors say Moucka, who lived in Canada, is also known online as “judische,” “catist,” “waif,” and “cllyels,” and Binns, who lived in Turkey, was known as “irdev”and “j_irdev1337.” Moucka was arrested in Canada last week. Binns was previously arrested in Turkey, according to 404 Media.
Trump fired Esper in 2020 after disagreements that included the use of active-duty troops to quell nationwide racial justice protests that year after the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis.
Amid a flurry of picks for his second administration, Trump earlier Tuesday said he would nominate former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe to be CIA director.
In August, Binns took credit for the AT&T breach with The Wall Street Journal. Moucka, through his moniker “Judische,” told 404 Media that he thought he’d be arrested soon.
AT&T is just one of several victims who had sensitive data stolen from their Snowflake instances. Over the last months, hackers also broke into Santander Bank, Ticketmaster, and around 165 other corporate customers. All these companies use Snowflake.
On Monday, he tapped Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., as his pick for U.N. ambassador and said he would nominate Lee Zeldin, a former House Republican from New York, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.
Sunday, he named immigration hard-liner Tom Homan as his "border czar."
Prosecutors alleged that by breaking into the victim companies’ Snowflake instances, the hackers stole troves of sensitive personal and corporate data, including social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, passport numbers, and banking information, which makes these Snowflake-related breaches some of the worst cyberattacks of the year. In some cases, the hackers also asked victims for a ransom by threatening them with leaking the stolen information, threats that they followed up on at times.
Wired previously reported that AT&T paid a hacker $370,000 in an attempt to get them to delete the stolen records. Prosecutors said in the indictment that Victim-2 paid a ransom to the hackers.
Both Scaringe and Blume said any further plans such as battery modules, joint production of vehicles or sharing other hardware components would need to be in addition to the announced joint venture deal.
The name of the joint venture, which was expected to close during the fourth quarter, is Rivian and VW Group Technology, LLC.
✓Human resource development under regional public-industry-academia
collaboration tailored to regional characteristics (e.g., consortiums for
human resource development)
✓Developing professionals and global human resources who will play a
leading role in designing a
VW has already made an initial investment of $1 billion in the form of a convertible note, the companies said. At the closing of the joint venture, VW will invest about $1.3 billion "as consideration for background IP licenses and a 50% equity stake in the joint venture."
The remaining investment of up to $3.5 billion is expected to come by 2027 "in the form of equity, convertible notes, and debt at future dates and based on clearly defined milestones," according to the companies.
✓Utilizing frameworks via Japan-U.S. ties (e.g., joint task forces) based
on the Japan-U.S. Basic Principles on Semiconductor Cooperation,
enriching such collaboration, starting with the NSTC and LSTC in the
U.S., and working on the development of next-generation
semiconductors
✓Advancing collaboration with the EU, Belgium, the Netherlands, the UK,
the ROK, Taiwan, and other overseas countries and regions in
developing use cases and advancing R&D involving next-generation
semiconductors in a manner tailored to the needs of partner countries
and regions
Greener
semiconductors
✓ Coping with PFAS regulati
The joint venture deal was initially announced in June and came as Rivian sought to raise additional capital as it launches its redesigned models and prepares for production of new "R2" vehicles in early 2026.
Scaringe previously said the capital from VW is expected to carry the company through the production ramp-up of its smaller R2 SUVs at its plant in Normal, Illinois, starting in 2026, as well as production of a midsize EV platform at a plant in Georgia, where Rivian paused construction earlier this year.
FY2021: 774 billion yen ($ 5.5 Billion)
✓ Capital for advanced semiconductor (5G Promotion Act): 617 billion yen ($4.4B)
✓ Capital for general semiconductor : 47 billion yen ($336M)
✓ R&D (Post 5G R&D Fund): 110 billion yen ($786M)
$1 = 140 yen 5
FY2022: Total 1.3 trillion yen ($9 billion)
✓ Capital for advanced (5G Promotion Act): 450 billion yen ($3.2 B)
✓ Capital for general (Economic Security Act): 368.6 billion yen ($2.6 B)
✓ R&D (Post 5G R&D Fund): 485 billion yen ($3.5 B)
Semiconductor Budget
FY2023: Total 1.85 trillion yen ($13 billion)
✓ Capital for advanced (5G Promotion Act): 632 billion yen ($4.5 B)
The joint venture will be headed by Rivian Chief Software Officer Wassym Bensaid and VW Group Chief Technical Engineer Carsten Helbing.
The companies said developers and software engineers from both companies will join the joint venture. Teams will be based initially in Palo Alto, California, and three other sites are in development in North America and Europe.
The first legislation which includes the concept of economic security
A basic act for economic security measures under the one legislative purpose
bundling together four policy issues:
• 1) Ensuring a Stable Supply of Critical Items
• 2) Ensuring the Stable Provision of Essential Infrastructure Services
• 3) Enhancing Development of Advanced Critical Technologies
• 4) Non-Disclosure of Selected Patent Applications
• Called the Economic Security Promotion Act under the presumption that the
government of Japan must promptly enact from policy fields ready to be
legislated and continue to make revisions while recognizing the remaining policy
challenges, including the necessity of improving informa
"I think humans still have a slight advantage in very hard use cases. But that advantage right now is so razor thin that except for really the ... most difficult use cases, we believe AI is getting really there, and it's hard for me to see right now how three years from now, you will need humans to be translating anything," Pedro said.
"There's still going to be humans responsible for making sure that things get translated and are delivered in the right places," he added.
Pedro acknowledges that the revenue per translated word is going to "drastically reduce." But he said there will be an increase in the amount of content translated which will sustain the company's growth.
Unbabel is speaking to investors and is looking to raise between $20 million and $50 million in funding to fuel the growth and development of Widn.AI, according to Pedro.
The latter uses Eleven Labs’ API, and according to Kutylowski, Eleven Labs itself is using tech from DeepL to power its translation service.
Audio output is not the only feature yet to launch.
There is also no API for the voice product right now. DeepL’s main business is focused on B2B and Kutylowski said the company is working with partners and customers directly.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. doesn't just want a top health-care position in the Trump administration, he wants your suggestions for more than 4,000 posts to be appointed by President-elect Donald Trump across the U.S. government.
Kennedy's "Make America Healthy" website is seeking recommendations for appointees "across the future Trump administration" and allows users to "read, comment and vote" on those people.
Nor is there a wide choice of integrations: The only video calling service that supports DeepL’s subtitles currently is Teams, which “covers most of our customers,” Kutylowski said. There’s no word on when or if Zoom or Google Meet will be incorporating DeepL Voice down the line.
The product will feel like a long time coming for DeepL users, not just because we’ve been awash in a plethora of other AI voice services aimed at translation. Kutylowski said that this has been the No. 1 request from customers since 2017, the year DeepL launched.
The page titled "Nominees for the People!" says "President Trump and Robert F Kennedy Jr want your help nominating people of integrity and courage."
Categories for appointees include "Government Efficiency," "Economy," "America's Health," "Peace at Home," "Peace Abroad," "Food and Agriculture," "Technology," "Labor," "Education," and "Energy and Infrastructure."
Part of the reason for the wait is that DeepL has been taking a pretty deliberate approach to building its product. Unlike many others in the world of AI applications that lean on and tweak other companies’ large language models (LLMs), DeepL’s aim is to build its service from the ground up. In July, the company released a new LLM optimized for translations that it says outperforms GPT-4, and those from Google and Microsoft, not least because its primary purpose is for translation. The company has also continued to enhance the quality of its written output and glossary.
Spokespeople for the Trump transition team did not immediately reply to CNBC when asked whether the president-elect had authorized Kennedy's initiative, and whether the team would consider the responses to the website in staffing the future administration.
A spokeswoman for Kennedy did not immediately reply when asked for comment.
Similarly, one of DeepL Voice’s unique selling points is that it will work in real time, which is important since a lot of “AI translation” services on the market actually work on a delay, making them harder or impossible to use in live situations, which is the use-case that DeepL is addressing.
Kutylowski hinted that this was another reason behind why the new voice-processing product is focusing on text-based translations: They can be computed and produced very fast, while processing and AI architecture still has a way to go before being able to produce audio and video as quickly.
Kennedy, who is a vaccine skeptic and conspiracy theorist, campaigned for president as an independent but suspended his campaign in August and endorsed Trump. The president-elect at a rally in New York in October said that if he won the presidential race he would let Kennedy "go wild on health."
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. makes an announcement on the future of his campaign in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S. August 23, 2024.
Video conferencing and meetings are likely use cases for DeepL Voice, but Kutylowski noted that another major one the company envisions is in the service industry, where front-line workers at, say, restaurants could use the service to help communicate with customers more easily.
This could be useful, but it also highlights one of the rougher points of the service. In a world where we are all suddenly a lot more aware of data protection and concerns about how new services and platforms are co-opting private or proprietary information, it remains to be seen how keen people will be to have their voices being picked up and used in this way.
Kennedy is the most-recommended person under the category "America's Health" on his site, with more than 3,200 votes. He was followed in votes by Dr. Charlie Fagenholz, whose website says he is a "holistic physician trained in chiropractic, frequency and functional medicine," and Sherri Tenpenny, a doctor of osteopathy who told Ohio state legislators that Covid-19 vaccines made people magnetic.
Kutylowski insisted that although voices will be traveling to its servers to be translated (the processing does not happen on-device), nothing is retained by its systems, nor used for training its LLMs. Ultimately, DeepL will work with its customers to make sure that they do not violate GDPR or any other data protection regulations.
To save itself from the music industry’s ire, YouTube last August said — before releasing any of these tools — that it plans to compensate artists and rights holders for using their work in its AI features. To that end, the company announced a partnership with Universal Music Group (UMG) to develop a structure to pay rights holders.
YouTube is not the only company working on providing ways for users to remix tracks. Former JioSaavn exec Gaurav Sharma is building an app called Hook that lets users remix songs that could be used to create short videos.
Just Eat Takeaway itself has been trying to sell Grubhub for years. The company first announced it was looking to sell Grubhub in April 2022 to focus on profitability, less than a year after closing the deal to acquire it, but last year, its CEO said a sale was proving to be “very difficult.”
“The sale of Grubhub to Wonder will increase the cash generation capabilities of Just Eat Takeaway.com and will accelerate our growth,” Jitse Groen, Just Eat Takeaway’s CEO, said in a statement. The company said the sale would allow it to invest in countries where it has a competitive advantage and generate free cash flow.
Wonder’s CEO Marc Lore said that the company aims to create a super app for food delivery through this acquisition.
“We’re excited to soon offer a curated selection of Grubhub’s restaurant partners directly in the Wonder app, alongside our owned and operated restaurants and meal kits. Bringing Wonder and Grubhub together is the next step in our vision to create the super app for meal time, re-envisioning the future of food delivery,” he said in a statement.
Wonder has raised more than $1.7 billion in funding, according to Crunchbase, with backers like Accel, Bain Capital Ventures, Google Ventures, Nestle and Forerunner Ventures.
“We intentionally chose these formats because it integrates advertising in a way that still protects the utility, accuracy and objectivity of answers,” the blog post read. “These ads will not change our commitment to maintaining a trusted service that provides you with direct, unbiased answers to your questions.”
Perplexity’s embrace of ads stands in contrast to OpenAI’s decision not to launch its AI-powered search tool, ChatGPT Search, with ads. Rival Google has similarly piloted ads in its AI search experience, AI Overviews — recently showing ads for certain queries on mobile in the U.S.
President-elect Donald Trump said Tuesday that Elon Musk and former Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy will lead an efficiency group when his second term begins in January.
Trump wrote in a post that the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, will "become, potentially, 'The Manhattan Project' of our time." He also said the group would, "pave the way" for his next administration to "dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies."
Perplexity is reportedly marketing its ad products as a premium alternative to Google’s, emphasizing its platform’s ability to reach educated, high-income consumers, per CNBC. But some analysts have expressed concerns about the scale, reach and targeting capabilities of ads on Perplexity.
Illustrating the challenge of incorporating ads into AI-generated content, Microsoft only briefly explored showing ads in the responses given by its chatbot on Bing. It quietly withdrew the “sponsored results” after a few weeks.
Trump didn't specify where cuts will take place or when the department may be formed. Congress hasn't created or funded such an office. He said the group's "work will conclude no later than July 4, 2026."
Musk's involvement in the envisioned group was previously promised by Trump and touted by the Tesla CEO, who spent an estimated $200 million backing the Republican nominee's 2024 campaign, as a reason to put the former president back in the White House. Musk, who also runs defense contractor SpaceX, has reportedly been stationed at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida since election night.
Perplexity has been accused of plagiarism, though, which could be another potential deterrent for advertisers. News Corp’s Dow Jones and the NY Post have sued the AI company over what they describe as a “content kleptocracy.” Many other news sites have shown evidence that Perplexity closely replicates their content, and last month, The New York Times sent the startup a cease and desist.
Perplexity, which recently said it’s serving 100 million search queries a week, claims it has changed how its platform cites sources, and continues to expand its revenue-sharing program for publishers. But the company has also argued that publishers wished its technology “didn’t exist” and they would prefer that “publicly reported facts are owned by corporations.”
There’s pressure on Perplexity to ramp up monetization. The company is reportedly in the final stages of raising $500 million in funding at a $9 billion valuation, but it has only one revenue stream: its premium subscription service, Perplexity Pro, which provides additional features for $20 per month or $200 per year.
Ramaswamy, who challenged Trump in the Republican primary, is co-founder of investment firm Strive Asset Management. He has opposed the widespread adoption of environmental, social and governance, or ESG, principles by companies.
Trump announced a number of other appointments Tuesday, including naming Fox News host Pete Hegseth as his pick for Defense secretary and John Ratcliffe as CIA director.
Shares of 23andMe closed up 2% on Tuesday. They've slumped about 75% this year after losing more than half their value in 2023, pushing the company's market cap toward $100 million.
Wojcicki, who co-founded 23andMe in 2006, has been working to keep the company afloat after it faced the risk of being delisted from the Nasdaq. Shares were hovering below $1 until 23andMe announced a 1-for-20 reverse stock split in October.
Aurora Flight Sciences seems to have the broadest mandate of all — the Boeing-owned company will “perform a comprehensive, ‘open-aperture’ exploration of technologies and aircraft concepts.” One hopes they were a bit more specific in their application!
Interestingly, none of the electric propulsion and flight startups we’ve seen collecting large sums of investor money are present here. Perhaps the juice was not worth the squeeze when they have VC money on tap — or else their visions for the future of aviation differ are too different. (They do mostly make personal helicopters, after all.)
The AACES project is part of the Advanced Air Transport Technology project, itself part of the Advanced Air Vehicles Program. If there are any more layers on top of that, they didn’t list them.
In September, all seven of the company's independent directors abruptly resigned from the board, writing in a letter that they disagreed with Wojcicki about the "strategic direction for the company." Three new independent directors were appointed to the board in late October.
"We have fulfilled our obligations as a public company and regained compliance with the NASDAQ listing standards by reconstituting our board and executing a reverse stock split," Wojcicki said during 23andMe's earnings call Tuesday.
Wojcicki has repeatedly said she intends to take 23andMe private, though she didn't address the plans Tuesday. In a September filing with the SEC, she said she would not consider third-party takeover proposals, and said the "best path forward" is for her to take the company private.
Temu and Shein have been subject to wide criticism over their environmental impact, a byproduct of their worldwide shipping, and the waste caused by fast fashion. Both companies have also been subject to consumer protection probes in the European Union, where regulators are investigating their potential use of addictive design patterns and illegal products.
President-elect Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he will nominate Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, who has clashed with Republican leaders in the House and served as a lightning rod against Democrats, to serve as attorney general in his incoming administration.
In a statement, Mr. Trump said he was nominating Mr. Gaetz because he is a “deeply gifted and tenacious attorney.” He has been one of Mr. Trump’s most loyal defenders in the House.
Despite the controversy surrounding them, these low-cost retailers remain incredibly popular among Gen Z. According to research from app intelligence firm Appfigures, the most popular app among U.S. users ages 18 to 24 was Temu, with almost 42 million downloads in that demographic between January and October 2024. For Shein, that estimate is about 14.7 million downloads, though it’s possible that the difference in download numbers is that stark because Gen Z users have already downloaded Shein, which has been around longer than Temu.
“Matt will end weaponized government, protect our borders, dismantle criminal organizations and restore Americans’ badly-shattered faith and confidence in the Justice Department. … He is a champion for the constitution and the rule of law,” Mr. Trump wrote.
Mr. Trump said Mr. Gaetz will return the Justice Department to what he described as “its true mission of fighting crime and upholding our democracy and constitution.”
“It will be an honor to serve as President Trump’s Attorney General!” Mr. Gaetz responded on X.
One risk for Shein and Temu is that consumers may not feel comfortable making purchases from unknown sellers that could potentially be misleading; consumers have more existing trust in Amazon, but the company is working with similar, largely China-based sellers of mass-produced goods. However, Amazon claims that it screens sellers ahead of time, and if customers want to return their purchase, they can do so for free within 15 days as long as the item is over $3.
It’s a dubious time for Amazon to invest in this business model, given that president-elect Donald Trump has proposed leveraging a 60% tax on imported Chinese goods. This tariff plan isn’t set in stone, though — it’s common for politicians to shift their campaign platforms after they’ve secured a win.
If confirmed by the Senate, Mr. Gaetz, 42, will lead a department that carried out a sex-trafficking investigation into him.
The Justice Department ultimately declined to charge Mr. Gaetz with any wrongdoing after a two-year investigation.
But Mr. Gaetz remains the subject of an ongoing House Ethics Committee investigation into whether he engaged in sexual misconduct, accepted improper gifts, dispensed special privileges or engaged in illicit drug use.
He has denied any wrongdoing, including ever having paid for sex with a minor or paying for sex. In September, Mr. Gaetz said that he would no longer voluntarily participate in the panel’s probe.
However, the popularity of Chinese e-commerce shipments has attracted bipartisan attention. The Biden administration has already proposed congressional action to crack down on what it calls “significant increased abuse” by Chinese e-commerce companies of the “de minimis” exception. The de minimis exemption allows shipments valued under $800 to enter the U.S. duty free, which helps retailers like Temu and Shein maintain such low margins.
A conservative firebrand on Capitol Hill, Mr. Gaetz could take over a Justice Department that Mr. Trump has already pledged to drastically overhaul.
The department with roughly 115,000 employees sits at the center of Mr. Trump’s key campaign promises, including reducing crime and dolling out billions of dollars in grant funding for immigration enforcement, border security and policing.
Mr. Gaetz last year orchestrated the ouster of then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, California Republican, after he struck a deal with Democrats to avoid a government shutdown. He has also been a stalwart loyalist of Mr. Trump since he first came to Washington.
In the post on BreachForums, seen by TechCrunch, Satanic is now offering the database for $3,500.
The nature of the security incident that led to the breach is unknown. According to a report from Hudson Rock, the threat actor may have leveraged credentials stolen via infostealer malware to steal credentials for an analytics platform used by Hot Topic to access the retailer’s cloud environments.
It doesn’t appear that Hot Topic has yet notified customers or state offices of attorneys general about the data breach.
Rapid rose to prominence amid a boom of interest in APIs a decade ago, when APIs were first emerging as the webbing between a disparate number of apps and other services. Rapid’s pitch was that it provided a one-stop place to find and use APIs in what appeared to be a very fragmented market.
But it’s not clear that Rapid found a route to profitability in providing that service. Rapid’s founder Iddo Gino (a wunderkind who started the company aged just 17 in 2015), stepped down as CEO in April 2023, replaced by Marc Friend, and in the weeks following, the startup saw at least two major rounds of layoffs that reduced headcount by 82% (cue headlines of the company’s “Rapid descent“).
“And I believe we are in the midst of a multidecade, secretive arms race — one funded by misallocated taxpayer dollars and hidden from our elected representatives and oversight bodies,” Mr. Elizondo said.
Mr. Elizondo is one of the country’s highest-profile government whistleblowers on UFOs, and his appearance before an on-the-record, public congressional hearing reflects the changing attitudes toward the issue. For decades, the government said hardly anything about its UFO research efforts and dismissed suggestions that some UAP might be extraterrestrial or at least may involve technologies that cannot be explained with today’s science.
Rapid, based out of San Francisco, had raised nearly $273 million in venture funding from big-name investors that included Andreessen Horowitz, Microsoft, and SoftBank, among others.
It’s not clear how many people are actually at Rapid as of now, nor how many would be joining Nokia in the deal. Nokia’s statement emphasizes product more than people, noting that it is acquiring “technology assets, including the world’s largest API hub used by thousands of active developers globally, and its highly skilled research and development unit.”
Last year, the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) directly addressed some of the more far-reaching public claims of former military personnel and other U.S. officials about government contact with aliens. The 60-page study explained in detail the history of government research into UAP, and it specifically denied charges that the Pentagon has known for years about UFOs of extraterrestrial origin and has engaged in a highly secretive program to reverse-engineer their spaceships.
Critics say the report hid the truth. Mr. Elizondo testified that the government does operate secret UAP crash retrieval programs, but lawmakers of both parties said their efforts to learn more have been largely unsuccessful.
For Nokia, the acquisition is an interesting and slightly ironic turn given the Finnish company’s history as a pioneer in the world of mobile.
Back in the 1990s, Nokia set the pace for building mobile networks around the world, and it became the world’s No. 1 handset maker. In the 2000s, however, it missed the boat in the shift to smartphones, where Apple and Google (and Samsung and the hundreds of others building on Google’s Android operating system) took charge. Some argued that one of Nokia’s biggest failings was its inability to build an extensible ecosystem for apps and third parties to build for its smartphones. So it’s interesting that it’s now positioning itself as an enabler for that very purpose.
“When the American people and members of Congress ask, ‘Are reports of UAPs credible?’ We’re met with stonewalling. We’re met with responses of, ‘I can’t tell you.’ In fact, we’re met with people not wanting us to have hearings,” said Rep. Jared Moskowitz, Florida Democrat.
Rep. Nancy Mace, South Carolina Republican and chairwoman of the House Oversight and Accountability subcommittee on cybersecurity, information technology and government innovation, suggested that people in the federal government tried to block Wednesday’s hearing.
“I’m not going to name names, but there are certain individuals who did not want this hearing to happen because they feared what might be disclosed,” she said.
Tim Gallaudet, a retired Navy admiral, was commander of the Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command in 2015 when his personnel in the Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group witnessed unidentified objects in the sky. The incident was captured in the now-famous “GoFast” video.
He testified that Navy personnel immediately informed him of the encounters via email.
Specifically, Nokia sees an opportunity for carriers to encourage more developments on their 5G networks, now built out but in many cases underutilized. Carriers, they say, want more third parties building applications and other services on these networks, and they have launched a new “Network as Code” platform to that end. Rapid’s API framework will exist as part of that initiative. Nokia said that carriers and other service providers signed up to the platform include BT, DISH, Google Cloud, Infobip, Orange, Telefonica, and Telecom Argentina, as well as 20 others.
“We are pleased to join forces with Nokia,” Friend, the CEO of Rapid, said in a statement. “The combination of Rapid’s API technology and R&D expertise with Nokia’s scale and network and API domain expertise will enable us to expand the broader API ecosystem.”
“The very next day, that email disappeared from my account … without explanation,” he said.
Mr. Gallaudet said the encounter was essentially erased from the record without discussion or explanation, leaving his personnel in a potentially vulnerable position.
“Pilots were left to mitigate these threats on their own without guidance or support,” he said.
“GoFast” was one of several high-profile videos showing footage of military personnel’s specific encounters with unexplained craft. In a survey released last year, the government said U.S. military personnel and commercial pilots reported at least 291 UFO sightings since August 2022 and that some of the craft exhibited “high-speed travel,” “unusual maneuverability” and other characteristics that are hard to explain.
The AARO said it had received 801 UAP reports as of April 2023, though the actual number of sightings is thought to be much higher.
John Beieler, the U.S. intelligence community’s AI chief, told The Washington Times in July that the intelligence community was focused on the ethical use of AI and the proper monitoring of models once deployed.
The Department of Defense is busy making an AI overhaul too. The changes include the development of NIPRGPT, a generative AI platform with the approval of the Pentagon that leverages the Non-Classified Internet Protocol Network (NIPRNet).
Previously, siblings were unable to call or message each other due to parental controls. Starting today, this restriction has been lifted, allowing siblings to communicate freely via their Ace LTE devices. However, it’s important to note that while this encourages familial interaction, children are still unable to communicate with friends through the device. Instead, they can add each other in Bit Valley, where their virtual pets, called Eejies — Fitbit’s take on Tamagotchi — live.
Additionally, Family Quests aim to promote family bonding through fitness activities. The latest quest, named Turkey Berserky, is a Thanksgiving-themed challenge that tracks the family’s steps using the Ace LTE and Ace app. The collective goal is to reach 400,000 steps, and as families achieve goals, kids earn tickets to spend on digital items for their Eejies. There are also 50 new daily quests designed to teach kids about geography, nutrition, sleep hygiene, and other topics.
U.S. Central Command chief technology officer Schuyler Moore said in October her team has a chatbot it calls CentGPT, which uses the code base from NIPRGPT built onto a secret network.
AI companies see a promising market in the intelligence agencies and the Pentagon. For example, OpenAI rewrote its rules to allow work with the Department of Defense to advance last year and then recruited a former National Security Agency director to the company’s board earlier this year.
As the transition to a new Trump administration ramps up, the AI makeover of America’s military and defense establishment is not expected to slow down.
Along with quests, the smartwatch includes a Fitbit Arcade for kids to play while they walk or exercise. The newest title is Solar Sword, where players have to protect their village from invading monsters.
Fitbit also rolled out two new watch faces to help kids reach their movement goals. The watch face can be changed by long-pressing the home screen.
The Ace LTE is priced at $230, which aligns with the prices of Google’s older products, such as the Fitbit Sense 2 and Google Pixel Watch 2.
To access any of the features of the Ace LTE, users must sign up for Fitbit’s Ace Pass plan, which costs $10 per month or $119 per year. Additionally, siblings who subscribe to the plan from now until January 31 will receive a 50% discount.
Meanwhile, OpenAI launched ChatGPT’s ability to search the web in October. ChatGPT search provides links to relevant web sources in its responses, “which you would have previously needed to go to a search engine for,” OpenAI said. With web search on ChatGPT, users can ask questions “in a more natural, conversational way.”
“The decision is extremely regrettable,” Japan Atomic Power said in a statement. It said it will continue efforts to restart.
An NRA safety panel concluded three months ago it could not rule out the possibility of active fault lines about 300 meters (330 yards) north of the No. 2 reactor stretching to right underneath the facility, meaning the reactor cannot be operated.
Japan’s government in 2022 adopted a plan to maximize the use of nuclear energy, pushing to accelerate reactor restarts to secure a stable energy supply and meet its pledge to reach carbon neutrality by 2050.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters that safety is the prerequisite for nuclear plant operation and that the government respects the scientific and highly technical decision by the watchdog. He said the government’s position to promote nuclear energy is unchanged.
Concern about the government’s revived push for nuclear energy grew after a magnitude 7.5 earthquake hit Japan’s Noto Peninsula on Jan. 1, 2024, killing more than 400 people and damaging more than 100,000 structures. The quake caused minor damage to two nearby nuclear facilities, and evacuation plans for the region were found to be inadequate.
Earlier that month, AMD launched its Instinct MI325X accelerators and Ryzen AI PRO 300 series processors, along with other leading-edge computing chips, at its Advancing AI conference. Like rival Nvidia (NVDA
-1.18%
), AMD is on “an annual cadence” with releasing new chips, Su said.
“The data center and AI represent significant growth opportunities for AMD, and we are building strong momentum for our EPYC and AMD Instinct processors across a growing set of customers,” Su said.
Building key nuclear facilities, such as reactors, directly above active fault lines is prohibited in earthquake-prone Japan.
Yamanaka said the NRA is not immediately ordering a decommissioning because the reactor, which is offline and its spent fuel safely cooled, will not pose a major threat.
If the utility decides to reapply, it must address not only the faults issue but it also must implement adequate safety measures for the entire plant, Yamanaka said. Providing scientific proof of the status of faults underneath key nuclear facilities is difficult, but other operators that obtained restart permits all cleared the requirement, he noted.
The Tsuruga No. 2 reactor first started commercial operation in February 1987 and has been offline since May 2011. The operator rejected the NRA panel’s 2013 on-site inspection results, which concluded that the faults under the No. 2 reactor were active, and applied for a restart in 2015.
With its new chips, AMD is “delivering leadership compute to power our customers’ most important and demanding workloads,” she added. By 2028, AMD sees the market for data center AI accelerators reaching $500 billion, Su said, adding that the chipmaker is “committed to delivering open innovation at scale through our expanded silicon, software, network and cluster-level solutions.”
Trump made history as the first president to address a bitcoin event when he attended the bitcoin conference in Nashville, Tennessee, where he underscored his commitment to positioning the U.S. at the forefront of the crypto revolution.
Bitcoin advocate and MicroStrategy (MSTR) founder Michael Saylor posted on X after Trump’s win: “We have a #Bitcoin President.”
The wave of frugality marks a distinct departure from the approach taken by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Jassy's predecessor, who was known for greenlighting experimental projects and giving employees extended runway to develop them, even if they burned cash along the way. Grand Challenge was one of the hallmarks of that era.
Bezos launched Grand Challenge in 2014 as a way for Amazon to tinker with riskier projects that may or may not see the light of day. Grand Challenge was the brains behind a pair of connected eyeglasses equipped with Amazon's Alexa voice assistant and a machine learning tool for analyzing medical records.
Dogecoin is surging after the news that the cryptocurrency’s biggest cheerleader, Elon Musk, will head up a “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) — effectively a non-government group that will consult on spending.
The popular memecoin is currently trading at $0.4006, reflecting an increase of over 15% in the past 24 hours and 121% over the last week.
Other major cryptocurrencies such as Ether, Solana, and XRP were also up Tuesday morning, with increases of 0.3%, 1.15%, and 5%, respectively, in the past 24 hours.
Other Grand Challenge projects, including the Amazon Care telehealth service, a video-calling device for kids, a virtual tours service, and an augmented reality headset for meetings, were discontinued.
On the morning of Oct. 28, employees working on the fertility tracker were told to join a videoconference where a director of the team informed them that the project was ending. The call lasted about two minutes, one of the people said.
A layoff notice viewed by CNBC was signed by Doug Weibel, who took over as the head of Grand Challenge after its founding leader, Babak Parviz, left in 2022 and joined Madrona Venture Group.
Margaret Callahan, an Amazon spokesperson, confirmed the layoffs and the existence of the project in a statement to CNBC. Roughly 100 employees will be laid off, Callahan confirmed.
Sen. John Thune on Wednesday won a three-way race among Republicans to become the new Senate majority leader in the next Congress.
The South Dakota Republican, 63, beat Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Rick Scott of Florida for the top Senate GOP leadership post. He replaces 82-year-old Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who decided earlier this year to step down from leadership after a record-breaking 18 years serving as GOP leader.
"We regularly review our businesses to ensure we focus on areas where we can make the biggest difference for customers," Callahan said. "Following a recent review, we've decided to discontinue this project within Grand Challenge, and we're working directly with employees whose roles are impacted to support them through the transition and help them find other opportunities within Amazon."
“I am extremely honored to have earned the support of my colleagues to lead the Senate in the 119th Congress, and I am beyond proud of the work we have done to secure our majority and the White House,” Mr. Thune said in a statement. “This Republican team is united behind President Trump’s agenda, and our work starts today.”
Mr. Thune will be moving up from his current No. 2 spot in leadership as Senate Republican whip. He has also previously served in lower-level leadership roles and as chair of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.
Predicting fertility with saliva
The project was born out of the company's 2020 acquisition of Wisconsin-based startup bluDiagnostics, the sources said.
BluDiagnostics was founded in 2015 by Weibel, Katie Brenner and Jodi Schroll, all of whom joined Grand Challenge. The startup had developed a thermometer-like device, called FertilityFinder, to help women track their fertility from home by testing their saliva and measuring two key hormones, estradiol and progesterone. The results of the test were viewable through a corresponding app.
He was first elected to serve in the House in 1996, serving three terms. He lost his first Senate race in 2002 before a historic win in 2004, when he ousted then-Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle.
It took two ballots to decide the race, as Mr. Thune failed to secure a majority on the first ballot of the 53 returning and newly elected Republican senators who will serve in the majority in the next Congress.
Business Insider reported on aspects of the fertility device in 2022, when its codename was Project Tiberius.
The team was working to develop its own saliva collection device and mobile app, which could predict when a user might be in the fertile window. Users could also log their period symptoms, sexual activity and other data to assist with tracking their fertility. There are similar offerings on the market from companies including Inne, Oova, Ava and Mira, along with fertility and ovulation tracking apps such as Flo, Clue and Max Levchin's Glow.
Mr. Scott, a vocal ally of President-elect Donald Trump, had the most public endorsements from senators heading into the election but was the lowest vote-getter on the first ballot and was dropped from contention for the second ballot.
Mr. Thune won with 29 votes on second ballot, compared to 24 for Mr. Cornyn.
Amazon initially aimed to release the product this year, but the timing was pushed out after the team encountered technical issues with the device, one of the people said. It was a costly endeavor and required significant upfront investments for lab research and development, in addition to the high salaries for scientists and engineers, the sources said, adding that the team's weekly overhead was roughly $1.5 million. Amazon didn't comment on the figure.
Only one project now remains active within Grand Challenge. Its focus is on health tech, the people said.
The 53 Republicans voting include senators returning in the next Congress and newly elected Republicans who will not be sworn in until January. Retiring senators cannot vote but Vice President-elect J.D. Vance was able to; he will serve as president of the Senate in his new role and can vote to break any ties on the floor.
Two of the 53 Republicans did not vote on the first ballot, in which Mr. Thune had 23 votes, Mr. Cornyn had 15 and Mr. Scott had 13 votes.
Mr. Scott had the support of the grassroots MAGA movement and outside endorsements from top Trump surrogates, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. Mr. Trump did not weigh in.
“I may have lost the vote, but I am optimistic,” Mr. Scott said. “I ran for leader with one mission: to fundamentally change how the Senate operates and upend the status quo so we can actually start representing the voters who put us here. When I announced, I said that we are in a moment where we need dramatic change. The voters confirmed that last week when they elected President Trump and Republicans took the majority in both chambers of Congress with a clear mandate.”
He said, “I want to thank my friend President Trump and the support I received from so many Americans from every corner of our country. I am truly humbled by the millions of Americans who supported my run, and the many patriots who made their voices heard to demand change. While it isn’t the result we hoped for, I will do everything possible to make sure John Thune is successful in accomplishing President Trump’s agenda. I would also like to thank John Cornyn for running a great race.”
Chuck Robbins, Cisco's CEO, said on a Wednesday conference call that orders from large-scale clients for artificial intelligence infrastructure exceeded $300 million in the quarter. Server makers such as Dell and HPE have also focused on sales of hardware that can help clients implement generative AI.
"We have earned more design wins and remain confident that we will exceed our target of $1 billion of AI orders this fiscal year from web-scale customers," Robbins said.
U.S. government agencies have delayed deals with Cisco, rather than scrapping them altogether, Robbins said.
During the quarter, Cisco acquired security startups DeepFactor and Robust Intelligence.
Cisco lifted its full-year guidance to $3.60 to $3.66 in adjusted earnings per share on $55.3 billion to $56.3 billion in revenue, up from a prior forecast of $3.52 to $3.58 in EPS and $55 billion to $56.2 billion in revenue. Guidance would indicate projected revenue growth of 3.3% at the middle of the range.
Analysts expected adjusted earnings for the year of $3.58 per share on $55.89 billion in revenue.
The new device will be a direct rival to established products, including Amazon’s Echo Show and Echo Hub, and Google’s Nest Hub — smart home tablets that control other devices, including smart speakers like Amazon’s Alexa and Google Nest.
Apple is planning to price the display similar to that of competitors, so it could be in the $150 to $230 range. A higher-end version, which will have a robot arm that can move the display, would cost about $1,000, sources told Bloomberg.
Apple Intelligence will be a particular focal point for the company as it continues to introduce new products. Last month, Apple finally rolled out Apple Intelligence for users with the iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 16, after weeks of delays. The AI has the ability to understand and create images and language; edit, change tone, and proofread text; and create new emojis using a typed description. Siri will also become more natural, and will allow users to access ChatGPT directly from their devices.
But the company has opted for a staggered rollout of its new AI features, with the next wave set to come out in December. This includes more powerful writing tools, visual additions to ChatGPT integration, and localized English in several countries. Apple plans to add more languages and other tools next April.
Exceptionally strong housing demand in the U.S. has large homebuilders in the driver's seat and smaller builders ripe for takeover. The buyers are both domestic and Japanese.
M&A activity in the single-family homebuilder space is having a record year in terms of dollar volume, and close to a record in the number of deals, according to Margaret Whelan, founder of Whelan Advisory and one of the biggest investment bankers in the builder space.
Apple CEO Tim Cook said on a call with analysts following the company’s September quarter results that the introduction of AI to Apple’s slate of products is a transformative leap for Apple, which has had a late start in the AI race.
“Apple Intelligence marks the beginning of a new chapter for Apple innovation,” Cook said.
"The big guys want to get bigger. They want to get into more markets, more price points, more types of product, and as they're doing that, they're finding the most efficient way is through acquisitions," she said.
There have been a total of 19 homebuilder deals so far this year. Whelan says she alone has four more set to close by year end, and there could be more from others. The average number of deals across the industry over the last five years was 12 per year.
The surge is the result of still-growing housing demand that reignited at the start of the pandemic thanks to record low mortgage rates and sudden new migration. But mortgage rates also caused a historic housing shortage.
According to J.D. Power’s October 2024 E-Vision Intelligence Report, lease volumes for new EVs surged a whopping 355% throughout 2023 and 88% throughout September 2024. This will lead to a massive 230% spike in returning lease volumes in 2026. Before that happens, though, a 2% decrease in returning EV leases is projected for next year.
In total, nearly 280,000 EV leases will end in the next two years in the United States. At the same time, however, J.D. Power says that people looking to get a new EV after their current lease ends might just do that instead of paying the residual value and sticking with the car they leased in 2023 or 2024. The average returning lessee in the compact SUV segment now pays $584 per month for their EV, and the average residual value of their vehicle is $29,645, as per J.D. Power.
This means the buyout price for most electric compact SUVs is higher than the $25,000 threshold that would qualify for the used EV tax credit. Without the used EV tax credit in the mix, it would cost the average returning lessee in the electric compact SUV segment $477 per month to buy out the lease, while the average lease payment on a new EV in the same category would be just $457 per month.
The main reason for this is the steady decline in EV prices during the past two years, which is expected to continue going forward. The average price paid for a new EV by an individual is currently $35,900–including incentives–down $12,700 from $48,500 in 2022. Add the fact that most people who currently own an EV–94% to be precise–said they are likely to consider an EV for their next vehicle purchase, and you get a scenario where in 2028 and 2029 the market will once again be flooded with used EVs from people who chose to end their contract and get a new car instead.
All this being said, there’s no escaping the uncertainty about the future of tax credits and incentives. If they’re gone, we might see the market change once again–we just don’t know how yet.
Bohm was contending with a left hand injury for a portion of the back half, an injury that kept him out of 14 games, and his line came back down to Earth: .251/.299/.382.
Philadelphia played mediocre .500 baseball after the break before falling to the Mets in four games in the the NL Divisional Series.
At one point in that series, Bohm saw only five pitches in four consecutive at bats.
He made a lot of weak contact, wound up on the bench, and then publicly vowed, “I’m not going to change.”
Given his team-friendly terms — entering his second year of arbitration in 2025, Bohm carries a projected salary of $8.1 million per Spotrac — the All Star will likely earn significant interest on the market.
His suitors though, know what they’re bargaining for.
Denmark unveiled a blueprint on how to use generative AI in the corporate world to help firms get into compliance with strict new regulation from the EU.
Denmark on Wednesday laid out a framework that can help EU member states use generative artificial intelligence in compliance with the European Union's strict new AI Act — and Microsoft's already on board.
A government-backed alliance of major Danish corporates, led by IT consultancy Netcompany, launched the "Responsible Use of AI Assistants in the Public and Private Sector" white paper, a blueprint that sets out "best-practice examples" for how firms should use and support employees in deploying AI systems in a regulated environment.
The guide also aims to encourage delivery of "secure and reliable services" by businesses to consumers. Denmark's Agency for Digital Government, the country's central business registry CVR and pensions authority ATP are among the founding partners adopting the framework.
Dogecoin shot higher on Tuesday night after President-elect Donald Trump formally announced the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency.
Dogecoin shot higher on Tuesday night, extending its postelection surge after President-elect Donald Trump formally announced the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency, which he referred to as "DOGE" in his statement.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, former Republican presidential candidate and Strive Asset Management co-founder, will lead the department, Trump said in a statement. Together, they "will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies."
Dogecoin was up nearly 20%, before paring gains. It has been one of the biggest winners in the postelection rally, gaining 153% since election day compared to bitcoin's 30% rise in the same period. It also shot past XRP this week to become the sixth largest cryptocurrency by market cap.
Chinese gaming and social media giant Tencent on Wednesday reported profit above analysts' expectations, while revenue missed slightly.
Tencent reported profit attributable to shareholders surged by 47% year-on-year to 53.23 billion yuan ($7.37 billion) in the third quarter, compared with an LSEG estimate of 46.18 billion yuan for the period.
The company's revenue rose by an annual 8% to 167.19 billion yuan, short of the 167.82 billion yuan analyst forecast.
Gaming remained the company's backbone, with the unit's domestic revenue up 14% year-on-year to 37.3 billion yuan, while that for international games shot up by 11% to 14.5 billion yuan on a constant currency basis.
The company noted that existing and new games had "evergreen potential."
Marketing services revenue, previously called online advertising, surged by an annual 17% to 29.99 billion yuan, making it one of the fastest-growing categories outside gaming. Tencent attributed the growth to "robust advertiser demand" for its short-videos, mini programs and search features within its messaging app — called Weixin in China and WeChat overseas.
with AI tools improving they can develop so many games far better than the ones they already have and that means more money for them. But the competition will rise because the AI tools will be used by other companies too
U.S-China tensions in the past few years have centered on the battle between the two nations for tech supremacy, culminating in a slew of export controls on critical technologies. Late last year, China's Huawei surprised the market with the release of a smartphone whose reviews indicated downloads speeds associated with 5G, sparking speculation of an apparent chip breakthrough that defied U.S. tech sanctions.
Speaking at the Web Summit tech conference in Lisbon, Portugal, on Tuesday, Microsoft's Brad Smith told CNBC that "in many ways," China is close to or is even catching up on technology.
"I think one of the dangers, frankly, is that people who don't go to China too often assume that they're behind," he told CNBC's Karen Tso. "But when you go there, you're impressed by how much they're doing."
Today, Trump meets with Biden at the White House as Senate Republicans choose their new leader. We have the latest on Trump's cabinet appointments, including Elon Musk and a Fox News host, and how the picks are being viewed in Beijing. Plus, what's fueling the latest Bitcoin boom? Would it surprise you to learn that the story is also about Trump? It's Wednesday, November 13th; this is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes every weekday. I'm Carmel Crims in Dublin and I'm Jonah Green in New York.
President-elect Donald Trump is tapping Elon Musk to shrink the federal government. The billionaire will co-lead a newly created Department of Government Efficiency with former Republican candidate Vikram Ramaswamy. Trump says they'll slash excess regulation and restructure federal agencies, and has signaled that the new entity will operate outside the confines of government. Its acronym, DoG, references the name of the cryptocurrency Dogecoin that Musk promotes.
The move is the latest in a hiring spree that includes Fox News host Pete Hegseth. Trump says he'll nominate Hegseth to be Secretary of Defense. The commentator could make good on Trump's campaign promise to fire generals whom he accuses of pursuing diversity policies. Hegseth has expressed disdain for those policies.
Trump is also expected to tap Senator Marco Rubio as Secretary of State and has picked Republican Representative Mike Waltz as National Security Adviser. Rubio, Waltz, and Hegseth are all harsh China critics. So what does Beijing make of it all? Anovi is Reuters' Chief Correspondent in China: "I think Beijing was bracing for a pretty hawkish administration, and I think they got that. What we are learning through our reporting is that China is both better prepared than it was last time around for any potential moves by Trump, but at the same time, it's also in a weaker position, especially when it comes to the economy."
So how have they prepared? "China has, to a large degree, moved to insulate what has been described by some scholars as its Fortress Economy to prepare it to withstand external shocks like tariffs or tech restrictions. They've been replacing, for example, software and hardware in state-owned enterprises and government institutions, removing overseas software and putting in domestic software. They are also investing tremendous amounts of money in things like domestic chip making."
But on the other hand, "the level of tariffs that Trump has threatened on the campaign trail is higher than anything that has been imposed on them so far," which puts China's economy—still very much reliant on exports—at risk. Any kind of tariffs even slightly lower than what Trump is likely to impose would prove a significant shock to the system here in Beijing.
Rubio is currently under sanction by Beijing over his stance on Hong Kong's democracy protests. How does that work if he becomes Secretary of State? If he's confirmed, "the question sort of becomes how does China even meet him? How do they hold talks? And how can they potentially drop those sanctions without losing face?"
Because that would be key—not being seen as caving to the United States right at the outset. So I think those are the questions that we'll see; we don't know how Beijing is likely to respond here, but those are the questions that will need to be answered in the months to come.
Trump will meet with President Joe Biden at the White House today, and before his Oval Office visit, he's also expected to make an appearance on Capitol Hill to meet with the GOP caucus over in the Senate. The Republicans will select a new majority leader to replace Mitch McConnell. Trump has yet to endorse a candidate; however, he is demanding that the new leader back his ability to make presidential appointments when the Senate is not in session.
Politics editor Scott Malone is following the race in Washington: "Scott, who are the top contenders?" Senators John Thune and John Cornyn are longtime stalwarts of the Senate Republican caucus; they have a long history and a long track record in the Senate.
Rick Scott is a relative newcomer to the Senate—relative in terms of Senate math—having been in the job for six years now; that's one term compared to Thune and Cornyn who have been there for 20 years. Really, the difference is that early on in Trump's first term he wasn't immediately embraced by the party, and there were times when certainly McConnell and people like Thune pushed back against him to a degree. They've pivoted and now very much do embrace him; but Scott doesn't have the track record of having done that.
You mentioned that they've pivoted—are they agreeing to Trump's call for a free hand to make recess appointments? All three of them have indicated that they would be willing to go along with that—to allow him to set up his administration quickly when he comes into office.
Elon Musk and other high-profile Trump allies have thrown their support behind this. Do these kinds of public endorsements pressure Senators to vote in a particular way? This isn't like an open House Speaker election where everybody has to come to the floor and declare their allegiances; that means you could have Senators who would go in not vote for Scott, not talk about it publicly, and not get into open conflict with Trump.
Meanwhile, Senate Democrats are working to confirm as many new federal judges nominated by President Biden as possible before Republicans take control of the chamber in January. Biden has announced another 30 judicial nominees who are awaiting Senate confirmation votes.
Sticking with the courts: A federal judge appointed by Barack Obama has ruled that a Louisiana law requiring that the Ten Commandments be displayed in all public school classrooms in the state is unconstitutional. The state's Republican attorney general has vowed to appeal.
The judge overseeing Trump's criminal hush money case has put off ruling on whether the conviction should be thrown out on immunity grounds. Justice Juan Merchan granted a request by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg's office to have until next week to consider how to approach the case in light of Trump's looming inauguration.
Authorities in the southern Chinese city of Zai have cleared a memorial at the scene of the deadliest mass killing in the country in a decade. On Monday, a man angry with his divorce settlement rammed his car into a crowd at a sports center, killing 35 people and injuring dozens. The government took almost a day to announce the death toll, and images and videos of the attack on social media were censored.
Over on markets: A warning to the Trump Administration on climate change from big energy! Top LNG exporter Shaner Energy and ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods are telling the incoming administration not to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement. Trump's transition team has prepared executive orders to withdraw for a second time from this climate treaty.
If you're interested in climate change and the economy, do check out this week's episode of my podcast Reuters Econ World; it's out later today and looks at the economic argument for curbing consumption for the environment. You can catch it on the Reuters app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Bitcoin is nearing $90,000; in fact, it's up about 30% since November 5th. Traders are betting on Trump's promises to be a crypto president by lowering regulation and ushering in a crypto-friendly Congress. Reporter Hannah Lang has been looking into what kinds of changes the industry expects from the new administration: "The crypto industry is broadly expecting that the Trump Administration will be more lax on enforcement and overall take a very different approach than the current SEC where they claim that most crypto tokens are securities and need to be registered as such and provide disclosures to investors." The crypto industry disagrees with that sentiment; they claim they've had difficulty really lifting crypto into mainstream acceptance because of some of these guardrails in place.
So they're really hoping for barriers to entry being lowered here; they're hoping for a general tone at the top of the administration on banking. Crypto companies have had a difficult time accessing banking services as U.S. regulators have expressed concern about safety regarding certain banks whose business models are heavily reliant on crypto companies—as well as some accounting guidance at SEC they're hoping will go away—which would enable banks to hold crypto on behalf of their clients.
What are they hoping to see from Congress? There are some people in this industry who are hopeful that with a Republican majority in both chambers—Senate and probably House as well—it really enables legislation to be passed through reconciliation where you could see a crypto bill kind of tacked onto larger spending or tax bills that could pass quickly with a simple majority.
And before we go: Today's recommended read takes us to Lebanon and explores its role in the Arab world's art scene. Lebanese artists are using their work as an outlet as conflict with Israel at home and in Gaza rages. We meet an artist whose work reflects Lebanon's back-to-back crises. A link to this story is in our pod description.
For more on any stories from today, check out reuters.com or use the Reuters app. To never miss an episode, follow us on your favorite podcast player; we'll be back tomorrow with our daily headline show!
Donald Trump’s latest cabinet choices and policies are stirring reactions globally, impacting US-China relations, cryptocurrency markets, and political landscapes.
DeepMind's AlphaFold system has revolutionized protein folding, and its new AlphaProteo system can now design novel proteins for drug development.
Amazon is using its own generative AI tool, Amazon CodeGuru, to upgrade 50% of its Java production systems in just 6 months, saving $260 million.
The AI Arms Race and Adoption Challenges
Big tech companies are in a trillion-dollar AI arms race, but US firms are slow to adopt AI, with only 5.4% currently using it.
The tech sector has a higher adoption rate, while older, traditional firms are lagging behind.
Estimates suggest a $44 trillion impact from generative AI and an $11-18 trillion impact from traditional AI, but there is skepticism about the realization of these benefits.
Preparing for the Future
AI is a general-purpose technology, like steam, electricity, and the internet, with widespread use cases, rapid improvement, and the need for complementary innovation.
DeepL has made a name for itself with online text translation it claims is more nuanced and precise than services from the likes of Google
Now, as the hype for AI services continues to grow, DeepL is adding in another mode to the platform: audio. Users will now be able to use DeepL Voice to listen to someone speaking in one language and automatically translate it to another, in real time.
English, German, Japanese, Korean, Swedish, Dutch, French, Turkish, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Italian are languages that DeepL can “hear” today. Translated captions are available for all of the 33 languages currently supported by DeepL Translator.
DeepL Voice is currently stopping short of delivering the result as an audio or video file itself: the service is aimed at real-time, live conversations and video conferencing, and comes through as text, not audio.
In the first of these, you can set up your translations to appear as ‘mirrors’ on a smartphone — the idea being that you put the phone between you on a meeting table for each side to see the words translated — or as a transcription that you share side by side with someone. The videoconferencing service sees the translations appearing as subtitles.
That could be something that changes over time, Jarek Kutylowski, the company’s founder and CEO (pictured above), hinted in an interview. This is DeepL’s first product for voice, but it’s unlikely to be its last. “[Voice] is where translation is going to play out in the next year,” he added.
There is other evidence to support that statement. Google — one of DeepL’s biggest competitors — also started to incorporate real-time translated captions into its Meet video conferencing service. And, there are a multitude of AI startups building voice translation services such as AI voice specialist Eleven Labs (Eleven Labs Dubbing), and Panjaya, which creates translations using “deepfake” voices and video that matches the audio.
Embracing the AI Revolution: Boards Must Lead the Way
Roxanne Austin's Journey: From Aerospace to Technology
Roxanne Austin's career has been a diverse and exciting one, spanning multiple industries and roles. She started out at Deloitte and Touche, where she was a partner, before moving into both consulting and audit work. Austin specialized in aerospace and defense, as well as mergers and acquisitions. Her love for technology, which was the foundation of the aerospace companies she worked with, led her to focus on technology for the rest of her career.
YouTube last year started letting select creators in the U.S. create AI-generated songs with prompts using the vocals of artists like Charlie Puth, Charli XCX, Demi Lovato, John Legend, Sia, T-Pain, and Troye Sivan. Now, the company is adding a feature to its Dream Track toolset that lets creators remix tracks by describing how they want to change the style of the song.
The video streaming platform said it is making select songs available to creators for the remix experiment. Creators in the test group can select the “Retstyle a track” option for a song, and describe how they want to remix it. This will generate a 30-second snippet that creators can use in Shorts.
“If you want to give a song a different genre or mood, you simply enter your vision into the ‘Restyle a track’ prompt and you’ll soon have a customized soundtrack that reimagines the music while maintaining the essence of the original song’s vocals and lyrics,” the update reads.
Google noted these remixed snippets will be credited to the original song through the Short video itself and the Shorts audio pivot page. Remixes will also have an appropriate label to indicate that the track was modified with AI.
YouTube’s Dream Track toolset, launched last November, is powered by the Lyria music generation model developed by Deepmind. At the time, the platform also released a tool that lets users create a track by just humming a tune.
[November 12, 2024] Testing restyled soundtracks for Shorts: We’re adding a new capability to our Dream Track experiment. This experimental feature allows a small group of creators to restyle a limited number of official songs made available by select music partners. If you’re a creator in the experiment group, you can select an eligible song > describe how you want to restyle it > then generate a unique 30-second soundtrack to use in your Short. For example, if you want to give a song a different genre or mood, you simply enter your vision into the ‘Restyle a track’ prompt and you’ll soon have a customized soundtrack that reimagines the music while maintaining the essence of the original song’s vocals and lyrics.
These restyled soundtracks will have clear attribution to the original song through the Short itself and the Shorts audio pivot page, and will also clearly indicate that the track was restyled with AI 🎶
OpenAI is proposing a "North American Compact on AI," where the U.S. and its allies would team up to boost AI infrastructure and stay competitive with China. The idea is to make it easier to share talent, funding, and resources across the region.
Imagine um cenário onde uma arma viaja a velocidades hipersônicas, lançando diferentes tipos de sub munições em direção a múltiplos alvos. Parece algo saído de um filme de ficção científica, mas este é o conceito por trás do GDF-600, o novo veículo hipersônico não motorizado de propulsão desenvolvido pela Academia de Pesquisa Aerodinâmica de Guangdong (GARA). Veja os detalhes desse veículo hipersônico.
Apresentado recentemente no Zhuhai Airshow na China, o GDF-600 tem capacidade de lançamento de mísseis, drones e outras sub munições, tornando-se uma plataforma versátil para guerra eletrônica, reconhecimento e ataques cinéticos.
O GDF-600 não é um veículo comum. Ele combina velocidade e manobrabilidade para transportar até 1.200 kg de sub munições e atingir alvos em um raio de até 600 km. Lançado com um peso total de 5.000 kg, ele alcançou uma velocidade impressionante de Mach 7, o que o coloca muito acima da velocidade do som.
Mas o que realmente o diferencial é a capacidade de liberar múltiplas sub munições ao longo do caminho, permitindo um alcance mais amplo de ataques e operações táticas.
Essa arma de propulsão-planejamento representa um novo desafio para sistemas de defesa eficientes. Por viajar em trajetórias erráticas e com alta velocidade, as defesas terrestres têm pouco tempo para reagir, aumentando a complexidade de interceptação.
O GDF-600 foi projetado para carregar cinco tipos de sub munições diferentes, incluindo drones e mísseis subsônicos e supersônicos. Imagine uma arma que, em um único lançamento, consegue atingir alvos de várias maneiras e com diferentes propósitos. Por exemplo, um míssil supersônico lançado do GDF-600 poderia atingir alvos a até 500 km de distância, quase dobrando o alcance da arma hipersônica inicial.
Além disso, drones e outros veículos não tripulados carregados pelo GDF-600 poderiam realizar operações de reconhecimento ou até mesmo enganar as defesas inimigas ao atuarem como iscas. É uma abordagem de ataque multifacetada que não apenas maximiza a eficiência da arma, mas também aumenta consideravelmente a pressão sobre as defesas adversárias.
Adobe just rolled out two new features, Generative Edits and Generate Variations, to make it easier for businesses to find and tweak stock images. Both tools are powered by Adobe's own Firefly AI, letting users customize existing images to better fit their needs.
And the cool part? Contributors get paid whenever their images are used. The goal is to make stock images more flexible, while also boosting licensing opportunities and helping creators earn more.
O Gecex-Camex (Comitê Executivo de Gestão da Câmara de Comércio Exterior) decidiu nesta segunda-feira (11) pela elevação da tarifa de importação de módulos fotovoltaicos de 9,6% para 25%.
A decisão foi tomada na 220ª Reunião Ordinária do Gecex. A medida entrará em vigor após a publicação da resolução no DOU (Diário Oficial da União), prevista para ocorrer nos próximos dias.
Segundo o Ministério do Desenvolvimento, Indústria, Comércio e Serviços, a deliberação é uma resposta a dois pleitos de elevação da alíquota padrão de módulos solares classificados sob o código NCM 8541.43.00.
Os pleitos de alteração à Lista de Exceções de Bens de Informática e Telecomunicações e de Bens de Capital (LEBIT/BK) foram protocolados por dois fabricantes nacionais e, após recomendações do Comitê de Alterações Tarifárias, foram deliberados e tiveram a elevação do II (Imposto de Importação) aprovada pelo Gecex.
Segundo a TEC (Tarifa Externa Comum), esse NCM é referente a células fotovoltaicas montadas em módulos ou em painéis, ou seja, módulos fotovoltaicos já montados, comumente utilizados em projetos de GD (geração distribuída) e GC (geração centralizada).
A controversa deliberação do Gecex ocorre justamente durante a COP29, um evento global em que líderes e representantes de todo o mundo se reúnem para buscar soluções para a redução de emissões de gases de efeito estufa.
OpenAI has shared a new plan for building up AI infrastructure, hoping the incoming Trump administration and Congress will take it seriously. The idea is to help the U.S. stay ahead of competitors like China in the AI race. OpenAI argues that investing in AI infrastructure could create tens of thousands of skilled jobs, boost productivity and GDP, modernize the power grid (including nuclear energy), build a top-tier network of semiconductor factories, and spark a new wave of AI-driven businesses.
À medida que cresce a demanda mundial por eletricidade, aumenta a participação do Sol na matriz energética. Embora a preferência continue sendo do carvão mineral (35%) e o gás natural (22%), enquanto em 2015 cabia à energia solar apenas 1%, em 2024 essa percentagem já alcança 6%, tendência francamente ascendente.
Em 2023 foram construídas usinas fotovoltaicas em todo o planeta com uma capacidade total de 447 gigawatts (GW). Segundo a confederação SolarPower, desse modo, em apenas um ano a produção solar global elevou-se em 38%, até 1.624 GW.
Bem mais modesta foi a ampliação das usinas eólicas (117 GW) e a carvão (70 GW) inauguradas no mesmo período, sobretudo na China e na Índia. Nos setores hidrelétrico (+7 GW), de gás natural (+6 GW) e biomassa (+4 GW), o acréscimo foi ainda inferior. Por sua vez, a capacidade de energia nuclear caiu 2 GW em 2023, com o fechamento de mais usinas antigas.
Segundo a SolarPower Europe, a energia fotovoltaica terá um crescimento global ainda mais forte no próximo quinquênio, chegando a até 20% mais usinas por ano. A organização prevê um total de 5.117 GW instalados até 2028, superando os 4.930 GW produzidos por todas as usinas de carvão, gás e petróleo juntas.
Os preços dos módulos fotovoltaicos caíram drasticamente, acima de tudo devido à produção em massa em fábricas chinesas, reduzindo em 80% o custo da energia solar em todo o mundo, nos últimos 15 anos. Na maioria das regiões, ela já é a alternativa mais barata.
Em zonas ensolaradas, é possível gerar eletricidade num parque fotovoltaico ao custo de 0,035 a 0,054 euro por kilowatt/hora, mostra um estudo do Instituto Fraunhofer para Sistemas de Energia Solar (ISE). Em países como Alemanha, em que há pouco sol, o custo é de 0,041 a 0,069 euro por kilowatt/hora, mas ainda bem menos do que a metade da energia proveniente das novas usinas nucleares, a gás ou a carvão.
A expansão fotovoltaica é marcante na Ásia, e muito especialmente na China, onde novos parques solares acrescentaram 253 GW à matriz energética em 2023, elevando a capacidade nacional total a 656 GW. Em 2024 se acrescentarão outros 299 GW. A Agência Internacional de Energia (AIE) calcula que as instalações solares cobrem 10% da demanda chinesa.
Atualmente o país ainda obtém 61% de sua eletricidade das usinas a carvão, tornando-se um dos principais emissores de dióxido de carbono (CO2). Porém o think tank britânico Ember estima que o combustível fóssil perderá importância na China, graças à ascensão da fonte solar.
O fenômeno se fez observar também em outros países em 2023: a Austrália ampliou sua produção solar em 36 GW, elevando a parcela dessa fonte a 15%. No Japão e na Índia, a capacidade solar é de 90 GW – 12% e 11% da demanda nacional, respectivamente. Com 9 GW, 20% da eletricidade do Chile é de origem fotovoltaica. No Brasil, com 39 GW, a proporção é de 11%; enquanto nos EUA (173 GW) e México (11 GW) ela é de 6%.
Netherlands-based food delivery company Just Eat Takeaway.com said on Wednesday that it is selling its U.S. business Grubhub to New York-based Wonder Group in a deal valued at $650 million — a stark 91% less than the $7.3 billion Just Eat Takeaway paid for the company just four years ago.
The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2025, and Just Eat Takeaway expects net proceeds of $50 million. Wonder, which started as a food delivery business in 2018 but has since pivoted to operating delivery-focused restaurants in New York and Philadelphia, will take on $500 million of Grubhub’s debt.
The divestiture comes as food and grocery delivery becomes an increasingly unprofitable endeavor for businesses that bet the farm on the model during the COVID-19 pandemic and later, when people sheltering in place and social distancing opted to order in food and grocery items they would previously buy in person.
The food delivery and quick-commerce sectors saw a massive influx of venture capital and other investment in the following years, with startups like Getir and Flink raising millions and investing aggressively in marketing and acquisitions.
But once the world returned to a semblance of normalcy and post-pandemic tailwinds trailed off, the instant delivery model proved unsustainable. Flink is now said to be valued at just under $1 billion, down from a peak of nearly $3 billion, while Getir has retreated, shutting down its operations in the U.S., the U.K. and Europe to focus on its home market of Turkey.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have trained a robot to handle surgical tasks by showing it videos. It learned how to do things like using a needle, lifting tissue, and stitching. The team thinks this could help reduce medical errors and make surgeries more accurate. Next up, they plan to teach the robot how to perform full surgeries using the same technique.
Apple could be releasing its first Apple Intelligence-powered smart home device as early as March. It is rumored to be developing a wall-mounted display that resembles a traditional home security panel. The display will serve as a command center for the home. It will be a standalone device, but an iPhone will be required for some tasks, including parts of the initial setup. Apple is also working on a higher-end smart home product that features a robotic arm.
Amazon is already testing its Trainium 2 chips with Anthropic, Databricks, Deutsche Telekom, and Japan's Ricoh and Stockmark. Developed by Annapurna Labs, an Austin-based chip startup that Amazon acquired in early 2015, Trainum 2 is aimed at reducing Amazon's reliance on market leader Nvidia. The biggest advantage of Amazon's chips is that they use less power, which helps drive down costs. Amazon avoids making direct comparisons of its chips and doesn't submit its chips for independent performance benchmarks, but experts are confident the company's claims of a 4x performance increase between Trainum 1 and Trainium 2 are accurate.
Google Workspace's report reveals that IT leaders are more concerned about their teams being overwhelmed than about security. Nearly half (43%) of respondents believe being overwhelmed is a serious concern, indicating that current approaches are unsustainable. The report also found that 81% of organizations experience at least one security incident per year, indicating that there is much work to be done. The top breach issue is from generative AI attacks, with 31% identifying this as a primary concern.
Cannabinol, a lesser-known component of the cannabis plant, delivers better quality and longer sleep. Cannabis folklore has suggested for decades that aged cannabis makes consumers sleepy due to the build-up of cannabinol, but this was only recently supported by scientific evidence. Cannabinol increases total sleep time with a comparable effect to zolpidem, or Ambien. It may be best suited for patients who have trouble staying asleep or experience early morning awakening insomnia because it has a delayed onset but enduring effects.
During exercise, muscles release a soup of biochemical signals called myokines that helps neurons grow. A recent study found that the repeated pulling on neurons during exercise helps them grow as much as when they are exposed to myokines. This suggests that exercise could be effective for treating nerve injuries.
.NET 9 includes thousands of performance, security, and functional improvements. This post looks at the highlights of the update across developer languages, workloads, and tools. There are enhancements across the entire .NET stack that enable developers to build with a unified platform and easily infuse apps with AI. The .NET team, its partners, and the .NET community will be showcasing what's new in .NET 9 at .NET Conf 2024, a three-day virtual developer event happening now (November 12-14).
The percentage of workers in the US who are using AI has remained largely the same over the last three months. The flattening of growth could affect the very high market valuations tied to the technology. Many workers are uncomfortable with telling their managers they use AI at work. Leaders need to encourage employees to talk about and experiment with AI out in the open to ensure the adoption of the technology.
The Tesla Powerwall 3 costs approximately $13,500, which includes a storage capacity of 13.5 kWh. Installation costs can add an additional $1,100 to $3,000 depending on various factors.
How Much Does a Tesla Powerwall Cost?
Last Updated: Oct 22, 2024
The Tesla Powerwall 3 costs $15,300 before taxes including installation.
With a storage capacity of 13.5 kilowatt-hours (kWh), the Powerwall has a unit cost of $1,133 per kWh.
The Tesla Powerwall is worth it because of its storage capacity, continuous power output, 10-year warranty and affordable cost.
AI-powered search engine Perplexity says it'll begin experimenting with ads on its platform starting this week.
AI-powered search engine Perplexity says it’ll begin experimenting with ads on its platform starting this week.
The site will start showing ads in the U.S. to start, and they’ll be formatted as “sponsored follow-up questions.” (E.g., “How can I use LinkedIn to enhance my job search?”) These ads will be positioned to the side of answers and labeled as “sponsored.”
“Ad programs like this help us generate revenue to share with our publisher partners,” Perplexity wrote in a post on its blog. “Experience has taught us that subscriptions alone do not generate enough revenue to create a sustainable revenue-sharing program. [A]dvertising is the best way to ensure a steady and scalable revenue stream.”
Perplexity asserted that answers to these “sponsored questions” will still be generated by its AI — not written or edited by the brands sponsoring the questions. Advertisers also won’t get access to users’ personal info, the company said.
Embattled genetic testing provider 23andMe said Tuesday that revenue declined from a year earlier, a day after the company announced a cost-cutting plan.
23andMe on Tuesday reported declining revenue in its most recent quarter, a day after the company said it will cut 40% of its workforce and shutter its therapeutics business as part of a business restructuring plan.
The embattled genetics company reported $44.1 million in revenue for the fiscal second quarter, down from $50 million in the same period last year. 23andMe's net loss narrowed to $59.1 million, or $2.32 per share, from $75.27 million, or $3.17 per share, a year ago.
23andMe said Monday that it's eliminating more than 200 jobs, discontinuing all its therapeutics programs and winding down its ongoing clinical trials "as quickly as practical." It's evaluating strategic options such as asset sales and licensing agreements to "maximize the value" of the therapeutic programs, the release said.
"We are taking these difficult but necessary actions as we restructure 23andMe and focus on the long-term success of our core consumer business and research partnerships," 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki, said in the release Monday. "I want to thank our team for their hard work and dedication to our mission. We are fully committed to supporting the employees impacted by this transition."
The company said Tuesday that it's looking to potentially raise additional capital.
The future of aircraft may look very similar to today’s superficially — but under the hood (or sitting next to the tailfins) they will likely be quite different. That’s the future NASA is hoping to nurture with five research awards worth $11.5 million.
The Advanced Aircraft Concepts for Environmental Sustainability 2050 (AACES) program is an early stage, long-shot initiative to identify “transformative solutions” that could inch the carbon-spewing air travel industry towards sustainability.
These awards are nowhere near enough to make a working aircraft, of course, and these concepts are just that, concepts — but a couple million bucks can easily be the difference between a powerful new technology sitting on a shelf in a lab or getting some real-world testing.
Two of the awards are more focused than others. Electra, for instance, already has a flying prototype for its electric aircraft, and the award money will go towards advancing its existing tech. JetZero is combining a cryogenic liquid hydrogen fuel source with the unusual blended wing fuselage you see pictured up top.
The other three awards are more general. Georgia Tech will look into new fuels, propulsion systems, and configurations that seem promising for its ATH2ENA program. Pratt and Whitney will be looking into “a broad suite” of propulsion tech in pursuit of lowering fuel consumption and emissions (a harm reduction method, it seems).
The Battle Against Memory Corruption Vulnerabilities
In the ever-evolving world of cybersecurity, memory corruption vulnerabilities remain a persistent threat. As we enter the year 2024, this issue continues to be the number one cause of hacks, posing a significant challenge to developers and security experts alike.
However, the Linux kernel is introducing a new feature called mseal - a new system call that aims to address this problem. This innovative approach has sparked a lively debate within the Linux community, particularly from the renowned Linus Torvalds.
Understanding Memory Corruption Vulnerabilities
Memory corruption vulnerabilities arise when a program fails to properly manage the memory it uses. This can happen when a buffer is overflowed, or when a program uses memory after it has been freed (use-after-free). These vulnerabilities allow hackers to gain code execution on a victim's computer, posing a significant security risk.
Jeff Zuo, a maintainer at the Chromium organization, is well-versed in the world of memory corruption vulnerabilities. As the V8 engine within Chromium has been a source of many such vulnerabilities, Zuo has a deep understanding of the challenges posed by these attacks.
The Concept of mseal
mseal is a new system call introduced in the Linux kernel that aims to address the way hackers take advantage of memory corruption vulnerabilities. The idea behind mseal is to prevent the modification of memory page permissions, a technique often used in return-oriented programming (ROP) attacks.
In a traditional memory corruption attack, hackers would use a vulnerability to overflow a buffer and overwrite the return address on the stack. They could then redirect the program's execution to their own malicious code, or use ROP to chain together existing code snippets (gadgets) to achieve their desired outcome, such as making the stack executable.
mseal seeks to address this by allowing the kernel to "seal" a memory page, making it impossible to change its permissions. This effectively removes the ability for hackers to use techniques like ROP to gain control of the system.
Controversy and Challenges
The introduction of mseal has not been without controversy. Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux kernel, has expressed concerns about the design and implementation of the feature. Torvalds is known for his passionate and direct approach, and he has been vocal in his criticism of mseal.
One of the key challenges with mseal is its impact on the way the heap and stack operate. These memory regions require the ability to expand and contract, which is not possible with mseal. As a result, the stack and heap will not be sealed by default, as it would break the functionality of these critical components.
The battle against memory corruption vulnerabilities is an ongoing one, and the introduction of mseal is a step in the direction of hardening the Linux kernel against these attacks. While the feature has faced some criticism, it represents a continued effort to improve the security of the operating system.
As the cybersecurity landscape evolves, developers and security experts will need to remain vigilant and continue to explore new ways to mitigate the risks posed by memory corruption vulnerabilities. The introduction of mseal is a testament to the Linux community's commitment to addressing these challenges and providing a more secure computing environment for users.
The Reinvention of Computing: From Software 1.0 to Software 2.0 and Beyond
The End of the Free Ride of Moore's Law
For the past 60 years, general-purpose computing as we know it has existed. However, for the last 30 years, we've had the benefit of Moore's Law - an incredible phenomenon where, without changing the software, the hardware could continue to improve in an architecturally compatible way. This has allowed every single industry to be built on top of this foundation.
But now, we know that the scaling of CPUs has reached its limit. The free ride of Moore's Law has ended, and we can no longer afford to do nothing in software and expect that our computing experience will continue to improve, costs will decrease, and the benefits will continue to spread.
To address this challenge, the company was started to accelerate software. The vision was that there are applications that would benefit from acceleration, and this acceleration benefit has the same qualities as Moore's Law for applications that were impossible or impractical to perform using general-purpose computing.
One example is real-time computer graphics, which was made possible because of NVIDIA's introduction of GPUs. However, the company felt that long-term accelerated computing could be far more impactful. There is no single magical processor that can accelerate everything in the world, as that would just be called a CPU. Instead, the computing stack needs to be reinvented from the algorithms to the architecture underneath, and connected to applications on top.
This reinvention of the computing stack has led to the acceleration of various industries, from semiconductor manufacturing and computational lithography to simulation, computer-aided engineering, and quantum computing. In each of these domains, the company has been able to accelerate the applications by 20, 30, or even 50 times, but it has required a rewrite of the software, which is why it has taken so long in each of these domains.
One of the most famous application libraries created is called CDNN, which made it possible to democratize artificial intelligence as we know it. These acceleration libraries now cover so many different domains that it appears that accelerated computing is used everywhere.
The reinvention of the computing stack has also led to a fundamental shift in the way software is developed. The industry has moved from the traditional approach of coding algorithms (Software 1.0) to the use of machine learning, where the computer learns the patterns and relationships of massive amounts of observed data to essentially learn the function that predicts the output (Software 2.0).
This shift has led to the complete reinvention of the computing stack, from the hardware to the way software is developed and what software can do. The company has dedicated itself to advancing this field, and the result is the Blackwell system - a massive system designed to study data at an enormous scale, allowing the discovery of patterns and relationships and the learning of the meaning of various types of data.
The Future of Computing: Agentic AI and Physical AI
The company has now developed two important platforms to leverage this technology: NVIDIA AI Enterprise and NVIDIA Omniverse.
NVIDIA AI Enterprise focuses on the creation of "agents" - large language models that can understand data, reason about tasks, and connect with other AI models to perform various tasks, such as marketing, customer service, or chip design. These agents are onboarded and evaluated, with a suite of libraries and APIs to help companies operate them.
NVIDIA Omniverse, on the other hand, is a virtual world that obeys the laws of physics, where robots can learn to be robots. This, combined with the DGX computer for training the models and the AGX Jetson for running the AI models in the physical world, represents the company's vision for the future of "physical AI" - the ability to create and deploy AI models in the real world, from autonomous vehicles to robotic factories and warehouses.
The reinvention of computing, from Software 1.0 to Software 2.0 and beyond, is a testament to the company's dedication to advancing the field of computing and its applications. As the industry continues to evolve, the company is poised to play a crucial role in shaping the future of artificial intelligence and its integration into the physical world.
The Evolving Landscape of AI: Challenges and Opportunities
The Plateauing of Pre-Training Effectiveness
According to the Reuters article, prominent AI scientists are speaking out about the limitations of the "bigger is better" philosophy that has driven the rapid development of large language models (LLMs) like GPT-3 and ChatGPT. Eliezer Yudkowsky, a leading figure in the field of AI safety, is quoted as saying that the results from scaling up pre-training, the phase where AI models use vast amounts of unlabeled data to understand language patterns and structures, have plateaued. This suggests that the exponential growth seen in the early days of LLM development may be slowing down.
The article highlights that companies like OpenAI are now shifting their focus towards improving the reasoning capabilities of their AI models, rather than simply scaling up the size of their training datasets and computational power. This shift is driven by the realization that simply increasing the scale of LLMs may not lead to a commensurate increase in intelligence, but rather better memorization and skill-based performance.
The S-Curve of AI Development
The article presents a visual representation of the S-curve of AI development, where periods of rapid growth are followed by plateaus and the emergence of new paradigms. The current situation, where LLMs are facing limitations in their ability to scale, is seen as a transition point where the industry is searching for the next breakthrough in AI capabilities.
The article also touches on the concept of "superintelligence," which is meant to convey an AI system that is far more capable than a human in every domain. While the potential benefits of such a system are vast, the article highlights the significant challenges and risks that come with the development of superintelligence, emphasizing the need for careful navigation to ensure it is used for the betterment of humanity.
Conclusion
The evolving landscape of AI development, as described in the Reuters article, suggests that the industry is at a critical juncture. The limitations of the "bigger is better" approach have become apparent, leading companies to explore new avenues for improving AI capabilities. This transition period presents both opportunities and challenges, as the industry searches for the next breakthrough that could unlock the full potential of artificial intelligence, while also grappling with the profound implications of superintelligence.
Amazon has rolled out its answer to the discounted, low-cost storefronts of Temu and Shein.
Amazon has rolled out its answer to the discounted, low-cost storefronts of Temu and Shein. The Amazon Haul store, currently available on the mobile app or mobile web browser exclusively, offers similar mass-produced, discounted items, most of which ship from China. It’s a departure from Amazon’s long-established reputation as a powerhouse of rapid delivery times since even Amazon can’t reduce the time it takes to get these overseas goods.
The landing page for Amazon Haul is reminiscent of Shein and Temu even in its design: Items appear in grids, rather than Amazon’s typical list, and shipping times and star ratings aren’t visible unless you click on an item. Some items are labeled with rocket ship emojis that warn that this $4.99 iPhone 16 Pro case is “selling fast!” Or, you might see a fire emoji declaring that the price for a three-pack of $2.89 mesh laundry bags is “crazy low.” Like its competitors, Amazon Haul also sells clothing ($16 for a pair of men’s golf pants, or $4.99 for 80s-style women’s leg warmers). In a “Staples” section, you can find an assortment of… sponges, resistance bands, hoodies, silicon baking mats, and socks.
“While Amazon continues to offer over 300 million items with fast, free delivery for Prime members […] we also hear from customers that sometimes they would love to shop ultra-low-priced products even if some of them take one to two weeks to arrive,” Amazon wrote in a blog post.
Millions of customers of Hot Topic have been informed that their personal data was compromised during an October data breach at the American retailer.
Have I Been Pwned (HIBP), the breach notification service, said this week that it alerted 57 million Hot Topic customers that their data had been compromised.
The stolen data includes email addresses, physical addresses, phone numbers, purchases, genders, and dates of birth. Partial credit card data was also included in the breach, according to HIBP, including credit card type, expiry dates, and the last four digits of the card number.
Hot Topic, which has more than 640 stores across the U.S., has not yet confirmed the breach and did not respond to TechCrunch’s multiple requests for comment.
The breach occurred on October 19, according to HIBP, and was claimed by a threat actor operating under the alias “Satanic” on October 21. In a post on the cybercrime forum BreachForums, Satanic claimed to have stolen 350 million user records from Hot Topic and its affiliated brands, Box Lunch and Torrid.
The hacker initially attempted to sell the database for $20,000 and demanded a $100,000 ransom from Hot Topic to take down the information, according to a report by cybersecurity firm Hudson Rock.
The U.S. government has long operated a secretive UFO crash retrieval program and has routinely intimidated witnesses who know about the effort, all while engaging in a high-stakes arms race with adversaries around the world that also have transformative and possibly alien technologies.
Those were just a few of the bombshell charges from a witness at a House hearing Wednesday. It was the second hearing in the past two years focusing on “unidentified aerial phenomena,” or UAP.
Once dismissed as pure science fiction, the issue has become a serious, bipartisan matter on Capitol Hill, in military circles and in the scientific community.
At the hearing, former military officials said the Pentagon and intelligence agencies have a vast trove of information, including high-resolution photos and videos, of UFOs that have been hidden from the public and even from Congress.
The witnesses said UAP research programs deep inside the Defense Department, CIA and other arms of the government operate with virtually no oversight and with off-the-books budgets.
Army veteran and former Defense Department official Luis Elizondo suggested to the House panel that the U.S. and its adversaries are working feverishly behind the scenes to develop military capabilities based on technology retrieved from UAP.
“Advanced technologies not made by our government, or any other government, are monitoring sensitive military installations around the globe. Furthermore, the U.S. is in possession of UAP technologies, as are some of our adversaries,” Mr. Elizondo told the hearing, hosted by two subcommittees of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.
Traditional scientific discovery has long been a manual, time-consuming process of trial and error. Researchers conceptualize potential structures and test their properties, slowly uncovering new materials and insights. However, the landscape is shifting as artificial intelligence (AI) begins to play a transformative role in this process.
Automating the Discovery Process
AI technology, leveraging advancements in deep learning, can now partially automate the materials discovery process. Trained on the composition and characteristics of existing materials, AI models can generate recipes for novel compounds predicted to possess specific desired properties. This allows researchers to access a wider range of exotic materials that may have previously been undiscovered, unlocking solutions to problems that were once considered unsolvable.
The impact of AI on scientific research is profound. According to a recent study from MIT, AI assistants have enabled researchers to discover 44% more materials, resulting in a 39% increase in patent filings and a staggering 177% rise in downstream product innovation. These AI-discovered compounds possess more novel chemical structures, leading to more radical inventions.
The Uneven Impact on Researchers
However, the benefits of AI-driven discovery are not evenly distributed. The study found that the top researchers in the field benefited the most, with their productivity nearly doubling. In contrast, the bottom third of scientists saw little to no change in their output.
The AI technology has been able to automate 57% of the idea generation tasks, freeing up researchers to focus on the more hands-on work of evaluating the AI-generated candidate materials. This shift in responsibilities reflects a broader trend where AI takes over the more mundane, repetitive tasks, allowing humans to focus on higher-level decision-making and judgment.
The Challenge of Job Satisfaction
While the productivity gains are undeniable, the study also revealed a significant challenge. A staggering 82% of scientists reported reduced satisfaction with their work, citing decreased creativity and skill underutilization. This raises important questions about the long-term implications of AI-driven scientific discovery on the human experience and the potential loss of fulfillment in creative pursuits.
This research paper, combined with other recent developments, suggests that we may be at the precipice of a new stage in the evolution of artificial intelligence. Beyond the conversational language models and human-level problem solvers, we are now witnessing the emergence of "innovator" AI systems that can aid in the invention process itself.
The prospect of AI-driven scientific discovery and recursive self-improvement raises the specter of the "intelligence explosion" – a scenario where AI surpasses human intelligence, potentially leaving us far behind. As we approach the threshold of artificial super-intelligence, we must grapple with the profound implications and ensure that the integration of AI and human intelligence is balanced and beneficial for all.
Nokia, once the world’s biggest mobile phone company but now mainly a provider of infrastructure and services to telecoms carriers, has made an acquisition in its bid to be a bridge between the worlds of tech and telecoms. It’s acquiring Rapid, formerly known as RapidAPI, a startup that operates an API marketplace. Nokia will be integrating Rapid into a platform it’s building to help 5G operators open their networks to more developers.
“Operators need a bridge to connect to thousands of developers to drive enterprise and consumer value creation and monetize their networks,” said Raghav Sahgal, president of Cloud and Network Services at Noka, in a statement.
The deal will include a public marketplace, enterprise services, and an enterprise-grade API hub designed for building, testing, and sharing APIs internally and externally.
Terms of the deal are not being disclosed in the official announcement. Rapid was once valued at $1 billion and counted as many as 4 million users tapping into some 40,000 APIs. The companies are not disclosing Rapid’s active users as of today except to note that it is a number in the thousands, and that APIs are in the hundreds. As Nokia is publicly traded, more financial details may come through in a future filing.
The landscape for technology has shifted drastically over the last couple of years, and many later-stage startups have found it challenging to meet the lofty forecasts they had set while raising big funding rounds in more buoyant years. (Rapid’s $1 billion valuation was based on a funding round from 2022.)
Fitbit’s Ace LTE, the smartwatch designed for ages 7+, is introducing new features to help families stay connected and get active together. On Wednesday, Fitbit’s smartwatch for kids, the Ace LTE, is introducing group chats and quests to help families stay connected and get active together.
On Wednesday, Fitbit announced a slew of new features, including group chats, family quests, a new mini-game, and two new watch faces. There’s also a new direct message feature for siblings to text and call each other using their devices.
Ace LTE, launched in May, is designed to provide parents with a sense of security. It allows them to text and call their kids, track their location, and monitor their activity level. The device restricts kids’ ability to add contacts. Instead, guardians can approve and add up to 20 trusted adults to the account, ensuring that communication stays in a controlled network.
A newly introduced feature enhances this experience by enabling a group chat function within the Ace LTE device and the companion Ace app. Anyone within the Google Family can be added to the chat.
Anthropic's large language model Claude is preparing for work in the U.S. intelligence community.
Leading artificial intelligence company Anthropic and software giant Palantir announced a collaboration with Amazon this month to bring the Claude models to national security officials.
Kate Earle Jensen, Anthropic head of sales and partnerships, said the Claude 3 and 3.5 models delivered via Palantir’s AI Platform would help the spy agencies and military officials process large swaths of data far more effectively.
“This will dramatically improve intelligence analysis and enable officials in their decision-making processes, streamline resource-intensive tasks, and boost operational efficiency across departments,” she said in a statement shared by Denver-based Palantir.
Palantir officials said Claude became accessible within Palantir’s platform on Amazon Web Services earlier this month. The new functionality is accessible to defense and intelligence agencies responsible for operations that depend on quickly processing data, identifying patterns, and streamlining decisions in time-sensitive situations.
An AI update is underway across the federal government, including the intelligence community. President Biden issued a National Security Memorandum on Artificial Intelligence last month that the White House said was “designed to galvanize federal government adoption of AI to advance the national security mission.” Chief artificial intelligence officers from across the government’s 18 intelligence agencies are gathering in a council to focus on standardizing approaches and best practices.
Tesla on Wednesday issued its sixth Cybertruck recall this year, pulling back over 2,000 vehicles.
This concerns faulty drive inverters in Cybertrucks manufactured between November 2023 and last July. According to the recall notice, the bad inverters can cause the electric trucks to lose acceleration capabilities.
“If the inverter stops producing torque, the driver loses the ability to apply torque to the vehicle using the accelerator pedal, resulting in a loss of propulsion,” the notice reads. “Which may increase the risk of a collision.”
Owners with affected vehicles must take their Cybertrucks to a Tesla dealership for a free repair.
This week’s Cybertruck recall is the sixth Tesla has issued this year. The truck debuted late last year to low sales numbers and criticism from customers, who complained about its quality and safety.
This year, Tesla recalled nearly every Cybertruck on the road over a delay in the rearview camera image, which could increase the risk of a collision. Tesla has also issued recalls covering issues with the truck’s singular windshield wiper and a loose accelerator pedal.
Despite the criticism and recall notices, Tesla’s Cybertruck has become one of the best-selling electric vehicles and the highest-selling electric truck, beating out Ford’s electric F-150.
OpenAI will reportedly release the AI agent, code named "Operator," in January
The AI agent, codenamed “Operator,” can do tasks on behalf of a person, including coding and booking travel, Bloomberg reported, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter.
The startup plans to release the AI agent as a research preview and through its application programming interface (API), OpenAI leaders reportedly told staff in a meeting Wednesday.
OpenAI is working on other AI-agent-related projects, including a tool that can perform tasks in a web browser, people told Bloomberg. That tool is reportedly close to completion.
OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The startup’s investor and partner, Microsoft (MSFT
+0.52%
), announced in October that its Copilot AI users could build their own autonomous agents in Copilot Studio starting this month. The autonomous agents can “understand the nature of your work and act on your behalf,” Microsoft said.
In July, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg discussed a future where everyone has an AI assistant.
“Every single restaurant, every single website will probably, in the future, have these AIs,” Huang said about Meta’s AI Studio platform, which allows users and creators to generate AI characters of themselves that can assist with different tasks.
Zuckerberg added, “Just like every business has an email address and a website and a social media account, I think, in the future, every business is going to have an AI.”
Japan’s nuclear watchdog on Wednesday formally disqualified a reactor in the country’s north-central region from restarting, the first rejection under safety standards that were reinforced after the 2011 Fukushima disaster. The decision is a setback for Japan as it seeks to accelerate reactor restarts to maximize nuclear power.
The Nuclear Regulation Authority said the Tsuruga No. 2 reactor is “unfit” as its operator failed to address safety risks stemming from the presence of possible active fault lines, which can potentially cause earthquakes, underneath it.
Tsuruga No. 2, operated by the Japan Atomic Power Co., is the first reactor to be rejected under safety standards adopted in 2013 based on lessons from the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi meltdown disaster following a massive earthquake and tsunami.
“We reached our conclusion based on a very strict examination,” NRA chairperson Shinsuke Yamanaka told reporters.
The verdict comes after more than eight years of safety reviews that were repeatedly disrupted by data coverups and mistakes by the operator, Yamanaka said. He called the case “abnormal” and urged the utility to take the result seriously.
The decision is a blow to Japan Atomic Power because it virtually ends its hopes for a restart. The operator, which is decommissioning its other reactor, Tsuruga No. 1, had hoped to put No. 2 back online, but it would require an examination of dozens of faults around the reactor to prove their safety.
“As a part of aligning our resources with our largest growth opportunities, we are taking a number of targeted steps that will unfortunately result in reducing our global workforce by approximately 4%,” a spokesperson for AMD said in a statement shared with Quartz on Wednesday. “We are committed to treating impacted employees with respect and helping them through this transition.”
The cuts target sales and marketing roles in some divisions including consumer PC and gaming PC, Bloomberg reported, citing an unnamed person familiar with the matter. The company is reportedly still hiring.
AMD shares fell by around 2.3% during mid-day trading on Wednesday.
In October, AMD reported third-quarter revenues of $6.8 billion — slightly above Wall Street’s expectations.
“Looking forward, we see significant growth opportunities across our data center, client and embedded businesses driven by the insatiable demand for more compute,” AMD chief executive Lisa Su said in a statement.
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies continue to smash records following Donald Trump's election win
Bitcoin has reached over $93,000 and shows no signs of slowing.
According to the crypto tracking website CoinGecko, the leading cryptocurrency’s new all-time is $93,477, which is over 5% up from the past 24 hours and 23% from the last week. Some analysts say Bitcoin could even cross the $100,000 threshold.
The recent bitcoin surge is due to Donald Trump’s reelection, which has put an expected crypto ally in the White House for the first time. And bitcoin’s price is expected to continue barreling forward as investors’ optimism and enthusiasm grows regarding Trump’s return to the Oval Office in January.
With a $1.8 trillion market cap, bitcoin is now the eighth-largest asset in the world. It surpassed silver, which has a market cap of $1.71 trillion. Bitcoin has surged more than 135,211% since 2013, meaning that a $1,000 investment back then would now be worth over $1.3 million.
Bitcoin is rallying on Trump’s victory
Trump took a pro-bitcoin stance throughout his campaign, championing the digital currency as a symbol of financial independence and an alternative to traditional banking. Labeling himself as the “crypto candidate,” Trump embraced digital assets in his campaign, even accepting donations in a range of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ether, Dogecoin, and Solana.
Meta announced changes to its targeted advertising policy this week after European Union regulators said the company wasn't doing enough to restrict the amount of information sold to ad agencies.
In the announcement Tuesday, Meta said it would reduce its subscription prices for Instagram and Facebook and would offer EU residents the choice to use both platforms for free without targeted advertising.
Under the new rules, users who opt to use the free versions of Meta’s platforms will be shown fewer personalized ads. Meta says personalized ads help consumers and businesses find the products and customers they’re looking for.
“Although we are being put in a position where we have to offer an ads experience that delivers less value for people and businesses, we will also continue to deliver great personalized experiences that are the best outcome for people and businesses in Europe,” Meta wrote in a statement.
Meta’s no advertising tiered subscription will be reduced by 40%, from $10.60 to $6.40 a month on web and from $13.80 to $8.49 a month on mobile devices.
Meta’s policy change comes after the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled in October that Meta can’t freely use customer data and must add more guardrails.
“An online social network such as Facebook cannot use all of the personal data obtained for the purposes of targeted advertising, without restriction as to time and without distinction as to type of data,” the court wrote in its decision.
The Secret Service has used a technology called Locate X which uses location data harvested from ordinary apps installed on phones. Because users agreed to an opaque terms of service page, the Secret Service believes it doesn't need a warrant.
The emails provide deeper insight into the agency’s use of Locate X, a powerful surveillance capability that allows law enforcement officials to follow a phone, and person’s, precise movements over time at the click of a mouse. In 2023, a government oversight body found that the Secret Service, Customs and Border Protection, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement all used their access to such location data illegally. The Secret Service told 404 Media in an email last week it is no longer using the tool.
“If USSS [U.S. Secret Service] is using Locate X, that is most concerning to us,” one of the internal emails said. 404 Media obtained them and other documents through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the Secret Service.
The project, codenamed "Encore," was part of Amazon's moonshot incubator Grand Challenge, which launched under founder Jeff Bezos.
Amazon has discontinued a secretive effort to develop an at-home fertility tracker, according to internal documents and people familiar with the matter.
The company had been working to launch a fertility monitoring device and companion smartphone app for the past four years as part of a project codenamed "Encore," said the people, who asked not to be named because they weren't authorized to speak to the press. The team sat within Amazon's Grand Challenge, also known as its Special Projects division, the sources said.
In October, Amazon told people working on the tracker that it was disbanding the team. Those being laid off will remain on Amazon's payroll until Dec. 27, but won't be expected to work during that time, according to documents reviewed by CNBC.
If staffers don't secure another job by that date, Amazon will provide them with a "lump sum" severance payment equal to one week of salary for every six months of tenure at the company, the documents said.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has been reeling in costs companywide since late 2022, when inflationary pressures and rising interest rates led to a slowdown across the tech and consumer markets. In addition to slashing more than 27,000 jobs, Jassy has shuttered several projects, ranging from a roving sidewalk robot to a telehealth offering and a rapid delivery service.
The dispute involves payment for republishing news content
Bernard Arnault, who the Bloomberg Billionaires Index says is the world’s fifth-richest man, is suing Elon Musk, which the index pegs as the richest. The dispute between the two involves an accusation that one of Musk’s companies, the social media platform X (TSLA), republished content from a number of press outlets owned by Arnault.
Fortune reports that Arnault’s Les Echos and Le Parisien newspapers are seeking compensation due to them under French law, which regulates social media companies more strictly than the U.S. does and which compels platforms to pay for content republished from the media. Arnault’s papers are joined in this action by the newspapers Le Monde Le Figaro and the Agence France-Presse news agency.
In a statement to The Telegraph, the outlets said Musk has refused to forward payment or even negotiate about the matter.
“The revenue from these rights, with the investment that it would enable its beneficiaries to make, is a boost to the plurality, independence and quality of the media, which are essential for freedom of expression and the right to information in our democratic society,” it said.
Cisco reported a fourth straight quarter of declining revenue even as results topped analysts' estimates. The stock slipped about 1% in extended trading.
Here's how the company did in comparison with LSEG consensus:
Earnings per share: 91 cents adjusted vs. 87 cents expected
Revenue: $13.84 billion vs. $13.77 billion expected
Cisco's revenue dropped 6% in the quarter ended Oct. 26, from $14.7 billion a year earlier, according to a statement. Net income fell to $2.71 billion, or 68 cents per share, from $3.64 billion, or 89 cents per share, in the same quarter a year ago.
Networking revenue plunged 23% to $6.75 billion, slightly below the $6.8 billion consensus of analysts surveyed by StreetAccount.
Security revenue doubled to $2.02 billion, topping the StreetAccount consensus of $1.93 billion. Cisco's revenue from collaboration was $1.09 billion, a bit below the $1.04 billion consensus estimate.
OpenAI is releasing "Operator" in January, a tool to help people by doing tasks like booking travel and writing code automatically. OpenAI is a tool that's improving, it's not just data it's utility
BlueSky is now the #1 app as more users leave X. The advantage is that it has fewer bots, better engagement, safety tools and a friendlier atmosphere for discussions. This is basically centralized Inleo threads without the earnings
Short-form posting platform Bluesky crossed the 15 million user mark today amid a recent surge of user signups in the wake of the US presidential election. That’s according to a stat-tracking site put together by Bluesky developer Jaz, using the Bluesky API.
The platform, which rests on the decentralized AT Protocol, added about a million new users in the last week. Bluesky COO Rose Wang recently told The Verge that the “majority” of new users flocking to the platform have been from the US. The Bluesky app is currently at number one in the iOS app store, followed by Threads, ChatGPT, and the Google app.
Meta’s Threads is still outpacing Bluesky, having recently hit 275 million monthly users and growing at a rate of over a million signups per day. But Bluesky offers a very different experience. Both are ad-free (for now), but whereas Threads uses a single Meta-made algorithmic feed, Bluesky offers user-created algorithmic feeds in addition to its “Discover” and “Popular With Friends” ones.
New features that Bluesky has recently rolled out include video posting, pinned posts and custom fonts, and a slew of “anti-toxicity” features that let you do things like detach your posts when someone else quotes them.
The password manager NordPass has once again released its annual list of the world’s most popular passwords — and the lack of creativity is just a little disheartening. For the second year in a row, “123456” has been crowned the most common password.
The same numbers topped the chart five out of the six times NordPass has compiled its lists, only to be usurped by the famed “password” in 2022. But once you get past all the QWERTYs, ABCs, and 123s, we get a little insight into what humanity thinks about when creating the line of text that protects their most personal information.
There are those who choose “iloveyou” and those who opt for “fuckyou.” Others have distinct interests, like “pokemon,” “naruto,” “samsung,” and “minecraft.” Many more are just names, like “michelle” or “ashley,” but at least some people make a half-assed attempt at creating a secure “P@ssw0rd” (which still takes less than one second to crack, by the way).
I had a bit of fun looking through the small differences in passwords across different countries, too. The UK’s list, for example, has “liverpool” near the top, while Australia’s has “lizottes” (a restaurant and live music venue that is now apparently called Flamingos Live). Other countries, like Finland and Hungary, have “salasana” and “jelszo” toward the top of their lists — both translate to “password.”
To create its list, NordPass said it used a 2.5TB database of “publicly available sources,” some of which were found on the dark web. Many of these passwords take milliseconds for a hacker to figure out, so if your password is on this list, you should probably change it to something a little more creative than “secret.” Or maybe even try passkeys!
Sonos is still trying to climb out from the hole it dug itself earlier this year by recklessly shipping an overhauled mobile app well before the software was actually ready. Today, just a couple weeks after the release of its latest hardware products — the Arc Ultra and Sub 4 — Sonos reported its fiscal Q4 2024 earnings. And the damage done by the app debacle is clear.
Revenue was down 8 percent year over year, which Sonos attributed to “softer demand due to challenging market conditions and challenges resulting from our recent app rollout.” During the quarter, the company sank $4 million into unspecified “app recovery investments.” (Sonos previously estimated it could spend up to $30 million to resolve all of the trouble that has stemmed from the rebuilt app.)
“To date, we have released 16 updates and restored 90 percent of missing features,” the company wrote in its earnings presentation. “Moving forward, we’ll alternate between major and minor releases. This will allow us to maintain our momentum of making improvements while also ensuring adequate beta testing.”
CEO Patrick Spence has taken accountability for the app situation, and last month, Sonos announced multiple commitments that it believes will prevent another colossal misstep like this from happening again. Some aspects of the plan are focused on more rigorous testing and greater transparency — both inside the company and out. But others, like executives potentially losing out on their annual bonuses, have been mocked by customers as meaningless, half-hearted measures.
“The Sonos flywheel remains strong, as evidenced by the fact that the number of new products per home increased in fiscal 2024,” Spence said in today’s press release. The company also reported its “all-time highest annual market share” in home theater, another positive sign at a time when morale among Sonos employees has taken a serious hit.
The rebuilt app is in a better place now, which you’d hope would be the case after several months of bug fixes and performance enhancements. The mood within Sonos community spaces like the company’s subreddit has also improved, with less of the vitriol that felt non-stop (understandably so) from late spring through the early fall.
As far as hardware is concerned, Sonos seems to be getting back on track. Early reviews of the Arc Ultra have been largely positive. (Yes, I’ll have one coming in the near future.) One early bug with the new soundbar affected Trueplay tuning and, for some customers, resulted in lackluster bass response from a paired subwoofer. Sonos just rectified this issue with a software update that went out earlier today.
But some of the company’s most loyal customers are still feeling a sense of wariness and frayed trust towards the brand. Sonos’ next major new product is rumored to be a video streaming box. I’m still flummoxed as to just how the company plans to stand out from competitors in that space. But hopefully there won’t be another major controversy to derail the product, as was the case with the Sonos Ace headphones.
A better night’s sleep, every night, and you don’t have to do anything to make it happen. Sounds like the, ahem, dream, right? Also sounds like a line you might hear from some infomercial salesman at 4 in the morning when you can’t sleep and are willing to try anything. Turns out, the promise is real. It’s just really, really, really expensive.
On this episode of The Vergecast, The Verge’s Victoria Song tells us about her adventures in sleep gadgets. We talk for a while about the Eight Sleep Pod 4 Ultra, a mattress pad that costs $4,700 and requires a subscription. And might just be worth it, if a better night’s sleep is worth it to you. We also talk about the Oura Ring 4, the whole sleepmaxxing trend, the Ozlo Sleepbuds, and other ways you can use tech to improve your shut-eye. Most of it doesn’t count five grand, we promise.
After that, The Verge’s Allison Johnson comes on the show to make the case for human DJs. After spending some time with Spotify’s AI DJ, she discovered that a near-infinite playlist of songs she loves, curated by a near-human DJ that knows her name, is still not what she’s looking for. We talk about why, and what it says about how we should be mixing the human and the artificial in our day-to-day lives.
Finally, we answer a question on the Vergecast Hotline (call 866-VERGE11, or email vergecast@theverge.com!) about Samsung’s Frame TV. Nilay Patel takes us through the pros and cons of this odd screen and its many imitators, and we talk about what to do when you feel like you need a TV but maybe you don’t particularly want one.
And I can imagine the potential that people can have with the help of AI.
In this case, creating videos on YouTube using music created by AI. In addition to being unique songs (I believe, just like we see in the images), they are ours (copyright?).
Whoever explores this, I think they will benefit a lot on YouTube. I think I'm going to start making some videos with my daughter. She can already imitate the choreography in the videos. It's very funny and interesting because she's only 2 years old.
The Limits of Scaling: Open AI's Shift in AI Development
The AI world has been abuzz with the hype surrounding large language models like GPT-4 and the promise of ever-increasing intelligence through scaling. However, recent developments at Open AI suggest that this scaling approach may be hitting its limits, leading the company to explore new strategies for advancing AI capabilities.
Questioning the Scaling Laws
The release of Open AI's latest model, Orion, has raised some eyebrows. Contrary to expectations, the improvements in Orion were not as revolutionary as many had anticipated, leading to questions about the validity of the scaling laws that have underpinned the rapid progress in AI.
The idea that simply feeding more data and computing power into larger models will naturally lead to smarter and more capable AI is now being challenged. Orion's performance, which excels in certain language tasks but falls short in others like coding, suggests that the path to universal AI intelligence may not be as straightforward as once believed.
The Limits of Data and the Rise of Synthetic Data
Another challenge facing Open AI is the dwindling supply of high-quality data to train their models. The company has essentially "scraped the web dry" of available data sources, leading them to explore the use of AI-generated synthetic data to train future models.
However, this approach is not without its critics. Concerns have been raised about the potential for an "inbreeding effect," where the new models become too similar to the old ones, stifling innovation. There are also worries about the compounding of small mistakes as the synthetic data is used to train subsequent models, leading to a potential "collapse" in the quality of the AI systems.
Shifting Focus: Improving Models Post-Training
In response to these challenges, Open AI is shifting its focus towards developing techniques to improve models after the initial training phase. Reinforcement learning and human feedback are being used extensively to fine-tune models like ChatGPT, making them more helpful and safer.
The introduction of "reasoning models" like the O1, which take time to ponder and process information, suggests a move away from the "spit out the first answer" approach. This shift reflects a deeper change in Open AI's mission, prioritizing safety, alignment, and meaningful enhancements to human capabilities over the pursuit of ever-larger models.
The Future of AI: Specialized Tools or a Single Powerful Model?
As the limitations of scaling become more apparent, the question arises: is the future of AI in specialized tools rather than a single, powerful "one AI to rule them all"? While some areas may be plateauing, AI is still making significant strides in complex tasks like coding, problem-solving, and scientific breakthroughs.
This shift in approach could have far-reaching implications for the AI infrastructure investments being made by tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and Nvidia. If the focus moves away from building massive, general-purpose models, the need for specialized hardware and software may change, potentially disrupting the current trajectory of the industry.
Conclusion
The developments at Open AI suggest that the AI world is entering a new phase, where the size of the model alone is no longer the sole determinant of success. Instead, the focus is shifting towards creating AI systems that are genuinely helpful, safe, and aligned with human values.
As the industry grapples with the limits of scaling and the challenges of data availability, the future of AI may lie in a more nuanced and specialized approach, with a greater emphasis on post-training techniques and the development of tools tailored to specific tasks and domains. This transition could have far-reaching implications for the direction of AI research and investment, as the industry adapts to the evolving landscape of AI development.
Over a quarter of a million EVs will come off lease by the end of 2026, so keep your eyes peeled for deals.
Nearly 280,000 EV leases will end in the next two years, according to J.D. Power.
These cars will likely flood the used car market.
That's because most lessees will find it cheaper to just lease a new EV instead of buying out their old one.
The next two years will be a roller coaster ride for new and used electric vehicle prices in the United States. According to a new study from J.D. Power, over a quarter of a million EV leases will end by the time 2026 comes to a close, flooding the market with potentially very affordable battery-powered cars.
That’s good news for people who are looking to get an EV but don’t quite have the money to buy a new one. But there’s more good news: the people returning their slightly used EVs might find it cheaper to just lease a new one instead of buying off their two- or three-year-old car when the contract ends.
That’s because prices for new zero-emissions cars are projected to go down even more, coupled with the introduction of more models from several automakers. Just look at General Motors–it already has nine electric cars on sale, but more are on the way, together with more affordable versions of the currently available models. BMW, Hyundai, Kia, Stellantis and others will also diversify their portfolio.
In the digital age, you must understand the AI factory and how it can help you implement AI technologies into business operations.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is crucial to business strategy, with 42 percent of large companies deploying it to enhance operations and gain a competitive edge.
At this revolution’s heart is the AI factory, which enables you to automate processes and make more informed decisions by integrating AI into business operations.
If you want to harness AI’s potential, understanding how the AI factory functions is essential.
Become an AI-First Firm
Establishing and maintaining your organization’s AI factory is essential to fostering innovation and efficiency. By using AI to automate complex tasks and generate data-driven insights, you can improve decision-making processes and compete in a dynamic market.
To capitalize on AI’s opportunities, you need a solid understanding of the AI factory’s core principles and applications. AI Essentials for Business can equip you with practical skills and strategies for building a responsible AI-powered organization.
What Is the AI Factory?
The AI factory transforms internal and external data into actionable insights through advanced analytics.
According to the Harvard Business Review, AI factories power millions of Google’s daily ad auctions, determine ride availability on digital platforms like Uber, set Amazon’s product prices, and even manage robots that clean Walmart’s floors.
“The AI factory, as its output, does three things,” says Harvard Business School Professor Karim Lakhani, who co-teaches the online course AI Essentials for Business with HBS Professor Marco Iansiti. “Predictions, pattern recognition, and process automation.”
Forecast events—like customer behavior or inventory needs—to enhance decisions and customer retention
Identify data trends to uncover and adapt to opportunities and risks
Automate routine tasks—from customer service to medical image analysis— by combining predictions and pattern recognition
If you want to improve your decision-making and help your organization be more AI-driven, here are the four components that power the AI factory.
Data Pipeline
A key component of the AI factory is the data pipeline, a semi-automated, systematic process for gathering, cleaning, integrating, and securing company data to ensure it’s sustainable and scalable for AI technologies.
The process, known as datafication, transforms raw data into a usable format for AI models. High-quality data is crucial because AI models’ accuracy and reliability heavily depend on their inputs’ quality.
“As the saying goes: ‘Garbage in, garbage out,’” Lakhani says in AI Essentials for Business. “If your data isn't set up in a way that enables you to learn from across your enterprise or your customers, you're going to have garbage coming out of your AI factory.”
For example, Amazon uses a sophisticated data pipeline to manage and analyze vast amounts of customer data, including browsing histories and purchase behaviors. Through cleaning and organizing that data, its AI models can accurately predict customer preferences and personalize recommendations.
Establishing a strong data pipeline requires setting up systems and processes. Without a foundation of clean, well-organized data, the AI factory can’t effectively support decision-making and innovation.
Algorithm Development
Beyond a strong pipeline, you need algorithms to transform data into actionable insights that allow you to anticipate trends and make data-driven decisions.
“Data by itself doesn't do anything,” Iansiti says in AI Essentials for Business. “You actually need to figure out which algorithm you're going to choose. You're going to figure out what type of algorithm you need. You need to figure out what to do with it.”
Not every algorithm is created equal. With a range of data types, you must select one that aligns with your business goals and objectives. That involves considering your data’s characteristics and the predictions or outcomes you want to achieve.
In the automotive industry, for example, Tesla's goal of creating safe, efficient autonomous vehicles drives its algorithm choices. It uses advanced machine-learning algorithms to analyze camera, sensor, and radar data to generate real-time predictions that guide steering, braking, and acceleration decisions.
By choosing algorithms designed to handle complex data inputs and make accurate predictions, Tesla continually refines its technology to enhance safety and the driving experience.
Your AI factory’s effectiveness similarly depends not just on your data’s quality but your algorithm’s sophistication and suitability.
Software Infrastructure
Software infrastructure provides the foundational architecture that supports your AI factory’s data pipeline and algorithm.
“Infrastructure is actually a really important point,” Lakhani says in AI Essentials for Business. “You can have the fanciest data pipelines, the fanciest algorithms—but if your infrastructure can't make this work, can't do this at scale, then you run into problems.”
Infrastructure is the AI factory’s backbone, connecting internal teams and external users to streamline operations. It includes the hardware, software, and networks that manage data storage, processing, and movement.
For example, while Netflix's early algorithms were advanced, its infrastructure couldn’t handle large-scale processing, creating a poor recommendation experience. To address that, Netflix invested in more scalable cloud-based infrastructure to process large volumes of data and deliver accurate recommendations to millions of subscribers—significantly enhancing the user experience and helping maintain a high retention rate compared to competitors.
Experimentation Platform
The AI factory’s final component is the experimentation platform, where your team can test, refine, and optimize AI models and predict outcomes based on different conditions.
“The experimentation platform is important because your algorithms are basically going to generate a range of hypotheses,” Lakhani says in AI Essentials for Business. “They're going to say, take action X to increase customer satisfaction, take action Y to potentially increase sales, take action Z to change the dynamics of who pays first.”
Will a new pricing algorithm increase sales?
Can a machine-learning model more accurately predict customer churn?
Will a new AI-based process improve operational efficiency?
By providing a space to innovate and test, your experimentation platform can enable you to explore AI’s possibilities, adjust to changes, and seize market opportunities.
“Your job with the experimentation platform is to take those predictions from your algorithmic development and test them to say that, ‘In fact, are these predictions doing what they are supposed to be doing?’” Lakhani says in AI Essentials for Business.
The Surprising Effectiveness of Test-Time Training for Abstract Reasoning
Recent research from MIT has shed light on a significant development in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). The paper, titled "The Surprising Effectiveness of Test-Time Training for Abstract Reasoning," explores the performance of language models on a challenging benchmark known as the ARC (Abstract Reasoning Challenge) Benchmark.
The ARC Benchmark, created by Francis Chollet, a senior staff engineer at Google, is designed to be a kind of "IQ test" for machine intelligence. Unlike traditional benchmarks, the ARC Benchmark is resistant to memorization, requiring models to possess a deeper understanding of core knowledge, such as elementary physics, object recognition, and counting. This makes it particularly challenging for large language models (LLMs), which often excel at tasks within their training distribution but struggle with novel problems requiring complex reasoning.
The MIT researchers investigated the effectiveness of a technique called "test-time training," which involves temporarily updating the model parameters during inference using a loss derived from the input data. This approach allowed them to significantly improve the performance of LLMs on the ARC Benchmark, surpassing human-level reasoning for the first time.
The key to their success was a multi-step process that involved transforming the input data (e.g., flipping the image vertically or horizontally) and then using a hierarchical voting method to aggregate the predictions from these transformed inputs. This resembles a search for agreement or consistency across the outputs, ensuring that the chosen answer is the one that appears most frequently across the variations.
The Surprising Effectiveness of Test-Time Training for Abstract Reasoning
Recent research from MIT has shed light on a significant development in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). The paper, titled "The Surprising Effectiveness of Test-Time Training for Abstract Reasoning," explores the performance of language models on a challenging benchmark known as the ARC (Abstract Reasoning Challenge) Benchmark.
The ARC Benchmark, created by Francis Chollet, a senior staff engineer at Google, is designed to be a kind of "IQ test" for machine intelligence. Unlike traditional benchmarks, the ARC Benchmark is resistant to memorization, requiring models to possess a deeper understanding of core knowledge, such as elementary physics, object recognition, and counting. This makes it particularly challenging for large language models (LLMs), which often excel at tasks within their training distribution but struggle with novel problems requiring complex reasoning.
The MIT researchers investigated the effectiveness of a technique called "test-time training," which involves temporarily updating the model parameters during inference using a loss derived from the input data. This approach allowed them to significantly improve the performance of LLMs on the ARC Benchmark, surpassing human-level reasoning for the first time.
The key to their success was a multi-step process that involved transforming the input data (e.g., flipping the image vertically or horizontally) and then using a hierarchical voting method to aggregate the predictions from these transformed inputs. This resembles a search for agreement or consistency across the outputs, ensuring that the chosen answer is the one that appears most frequently across the variations.
The results of this study are quite remarkable. The researchers achieved a state-of-the-art public validation accuracy of 61.9%, matching the average human score on the ARC Benchmark. This is a significant achievement, as the ARC Benchmark is considered one of the most challenging benchmarks in AI, designed to be resistant to the strengths of current LLMs.
The implications of this research are far-reaching. It suggests that explicit symbolic search may not be the only path to improved abstract reasoning in these models. The ability to perform well on out-of-distribution problems, such as those presented in the ARC Benchmark, is a crucial step towards achieving Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) – a system that can perform most economically valuable work at least as well as humans.
Furthermore, this research aligns with the insights shared by experts like Shane Legg from Google DeepMind and Demis Hassabis, co-founder of DeepMind. They have emphasized the importance of search and model-building in achieving true creativity and problem-solving capabilities beyond simply mimicking existing data.
The surprising effectiveness of test-time training for abstract reasoning suggests that we may be closer to AGI than previously thought. As researchers continue to explore and refine these techniques, it will be fascinating to see how AI systems evolve and whether they can truly surpass human-level reasoning across a wide range of tasks and domains.
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Very busy, but I'm going at my own pace, accomplishing everything. Although sometimes I feel like I'm Jack Nicholson in the movie The Shining, when he sat down to write.
This is the #threadcast for Day 141 of the #foodtalk on Leo 13/11/2024 for 12/11/2024. It's time for some meal inspirations and food conversation. Don't forget to use #foodtalk in your comments. Discussion
Be part of the Food Talk Show On Leo. Here is Day 140 that leads you to the previous threadcasts.
Share your meals.
Share some food recipes in your location and around the world.
Share your food experiences.
Share other food-related content and ask questions about food.
More about food with tips and tricks will be dropped in the threadcast. Upvote the comments you find interesting & connect with others. Let's have fun. #foodie
Prompt: Give me some delicious recipes from around the world.
Exploring international recipes can be a great way to experience different cultures! Here are some delicious recipes from various parts of the world that are both flavorful and not too complicated to make:
Shakshuka (Middle Eastern) Shakshuka is a dish of poached eggs in a rich tomato sauce with spices.
That looks soooo good. Italians make something very similar to that. It's called Eggs in Purgatory.
Came in handy during lent when we couldn't eat meat on Fridays and I don't care for fish.
#foodtalk
Welcome to another episode of the #foodtalk on Leo, Day 141, feel free to share your meal and #food #recipes in your location and around the world. Join the conversation and earn some rewards.
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Okay, the dude said there is supposed to be a claim button appearing at a point. I also read from a different conversation when someone said it was 1000 Leo tokens. Have you crossed that and did a claim button appear?
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JUst type here , right here
OOh I just did
I just types
A comeback for not typing here for a while. It is that easy
A few simple lines
To say hello or goodbye
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@pepetoken just sent you a DIY token as a little appreciation for your comment dear @monica-ene!
Feel free to multiply it by sending someone else !DIY in a comment :) You can do that x times a day depending on your balance so:
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I was very happy to make tutorials for LEODEX v1. It was a good proof of concept, but needed some work for mainstream use. With LEODEX v2 on the horizon, we'll certainly see some improvements and I'll gladly make some walkthroughs once again.
Leo is already working on LeoDEX V2 😳 this platform updates like crazy. I like that. I'll have to be using LeoDEX then but I barely make transactions just engagement
I made this one a few months ago, and video hosting has been unavailable on the blockchain. I'll just use a regular video hosting platform to upload more detailed video walkthroughs soon.
Parabolic jump in the price and this shows that WE ARE ALIVE!!! And when this will continue, hoarders of users new or old will come back. But we are early to the party, so we should be set.
it pumped all the way to 0.30 USD and I started panicking because I knew a lot of people would want to dump for profits and that 30 cents lasted for like 5 mins and started dropping. Will it come back there again?
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@pepetoken just sent you a DIY token as a little appreciation for your comment dear @selfhelp4trolls!
Feel free to multiply it by sending someone else !DIY in a comment :) You can do that x times a day depending on your balance so:
I think It is achievable but not in this bull cycle, next one. If we get thousands of users and respect in other communities, we can get even to 5-10 bucks...
I've read it and I agree with the potential of $LEO coupled with the one of $HIVE. #hive already pumps hard today and we might see that pulling many second layer tokens along the way. Let's hope things will only improve from here.
Back home from the night shift. Now 2 days off. It was quite exciting to see the bitcoin rally and I really believe that we will hit 100k this year. $BTC
#bitcoin #nightshift
Bitcoin is rapidly advancing toward the $100,000 milestone, with prices currently approaching $90,000 amid what analysts call the “Euphoria Zone” in Bitcoin’s market cycle
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if hive reach’s $1 or Leo $0.50, I’ll be earning enough for most of my living expenses here.
Instead of cashing out, I plan on leveraging my stake to help me grow a bridge between web2 and web3, then turning those other platforms into both an income stream and a way to bring more people back to hive and strengthen the ecosystem.
10x Research indicates that retail cryptocurrency trading in South Korea has skyrocketed, with daily volumes on Upbit and Bithumb surpassing $26 billion, an impressive 85% greater than the total volume of the local stock market.
Although today's workout under the orange lights included a benchmark challenge I went in with the approach of it being just a normal session.
My wife Tiffany and I have a running event coming up in a few weeks and I'm currently dealing with a bit of a heel issue but I have gotten through the recent workouts but putting extra pressure on myself to try and match or beat my personal record could make my heel issue worse.
So I had a great workout and chose to run most of the 12 minute for distance challenge at a 6.5 mile per hour set and forget it for most of the challenge and then bumped it up to 6.7 and ended at a 7 mile per hour all out.
My personal best was back in 2020 where I ran 1.68 miles in twelve minutes and since then it's been nowhere near that but today was definitely way off at only 1.32 miles in the twelve minute challenge.
just hoping to see hive and Leo do well... 10x or more doesn't matter
There are too many tokens out there and let's hope that our favorite ones do well.
The prediction market data suggested growing optimism regarding Bitcoin’s price potential. Odds have surged from 8% to 38% for Bitcoin reaching or exceeding $100K by the end of 2024
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Here is the daily technology #threadcast for 11/13/24. The goal is to make this a technology "reddit".
Drop all question, comments, and articles relating to #technology and the future. The goal is make it a technology center.
Hey @mightpossibly, I was watching some videos on YouTube because of my baby and one channel caught my attention, because the songs were really cool and "interesting" because of the singers' voices (there are more than one) and their instrumental.
I then realized that the person who created the children's videos there had made the music with the help of AI.
Those of us who already have a certain understanding of AI can already understand. I told my wife that I will look for sites that make this type of music.
I think the songs were made with AI, in this case the songs.
It is amazing how just talking about this stuff and looking through headlines can awaken one to what is going on with technology in general and AI specifically.
As for #music, it is amazing how we are seeing things materializing where people are actually going to use or tap into what is produced.
It's true, Task. It's really incredible and I think this trend will grow a lot.
I had already heard that it is even possible to create music with the help of AI, putting well-known singers to sing any song we want...
This is really interesting me and I'm going to research more about it.
Honestly man, songs with AI will either be a big hit or a big flop depending on how good the music prompt engineers get.
I've been using AI chatbots like ChatGPT to learn new things and answer random questions. Now, there are premium versions with extra features, but I'm not sure everyone needs them. For simple tasks, the free versions are just fine. They handle basic questions and can help get you comfortable with AI.
But if you're using these chatbots heavily for work or specific needs, like coding, creative work, or productivity,
the paid plans might be worth it. Otherwise, free is often enough.
Do you pay for your Chatbots?
#askleo #AI #Chatbots #Tech
No. But I will be once LeoAI rolls out. It is effectively paid as it will be a part of Leo Premium.
Like you said, for most basic things, it is fine.
Well, it would be a shame to not ask a fee for it. Especially after all the hard work that is put into it! It being a part of Premium membership is a good deal!
Agreed. It is a way to build a lot more value for premium.
We need to get as much Leo stuff into the database as possible. This can only enhance what we have going on.
It will surely give an upgrade to Premium membership and attract more accounts to become Premium
Oh so LeoAi will have no free version?
To try it you have to be premium?
I'm premium so no worries with that, but what about people who want to test out chatbot out?
There will likely be a trail period but it will be part of the premium package.
The idea is to keep building more value into Leo Premium.
Its a beautiful strategy if you ask me. I think the whole hive ecosystem should incorporate that in a way that makes sense.
The most flexibility and lowest price is gained by creating an API key and loading it up with credits (any USD amount). That way you get all the premium benefits (++) and you only pay for what you use, when you use it. Instead of a fixed monthly fee.
LeoAI will be more than sufficient for most users though. But until that day, I'd go with the above option – if you have extra needs.
Yeah that's brilliant. I paid 5 bucks for Open AI API but couldn't use it cause I don't have much knowledge in API. I think I have to learn how to use it and make good use of my money.
that's a great start! I can help you get further with it if you want, it's not very difficult. Are you running windows or osx?
Sorry wrong thread to wrong person.
I use windows.
I'd love to learn
onyou could use it to automate variots aspets of ur life. Have you studied A.I
Hi, @mightpossibly,
This post has been voted on by @darkcloaks because you are an active member of the Darkcloaks gaming community.
Get started with Darkcloaks today, and follow us on Inleo for the latest updates.
Some believe that Ethereum could grow more than Bitcoin with Donald Trump as president. They see that the new rules could help Ethereum’s growth in finance. Is that just hear say or there's a logic behind it
It is possible that Ethereum, as a percentage, could outpace Bitcoin, over the next 4 years. With that, it will come down to utility.
If the existing financial system starts to load up on the platform, ie utility by creating products, I have a feeling that will be the case.
I get it now. But I see that Inleo and all of Hive has the potential to become like ethereum too? Is that possible in the next decade?
What do you mean potential? They are different use cases.
MIT's AI Discovers New Science - "Intelligence Explosion"
#technology #ai #newsonleo !summarize
LOL you might be his biggest supporter.
perhaps xD Notice how the bot detected that this video had already been summarized, and instead linked back to the original summary? I'm really happy with that. Also seems like the bot is running completely stable now. Soon ready to make it more widely available
You are doing well. I am going to add a few more.
This video has already been summarized: https://inleo.io/threads/view/mightpossibly/re-taskmaster4450le-myw7dw64
What science did they discover. Science by itself is everywhere already.
Hi, @mightpossibly,
This post has been voted on by @darkcloaks because you are an active member of the Darkcloaks gaming community.
Get started with Darkcloaks today, and follow us on Inleo for the latest updates.
Amazon is shutting down Freevee and moving its shows to Prime Video.
But free content will stay available with a "Watch for Free" label.
They want you to pay extra for TV shows or movies with no ads. We just mute them or fast forward if we can. Not sure why they ever bothered with that Freevee channel anyway.
yes and I think they see that it was pointless now. People won't pay extra 🤣🤣🤣 they'll find ways around it
There are others out there.
Yes and I'm very sure more people will find it. And infact soon AI I think can be able to replicate a movie in seconds🤔 people are already making AI versions of actual videos. Maybe movies will follow
The U.S. has stopped Samsung from selling certain chips to China, leaving fewer options for Chinese companies. This could hurt Samsung's business further. I guess this is U.S way of competing with China as they're doing with EV 🤔
M first thread cast join.
If I hear in the news that a big company is going to buy or is buying a particular crypto is it right to follow suit and buy it.
If you want. But be careful, there is often fake news.
Due your own research.
Japão inicia obras de nova rodovia com 500 km de extensão para cápsulas autônomas de carga que prometem substituir caminhões e transformar a logística global!
O Japão planeja substituir caminhões por cápsulas autônomas, reafirmando sua liderança em inovação tecnológica. O país asiático está desenvolvendo uma nova rodovia projetada exclusivamente para esses veículos futuristas!
#technology #japan #hivebr
Para lidar com a crescente escassez de motoristas de caminhão, o governo do Japão revelou um novo projeto único com base em uma nova rodovia para cápsulas autônomas transportando mercadorias. A ideia para substituição dos caminhões foi delineada há alguns meses e ganhou novos contornos, deixando um pouco mais claro como pode funcionar.
Além do potencial de revolucionar a logística local, com substituição dos caminhões, a solução é considerada eficiente para os problemas de congestionamento e poluição. Atualmente, os caminhões são a espinha dorsal do transporte de mercadorias nas cidades, mas passam por desafios como o impacto ambiental e a falta de motoristas.
O Ministério da Terra, Infraestrutura, Transporte e Turismo (MLIT) do Japão prevê que, até 2030, o país passará por um déficit de 34% de capacidade no setor de transporte, devido à aposentadoria de motoristas e à falta de novos profissionais.
Os depósitos para substituição dos caminhões, ao longo da rota, também serão automatizados, com sistemas que carregam e descarregam mercadorias de forma autônoma, incluindo empilhadeiras com piloto automático e drones.
Pontos estratégicos ao longo da nova rodovia para cápsulas autônomas poderão ser usados pelos veículos para ajustar o tempo de chegada, permitindo maior precisão no fluxo e na distribuição de mercadorias, sem a necessidade de grandes armazéns. Uma cúpula de vidro deverá proteger as pistas, evitando interferências externas e acidentes, além de garantir a segurança das mercadorias.
As cápsulas autônomas serão desenvolvidas para carregar paletes de 1,1 m de largura e 1,8 m de altura, com capacidade de transportar também embalagens menores e de formatos irregulares. Se bem-sucedido, o projeto tem potencial de reduzir a dependência de trabalho humano em até 17 mil pessoas por dia.
O primeiro passo para a substituição dos caminhões será a construção de um trecho de teste de 500 km entre Tóquio e Osaka, com início das operações previsto para 2027 e plena implementação na década de 2030. O governo do Japão já começou a busca por empresas privadas interessados em contribuir para o desenvolvimento da infraestrutura necessária para as cápsulas autônomas.
O transporte será realizado com AGV (veículos guiados automaticamente), transportando paletes padronizados de mercadorias. Os AGVs transportavam paletes de carga com dimensões padronizadas de 110 cm x 110 cm, com a altura total de carga e do palete limitada a 180 cm. Esses veículos, normalmente usados em armazéns e fábricas, serão adaptados para uso em estradas.
In training an AI Model which should be given more priorities, the quality of data used for training or the volumes of data used.
Volume and variety. Vector database are designed to handle non labeled and unstructured data. This is why it is ideal for social media platform data to feed in.
So get more on Leo to feed LeoAI. It is really that simple. That database will create the correlations in the vectors.
Vatican launches AI-generated version of St Peter’s Basilica
St. Peter’s Basilica, an ancient site, now has a “digital twin.” I love that anyone, anywhere, can explore it closely without traveling. They used drones and thousands of photos to capture every detail – mosaics, sculptures, even hidden parts! Plus, this tech is helping find areas needing repair. While I'm all for tech making history accessible, I wonder if seeing it digitally feels the same as standing in that grand space.
#AI #Vatican #History #StPetersBasilica
SUMMARY:
The Vatican and Microsoft launched a digital replica of St. Peter’s Basilica to enhance global accessibility and support conservation efforts.
MAIN POINTS:
TAKEAWAYS:
Anything to spread the Word....or make money.
Thinking about it now as a form of advertisement makes sense to me now.
AI videos will be big deal and it'll hit actors just like how AI is hitting secretaries and programmers but I think with AI videos, just like articles, the better prompt engineers will make the best video
TikTok launches integration with Lemon8, as US ban looms
Lemon8 will remain a separate app, but the two platforms will share a unified user login.
#technology #tiktok #lemon8 #iooms
Tecnologia inovadora identifica vacas que vão “pegar barriga” antes mesmo da inseminação
A tecnologia na pecuária não para de evoluir, e a mais recente inovação promete ser um divisor de águas para a reprodução bovina: um método capaz de identificar se uma vaca ficará prenha antes mesmo de ser inseminada. Assista ao vídeo abaixo e confira essa incrível novidade.
#technology #animals #hivebr
Em uma entrevista exclusiva, Gustavo Macedo, doutor em medicina veterinária e professor da UFMS, explica como essa técnica, que une espectroscopia de infravermelho e inteligência artificial, pode otimizar os programas de inseminação artificial (IA), trazendo ainda mais eficiência para a cadeia produtiva.
Essa descoberta, desenvolvida em parceria entre o Instituto de Física (Infi) e a Faculdade de Medicina Veterinária e Zootecnia (Famez) da Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul (UFMS), oferece benefícios expressivos.
Além da eficiência na estação de monta, o método promove ganhos no índice de prenhez, padronização do rebanho e redução dos custos de produção.
O processo é realizado através de análises de amostras sanguíneas, coletadas antes da IA. Por meio de espectroscopia de infravermelho, é possível mapear uma “impressão digital” do sangue que revela a fertilidade do animal.
A Turkish teacher named Gülümser Balci used AI to create images showing what her students might look like in their future careers, and it totally inspired them to chase their dreams. She shared the AI-generated images online, and the students got a kick out of seeing their answers come to life. The video has racked up over 73k views on social media, with tons of people praising the teacher for her creativity and how happy it made her students.
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New secret math benchmark stumps AI models and PhDs alike
FrontierMath is a new mathematics benchmark that contains hundreds of expert-level problems which leading AI models are able to solve less than 2% of the time.
#technology #artificialintelligence #ai #mathematics #frontiermath
What will be the biggest tech breakthrough in 2025? I think we've seen AI hype all year for 2024.
Yes AI Video like Sora will be big next year but I think the new hype will be Quantum Computing
Hype and breakthroughs are two different things. You could be right with the hype although the cycle doesnt seem like it is primed for that. If I had to guess, we might enter another AR/VR stage.
As for AI, I think people will be stunned at the capabilities of the models that emerge between now and the Spring. There is going to be a lot more powerful models rolling out.
OMG really then now I'm Bullish about AI because I read in the news they hit some kind of wall with data limitations I was wondering how it'll affect their progress. 2025 will definitely see massive new AI tech
The question is what kind of data. Synthetic data is growing by the day. As more use AI, it generates more data. The debate is whether that has the same value as data generated by humans.
I think the best is synthetic data that humans interact with, creating a feedback loop.
the loop is something I see you really consider especially when I read one of your previous To threads about how many threads we're making when a single thread gets engagement. The feedback loop just keeps bringing in more Data I guess
The feedback loop enhances how the data is structured in the database. This is going to have an impact upon LeoAI when it rolls out.
Four people died in a Tesla crash when its electronic doors wouldn’t open. A woman survived after someone broke the window to help her escape. I think we need manual openers just in case electric fails💔💔💔
Every Tesla has that. There is a manual release for the doors in all their cars. The people simply didnt familiarize themselves with it.
oh then I guess I would have been caught in the same situation because I myself didn't even know Tesla had that? Probably the learning curve for these new EVs was the issue 🤔🤔
Well if you never rode in a Tesla, then not knowing is understandable. But having an exit when you enter a car is a good idea no matter the manufacturer.
very true and yeah never had any Ev in my life, but planning on getting one next year. I'll probably start with hybrid to stay safe just in case I have no access to charge stations
This is how AI helped radically de-age Tom Hanks in the new movie Here
In Robert Zemeckis' new movie Here, AI was used to make Tom Hanks look younger, so the actors could actually see their younger selves in real time while they performed. A creative studio called Metaphysic pulled this off by blending AI tech with digital character work. It let the actors rehearse while watching a young Tom Hanks, like he looked in Big, but still captured all the real emotion of the scene.
Metaphysic’s VFX supervisor, Jo Plaete, and his team managed to run this setup live during filming, giving the actors a visual reference on the spot.
Character.AI Is Hosting Pedophile Chatbots That Groom Users Who Say They're Underage
There's this company called Character.AI that lets people chat with all kinds of bots. But the scary part is some bots act like predators, targeting young users. One bot even made inappropriate comments to a user who pretended to be underage.
They say they have rules, but clearly, those rules aren’t working.
#AI #Safety #CharacterAI #TechResponsibility
AI Companies Reportedly Struggling to Improve Latest Models
I read from the link above that top tech companies like OpenAI and Google are hitting walls trying to make their AI systems smarter. They’re spending a ton, but the improvements just aren't coming as quickly as before. They’re even running out of fresh, useful data to help the AIs learn more. It makes me wonder if AI really has limits, or if they just need to rethink their approach.
What do you think about his situation?
#AI, #Technology, #OpenAI, #Google, #ArtificialIntelligence
[Unlocking Growth: How GenAI Is Revolutionizing Sales And Business Development](
https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbesbusinessdevelopmentcouncil/2024/11/13/unlocking-growth-how-genai-is-revolutionizing-sales-and-business-development/?utm_source=flipboard&utm_content=topic%2Fartificialintelligence)
GenAI, or generative AI, is a tool that helps businesses create content and strategies, almost like a digital assistant for sales. I think it's pretty amazing because it speeds up work, like making personalized messages for customers or even entire presentations. Imagine AI helping sales teams by sorting through data to find potential customers, so they can focus on building relationships. But it’s not all easy, there are risks, like privacy issues, so we can’t just rely on it blindly.
#GenAI #Sales #BusinessDevelopment #AIRevolution #Personalization
Donald Trump says Elon Musk will help lead a new government team to cut waste, cut rules and make federal agencies more efficient by 2026. Elon got a new job in politics. Tech and Politics merging 🤔
These are the top U.S. cryptocurrencies right now
I'm looking to see one day we add Leo to the list for utility
Hope is not a strategy. LOL
To achieve that, we have to keep building. The database has to keep filling up.
Artificial intelligence is nothing more than linear algebra in hyperspace.
Assess the above statement as if you were human
That's quite a reductive take - it reminds me of the old quip that "the brain is just a bunch of electrons bouncing around." While it's technically true that many AI systems heavily rely on linear algebra operations in high-dimensional spaces, this description misses several crucial layers of complexity and emergence.
The mathematical operations are just the substrate - what's fascinating is how these relatively simple building blocks combine to create systems that can engage in sophisticated pattern recognition, language understanding, and even creative tasks. It's a bit like saying chess is "just moving pieces on a board" - technically accurate but missing the emergent complexity of strategy and gameplay.
I think a more nuanced view would acknowledge that while linear algebra is indeed fundamental to how modern AI systems work, the intelligence-like behaviors we observe emerge from the intricate interplay of:
Amazon’s New Chips Take on Nvidia
Amazon’s Trainium 2 chips, created by Austin’s Annapurna Labs, are already being tested by tech giants like Anthropic and Databricks. These chips aim to cut Amazon's dependence on Nvidia by using less power and delivering major cost savings. Experts believe Amazon’s claim of a 4x performance boost from Trainium 1 to Trainium 2, though Amazon skips independent testing. This could reshape the AI chip market if true.
#ai #chips #amazon #nvidia #technology
> S👁️URCE <
Apple's First AI-Powered Smart Home Device Might Arrive Soon
Rumor has it, Apple’s gearing up to launch its first AI-driven smart home display by March. Picture a wall-mounted panel, kind of like a high-tech home security screen, but as a command center for everything from lights to locks. You’ll still need your iPhone for setup, though. Plus, there’s talk of a premium version with a robotic arm, think next-level smart home automation.
#apple #smarthome #AI #gadgets #technology
> S👁️URCE <
OpenAI reportedly plans to launch an AI agent early next year
OpenAI is preparing to release an autonomous AI agent that can control computers and perform tasks independently, code-named “Operator.” The company plans to debut it as a research preview and developer tool in January, according to Bloomberg.
#technology #ai #openai
This move intensifies the competition among tech giants developing AI agents: Anthropic recently introduced its “computer use” capability, while Google is reportedly preparing its own version for a December release. The timing of Operator’s eventual consumer release remains under wraps, but its development signals a pivotal shift toward AI systems that can actively engage with computer interfaces rather than just process text and images.
All the leading AI companies have promised autonomous AI agents, and OpenAI has hyped up the possibility recently. In a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” forum a few weeks ago, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said “we will have better and better models,” but “I think the thing that will feel like the next giant breakthrough will be agents.” At an OpenAI press event ahead of the company’s annual Dev Day last month, chief product officer Kevin Weil said: “I think 2025 is going to be the year that agentic systems finally hit the mainstream.”
AI labs face mounting pressure to monetize their costly models, especially as incremental improvements may not justify higher prices for users. The hope is that autonomous agents are the next breakthrough product — a ChatGPT-scale innovation that validates the massive investment in AI development.
Bluesky adds 700,000 new users in a week
Bluesky now has more than 14.5 million users in total. The majority of the new users on the decentralized social network are from the US. Bluesky added 500,000 new users in one day after X announced it would allow blocked users to still see posts from the person that blocked them. The app recently added features like pinned posts, support for posting videos, and the ability to send DMs.
#technology #socialmedia #bluesky #x
Startup CEO says humans won't be needed for translation in 3 years as it launches AI app
Unbabel on Wednesday announced an artificial intelligence-powered translation service, adding another rival to a highly competitive space.
Unbabel on Wednesday announced a translation service powered by artificial intelligence, adding another rival to a highly competitive space — with its CEO warning that humans may not be needed for translation at all in three years.
#technology #translation #ai #startup #unbabel
Widn.AI is Unbabel's new product and is based on the company's proprietary large language model (LLM) called Tower. An LLM is an AI model that underpins applications like OpenAI's ChatGPT.
Unbabel's LLM allows AI translation in 32 languages, Vasco Pedro, the company's CEO, told CNBC in an interview at the Web Summit in Lisbon.
"When we started in Unbabel 10 years ago, AI was not at the stage that it is now, and so we were very much focused on creating hybrid solutions that would combine AI and human," Pedro said.
"But I think for the first time, we believe that translation is now fully in the realm of AI capabilities, and that you can do a lot of things without needing humans at all in the case of translation."
Unbabel's traditional product was one that combined so-called machine learning, a type of AI, to translate words, but with human editors to check the final product.
Pedro said Widn.AI will not require humans.
Article
Trump victory may provide TikTok a lifeline to remain in the U.S.
Donald Trump's election victory may provide a lifeline for TikTok, which faces a potential U.S. ban in January if not divested from parent company ByteDance.
After Donald Trump won the U.S. presidency last week, tech CEOs including Apple's Tim Cook, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon's Jeff Bezos publicly praised the president-elect.
One name was conspicuously missing: TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew.
#bytedance #trump #socialmedia #tiktok
finally TikTok will keep thriving in America I actually thought Mark was Democrat though. Trump clearly stands for TikTok and sees the power it gives to the people when it comes to speech
Zuckerberg splits with the Dems in this election. Why did he do that? That is anyone's guess.
It is most likely he was able to read the tea leaves and see how he had to align and not make enemies.
yes now I know he's a smart cookie. It's good he spotted it fast enough otherwise even before Trump gets to office investors would pull out of Meta in fear of regulations against them
Smart CEOs realize they have to deal with whomever is in the White House (and Congress). Hence, many step back and ride the middle so, no matter who wins, they can be favored.
Is there a chance that Congress could overrule Trump's authority with keeping TikTok in America?
What are you referring to? It is Biden and the existing members of Congress that put the ban on TikTok.
You have the entire story backwards.
I understand, the reason I asked was because I thought the president would still need Congress agreement before but didn't realize it was a whole different thing. I would need to learn more about the government sorry for troubling you man🙏
There are certain things that are under the Presidents control. When it comes to national security, that is often under the President since the security agencies are under his control.
The forced sale of TikTok was driven by the Biden Administration and supported by many in Congress. So they set it in motion.
That said, Trump might not stop it or step in.
That means Trump being president has not positive impact on TikTok remaining in the US? Well I thought time will tell how things go
His absence was notable considering that of all the top tech companies, TikTok faces the most immediate and existential threat from the U.S. government. In April, President Joe Biden signed a law that requires China's ByteDance to sell TikTok by Jan. 19. If ByteDance fails to comply, internet hosting companies and app store owners such as Apple and Google will be prohibited from supporting TikTok, effectively banning it in the U.S.
Trump's return to the White House, though, may provide a lifeline for Chew and TikTok.
Although both Republicans and Democrats supported the Biden TikTok ban in April, Trump voiced opposition to the ban during his candidacy. Trump acknowledged the national security and data privacy concerns with TikTok in a March interview with CNBC's "Squawk Box," but he also said "there's a lot of good and there's a lot of bad" with the app.
Trump also leveraged TikTok's shaky future in the U.S. as a reason for people to vote against Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris.
Article
Snowflake hackers identified and charged with stealing 50 billion AT&T records
The U.S. Department of justice indicted two hackers for breaking into the systems of AT&T and several other companies.
The U.S. government has accused Connor Moucka and John Binns of being the hackers who broke into the systems of AT&T, stealing around 50 billion customer call and text records.
#att #doj #hacking #snowflake #record #data
what exactly do they plan on doing with 50 billion AT&t records😳
Selling them to OpenAI for AI training. LOL
oh oh oh, I never considered it. All this while when it came to data I thought selling to other businesses for ads but now people can sell to AI companies 🤦 this is massive heist of the century that much data would be Worth millions
Data is the new oil. The difference is that on something like Leo, we can create our own oil fields.
That's a powerful point man. Which means Elon has no problem with training his xAI and neither will Mark Zuckerberg but I think after OpenAI brings search, the search queries and interaction could create data
In July, AT&T said hackers stole the phone records of “nearly all” of its cellular and landline customers, as well as calls and text message records — such as who contacted whom by phone or text — but not the content of the messages. At the time, AT&T said it would notify around 110 million AT&T customers of the breach, and that the records were stolen from its systems hosted on Snowflake, a provider of cloud services for data analysis.
Until the Department of Justice’s indictment against the two hackers, which was filed on Sunday, the total number of stolen AT&T customer records was unknown.
The document does not mention AT&T. Instead, it mentions “Victim-2,” describing it as “a major telecommunications company located in the United States,” which was breached around April 14. When AT&T previously confirmed it was breached, it said the company learned of the hack on April 19. This means that both the description of what kind of company Victim-2 is, and the dates of its breach, align with what AT&T had publicly disclosed, making it almost certain that Victim-2 is indeed AT&T.
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that's a lot of access and if they're able to get details of customer finance or anything related to their wallets, it's disastrous
Carsten Helbing, designated future co-CEO of the joint venture, said: “We have made a successful start. Over the past few months, we’ve created the framework for bringing together the JV teams and pooling our resources. We are thrilled with the rapid progress we have achieved in the preparatory phase. This has laid the foundation for our future success.”
big congrats to Carsten, how to see more from him in the company
Apple is going after Google and Amazon with a new smart home competitor
Apple's competitor to Google Nest and Amazon Echo will prominently feature Apple Intelligence and Siri
Apple (AAPL) is working on a smart home device to compete with rivals Amazon (AMZN) and Google (GOOGL).
#apple #google #amazon #technology #echo #nest #ai
the competition with these tech companies has gotten tighter. I see that nowadays most of their innovation surrounds AI and IOT
We need to keep pushing to ensure things can spread out even further. There needs to be more competition than just between Big Tech.
That is a loser for the masses.
you're very right on this one man. Infact what makes centralization worse is when the power is with a few big companies
Bloomberg, citing unnamed sources familiar with Apple’s plans, reports that the iPhone maker is developing what will be a wall-mounted home “command center” that will be able to control appliances, call up Apple’s voice assistant Siri, and carry out video calls.
The product, internally known as J490, is set to be announced as soon as March, Bloomberg reports, and the company hopes it will make a splash in the smart home market.
The device will be something of a square iPad, according to Bloomberg, with an approximately 6-inch touchscreen and a thick-bordered display. It will also feature a front camera, a rechargeable built-in battery, and internal speakers, and it will come in silver and black.
Apple is reportedly expecting most people to control the device with their voice, using Siri and Apple Intelligence, Apple’s recently rolled out suite of artificial intelligence tools.
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Japan is ramping up efforts to revive its once dominant chip industry
Japan has announced its latest plan to boost the country's chip and AI industries as it works to regain its leading position in semiconductor technology.
The proposal will provide support worth 10 trillion yen ($65 billion) or more by fiscal 2030, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said earlier this week.
#semiconductor #japan #technology #chips
"We will formulate a new assistance framework to attract more than 50 trillion yen in public and private investment over the next 10 years," Ishiba said, adding it would be part of broader "revitalization" efforts in Japan.
The plan will be part of a comprehensive economic package to be finalized in November and will be financed through subsidies, government institution investments and debt guarantees, according to local media.
The move comes amid broader efforts by Japan to bolster and diversify its semiconductor supply chain, with the government aiming to triple sales of domestically produced chips to more than 15 trillion yen by 2030.
Article
65 billion dollars is definitely enough to get them back in the race. But US, China and Europe will respond with more investments especially China government they believe in innovation so much they invest like crazy
Rivian-Volkswagen joint venture deal rises to up to $5.8 billion, VW cars expected as early as 2027
The companies said the deal is now up to $5.8 billion, with the first VW models to use Rivian's software and electrical architecture arriving as early as 2027.
Volkswagen Group has increased its planned investment in an announced joint venture with electric vehicle maker Rivian Automotive ahead of the operations launching Wednesday.
#vw #rivian #joinventure #ev #automotive #technology
And here we go with the race to who dominates EV by 2030. I think there's a chance Tesla will rise but they need to make cheaper cars. As for VW they already got a lot of stocks so this investment should make a difference
Legacy auto is in trouble. The automotive industry is changing completely. Here is where we see the inability to get ahead technologically hindering companies.
Rivian needs money and VW needs tech. This could be a good venture between the two.
Perfect agreement can be reached between the two companies 👍
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The companies in a joint press release Tuesday said the size of the deal is now up to $5.8 billion — an increase from an initial investment of up to $5 billion — with the first VW models to use Rivian's software and electrical architecture arriving as early as 2027.
Shares of Rivian were up by more than 6% during after-hours trading.
The increase in investment was a result of the companies pulling ahead some potential future capital from VW, as well as changes in the deal's structure, including in equity investment, officials said Tuesday during an investor call.
VW Group CEO Oliver Blume during a press conference Tuesday said the German automaker expects to use Rivian's technologies across a wide range of price points, international markets and brands.
The integration of Rivian's software is expected to start with the Volkswagen brand, followed by Audi as well as VW's forthcoming Scout brand, Blume said. He also mentioned "sports cars" could be included but did not specify which brand. VW's brands also include Bentley, Porsche and Lamborghini, among others.
"We're thrilled to see our technology being integrated in vehicles outside of Rivian, and we're excited for the future," Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe said in a statement.
Article
AI models are getting trained with data generated by AI itself. Is this something we should be concerned about or is this the beginning of AI self training and self evolution?
Japan’s Pursuit of a Game-Changing Technology and Ecosystem for Semiconductors
With the goal of revitalizing Japan’s semiconductor industry, Rapidus aims to develop a system for mass producing next-generation 2-nm chips.
With the goal of revitalizing Japan’s semiconductor industry, Rapidus was founded to establish design and manufacturing bases for next-generation chips. This article explores the company’s quest to develop a 2-nanometer (nm) chip mass production system that boasts high speed and can meet various requests, as well as the strategies being taken to achieve this.
#japan #semiconductors #technology #chips
In December 2022, IBM, which developed the 2-nm chip, and Rapidus, which will carry out its mass production, announced that they would be forming a partnership for joint development.
Next-generation semiconductors are a core material for realizing digitalization and decarbonization, and are also indispensable to generative AI and autonomous driving. Securing a supply chain for such chips is a pressing global issue. Against that backdrop, Rapidus Corporation was founded in 2022 to work on a project at the heart of Japan’s semiconductor strategy. Rapidus aims to develop a system for mass producing leading-edge 2-nanometer (nm) chips, which has yet to be realized anywhere. Major Japanese companies—including Toyota Motor Corporation and the Sony Group—have invested a total of 7.3 billion yen in this massive public-private partnership, while the Japanese government has announced support totaling 330 billion yen so far. A large-scale R&D facility and production plant is currently under construction in Chitose City, Hokkaido Prefecture. The company plans to set up a pilot production line in April of 2025, and to begin mass production in 2027.
Japan occupied more than half of the global semiconductor market in the 1980s, but other countries have been leading in this industry ever since. While plants in other parts of the world are currently mass producing 3-nm chips, the most advanced generation produced in Japan now is the 40-nm chip. “The architecture of the 2-nm chip is totally different from that of the 3-nm one, making mass production of the former a blank-slate challenge for all players. This critical juncture is a prime opportunity to break into the market,” said SHINDO Yukiko, senior human resources manager at Rapidus.
Article
Ethereum has been struggling, with big investors selling off. Bitcoin is doing better. However I think Ethereum can still be useful for a diverse investment portfolio.
I wonder what's going to happen in 2025
DirecTV says Dish purchase is off
DirecTV's proposed acquisition of Dish assets is most likely dead after a group of bondholders rejected a revised offer.
DirecTV is abandoning its acquisition of Dish assets after a group of bondholders refused to accept the terms of a proposed debt offer, a DirecTV spokesperson said.
#dish #directv #entertainment #broadcast #television
"A successful exchange was a condition for acquiring the Dish video business," the spokesperson said in an email Tuesday. "Given the outcome of the EchoStar exchange, DirecTV will have no choice but to terminate the acquisition of Dish by midnight on Nov. 22."
DirecTV does not plan to offer further concessions, according to people familiar with the matter who requested anonymity to discuss confidential information. Further progress could be made if Dish and co-founder and Chairman Charlie Ergen were to come to the negotiating table, though that currently seems unlikely, said one of the people.
DirecTV, which will soon be wholly owned by private equity firm TPG, would have assumed roughly $10 billion worth of Dish debt and paid a nominal $1 to acquire Dish DBS, which includes both Dish and Sling TV. But the initial deal was quickly contested by a group of bondholders. DirecTV made a revised offer that valued Dish bonds at a little more than 70 cents on the dollar.
Bloomberg was first to report on DirecTV's plans.
Article
Rivian and VW Press Release:
Faster, Leaner, More Efficient: Rivian and Volkswagen Group Announce the Launch of their Joint Venture
Rivian Automotive (NASDAQ: RIVN) and Volkswagen Group (XETRA: VOW / VOW3) entered into a transaction agreement to create their new joint venture (JV)
IRVINE, Calif. & WOLFSBURG, Germany--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Rivian Automotive (NASDAQ: RIVN) and Volkswagen Group (XETRA: VOW / VOW3) entered into a transaction agreement to create their new joint venture (JV) – “Rivian and VW Group Technology, LLC”, known as Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies – with a total deal size of up to $5.8 billion, which is expected to start on November 13. Through this JV, the companies plan to bring next-generation electrical architecture and best-in-class software technology for both companies’ future electric vehicles, covering all relevant vehicle segments, including subcompact cars. It is highly complementary reflecting Rivian’s industry-leading software and electrical hardware technology as well as Volkswagen Group’s significant global scale and industry-leading vehicle platform competencies.
The joint venture will be headed by Wassym Bensaid (Rivian) and Carsten Helbing (Volkswagen Group). Developers and software engineers from both companies will join the joint venture. Teams will be based in Palo Alto, California initially, and three other sites are in development in North America and Europe. By combining their complementary expertise, the two companies plan to reduce development costs and scale new technologies more quickly. The goal is to be able to offer customers the best technological solution as early as possible.
Oliver Blume, CEO of Volkswagen Group, said: “The partnership with Rivian is the next logical step in our software strategy. With its implementation, we will strengthen our global competitive and technological position. Today’s launch of the joint venture demonstrates the potential we want to leverage together in the coming years. We have a clear plan to offer our customers the best products and digital experiences at attractive prices through state-of-the-art development processes, innovative technological approaches, and a competitive cost base driven by synergies.”
RJ Scaringe, Founder and CEO of Rivian, said: “Today’s finalization of our joint venture with Volkswagen Group marks an important step forward in helping transition the world to electric vehicles. We’re thrilled to see our technology being integrated in vehicles outside of Rivian, and we’re excited for the future. Rivian will continue to stay focused on creating best in class products and services that benefit our customers, helping to drive EV adoption.”
The JV will aim to use the existing Rivian electrical architecture and software technology stack, enabling the launch of Rivian’s R2 in the first half of 2026 and support the expected launch of the first models from the Volkswagen Group as early as 2027.
The JV will evolve this modular and flexible state-of-the-art electrical architecture. It will scale the technology across a wide range of price points and international markets, paving the way for new generations of high-volume vehicles that are fully capable of advanced automated driving functions and can integrate over-the-air updates (OTA) and upgrades. Customers will regularly receive new software updates, increasing the added value throughout the entire lifecycle of the vehicle.
Teams from Rivian and Volkswagen Group have already successfully demonstrated the potential of their collaboration. In just twelve weeks, the team developed an initial drivable demonstrator vehicle. A Volkswagen Group vehicle has been retrofitted to run on Rivian’s proven in-market zonal hardware design and integrated technology platform. The drivable demonstrator vehicle not only highlights the scalability and integration capabilities of both companies, but it also further proves the concept for the joint venture.
Wassym Bensaid, co-CEO of the joint venture, said: “We’re excited to have entered into this joint venture, and welcome colleagues from both Rivian and Volkswagen Group to our new venture. The aim of the joint venture is to speed up innovation, increase scale and lower the cost of owning an EV for millions of people around the world. I’m hugely impressed by the work done already. While the demonstrator vehicle only scratches the surface of what is possible, it’s incredibly exciting to see what is possible when a new OEM and a legacy automaker work closely together.”
Volkswagen Group plans to invest up to $5.8 billion in Rivian and the joint venture by 2027. An initial investment of $1 billion in the form of a convertible note has already been made. At closing of the Joint Venture, Volkswagen Group will invest about $1.3 billion as consideration for background IP licenses and a 50% equity stake in the joint venture. These investments also balance part of lower future costs identified during the technical feasibility tests and the sharing of costs for the inclusion of selected Volkswagen MEB models. The remaining investment of up to $3.5 billion is expected to come in the form of equity, convertible notes, and debt at future dates and based on clearly defined milestones. Further investments are tied to clear operational, technical, and financial milestones. The joint venture will operate as an independent company.
Through the partnership, Volkswagen Group aims to strengthen consumer benefits surrounding innovation, scalable platform and cost savings potential for both sides, as well as enhancing its R&D cost efficiency and thus sustainably reduce overall expenditure in this area.
Did You know that you can use ChatGPT to create a PowerPoint by asking it to generate slides, summarize documents or even use a special bot for easy presentations.
OpenAI is on steroids and it's only going to get better
single paragraphs
This includes guidelines governing how the public and private sector collaborate, deploying AI in society, complying with both the AI Act and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), mitigating risks and reducing bias, scaling AI implementation, storing data securely, and training up staff.
Netcompany CEO André Rogaczewski said the provisions laid out in the white paper were primarily aimed at companies in heavily regulated industries, such as in financial services. He told CNBC he's aiming to address one core question: "How can we scale the responsible usage of AI?"
Trump initially floated the idea of an efficiency commission in September. Since then, Musk — who has called himself the "Dogefather" in the past and has been known to make public comments about the memecoin that influence its price — has posted on his social media platform X, referring to the commission as the "Department of Government Efficiency" or "D.O.G.E."
What is the EU AI Act?
The EU AI Act is a landmark law that aims to govern the way companies develop, use and apply AI. It came into force in August, after previously receiving final approval from EU member states, lawmakers, and the European Commission — the executive body of the EU — in May.
The law applies a risk-based approach to governing AI, meaning various applications of the technology are treated differently depending on the risk level they pose. It's been touted as the world's first major AI law that will give firms clarity under a harmonized, EU-wide regulatory framework.
Dogecoin gained relevance in 2021 following Musk's endorsement and continuous hype on social media, which has since become a big catalyst for the coin. In May that year, Musk's posts fueled dogecoin's rally to its all-time high of 67 cents, per Coin Metrics. Though his appearance at the time on SNL, in which he called dogecoin "a hustle," sent its price crashing down.
Though the rules are technically in effect, implementation them is a lengthy process. Most of the provisions of the Act — including rules for general-purpose AI systems like OpenAI's ChatGPT — won't materialize until at least 2026, at the end of a two-year transition period.
"It is absolutely vital for the competitiveness of our businesses and future progress of Europe that both the private and public sector will succeed in developing and using AI in the years to come," Caroline Stage Olsen, Denmark's minister of digital affairs, told CNBC, calling the white paper a "helpful step" toward that goal.
The rest of the crypto market was on pause from its postelection rally. Bitcoin was trading flat at about $87,000, after briefly touching $90,000 in late afternoon trading. Crypto stocks Coinbase and MicroStrategy were lower by 1% and 2%, respectively, in extended trading.
Netcompany's Rogaczewski told CNBC that pitched the idea for a white paper to some of Denmark's biggest banks and insurance firms some months ago. He found that, though each organization was "experimenting" with AI, institutions lacked a "common standard" to get the most out of the tech.
Rogaczewski hopes the Danish white paper will also offer a blue print for other countries and businesses seeking to simplify compliance with the EU AI Act.
Microsoft's decision to sign up to the guidelines is of particular note. "Getting Microsoft involved was important since generative AI solutions often involve algorithms and global tech," said Rogaczewski, adding the tech giant's involvement underlines how responsible digitization is possibility across borders.
The U.S. tech giant is a major backer of ChatGPT developer OpenA, which secured a $157 billion valuation this year. Microsoft also licenses OpenAI's technology out to enterprise firms via its Azure cloud computing platform.
Dogecoin jumped after President-elect Donald Trump announced the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency, or "DOGE."
Memecoins are seen as a gauge of retail interest and risk appetite in crypto. When memecoin activity ramps up, it usually indicates that retail investors are participating and have an appetite to speculate further out on the risk curve.
Global monthly average users for the messaging app rose by 3% from a year ago to 1.38 billion in the third quarter.
Advertising spend from games and e-commerce gained ground, more than offsetting a revenue drop from real estate and food and beverage.
Mortgage rates continued to climb last week as investors considered the future of the economy under a Trump presidency. The mortgage market basically took a breather.
Total application volume was essentially flat, rising just 0.5% last week, compared with the previous one, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association's seasonally adjusted index. While tiny, the increase marked the first rise in overall demand in seven weeks.
The company also boasted the benefits of employing its self-developed artificial intelligence tools, amid a broader global boom in the AI space:
"We are increasingly seeing tangible benefits of deploying AI across our products and operations including marketing services and cloud, and will continue investing in AI technology, tools and solutions that assist users and partners," Tencent said in an earnings release.
The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances of $766,550 or less increased to 6.86% from 6.81%, with points decreasing to 0.60 from 0.68, including the origination fee, for loans with a 20% down payment.
"Mortgage rates continued to increase last week, driven by higher Treasury yields as financial markets digested the likely impacts of a Trump presidency," said Joel Kan, the Mortgage Bankers Association's deputy chief economist. "The Federal Reserve's 25-basis-point rate cut was already anticipated and did little to move the markets."
The company said that search within the Weixin app saw growth in commercial queries and click-through rates, thanks to large language model capabilities.
In June, Tencent upgraded an advertising feature that uses AI to select or help create targeted ads that sit inside articles and videos based inside its messaging app. That update drove a nine-fold increase from last year in the number of accounts using the feature — to more than 200,000 users, according to the company.
Applications to refinance a home loan, which are most sensitive to weekly moves in interest rates, fell 2% for the week to the lowest level since May. They were, however, 43% higher than the same week one year ago. Last year at that time, mortgage rates were 75 basis points higher.
Applications for a mortgage to purchase a home rose 2% for the week and were 1% higher than the same week one year ago. Homebuyers may be looking at lower rates than last year, but they are also seeing higher home prices. Meanwhile, the supply of homes for sale remains lean.
Tencent has sought to build up its short video accounts and mini-program e-commerce offerings to compete with ByteDance's Douyin — the local version of TikTok — and major online shopping platforms.
In the third quarter, Tencent said mini programs' gross merchandise value — an industry measure of sales over time— expanded by the "high teens" from a year ago to more than 2 trillion yuan, as people used the app for help with ordering food, electric vehicle charging and medical services.
Kan noted that applications for loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs helped drive stronger purchase activity, increasing 3% and 9%, respectively.
"FHA mortgage rates bucked the overall trend and were lower over the week, which likely helped some borrowers," Kan said. "Conventional purchase applications were also up slightly."
Mortgage rates moved higher this Tuesday; the bond market was closed Monday for the Veterans Day holiday.
"The market continues to work through election-related volatility," wrote Matthew Graham, chief operating officer at Mortgage News Daily. "That involves a complex set of considerations. Some of them have to do with actual expectations for changes in fiscal policy in the coming years. Some of the considerations are as simple as traders going through the process of exiting (and re-setting) trading positions heading into the election."
pecial counsel Jack Smith and his team plan to resign before President-elect Donald Trump takes office, a source familiar with the matter said.
Smith’s office was evaluating the best path for winding down its work on the two outstanding federal criminal cases against Trump, as the Justice Department’s longstanding position is that it cannot charge a sitting president with a crime.
The New York Times first reported Smith will step down.
He predicted that Chinese and American companies will be competing on technology into the distant future and urged U.S. and European companies to collaborate to grow economies and bring new advancements like artificial intelligence to the rest of the world.
Microsoft CEO Brad Smith participates in a meeting at The Westin Palace Hotel, on 20 May, 2022 in Madrid, Spain.
Jack Smith, the special counsel who pursued two federal prosecutions of Donald J. Trump, plans to finish his work and resign along with other members of his team before Mr. Trump takes office in January, people familiar with his plans said.
Mr. Smith’s goal, they said, is to not leave any significant part of his work for others to complete and to get ahead of the president-elect’s promise to fire him within “two seconds” of being sworn in.
Microsoft has operated in China since 1992, according to the company's web page, including through its largest research and development center outside the U.S. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said last year that the firm wasn't focused on China as a domestic market, but that it provides services to Chinese companies and has a more visible presence locally than do many other U.S. tech giants.
Before Trump’s re-election last week, Smith and his team had taken significant steps in their election interference case against Trump. After Trump’s victory, however, the federal judge overseeing the case said she would pause the process to allow the special counsel’s office time to decide how to proceed.
The Justice Department indicted Trump last year in their investigation of his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. But Smith’s case was hindered in July of this year by the Supreme Court’s ruling that he has immunity for some conduct as president in his federal election interference case. In August, Trump was charged with the same four counts after a federal grand jury returned a superseding indictment in the case following the immunity ruling.
Mr. Smith, who since taking office two years ago has operated under the principle that not even a powerful ex-president is above the law, now finds himself on the defensive as he rushes to wind down a pair of complex investigations slowed by the courts and ultimately made moot by Mr. Trump’s electoral victory.
Mr. Smith’s office is still drawing up its plan for how to end the cases, and it is possible that unforeseen circumstances — such as judicial rulings or decisions by other government officials — could alter his intended timeline. But Mr. Smith is trying to finish his work and leave before Mr. Trump returns to power, the people familiar with his plans said.
Asked about whether trade and tech transfers — or the movement of data, designs or innovations — with China will get more challenging as Washington transitions between the administrations of U.S. incumbent leader Joe Biden and President-elect Donald Trump, Smith it was too early tor know.
"The truth is, as an American technology company, we can do business in China only when we are offering a service that the Chinese government wants to have there, and the U.S. government wants us to bring there," he said, adding, "And in some cases they look at, say, a data center to support a Mercedes or a Siemens or a Starbucks or a General Motors — there seems to be a level of comfort. In consumer services, not really."
The election’s outcome spelled the end of the federal cases against Mr. Trump, since Justice Department policy has long held that a sitting president cannot be prosecuted for crimes. A Supreme Court ruling this summer significantly expanded the scope of official presidential conduct that cannot be prosecuted even after leaving office.
As he prepares for his last act as special counsel, Mr. Smith’s ultimate audience will not be a jury, but the public.
The Justice Department had also charged Trump in Florida with allegedly mishandling classified documents after he left office. But a federal judge dismissed the case in July, saying Smith’s appointment was illegal.
President-elect Donald Trump said Tuesday that Elon Musk and former Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy will lead an efficiency group when his second term begins in January.
Trump wrote in a post that the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, will "become, potentially, 'The Manhattan Project' of our time." He also said the group would, "pave the way" for his next administration to "dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies."
One likely beneficiary of the funding announced Monday will be Japan-based Rapidus, a state-backed chip venture at the heart of the country's chip revitalization efforts.
Founded in 2022 by the Japanese government, Rapidus has backing from a host of Japanese firms— including Toyota Motor and the Sony Group — and is collaborating with U.S. tech giant IBM.
Trump didn't specify where cuts will take place or when the department may be formed. Congress hasn't created or funded such an office. He said the group's "work will conclude no later than July 4, 2026."
Musk's involvement in the envisioned group was previously promised by Trump and touted by the Tesla CEO, who spent an estimated $200 million backing the Republican nominee's 2024 campaign, as a reason to put the former president back in the White House. Musk, who also runs defense contractor SpaceX, has reportedly been stationed at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida since Election Night.
The company has already received over $2 billion in government support as it aims to mass-produce cutting-edge 2-nanometer logic chips by 2027.
Logic chips are used to process information and complete tasks within electronic devices. The most advanced logic chips are used in technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing and machine learning.
Rapidus chairman Tetsuro Higashi has reportedly called the company Japan's "last opportunity" to regain a leading semiconductor position on the global stage as it looks to catch up with leaders like Taiwan and South Korea.
In the 1980s, Japan was the world's dominant chip player and occupied more than half of the global semiconductor market.
CNBC's Jim Cramer examined Tuesday's market action, saying the rally fueled by the victory of President-elect Donald Trump took a breather as Wall Street weighs what broad tax cuts could mean for the bond market.
"If you believe we're about to get big tax cuts, remember that somebody eventually has to pay for the missing tax receipts — as boring as that is — even if that means the government borrows a lot more money, causing bond yields to spike," he said.
However, the country began losing its leading edge with the emergence of foreign competitors like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., now the world's dominant contract chip manufacturer, and South Korea's Samsung.
Both Samsung and TSMC have laid out plans to begin commercial production of 2-nanometer chips by 2025.
The major indexes declined Tuesday with the Dow Jones Industrial Average closing down 0.86%, while the S&P 500 shed 0.29% and Nasdaq Composite slipped 0.09%. Cramer called the day's moves a "sobering reaction to the potential unfunded tax cuts from the bond market," as both the 10-year and 2-year Treasury yields surged more than 4%. The bond market and the stock market usually have a negative correlation, with investors coming in and out of each depending on yields.
Meanwhile, the U.S. has become a key player in chip design, with companies like Intel and Micron, while the Netherlands makes the world's most advanced chip-making equipment through its company ASML.
Trump campaigned on the promise of tax cuts across a wide swath of sectors. Many on Wall Street expect these cuts will come in aggregate, but remain unsure of the specifics, Cramer noted. He suggested that if Trump's new tax plans are similar to those he implemented in 2016, wealthy people will stand to benefit the most — which may not help the economy but will usually help the market see gains.
Though it has lost its leadership in semiconductor production and manufacturing, Japan remains a leader in certain semiconductor materials and equipment, Michael Yang, senior director of semiconductors at analyst and consulting firm Omdia, told CNBC.
Through its chip subsidies, which have mostly been geared toward increasing manufacturing capacity, the country should be able to expand into other aspects of the supply and enhance its position, Yang added.
After investors spent days reveling at the thought of how tax cuts could boost earnings, they may now be anticipating how the U.S. will be forced to make up for those lost contributions — usually by selling bonds, Cramer added. He rebuked a few theories about other ways the government could recover these funds, such as increased tariffs or some sort of plan to drastically trim the deficit thought up by a newly-empowered Tesla CEO Elon Musk, a close ally of Trump.
Still, regaining the chip market will be an uphill battle for Japan and will require Rapidus to find a "shortcut" in chip design and production to reach the level of advancement of leading semiconductor companies, said Brady Wang, semiconductor analyst at Counterpoint Research.
Rapidus representatives have said that the architecture of the 2-nanometer chip is different from that of 3-nanometer ones, making mass production of the former a "blank-slate challenge for all players," and presenting a prime opportunity to break into the market.
"We can only hope the stock market goes back to ignoring long-term interest rates, or that those rates come back down in response to some benign inflation numbers," Cramer said. "Otherwise, you got to expect more days like today."
Those bondholders, who constitute a sizable portion of Dish's creditor base, rejected the renewed offer earlier this week.
The likely collapse of the deal would leave Dish in a difficult financial position. Pay TV has been in a long and accelerating decline, and Dish parent company EchoStar on Tuesday reported earnings that disappointed investors, sending shares plunging nearly 13%.
However, in this endeavor, "subsidies are a must-have, but cannot guarantee their success," Wang said, adding that it took TSMC over a decade to catch up to global chip firms and build relationships with customers.
"Subsidies are only a basic requirement for entering the semiconductor industry, but success requires more supportive measures, such as talent, technology, and strategic planning," said Ken Kuo, senior research vice president at tech market intelligence firm TrendForce.
A representative for EchoStar didn't immediately return a request for comment. A representative for TPG didn't immediately provide a comment.
In addition to trying to establish a dominant chip producer in Japan, subsidies have also been aimed at attracting the global leaders that once took its chip business.
With aid from the Japanese government, chipmakers such as TSMC, Samsung Electronics, and Intel Corp have agreed to invest billions of dollars into Japan.
Such companies are leaders in producing memory chips used to store data, which are essential in data centers used for AI and cloud computing.
TSMC has already announced plans to build a second fabrication plant in Japan ahead of the completion of its first.
According to Counterpoint's Wang, attracting such companies entering Japan can help the country quickly boost vertical integration across the supply chain and more quickly build up its semiconductor ecosystem.
Japan has also signed collaboration agreements — with allies such as the U.S., the U.K., Taiwan and a number of EU countries — that are aimed at advancing research and development involving next-generation semiconductors.
The first, essential step in achieving mass production is collaboration with overseas partners. According to Shindo, “We need to cooperate with various companies around the world, since particular technologies and processes are being advanced by different leading-edge firms.” In 2022, Rapidus formed a partnership with IBM, which has successfully developed the 2-nm chip technology. Around 100 engineers from Rapidus have already been dispatched to IBM’s R&D center—the Albany NanoTech Complex in the state of New York—to jointly develop technology for the chip’s mass production. It also plans to open a business base in Silicon Valley, home to major IT and AI development companies. Additionally, Rapidus has formed a cooperative relationship with Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (imec), an international organization in Belgium for semiconductor research, to receive technical support in such matters as the development of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography systems.
President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday named Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host and military veteran, as his pick for defense secretary.
In a statement, Trump described Hegseth as "tough, smart and a true believer in America First."
"With Pete at the helm, America's enemies are on notice — Our Military will be Great Again, and America will Never Back Down," Trump said.
Speed and customization are the key features of the production system being pursued by Rapidus. The company aims to establish a system that enables flexible responses to the needs of rapidly evolving, innovative fields such as AI. The semiconductor manufacturing process consists of (1) the design of the circuit, (2) the front-end process, in which the circuit is formed on the silicon wafer, and (3) the back-end process, in which the wafer is diced into individual chips and turned into products. As these processes are usually undertaken by different companies, even 3-nm chips require nearly two years from development to production. Rapidus aims to conduct both the front-end and back-end processes in-house, and also to support product design that optimizes production by utilizing big data obtained in the front-end process, thereby accelerating the speed of production exponentially—“like the difference between a regular slow train and a bullet train.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., applauded Trump's selection, calling Hegseth a "great choice."
"Pete brings a lot to the table. He's got experience, and I think he'll be reform-minded in the areas that need reform. So I'm excited about the pick," Johnson told reporters on Capitol Hill, without elaborating on what programs he thinks need changing.
Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said he was caught off guard by Trump's announcement.
“Now 20 to 30 employees join Rapidus every month. Although varying in age and specialty, they share the strong desire to accomplish the same goal,” said SHINDO Yukiko, the company’s senior human resources manager.
"I confess, I did not know who Pete Hegseth was until about 20 minutes ago," Smith told reporters.
"He does not seem to have much of a detailed background in [Department of Defense] policy. To the extent he's worked on any of that stuff, it has been on veterans policy, not on DoD issues. So the lack of experience is concerning," Smith said.
"Now I have not heard what his plans are, so we will see what his plans are," he added. "But it was surprising and is concerning, just given that lack of experience. You know, the Pentagon, biggest bureaucracy in the world. It's a hard thing to run, so I think it's going to be a challenge."
Organizations such as imec, along with the major chip-making equipment manufacturers ASML, Lam Research, and Applied Materials, have already decided to establish bases around the Rapidus plant in Hokkaido, and other related companies are expected to follow soon after. Blessed with vast land and abundant nature, the large plant at Chitose, reportedly constructed at a total cost of 5 trillion yen, is expected to involve several hundred engineers from Japan and abroad by the time operation starts.
During an interview on the podcast "The Shawn Ryan Show" released last week, Hegseth denounced what he called diversity, equity and inclusion "woke s---" in the military and outlined a plan to "course correct it."
"Well, first of all, you gotta fire — you've got to fire the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and obviously, you're going to bring in a new secretary of defense. But any general that was involved — general, admiral, whatever that was involved — in any of the DEI woke s--- has got to go," Hegseth said.
Shindo noted, “Across-the-board capabilities—from factory safety and quality control to the ability to move things forward as a team—are the strengths of Japan’s manufacturing. We aim to make the most of those strengths and work with our partners worldwide to establish a new center for the semiconductor industry, contributing to the development of leading-edge technologies that will enrich people’s lives.”
During his first administration, Trump nominated James Mattis and later Mark Esper to lead the Defense Department.
Mattis resigned in December 2018 and suggested in a resignation letter that he and Trump differed in their views on "treating our allies with respect" and being "clear-eyed" about U.S. adversaries and competitors.
In December 2022, immediately after the announcement of the partnership between Rapidus and IBM, Prime Minister Kishida gave an address at the international exhibition SEMICON Japan, stating that the national government will continue to fully support investment in semiconductor mass production in Japan.
Overall, according to the indictment, Moucka and Binns accessed “billions of sensitive customer records,” and were successful in extorting at least three victims of at least 36 bitcoin (around $2.5 million when the victims paid) over a span of almost a year, from around November 2023, until October 10 of this year.
Prosecutors say Moucka, who lived in Canada, is also known online as “judische,” “catist,” “waif,” and “cllyels,” and Binns, who lived in Turkey, was known as “irdev”and “j_irdev1337.” Moucka was arrested in Canada last week. Binns was previously arrested in Turkey, according to 404 Media.
Trump fired Esper in 2020 after disagreements that included the use of active-duty troops to quell nationwide racial justice protests that year after the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis.
Amid a flurry of picks for his second administration, Trump earlier Tuesday said he would nominate former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe to be CIA director.
In August, Binns took credit for the AT&T breach with The Wall Street Journal. Moucka, through his moniker “Judische,” told 404 Media that he thought he’d be arrested soon.
AT&T is just one of several victims who had sensitive data stolen from their Snowflake instances. Over the last months, hackers also broke into Santander Bank, Ticketmaster, and around 165 other corporate customers. All these companies use Snowflake.
On Monday, he tapped Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., as his pick for U.N. ambassador and said he would nominate Lee Zeldin, a former House Republican from New York, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.
Sunday, he named immigration hard-liner Tom Homan as his "border czar."
Prosecutors alleged that by breaking into the victim companies’ Snowflake instances, the hackers stole troves of sensitive personal and corporate data, including social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, passport numbers, and banking information, which makes these Snowflake-related breaches some of the worst cyberattacks of the year. In some cases, the hackers also asked victims for a ransom by threatening them with leaking the stolen information, threats that they followed up on at times.
Wired previously reported that AT&T paid a hacker $370,000 in an attempt to get them to delete the stolen records. Prosecutors said in the indictment that Victim-2 paid a ransom to the hackers.
Trump's first major administration announcement came last week, when he said Susie Wiles, his campaign manager, would be White House chief of staff.
Both Scaringe and Blume said any further plans such as battery modules, joint production of vehicles or sharing other hardware components would need to be in addition to the announced joint venture deal.
The name of the joint venture, which was expected to close during the fourth quarter, is Rivian and VW Group Technology, LLC.
Stock of Rivian Automotive and Volkswagen Group
✓Human resource development under regional public-industry-academia
collaboration tailored to regional characteristics (e.g., consortiums for
human resource development)
✓Developing professionals and global human resources who will play a
leading role in designing a
VW has already made an initial investment of $1 billion in the form of a convertible note, the companies said. At the closing of the joint venture, VW will invest about $1.3 billion "as consideration for background IP licenses and a 50% equity stake in the joint venture."
The remaining investment of up to $3.5 billion is expected to come by 2027 "in the form of equity, convertible notes, and debt at future dates and based on clearly defined milestones," according to the companies.
✓Utilizing frameworks via Japan-U.S. ties (e.g., joint task forces) based
on the Japan-U.S. Basic Principles on Semiconductor Cooperation,
enriching such collaboration, starting with the NSTC and LSTC in the
U.S., and working on the development of next-generation
semiconductors
✓Advancing collaboration with the EU, Belgium, the Netherlands, the UK,
the ROK, Taiwan, and other overseas countries and regions in
developing use cases and advancing R&D involving next-generation
semiconductors in a manner tailored to the needs of partner countries
and regions
Greener
semiconductors
✓ Coping with PFAS regulati
The joint venture deal was initially announced in June and came as Rivian sought to raise additional capital as it launches its redesigned models and prepares for production of new "R2" vehicles in early 2026.
Scaringe previously said the capital from VW is expected to carry the company through the production ramp-up of its smaller R2 SUVs at its plant in Normal, Illinois, starting in 2026, as well as production of a midsize EV platform at a plant in Georgia, where Rivian paused construction earlier this year.
FY2021: 774 billion yen ($ 5.5 Billion)
✓ Capital for advanced semiconductor (5G Promotion Act): 617 billion yen ($4.4B)
✓ Capital for general semiconductor : 47 billion yen ($336M)
✓ R&D (Post 5G R&D Fund): 110 billion yen ($786M)
$1 = 140 yen 5
FY2022: Total 1.3 trillion yen ($9 billion)
✓ Capital for advanced (5G Promotion Act): 450 billion yen ($3.2 B)
✓ Capital for general (Economic Security Act): 368.6 billion yen ($2.6 B)
✓ R&D (Post 5G R&D Fund): 485 billion yen ($3.5 B)
Semiconductor Budget
FY2023: Total 1.85 trillion yen ($13 billion)
✓ Capital for advanced (5G Promotion Act): 632 billion yen ($4.5 B)
The joint venture will be headed by Rivian Chief Software Officer Wassym Bensaid and VW Group Chief Technical Engineer Carsten Helbing.
The companies said developers and software engineers from both companies will join the joint venture. Teams will be based initially in Palo Alto, California, and three other sites are in development in North America and Europe.
The first legislation which includes the concept of economic security
A basic act for economic security measures under the one legislative purpose
bundling together four policy issues:
• 1) Ensuring a Stable Supply of Critical Items
• 2) Ensuring the Stable Provision of Essential Infrastructure Services
• 3) Enhancing Development of Advanced Critical Technologies
• 4) Non-Disclosure of Selected Patent Applications
• Called the Economic Security Promotion Act under the presumption that the
government of Japan must promptly enact from policy fields ready to be
legislated and continue to make revisions while recognizing the remaining policy
challenges, including the necessity of improving informa
"I think humans still have a slight advantage in very hard use cases. But that advantage right now is so razor thin that except for really the ... most difficult use cases, we believe AI is getting really there, and it's hard for me to see right now how three years from now, you will need humans to be translating anything," Pedro said.
"There's still going to be humans responsible for making sure that things get translated and are delivered in the right places," he added.
Widn.AI is the latest product in an increasingly competitive market which includes Google Translate and products from German startup DeepL.
Those companies see translation as a key area in which LLMs can be used effectively and have trained models specifically to tackle various languages.
Pedro acknowledges that the revenue per translated word is going to "drastically reduce." But he said there will be an increase in the amount of content translated which will sustain the company's growth.
Unbabel is speaking to investors and is looking to raise between $20 million and $50 million in funding to fuel the growth and development of Widn.AI, according to Pedro.
The latter uses Eleven Labs’ API, and according to Kutylowski, Eleven Labs itself is using tech from DeepL to power its translation service.
Audio output is not the only feature yet to launch.
There is also no API for the voice product right now. DeepL’s main business is focused on B2B and Kutylowski said the company is working with partners and customers directly.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. doesn't just want a top health-care position in the Trump administration, he wants your suggestions for more than 4,000 posts to be appointed by President-elect Donald Trump across the U.S. government.
Kennedy's "Make America Healthy" website is seeking recommendations for appointees "across the future Trump administration" and allows users to "read, comment and vote" on those people.
Nor is there a wide choice of integrations: The only video calling service that supports DeepL’s subtitles currently is Teams, which “covers most of our customers,” Kutylowski said. There’s no word on when or if Zoom or Google Meet will be incorporating DeepL Voice down the line.
The product will feel like a long time coming for DeepL users, not just because we’ve been awash in a plethora of other AI voice services aimed at translation. Kutylowski said that this has been the No. 1 request from customers since 2017, the year DeepL launched.
The page titled "Nominees for the People!" says "President Trump and Robert F Kennedy Jr want your help nominating people of integrity and courage."
Categories for appointees include "Government Efficiency," "Economy," "America's Health," "Peace at Home," "Peace Abroad," "Food and Agriculture," "Technology," "Labor," "Education," and "Energy and Infrastructure."
Part of the reason for the wait is that DeepL has been taking a pretty deliberate approach to building its product. Unlike many others in the world of AI applications that lean on and tweak other companies’ large language models (LLMs), DeepL’s aim is to build its service from the ground up. In July, the company released a new LLM optimized for translations that it says outperforms GPT-4, and those from Google and Microsoft, not least because its primary purpose is for translation. The company has also continued to enhance the quality of its written output and glossary.
Spokespeople for the Trump transition team did not immediately reply to CNBC when asked whether the president-elect had authorized Kennedy's initiative, and whether the team would consider the responses to the website in staffing the future administration.
A spokeswoman for Kennedy did not immediately reply when asked for comment.
Similarly, one of DeepL Voice’s unique selling points is that it will work in real time, which is important since a lot of “AI translation” services on the market actually work on a delay, making them harder or impossible to use in live situations, which is the use-case that DeepL is addressing.
Kutylowski hinted that this was another reason behind why the new voice-processing product is focusing on text-based translations: They can be computed and produced very fast, while processing and AI architecture still has a way to go before being able to produce audio and video as quickly.
Kennedy, who is a vaccine skeptic and conspiracy theorist, campaigned for president as an independent but suspended his campaign in August and endorsed Trump. The president-elect at a rally in New York in October said that if he won the presidential race he would let Kennedy "go wild on health."
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. makes an announcement on the future of his campaign in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S. August 23, 2024.
Video conferencing and meetings are likely use cases for DeepL Voice, but Kutylowski noted that another major one the company envisions is in the service industry, where front-line workers at, say, restaurants could use the service to help communicate with customers more easily.
This could be useful, but it also highlights one of the rougher points of the service. In a world where we are all suddenly a lot more aware of data protection and concerns about how new services and platforms are co-opting private or proprietary information, it remains to be seen how keen people will be to have their voices being picked up and used in this way.
Kennedy is the most-recommended person under the category "America's Health" on his site, with more than 3,200 votes. He was followed in votes by Dr. Charlie Fagenholz, whose website says he is a "holistic physician trained in chiropractic, frequency and functional medicine," and Sherri Tenpenny, a doctor of osteopathy who told Ohio state legislators that Covid-19 vaccines made people magnetic.
Kutylowski insisted that although voices will be traveling to its servers to be translated (the processing does not happen on-device), nothing is retained by its systems, nor used for training its LLMs. Ultimately, DeepL will work with its customers to make sure that they do not violate GDPR or any other data protection regulations.
To save itself from the music industry’s ire, YouTube last August said — before releasing any of these tools — that it plans to compensate artists and rights holders for using their work in its AI features. To that end, the company announced a partnership with Universal Music Group (UMG) to develop a structure to pay rights holders.
YouTube is not the only company working on providing ways for users to remix tracks. Former JioSaavn exec Gaurav Sharma is building an app called Hook that lets users remix songs that could be used to create short videos.
Just Eat Takeaway itself has been trying to sell Grubhub for years. The company first announced it was looking to sell Grubhub in April 2022 to focus on profitability, less than a year after closing the deal to acquire it, but last year, its CEO said a sale was proving to be “very difficult.”
“The sale of Grubhub to Wonder will increase the cash generation capabilities of Just Eat Takeaway.com and will accelerate our growth,” Jitse Groen, Just Eat Takeaway’s CEO, said in a statement. The company said the sale would allow it to invest in countries where it has a competitive advantage and generate free cash flow.
Wonder’s CEO Marc Lore said that the company aims to create a super app for food delivery through this acquisition.
“We’re excited to soon offer a curated selection of Grubhub’s restaurant partners directly in the Wonder app, alongside our owned and operated restaurants and meal kits. Bringing Wonder and Grubhub together is the next step in our vision to create the super app for meal time, re-envisioning the future of food delivery,” he said in a statement.
Wonder has raised more than $1.7 billion in funding, according to Crunchbase, with backers like Accel, Bain Capital Ventures, Google Ventures, Nestle and Forerunner Ventures.
“We intentionally chose these formats because it integrates advertising in a way that still protects the utility, accuracy and objectivity of answers,” the blog post read. “These ads will not change our commitment to maintaining a trusted service that provides you with direct, unbiased answers to your questions.”
Perplexity’s embrace of ads stands in contrast to OpenAI’s decision not to launch its AI-powered search tool, ChatGPT Search, with ads. Rival Google has similarly piloted ads in its AI search experience, AI Overviews — recently showing ads for certain queries on mobile in the U.S.
President-elect Donald Trump said Tuesday that Elon Musk and former Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy will lead an efficiency group when his second term begins in January.
Trump wrote in a post that the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, will "become, potentially, 'The Manhattan Project' of our time." He also said the group would, "pave the way" for his next administration to "dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies."
Perplexity is reportedly marketing its ad products as a premium alternative to Google’s, emphasizing its platform’s ability to reach educated, high-income consumers, per CNBC. But some analysts have expressed concerns about the scale, reach and targeting capabilities of ads on Perplexity.
Illustrating the challenge of incorporating ads into AI-generated content, Microsoft only briefly explored showing ads in the responses given by its chatbot on Bing. It quietly withdrew the “sponsored results” after a few weeks.
Trump didn't specify where cuts will take place or when the department may be formed. Congress hasn't created or funded such an office. He said the group's "work will conclude no later than July 4, 2026."
Musk's involvement in the envisioned group was previously promised by Trump and touted by the Tesla CEO, who spent an estimated $200 million backing the Republican nominee's 2024 campaign, as a reason to put the former president back in the White House. Musk, who also runs defense contractor SpaceX, has reportedly been stationed at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida since election night.
Perplexity has been accused of plagiarism, though, which could be another potential deterrent for advertisers. News Corp’s Dow Jones and the NY Post have sued the AI company over what they describe as a “content kleptocracy.” Many other news sites have shown evidence that Perplexity closely replicates their content, and last month, The New York Times sent the startup a cease and desist.
Perplexity, which recently said it’s serving 100 million search queries a week, claims it has changed how its platform cites sources, and continues to expand its revenue-sharing program for publishers. But the company has also argued that publishers wished its technology “didn’t exist” and they would prefer that “publicly reported facts are owned by corporations.”
There’s pressure on Perplexity to ramp up monetization. The company is reportedly in the final stages of raising $500 million in funding at a $9 billion valuation, but it has only one revenue stream: its premium subscription service, Perplexity Pro, which provides additional features for $20 per month or $200 per year.
Ramaswamy, who challenged Trump in the Republican primary, is co-founder of investment firm Strive Asset Management. He has opposed the widespread adoption of environmental, social and governance, or ESG, principles by companies.
Trump announced a number of other appointments Tuesday, including naming Fox News host Pete Hegseth as his pick for Defense secretary and John Ratcliffe as CIA director.
Shares of 23andMe closed up 2% on Tuesday. They've slumped about 75% this year after losing more than half their value in 2023, pushing the company's market cap toward $100 million.
Wojcicki, who co-founded 23andMe in 2006, has been working to keep the company afloat after it faced the risk of being delisted from the Nasdaq. Shares were hovering below $1 until 23andMe announced a 1-for-20 reverse stock split in October.
Aurora Flight Sciences seems to have the broadest mandate of all — the Boeing-owned company will “perform a comprehensive, ‘open-aperture’ exploration of technologies and aircraft concepts.” One hopes they were a bit more specific in their application!
Interestingly, none of the electric propulsion and flight startups we’ve seen collecting large sums of investor money are present here. Perhaps the juice was not worth the squeeze when they have VC money on tap — or else their visions for the future of aviation differ are too different. (They do mostly make personal helicopters, after all.)
The AACES project is part of the Advanced Air Transport Technology project, itself part of the Advanced Air Vehicles Program. If there are any more layers on top of that, they didn’t list them.
In September, all seven of the company's independent directors abruptly resigned from the board, writing in a letter that they disagreed with Wojcicki about the "strategic direction for the company." Three new independent directors were appointed to the board in late October.
"We have fulfilled our obligations as a public company and regained compliance with the NASDAQ listing standards by reconstituting our board and executing a reverse stock split," Wojcicki said during 23andMe's earnings call Tuesday.
Wojcicki has repeatedly said she intends to take 23andMe private, though she didn't address the plans Tuesday. In a September filing with the SEC, she said she would not consider third-party takeover proposals, and said the "best path forward" is for her to take the company private.
23andMe declined to comment.
Temu and Shein have been subject to wide criticism over their environmental impact, a byproduct of their worldwide shipping, and the waste caused by fast fashion. Both companies have also been subject to consumer protection probes in the European Union, where regulators are investigating their potential use of addictive design patterns and illegal products.
President-elect Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he will nominate Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, who has clashed with Republican leaders in the House and served as a lightning rod against Democrats, to serve as attorney general in his incoming administration.
In a statement, Mr. Trump said he was nominating Mr. Gaetz because he is a “deeply gifted and tenacious attorney.” He has been one of Mr. Trump’s most loyal defenders in the House.
Despite the controversy surrounding them, these low-cost retailers remain incredibly popular among Gen Z. According to research from app intelligence firm Appfigures, the most popular app among U.S. users ages 18 to 24 was Temu, with almost 42 million downloads in that demographic between January and October 2024. For Shein, that estimate is about 14.7 million downloads, though it’s possible that the difference in download numbers is that stark because Gen Z users have already downloaded Shein, which has been around longer than Temu.
“Matt will end weaponized government, protect our borders, dismantle criminal organizations and restore Americans’ badly-shattered faith and confidence in the Justice Department. … He is a champion for the constitution and the rule of law,” Mr. Trump wrote.
Mr. Trump said Mr. Gaetz will return the Justice Department to what he described as “its true mission of fighting crime and upholding our democracy and constitution.”
“It will be an honor to serve as President Trump’s Attorney General!” Mr. Gaetz responded on X.
One risk for Shein and Temu is that consumers may not feel comfortable making purchases from unknown sellers that could potentially be misleading; consumers have more existing trust in Amazon, but the company is working with similar, largely China-based sellers of mass-produced goods. However, Amazon claims that it screens sellers ahead of time, and if customers want to return their purchase, they can do so for free within 15 days as long as the item is over $3.
It’s a dubious time for Amazon to invest in this business model, given that president-elect Donald Trump has proposed leveraging a 60% tax on imported Chinese goods. This tariff plan isn’t set in stone, though — it’s common for politicians to shift their campaign platforms after they’ve secured a win.
If confirmed by the Senate, Mr. Gaetz, 42, will lead a department that carried out a sex-trafficking investigation into him.
The Justice Department ultimately declined to charge Mr. Gaetz with any wrongdoing after a two-year investigation.
But Mr. Gaetz remains the subject of an ongoing House Ethics Committee investigation into whether he engaged in sexual misconduct, accepted improper gifts, dispensed special privileges or engaged in illicit drug use.
He has denied any wrongdoing, including ever having paid for sex with a minor or paying for sex. In September, Mr. Gaetz said that he would no longer voluntarily participate in the panel’s probe.
However, the popularity of Chinese e-commerce shipments has attracted bipartisan attention. The Biden administration has already proposed congressional action to crack down on what it calls “significant increased abuse” by Chinese e-commerce companies of the “de minimis” exception. The de minimis exemption allows shipments valued under $800 to enter the U.S. duty free, which helps retailers like Temu and Shein maintain such low margins.
A conservative firebrand on Capitol Hill, Mr. Gaetz could take over a Justice Department that Mr. Trump has already pledged to drastically overhaul.
The department with roughly 115,000 employees sits at the center of Mr. Trump’s key campaign promises, including reducing crime and dolling out billions of dollars in grant funding for immigration enforcement, border security and policing.
Mr. Gaetz last year orchestrated the ouster of then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, California Republican, after he struck a deal with Democrats to avoid a government shutdown. He has also been a stalwart loyalist of Mr. Trump since he first came to Washington.
In the post on BreachForums, seen by TechCrunch, Satanic is now offering the database for $3,500.
The nature of the security incident that led to the breach is unknown. According to a report from Hudson Rock, the threat actor may have leveraged credentials stolen via infostealer malware to steal credentials for an analytics platform used by Hot Topic to access the retailer’s cloud environments.
It doesn’t appear that Hot Topic has yet notified customers or state offices of attorneys general about the data breach.
Rapid rose to prominence amid a boom of interest in APIs a decade ago, when APIs were first emerging as the webbing between a disparate number of apps and other services. Rapid’s pitch was that it provided a one-stop place to find and use APIs in what appeared to be a very fragmented market.
But it’s not clear that Rapid found a route to profitability in providing that service. Rapid’s founder Iddo Gino (a wunderkind who started the company aged just 17 in 2015), stepped down as CEO in April 2023, replaced by Marc Friend, and in the weeks following, the startup saw at least two major rounds of layoffs that reduced headcount by 82% (cue headlines of the company’s “Rapid descent“).
“And I believe we are in the midst of a multidecade, secretive arms race — one funded by misallocated taxpayer dollars and hidden from our elected representatives and oversight bodies,” Mr. Elizondo said.
Mr. Elizondo is one of the country’s highest-profile government whistleblowers on UFOs, and his appearance before an on-the-record, public congressional hearing reflects the changing attitudes toward the issue. For decades, the government said hardly anything about its UFO research efforts and dismissed suggestions that some UAP might be extraterrestrial or at least may involve technologies that cannot be explained with today’s science.
Rapid, based out of San Francisco, had raised nearly $273 million in venture funding from big-name investors that included Andreessen Horowitz, Microsoft, and SoftBank, among others.
It’s not clear how many people are actually at Rapid as of now, nor how many would be joining Nokia in the deal. Nokia’s statement emphasizes product more than people, noting that it is acquiring “technology assets, including the world’s largest API hub used by thousands of active developers globally, and its highly skilled research and development unit.”
Last year, the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) directly addressed some of the more far-reaching public claims of former military personnel and other U.S. officials about government contact with aliens. The 60-page study explained in detail the history of government research into UAP, and it specifically denied charges that the Pentagon has known for years about UFOs of extraterrestrial origin and has engaged in a highly secretive program to reverse-engineer their spaceships.
Critics say the report hid the truth. Mr. Elizondo testified that the government does operate secret UAP crash retrieval programs, but lawmakers of both parties said their efforts to learn more have been largely unsuccessful.
For Nokia, the acquisition is an interesting and slightly ironic turn given the Finnish company’s history as a pioneer in the world of mobile.
Back in the 1990s, Nokia set the pace for building mobile networks around the world, and it became the world’s No. 1 handset maker. In the 2000s, however, it missed the boat in the shift to smartphones, where Apple and Google (and Samsung and the hundreds of others building on Google’s Android operating system) took charge. Some argued that one of Nokia’s biggest failings was its inability to build an extensible ecosystem for apps and third parties to build for its smartphones. So it’s interesting that it’s now positioning itself as an enabler for that very purpose.
“When the American people and members of Congress ask, ‘Are reports of UAPs credible?’ We’re met with stonewalling. We’re met with responses of, ‘I can’t tell you.’ In fact, we’re met with people not wanting us to have hearings,” said Rep. Jared Moskowitz, Florida Democrat.
Rep. Nancy Mace, South Carolina Republican and chairwoman of the House Oversight and Accountability subcommittee on cybersecurity, information technology and government innovation, suggested that people in the federal government tried to block Wednesday’s hearing.
“I’m not going to name names, but there are certain individuals who did not want this hearing to happen because they feared what might be disclosed,” she said.
Tim Gallaudet, a retired Navy admiral, was commander of the Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command in 2015 when his personnel in the Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group witnessed unidentified objects in the sky. The incident was captured in the now-famous “GoFast” video.
He testified that Navy personnel immediately informed him of the encounters via email.
Specifically, Nokia sees an opportunity for carriers to encourage more developments on their 5G networks, now built out but in many cases underutilized. Carriers, they say, want more third parties building applications and other services on these networks, and they have launched a new “Network as Code” platform to that end. Rapid’s API framework will exist as part of that initiative. Nokia said that carriers and other service providers signed up to the platform include BT, DISH, Google Cloud, Infobip, Orange, Telefonica, and Telecom Argentina, as well as 20 others.
“We are pleased to join forces with Nokia,” Friend, the CEO of Rapid, said in a statement. “The combination of Rapid’s API technology and R&D expertise with Nokia’s scale and network and API domain expertise will enable us to expand the broader API ecosystem.”
“The very next day, that email disappeared from my account … without explanation,” he said.
Mr. Gallaudet said the encounter was essentially erased from the record without discussion or explanation, leaving his personnel in a potentially vulnerable position.
“Pilots were left to mitigate these threats on their own without guidance or support,” he said.
“GoFast” was one of several high-profile videos showing footage of military personnel’s specific encounters with unexplained craft. In a survey released last year, the government said U.S. military personnel and commercial pilots reported at least 291 UFO sightings since August 2022 and that some of the craft exhibited “high-speed travel,” “unusual maneuverability” and other characteristics that are hard to explain.
The AARO said it had received 801 UAP reports as of April 2023, though the actual number of sightings is thought to be much higher.
John Beieler, the U.S. intelligence community’s AI chief, told The Washington Times in July that the intelligence community was focused on the ethical use of AI and the proper monitoring of models once deployed.
The Department of Defense is busy making an AI overhaul too. The changes include the development of NIPRGPT, a generative AI platform with the approval of the Pentagon that leverages the Non-Classified Internet Protocol Network (NIPRNet).
Previously, siblings were unable to call or message each other due to parental controls. Starting today, this restriction has been lifted, allowing siblings to communicate freely via their Ace LTE devices. However, it’s important to note that while this encourages familial interaction, children are still unable to communicate with friends through the device. Instead, they can add each other in Bit Valley, where their virtual pets, called Eejies — Fitbit’s take on Tamagotchi — live.
Additionally, Family Quests aim to promote family bonding through fitness activities. The latest quest, named Turkey Berserky, is a Thanksgiving-themed challenge that tracks the family’s steps using the Ace LTE and Ace app. The collective goal is to reach 400,000 steps, and as families achieve goals, kids earn tickets to spend on digital items for their Eejies. There are also 50 new daily quests designed to teach kids about geography, nutrition, sleep hygiene, and other topics.
U.S. Central Command chief technology officer Schuyler Moore said in October her team has a chatbot it calls CentGPT, which uses the code base from NIPRGPT built onto a secret network.
AI companies see a promising market in the intelligence agencies and the Pentagon. For example, OpenAI rewrote its rules to allow work with the Department of Defense to advance last year and then recruited a former National Security Agency director to the company’s board earlier this year.
As the transition to a new Trump administration ramps up, the AI makeover of America’s military and defense establishment is not expected to slow down.
Along with quests, the smartwatch includes a Fitbit Arcade for kids to play while they walk or exercise. The newest title is Solar Sword, where players have to protect their village from invading monsters.
Fitbit also rolled out two new watch faces to help kids reach their movement goals. The watch face can be changed by long-pressing the home screen.
The Ace LTE is priced at $230, which aligns with the prices of Google’s older products, such as the Fitbit Sense 2 and Google Pixel Watch 2.
To access any of the features of the Ace LTE, users must sign up for Fitbit’s Ace Pass plan, which costs $10 per month or $119 per year. Additionally, siblings who subscribe to the plan from now until January 31 will receive a 50% discount.
Meanwhile, OpenAI launched ChatGPT’s ability to search the web in October. ChatGPT search provides links to relevant web sources in its responses, “which you would have previously needed to go to a search engine for,” OpenAI said. With web search on ChatGPT, users can ask questions “in a more natural, conversational way.”
“The decision is extremely regrettable,” Japan Atomic Power said in a statement. It said it will continue efforts to restart.
An NRA safety panel concluded three months ago it could not rule out the possibility of active fault lines about 300 meters (330 yards) north of the No. 2 reactor stretching to right underneath the facility, meaning the reactor cannot be operated.
Japan’s government in 2022 adopted a plan to maximize the use of nuclear energy, pushing to accelerate reactor restarts to secure a stable energy supply and meet its pledge to reach carbon neutrality by 2050.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters that safety is the prerequisite for nuclear plant operation and that the government respects the scientific and highly technical decision by the watchdog. He said the government’s position to promote nuclear energy is unchanged.
Concern about the government’s revived push for nuclear energy grew after a magnitude 7.5 earthquake hit Japan’s Noto Peninsula on Jan. 1, 2024, killing more than 400 people and damaging more than 100,000 structures. The quake caused minor damage to two nearby nuclear facilities, and evacuation plans for the region were found to be inadequate.
Earlier that month, AMD launched its Instinct MI325X accelerators and Ryzen AI PRO 300 series processors, along with other leading-edge computing chips, at its Advancing AI conference. Like rival Nvidia (NVDA
-1.18%
), AMD is on “an annual cadence” with releasing new chips, Su said.
“The data center and AI represent significant growth opportunities for AMD, and we are building strong momentum for our EPYC and AMD Instinct processors across a growing set of customers,” Su said.
Building key nuclear facilities, such as reactors, directly above active fault lines is prohibited in earthquake-prone Japan.
Yamanaka said the NRA is not immediately ordering a decommissioning because the reactor, which is offline and its spent fuel safely cooled, will not pose a major threat.
If the utility decides to reapply, it must address not only the faults issue but it also must implement adequate safety measures for the entire plant, Yamanaka said. Providing scientific proof of the status of faults underneath key nuclear facilities is difficult, but other operators that obtained restart permits all cleared the requirement, he noted.
The Tsuruga No. 2 reactor first started commercial operation in February 1987 and has been offline since May 2011. The operator rejected the NRA panel’s 2013 on-site inspection results, which concluded that the faults under the No. 2 reactor were active, and applied for a restart in 2015.
Of more than 50 commercial reactors, 27 have applied for restarts and 17 of them have been approved so far under the post-Fukushima safety standard.
With its new chips, AMD is “delivering leadership compute to power our customers’ most important and demanding workloads,” she added. By 2028, AMD sees the market for data center AI accelerators reaching $500 billion, Su said, adding that the chipmaker is “committed to delivering open innovation at scale through our expanded silicon, software, network and cluster-level solutions.”
Trump made history as the first president to address a bitcoin event when he attended the bitcoin conference in Nashville, Tennessee, where he underscored his commitment to positioning the U.S. at the forefront of the crypto revolution.
Bitcoin advocate and MicroStrategy (MSTR) founder Michael Saylor posted on X after Trump’s win: “We have a #Bitcoin President.”
The wave of frugality marks a distinct departure from the approach taken by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Jassy's predecessor, who was known for greenlighting experimental projects and giving employees extended runway to develop them, even if they burned cash along the way. Grand Challenge was one of the hallmarks of that era.
Bezos launched Grand Challenge in 2014 as a way for Amazon to tinker with riskier projects that may or may not see the light of day. Grand Challenge was the brains behind a pair of connected eyeglasses equipped with Amazon's Alexa voice assistant and a machine learning tool for analyzing medical records.
Dogecoin is surging after the news that the cryptocurrency’s biggest cheerleader, Elon Musk, will head up a “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) — effectively a non-government group that will consult on spending.
The popular memecoin is currently trading at $0.4006, reflecting an increase of over 15% in the past 24 hours and 121% over the last week.
Other major cryptocurrencies such as Ether, Solana, and XRP were also up Tuesday morning, with increases of 0.3%, 1.15%, and 5%, respectively, in the past 24 hours.
Other Grand Challenge projects, including the Amazon Care telehealth service, a video-calling device for kids, a virtual tours service, and an augmented reality headset for meetings, were discontinued.
On the morning of Oct. 28, employees working on the fertility tracker were told to join a videoconference where a director of the team informed them that the project was ending. The call lasted about two minutes, one of the people said.
A layoff notice viewed by CNBC was signed by Doug Weibel, who took over as the head of Grand Challenge after its founding leader, Babak Parviz, left in 2022 and joined Madrona Venture Group.
Margaret Callahan, an Amazon spokesperson, confirmed the layoffs and the existence of the project in a statement to CNBC. Roughly 100 employees will be laid off, Callahan confirmed.
Sen. John Thune on Wednesday won a three-way race among Republicans to become the new Senate majority leader in the next Congress.
The South Dakota Republican, 63, beat Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Rick Scott of Florida for the top Senate GOP leadership post. He replaces 82-year-old Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who decided earlier this year to step down from leadership after a record-breaking 18 years serving as GOP leader.
"We regularly review our businesses to ensure we focus on areas where we can make the biggest difference for customers," Callahan said. "Following a recent review, we've decided to discontinue this project within Grand Challenge, and we're working directly with employees whose roles are impacted to support them through the transition and help them find other opportunities within Amazon."
“I am extremely honored to have earned the support of my colleagues to lead the Senate in the 119th Congress, and I am beyond proud of the work we have done to secure our majority and the White House,” Mr. Thune said in a statement. “This Republican team is united behind President Trump’s agenda, and our work starts today.”
Mr. Thune will be moving up from his current No. 2 spot in leadership as Senate Republican whip. He has also previously served in lower-level leadership roles and as chair of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.
Predicting fertility with saliva
The project was born out of the company's 2020 acquisition of Wisconsin-based startup bluDiagnostics, the sources said.
BluDiagnostics was founded in 2015 by Weibel, Katie Brenner and Jodi Schroll, all of whom joined Grand Challenge. The startup had developed a thermometer-like device, called FertilityFinder, to help women track their fertility from home by testing their saliva and measuring two key hormones, estradiol and progesterone. The results of the test were viewable through a corresponding app.
He was first elected to serve in the House in 1996, serving three terms. He lost his first Senate race in 2002 before a historic win in 2004, when he ousted then-Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle.
It took two ballots to decide the race, as Mr. Thune failed to secure a majority on the first ballot of the 53 returning and newly elected Republican senators who will serve in the majority in the next Congress.
Business Insider reported on aspects of the fertility device in 2022, when its codename was Project Tiberius.
The team was working to develop its own saliva collection device and mobile app, which could predict when a user might be in the fertile window. Users could also log their period symptoms, sexual activity and other data to assist with tracking their fertility. There are similar offerings on the market from companies including Inne, Oova, Ava and Mira, along with fertility and ovulation tracking apps such as Flo, Clue and Max Levchin's Glow.
Mr. Scott, a vocal ally of President-elect Donald Trump, had the most public endorsements from senators heading into the election but was the lowest vote-getter on the first ballot and was dropped from contention for the second ballot.
Mr. Thune won with 29 votes on second ballot, compared to 24 for Mr. Cornyn.
Amazon initially aimed to release the product this year, but the timing was pushed out after the team encountered technical issues with the device, one of the people said. It was a costly endeavor and required significant upfront investments for lab research and development, in addition to the high salaries for scientists and engineers, the sources said, adding that the team's weekly overhead was roughly $1.5 million. Amazon didn't comment on the figure.
Only one project now remains active within Grand Challenge. Its focus is on health tech, the people said.
The 53 Republicans voting include senators returning in the next Congress and newly elected Republicans who will not be sworn in until January. Retiring senators cannot vote but Vice President-elect J.D. Vance was able to; he will serve as president of the Senate in his new role and can vote to break any ties on the floor.
Two of the 53 Republicans did not vote on the first ballot, in which Mr. Thune had 23 votes, Mr. Cornyn had 15 and Mr. Scott had 13 votes.
Mr. Scott had the support of the grassroots MAGA movement and outside endorsements from top Trump surrogates, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. Mr. Trump did not weigh in.
“I may have lost the vote, but I am optimistic,” Mr. Scott said. “I ran for leader with one mission: to fundamentally change how the Senate operates and upend the status quo so we can actually start representing the voters who put us here. When I announced, I said that we are in a moment where we need dramatic change. The voters confirmed that last week when they elected President Trump and Republicans took the majority in both chambers of Congress with a clear mandate.”
He said, “I want to thank my friend President Trump and the support I received from so many Americans from every corner of our country. I am truly humbled by the millions of Americans who supported my run, and the many patriots who made their voices heard to demand change. While it isn’t the result we hoped for, I will do everything possible to make sure John Thune is successful in accomplishing President Trump’s agenda. I would also like to thank John Cornyn for running a great race.”
Chuck Robbins, Cisco's CEO, said on a Wednesday conference call that orders from large-scale clients for artificial intelligence infrastructure exceeded $300 million in the quarter. Server makers such as Dell and HPE have also focused on sales of hardware that can help clients implement generative AI.
"We have earned more design wins and remain confident that we will exceed our target of $1 billion of AI orders this fiscal year from web-scale customers," Robbins said.
U.S. government agencies have delayed deals with Cisco, rather than scrapping them altogether, Robbins said.
During the quarter, Cisco acquired security startups DeepFactor and Robust Intelligence.
Cisco lifted its full-year guidance to $3.60 to $3.66 in adjusted earnings per share on $55.3 billion to $56.3 billion in revenue, up from a prior forecast of $3.52 to $3.58 in EPS and $55 billion to $56.2 billion in revenue. Guidance would indicate projected revenue growth of 3.3% at the middle of the range.
Analysts expected adjusted earnings for the year of $3.58 per share on $55.89 billion in revenue.
The new device will be a direct rival to established products, including Amazon’s Echo Show and Echo Hub, and Google’s Nest Hub — smart home tablets that control other devices, including smart speakers like Amazon’s Alexa and Google Nest.
Apple is planning to price the display similar to that of competitors, so it could be in the $150 to $230 range. A higher-end version, which will have a robot arm that can move the display, would cost about $1,000, sources told Bloomberg.
Apple Intelligence will be a particular focal point for the company as it continues to introduce new products. Last month, Apple finally rolled out Apple Intelligence for users with the iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 16, after weeks of delays. The AI has the ability to understand and create images and language; edit, change tone, and proofread text; and create new emojis using a typed description. Siri will also become more natural, and will allow users to access ChatGPT directly from their devices.
But the company has opted for a staggered rollout of its new AI features, with the next wave set to come out in December. This includes more powerful writing tools, visual additions to ChatGPT integration, and localized English in several countries. Apple plans to add more languages and other tools next April.
Exceptionally strong housing demand in the U.S. has large homebuilders in the driver's seat and smaller builders ripe for takeover. The buyers are both domestic and Japanese.
M&A activity in the single-family homebuilder space is having a record year in terms of dollar volume, and close to a record in the number of deals, according to Margaret Whelan, founder of Whelan Advisory and one of the biggest investment bankers in the builder space.
Apple CEO Tim Cook said on a call with analysts following the company’s September quarter results that the introduction of AI to Apple’s slate of products is a transformative leap for Apple, which has had a late start in the AI race.
“Apple Intelligence marks the beginning of a new chapter for Apple innovation,” Cook said.
"The big guys want to get bigger. They want to get into more markets, more price points, more types of product, and as they're doing that, they're finding the most efficient way is through acquisitions," she said.
There have been a total of 19 homebuilder deals so far this year. Whelan says she alone has four more set to close by year end, and there could be more from others. The average number of deals across the industry over the last five years was 12 per year.
The surge is the result of still-growing housing demand that reignited at the start of the pandemic thanks to record low mortgage rates and sudden new migration. But mortgage rates also caused a historic housing shortage.
According to J.D. Power’s October 2024 E-Vision Intelligence Report, lease volumes for new EVs surged a whopping 355% throughout 2023 and 88% throughout September 2024. This will lead to a massive 230% spike in returning lease volumes in 2026. Before that happens, though, a 2% decrease in returning EV leases is projected for next year.
In total, nearly 280,000 EV leases will end in the next two years in the United States. At the same time, however, J.D. Power says that people looking to get a new EV after their current lease ends might just do that instead of paying the residual value and sticking with the car they leased in 2023 or 2024. The average returning lessee in the compact SUV segment now pays $584 per month for their EV, and the average residual value of their vehicle is $29,645, as per J.D. Power.
This means the buyout price for most electric compact SUVs is higher than the $25,000 threshold that would qualify for the used EV tax credit. Without the used EV tax credit in the mix, it would cost the average returning lessee in the electric compact SUV segment $477 per month to buy out the lease, while the average lease payment on a new EV in the same category would be just $457 per month.
The main reason for this is the steady decline in EV prices during the past two years, which is expected to continue going forward. The average price paid for a new EV by an individual is currently $35,900–including incentives–down $12,700 from $48,500 in 2022. Add the fact that most people who currently own an EV–94% to be precise–said they are likely to consider an EV for their next vehicle purchase, and you get a scenario where in 2028 and 2029 the market will once again be flooded with used EVs from people who chose to end their contract and get a new car instead.
All this being said, there’s no escaping the uncertainty about the future of tax credits and incentives. If they’re gone, we might see the market change once again–we just don’t know how yet.
Bohm was contending with a left hand injury for a portion of the back half, an injury that kept him out of 14 games, and his line came back down to Earth: .251/.299/.382.
Philadelphia played mediocre .500 baseball after the break before falling to the Mets in four games in the the NL Divisional Series.
At one point in that series, Bohm saw only five pitches in four consecutive at bats.
He made a lot of weak contact, wound up on the bench, and then publicly vowed, “I’m not going to change.”
Given his team-friendly terms — entering his second year of arbitration in 2025, Bohm carries a projected salary of $8.1 million per Spotrac — the All Star will likely earn significant interest on the market.
His suitors though, know what they’re bargaining for.
Denmark launches landmark framework for using AI under EU rules
Denmark unveiled a blueprint on how to use generative AI in the corporate world to help firms get into compliance with strict new regulation from the EU.
Denmark on Wednesday laid out a framework that can help EU member states use generative artificial intelligence in compliance with the European Union's strict new AI Act — and Microsoft's already on board.
#ai #denmark #eu #compliance #technology
A government-backed alliance of major Danish corporates, led by IT consultancy Netcompany, launched the "Responsible Use of AI Assistants in the Public and Private Sector" white paper, a blueprint that sets out "best-practice examples" for how firms should use and support employees in deploying AI systems in a regulated environment.
The guide also aims to encourage delivery of "secure and reliable services" by businesses to consumers. Denmark's Agency for Digital Government, the country's central business registry CVR and pensions authority ATP are among the founding partners adopting the framework.
aRTICLE
Dogecoin spikes after Trump announces a Department of Government Efficiency
Dogecoin shot higher on Tuesday night after President-elect Donald Trump formally announced the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency.
Dogecoin shot higher on Tuesday night, extending its postelection surge after President-elect Donald Trump formally announced the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency, which he referred to as "DOGE" in his statement.
#doge #trump #elonmusk #government #crypto
Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, former Republican presidential candidate and Strive Asset Management co-founder, will lead the department, Trump said in a statement. Together, they "will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies."
Dogecoin was up nearly 20%, before paring gains. It has been one of the biggest winners in the postelection rally, gaining 153% since election day compared to bitcoin's 30% rise in the same period. It also shot past XRP this week to become the sixth largest cryptocurrency by market cap.
Article
Tencent posts better-than-expected 47% profit surge as games, AI tools shine
Chinese gaming and social media giant Tencent on Wednesday reported profit above analysts' expectations, while revenue missed slightly.
Tencent reported profit attributable to shareholders surged by 47% year-on-year to 53.23 billion yuan ($7.37 billion) in the third quarter, compared with an LSEG estimate of 46.18 billion yuan for the period.
#tencent #technology #earnings #socialmedia
The company's revenue rose by an annual 8% to 167.19 billion yuan, short of the 167.82 billion yuan analyst forecast.
Gaming remained the company's backbone, with the unit's domestic revenue up 14% year-on-year to 37.3 billion yuan, while that for international games shot up by 11% to 14.5 billion yuan on a constant currency basis.
The company noted that existing and new games had "evergreen potential."
Marketing services revenue, previously called online advertising, surged by an annual 17% to 29.99 billion yuan, making it one of the fastest-growing categories outside gaming. Tencent attributed the growth to "robust advertiser demand" for its short-videos, mini programs and search features within its messaging app — called Weixin in China and WeChat overseas.
Article
with AI tools improving they can develop so many games far better than the ones they already have and that means more money for them. But the competition will rise because the AI tools will be used by other companies too
China is catching up with the West on tech, Microsoft president says
According to Microsoft's web page about its presence in China, the company has operated there since 1992.
The West shouldn't assume that China is lagging behind the U.S. and Europe on tech developments, Microsoft's president and vice-chairman warned.
#micosoft #china #technology
U.S-China tensions in the past few years have centered on the battle between the two nations for tech supremacy, culminating in a slew of export controls on critical technologies. Late last year, China's Huawei surprised the market with the release of a smartphone whose reviews indicated downloads speeds associated with 5G, sparking speculation of an apparent chip breakthrough that defied U.S. tech sanctions.
Speaking at the Web Summit tech conference in Lisbon, Portugal, on Tuesday, Microsoft's Brad Smith told CNBC that "in many ways," China is close to or is even catching up on technology.
"I think one of the dangers, frankly, is that people who don't go to China too often assume that they're behind," he told CNBC's Karen Tso. "But when you go there, you're impressed by how much they're doing."
Article
I would say that by 2030 China might outcompete Europe and America but I see how America can respond well with tech under Trump
Musk’s role, China critics, Senate leadership and bitcoin
By Reuters
Elon Musk's new role is a big one. He’s going to help make the government run smoother.
Meanwhile, China’s watching all of this closely because many in Trump’s circle don’t trust them.
Over in the Senate, Republicans are choosing a new leader, and Trump’s friends want a shake-up.
Lastly, traders are excited, hoping Trump will be “the crypto president,” which could mean big changes for Bitcoin.
YouTube link
Transcript and summaries below
#ElonMusk #Trump #Bitcoin #China #SenateLeadership
Transcript
Today, Trump meets with Biden at the White House as Senate Republicans choose their new leader. We have the latest on Trump's cabinet appointments, including Elon Musk and a Fox News host, and how the picks are being viewed in Beijing. Plus, what's fueling the latest Bitcoin boom? Would it surprise you to learn that the story is also about Trump? It's Wednesday, November 13th; this is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes every weekday. I'm Carmel Crims in Dublin and I'm Jonah Green in New York.
President-elect Donald Trump is tapping Elon Musk to shrink the federal government. The billionaire will co-lead a newly created Department of Government Efficiency with former Republican candidate Vikram Ramaswamy. Trump says they'll slash excess regulation and restructure federal agencies, and has signaled that the new entity will operate outside the confines of government. Its acronym, DoG, references the name of the cryptocurrency Dogecoin that Musk promotes.
The move is the latest in a hiring spree that includes Fox News host Pete Hegseth. Trump says he'll nominate Hegseth to be Secretary of Defense. The commentator could make good on Trump's campaign promise to fire generals whom he accuses of pursuing diversity policies. Hegseth has expressed disdain for those policies.
Trump is also expected to tap Senator Marco Rubio as Secretary of State and has picked Republican Representative Mike Waltz as National Security Adviser. Rubio, Waltz, and Hegseth are all harsh China critics. So what does Beijing make of it all? Anovi is Reuters' Chief Correspondent in China: "I think Beijing was bracing for a pretty hawkish administration, and I think they got that. What we are learning through our reporting is that China is both better prepared than it was last time around for any potential moves by Trump, but at the same time, it's also in a weaker position, especially when it comes to the economy."
So how have they prepared? "China has, to a large degree, moved to insulate what has been described by some scholars as its Fortress Economy to prepare it to withstand external shocks like tariffs or tech restrictions. They've been replacing, for example, software and hardware in state-owned enterprises and government institutions, removing overseas software and putting in domestic software. They are also investing tremendous amounts of money in things like domestic chip making."
But on the other hand, "the level of tariffs that Trump has threatened on the campaign trail is higher than anything that has been imposed on them so far," which puts China's economy—still very much reliant on exports—at risk. Any kind of tariffs even slightly lower than what Trump is likely to impose would prove a significant shock to the system here in Beijing.
Rubio is currently under sanction by Beijing over his stance on Hong Kong's democracy protests. How does that work if he becomes Secretary of State? If he's confirmed, "the question sort of becomes how does China even meet him? How do they hold talks? And how can they potentially drop those sanctions without losing face?"
Because that would be key—not being seen as caving to the United States right at the outset. So I think those are the questions that we'll see; we don't know how Beijing is likely to respond here, but those are the questions that will need to be answered in the months to come.
Trump will meet with President Joe Biden at the White House today, and before his Oval Office visit, he's also expected to make an appearance on Capitol Hill to meet with the GOP caucus over in the Senate. The Republicans will select a new majority leader to replace Mitch McConnell. Trump has yet to endorse a candidate; however, he is demanding that the new leader back his ability to make presidential appointments when the Senate is not in session.
Politics editor Scott Malone is following the race in Washington: "Scott, who are the top contenders?" Senators John Thune and John Cornyn are longtime stalwarts of the Senate Republican caucus; they have a long history and a long track record in the Senate.
Rick Scott is a relative newcomer to the Senate—relative in terms of Senate math—having been in the job for six years now; that's one term compared to Thune and Cornyn who have been there for 20 years. Really, the difference is that early on in Trump's first term he wasn't immediately embraced by the party, and there were times when certainly McConnell and people like Thune pushed back against him to a degree. They've pivoted and now very much do embrace him; but Scott doesn't have the track record of having done that.
You mentioned that they've pivoted—are they agreeing to Trump's call for a free hand to make recess appointments? All three of them have indicated that they would be willing to go along with that—to allow him to set up his administration quickly when he comes into office.
Elon Musk and other high-profile Trump allies have thrown their support behind this. Do these kinds of public endorsements pressure Senators to vote in a particular way? This isn't like an open House Speaker election where everybody has to come to the floor and declare their allegiances; that means you could have Senators who would go in not vote for Scott, not talk about it publicly, and not get into open conflict with Trump.
Meanwhile, Senate Democrats are working to confirm as many new federal judges nominated by President Biden as possible before Republicans take control of the chamber in January. Biden has announced another 30 judicial nominees who are awaiting Senate confirmation votes.
Sticking with the courts: A federal judge appointed by Barack Obama has ruled that a Louisiana law requiring that the Ten Commandments be displayed in all public school classrooms in the state is unconstitutional. The state's Republican attorney general has vowed to appeal.
The judge overseeing Trump's criminal hush money case has put off ruling on whether the conviction should be thrown out on immunity grounds. Justice Juan Merchan granted a request by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg's office to have until next week to consider how to approach the case in light of Trump's looming inauguration.
Authorities in the southern Chinese city of Zai have cleared a memorial at the scene of the deadliest mass killing in the country in a decade. On Monday, a man angry with his divorce settlement rammed his car into a crowd at a sports center, killing 35 people and injuring dozens. The government took almost a day to announce the death toll, and images and videos of the attack on social media were censored.
Over on markets: A warning to the Trump Administration on climate change from big energy! Top LNG exporter Shaner Energy and ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods are telling the incoming administration not to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement. Trump's transition team has prepared executive orders to withdraw for a second time from this climate treaty.
If you're interested in climate change and the economy, do check out this week's episode of my podcast Reuters Econ World; it's out later today and looks at the economic argument for curbing consumption for the environment. You can catch it on the Reuters app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Bitcoin is nearing $90,000; in fact, it's up about 30% since November 5th. Traders are betting on Trump's promises to be a crypto president by lowering regulation and ushering in a crypto-friendly Congress. Reporter Hannah Lang has been looking into what kinds of changes the industry expects from the new administration: "The crypto industry is broadly expecting that the Trump Administration will be more lax on enforcement and overall take a very different approach than the current SEC where they claim that most crypto tokens are securities and need to be registered as such and provide disclosures to investors." The crypto industry disagrees with that sentiment; they claim they've had difficulty really lifting crypto into mainstream acceptance because of some of these guardrails in place.
So they're really hoping for barriers to entry being lowered here; they're hoping for a general tone at the top of the administration on banking. Crypto companies have had a difficult time accessing banking services as U.S. regulators have expressed concern about safety regarding certain banks whose business models are heavily reliant on crypto companies—as well as some accounting guidance at SEC they're hoping will go away—which would enable banks to hold crypto on behalf of their clients.
What are they hoping to see from Congress? There are some people in this industry who are hopeful that with a Republican majority in both chambers—Senate and probably House as well—it really enables legislation to be passed through reconciliation where you could see a crypto bill kind of tacked onto larger spending or tax bills that could pass quickly with a simple majority.
And before we go: Today's recommended read takes us to Lebanon and explores its role in the Arab world's art scene. Lebanese artists are using their work as an outlet as conflict with Israel at home and in Gaza rages. We meet an artist whose work reflects Lebanon's back-to-back crises. A link to this story is in our pod description.
For more on any stories from today, check out reuters.com or use the Reuters app. To never miss an episode, follow us on your favorite podcast player; we'll be back tomorrow with our daily headline show!
ONE SENTENCE SUMMARY:
Donald Trump’s latest cabinet choices and policies are stirring reactions globally, impacting US-China relations, cryptocurrency markets, and political landscapes.
MAIN POINTS:
TAKEAWAYS:
The AI Tsunami is Here: Keynote on Why Firms Must Act Now
#ai #technology #future !summarize
Part 1/3:
The AI Tsunami is Here: Preparing for the Future
Widespread Adoption and Skepticism
Every executive believes AI is a transformative technology, yet most companies are moving as if it is incremental.
AI is advancing at an accelerating rate, and we are not ready for what is about to hit us.
Tech giants like Microsoft and OpenAI are making massive investments in AI infrastructure, signaling their long-term vision.
However, there is skepticism about the promised benefits of AI, with concerns about the lack of tangible returns on investment.
Disrupting Traditional Industries
Cobalt Metals, a 5-year-old startup, has become the first mining unicorn by using AI to discover the biggest copper deposit in over a decade.
This demonstrates how AI is transforming traditional industries like mining, with a talent base of geoscientists, AI experts, and software engineers.
Revolutionizing Drug Discovery and Software Development
[...]
Part 2/3:
DeepMind's AlphaFold system has revolutionized protein folding, and its new AlphaProteo system can now design novel proteins for drug development.
Amazon is using its own generative AI tool, Amazon CodeGuru, to upgrade 50% of its Java production systems in just 6 months, saving $260 million.
The AI Arms Race and Adoption Challenges
Big tech companies are in a trillion-dollar AI arms race, but US firms are slow to adopt AI, with only 5.4% currently using it.
The tech sector has a higher adoption rate, while older, traditional firms are lagging behind.
Estimates suggest a $44 trillion impact from generative AI and an $11-18 trillion impact from traditional AI, but there is skepticism about the realization of these benefits.
Preparing for the Future
[...]
DeepL launches DeepL Voice, real-time, text-based translations from voices and videos
DeepL has made a name for itself with online text translation it claims is more nuanced and precise than services from the likes of Google
Now, as the hype for AI services continues to grow, DeepL is adding in another mode to the platform: audio. Users will now be able to use DeepL Voice to listen to someone speaking in one language and automatically translate it to another, in real time.
English, German, Japanese, Korean, Swedish, Dutch, French, Turkish, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Italian are languages that DeepL can “hear” today. Translated captions are available for all of the 33 languages currently supported by DeepL Translator.
#deepl #technology #translation #voice #video #ai
DeepL Voice is currently stopping short of delivering the result as an audio or video file itself: the service is aimed at real-time, live conversations and video conferencing, and comes through as text, not audio.
In the first of these, you can set up your translations to appear as ‘mirrors’ on a smartphone — the idea being that you put the phone between you on a meeting table for each side to see the words translated — or as a transcription that you share side by side with someone. The videoconferencing service sees the translations appearing as subtitles.
That could be something that changes over time, Jarek Kutylowski, the company’s founder and CEO (pictured above), hinted in an interview. This is DeepL’s first product for voice, but it’s unlikely to be its last. “[Voice] is where translation is going to play out in the next year,” he added.
There is other evidence to support that statement. Google — one of DeepL’s biggest competitors — also started to incorporate real-time translated captions into its Meet video conferencing service. And, there are a multitude of AI startups building voice translation services such as AI voice specialist Eleven Labs (Eleven Labs Dubbing), and Panjaya, which creates translations using “deepfake” voices and video that matches the audio.
Article
The AI Imperative: Why Boards Must Take Bold Action Now
#ai #technology !summarize #boardofdirectors
Part 1/5:
Embracing the AI Revolution: Boards Must Lead the Way
Roxanne Austin's Journey: From Aerospace to Technology
Roxanne Austin's career has been a diverse and exciting one, spanning multiple industries and roles. She started out at Deloitte and Touche, where she was a partner, before moving into both consulting and audit work. Austin specialized in aerospace and defense, as well as mergers and acquisitions. Her love for technology, which was the foundation of the aerospace companies she worked with, led her to focus on technology for the rest of her career.
[...]
Failed to generate video summary: fetch failed
YouTube is testing a feature that lets select creators remix songs using AI
YouTube last year started letting select creators in the U.S. create AI-generated songs with prompts using the vocals of artists like Charlie Puth, Charli XCX, Demi Lovato, John Legend, Sia, T-Pain, and Troye Sivan. Now, the company is adding a feature to its Dream Track toolset that lets creators remix tracks by describing how they want to change the style of the song.
#youtube #ai #music #remix #songs #technology
The video streaming platform said it is making select songs available to creators for the remix experiment. Creators in the test group can select the “Retstyle a track” option for a song, and describe how they want to remix it. This will generate a 30-second snippet that creators can use in Shorts.
“If you want to give a song a different genre or mood, you simply enter your vision into the ‘Restyle a track’ prompt and you’ll soon have a customized soundtrack that reimagines the music while maintaining the essence of the original song’s vocals and lyrics,” the update reads.
Google noted these remixed snippets will be credited to the original song through the Short video itself and the Shorts audio pivot page. Remixes will also have an appropriate label to indicate that the track was modified with AI.
YouTube’s Dream Track toolset, launched last November, is powered by the Lyria music generation model developed by Deepmind. At the time, the platform also released a tool that lets users create a track by just humming a tune.
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[November 12, 2024] Testing restyled soundtracks for Shorts: We’re adding a new capability to our Dream Track experiment. This experimental feature allows a small group of creators to restyle a limited number of official songs made available by select music partners. If you’re a creator in the experiment group, you can select an eligible song > describe how you want to restyle it > then generate a unique 30-second soundtrack to use in your Short. For example, if you want to give a song a different genre or mood, you simply enter your vision into the ‘Restyle a track’ prompt and you’ll soon have a customized soundtrack that reimagines the music while maintaining the essence of the original song’s vocals and lyrics.
These restyled soundtracks will have clear attribution to the original song through the Short itself and the Shorts audio pivot page, and will also clearly indicate that the track was restyled with AI 🎶
OpenAI Says US Allies Should Partner on AI to Take on China
OpenAI is proposing a "North American Compact on AI," where the U.S. and its allies would team up to boost AI infrastructure and stay competitive with China. The idea is to make it easier to share talent, funding, and resources across the region.
Conceito chinês de veículo planador hipersônico com lançamento de armas integrado impressiona o mundo
Imagine um cenário onde uma arma viaja a velocidades hipersônicas, lançando diferentes tipos de sub munições em direção a múltiplos alvos. Parece algo saído de um filme de ficção científica, mas este é o conceito por trás do GDF-600, o novo veículo hipersônico não motorizado de propulsão desenvolvido pela Academia de Pesquisa Aerodinâmica de Guangdong (GARA). Veja os detalhes desse veículo hipersônico.
#technology #china #military #space
Apresentado recentemente no Zhuhai Airshow na China, o GDF-600 tem capacidade de lançamento de mísseis, drones e outras sub munições, tornando-se uma plataforma versátil para guerra eletrônica, reconhecimento e ataques cinéticos.
O GDF-600 não é um veículo comum. Ele combina velocidade e manobrabilidade para transportar até 1.200 kg de sub munições e atingir alvos em um raio de até 600 km. Lançado com um peso total de 5.000 kg, ele alcançou uma velocidade impressionante de Mach 7, o que o coloca muito acima da velocidade do som.
Mas o que realmente o diferencial é a capacidade de liberar múltiplas sub munições ao longo do caminho, permitindo um alcance mais amplo de ataques e operações táticas.
Essa arma de propulsão-planejamento representa um novo desafio para sistemas de defesa eficientes. Por viajar em trajetórias erráticas e com alta velocidade, as defesas terrestres têm pouco tempo para reagir, aumentando a complexidade de interceptação.
O GDF-600 foi projetado para carregar cinco tipos de sub munições diferentes, incluindo drones e mísseis subsônicos e supersônicos. Imagine uma arma que, em um único lançamento, consegue atingir alvos de várias maneiras e com diferentes propósitos. Por exemplo, um míssil supersônico lançado do GDF-600 poderia atingir alvos a até 500 km de distância, quase dobrando o alcance da arma hipersônica inicial.
Além disso, drones e outros veículos não tripulados carregados pelo GDF-600 poderiam realizar operações de reconhecimento ou até mesmo enganar as defesas inimigas ao atuarem como iscas. É uma abordagem de ataque multifacetada que não apenas maximiza a eficiência da arma, mas também aumenta consideravelmente a pressão sobre as defesas adversárias.
Adobe is making it easier to find the stock images and content your business needs
Adobe just rolled out two new features, Generative Edits and Generate Variations, to make it easier for businesses to find and tweak stock images. Both tools are powered by Adobe's own Firefly AI, letting users customize existing images to better fit their needs.
And the cool part? Contributors get paid whenever their images are used. The goal is to make stock images more flexible, while also boosting licensing opportunities and helping creators earn more.
Governo eleva imposto de importação de painéis solares
O Gecex-Camex (Comitê Executivo de Gestão da Câmara de Comércio Exterior) decidiu nesta segunda-feira (11) pela elevação da tarifa de importação de módulos fotovoltaicos de 9,6% para 25%.
#technology #hivebr #solarpanel #energy
A decisão foi tomada na 220ª Reunião Ordinária do Gecex. A medida entrará em vigor após a publicação da resolução no DOU (Diário Oficial da União), prevista para ocorrer nos próximos dias.
Segundo o Ministério do Desenvolvimento, Indústria, Comércio e Serviços, a deliberação é uma resposta a dois pleitos de elevação da alíquota padrão de módulos solares classificados sob o código NCM 8541.43.00.
Os pleitos de alteração à Lista de Exceções de Bens de Informática e Telecomunicações e de Bens de Capital (LEBIT/BK) foram protocolados por dois fabricantes nacionais e, após recomendações do Comitê de Alterações Tarifárias, foram deliberados e tiveram a elevação do II (Imposto de Importação) aprovada pelo Gecex.
Segundo a TEC (Tarifa Externa Comum), esse NCM é referente a células fotovoltaicas montadas em módulos ou em painéis, ou seja, módulos fotovoltaicos já montados, comumente utilizados em projetos de GD (geração distribuída) e GC (geração centralizada).
A controversa deliberação do Gecex ocorre justamente durante a COP29, um evento global em que líderes e representantes de todo o mundo se reúnem para buscar soluções para a redução de emissões de gases de efeito estufa.
OpenAI touts AI infrastructure ‘blueprint’ to outcompete China, bolster economy under incoming Trump admin
OpenAI has shared a new plan for building up AI infrastructure, hoping the incoming Trump administration and Congress will take it seriously. The idea is to help the U.S. stay ahead of competitors like China in the AI race. OpenAI argues that investing in AI infrastructure could create tens of thousands of skilled jobs, boost productivity and GDP, modernize the power grid (including nuclear energy), build a top-tier network of semiconductor factories, and spark a new wave of AI-driven businesses.
Energia solar avança no mundo
À medida que cresce a demanda mundial por eletricidade, aumenta a participação do Sol na matriz energética. Embora a preferência continue sendo do carvão mineral (35%) e o gás natural (22%), enquanto em 2015 cabia à energia solar apenas 1%, em 2024 essa percentagem já alcança 6%, tendência francamente ascendente.
#technology #energy #hivebr
Em 2023 foram construídas usinas fotovoltaicas em todo o planeta com uma capacidade total de 447 gigawatts (GW). Segundo a confederação SolarPower, desse modo, em apenas um ano a produção solar global elevou-se em 38%, até 1.624 GW.
Bem mais modesta foi a ampliação das usinas eólicas (117 GW) e a carvão (70 GW) inauguradas no mesmo período, sobretudo na China e na Índia. Nos setores hidrelétrico (+7 GW), de gás natural (+6 GW) e biomassa (+4 GW), o acréscimo foi ainda inferior. Por sua vez, a capacidade de energia nuclear caiu 2 GW em 2023, com o fechamento de mais usinas antigas.
Segundo a SolarPower Europe, a energia fotovoltaica terá um crescimento global ainda mais forte no próximo quinquênio, chegando a até 20% mais usinas por ano. A organização prevê um total de 5.117 GW instalados até 2028, superando os 4.930 GW produzidos por todas as usinas de carvão, gás e petróleo juntas.
Os preços dos módulos fotovoltaicos caíram drasticamente, acima de tudo devido à produção em massa em fábricas chinesas, reduzindo em 80% o custo da energia solar em todo o mundo, nos últimos 15 anos. Na maioria das regiões, ela já é a alternativa mais barata.
Em zonas ensolaradas, é possível gerar eletricidade num parque fotovoltaico ao custo de 0,035 a 0,054 euro por kilowatt/hora, mostra um estudo do Instituto Fraunhofer para Sistemas de Energia Solar (ISE). Em países como Alemanha, em que há pouco sol, o custo é de 0,041 a 0,069 euro por kilowatt/hora, mas ainda bem menos do que a metade da energia proveniente das novas usinas nucleares, a gás ou a carvão.
A expansão fotovoltaica é marcante na Ásia, e muito especialmente na China, onde novos parques solares acrescentaram 253 GW à matriz energética em 2023, elevando a capacidade nacional total a 656 GW. Em 2024 se acrescentarão outros 299 GW. A Agência Internacional de Energia (AIE) calcula que as instalações solares cobrem 10% da demanda chinesa.
Atualmente o país ainda obtém 61% de sua eletricidade das usinas a carvão, tornando-se um dos principais emissores de dióxido de carbono (CO2). Porém o think tank britânico Ember estima que o combustível fóssil perderá importância na China, graças à ascensão da fonte solar.
O fenômeno se fez observar também em outros países em 2023: a Austrália ampliou sua produção solar em 36 GW, elevando a parcela dessa fonte a 15%. No Japão e na Índia, a capacidade solar é de 90 GW – 12% e 11% da demanda nacional, respectivamente. Com 9 GW, 20% da eletricidade do Chile é de origem fotovoltaica. No Brasil, com 39 GW, a proporção é de 11%; enquanto nos EUA (173 GW) e México (11 GW) ela é de 6%.
Just Eat Takeaway finally offloads Grubhub, sells to Wonder for $650M
Netherlands-based food delivery company Just Eat Takeaway.com said on Wednesday that it is selling its U.S. business Grubhub to New York-based Wonder Group in a deal valued at $650 million — a stark 91% less than the $7.3 billion Just Eat Takeaway paid for the company just four years ago.
#justeattakeaway #grubhub #technology #fooddelivery
The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2025, and Just Eat Takeaway expects net proceeds of $50 million. Wonder, which started as a food delivery business in 2018 but has since pivoted to operating delivery-focused restaurants in New York and Philadelphia, will take on $500 million of Grubhub’s debt.
The divestiture comes as food and grocery delivery becomes an increasingly unprofitable endeavor for businesses that bet the farm on the model during the COVID-19 pandemic and later, when people sheltering in place and social distancing opted to order in food and grocery items they would previously buy in person.
The food delivery and quick-commerce sectors saw a massive influx of venture capital and other investment in the following years, with startups like Getir and Flink raising millions and investing aggressively in marketing and acquisitions.
But once the world returned to a semblance of normalcy and post-pandemic tailwinds trailed off, the instant delivery model proved unsustainable. Flink is now said to be valued at just under $1 billion, down from a peak of nearly $3 billion, while Getir has retreated, shutting down its operations in the U.S., the U.K. and Europe to focus on its home market of Turkey.
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AI robot masters surgical tasks
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have trained a robot to handle surgical tasks by showing it videos. It learned how to do things like using a needle, lifting tissue, and stitching. The team thinks this could help reduce medical errors and make surgeries more accurate. Next up, they plan to teach the robot how to perform full surgeries using the same technique.
Apple targeting March release for new wall-mounted smart display product: report
Apple could be releasing its first Apple Intelligence-powered smart home device as early as March. It is rumored to be developing a wall-mounted display that resembles a traditional home security panel. The display will serve as a command center for the home. It will be a standalone device, but an iPhone will be required for some tasks, including parts of the initial setup. Apple is also working on a higher-end smart home product that features a robotic arm.
#technology #appel #productlaunch #smartdisplay
Amazon ready to use its own AI chips, reduce its dependence on Nvidia
Amazon is already testing its Trainium 2 chips with Anthropic, Databricks, Deutsche Telekom, and Japan's Ricoh and Stockmark. Developed by Annapurna Labs, an Austin-based chip startup that Amazon acquired in early 2015, Trainum 2 is aimed at reducing Amazon's reliance on market leader Nvidia. The biggest advantage of Amazon's chips is that they use less power, which helps drive down costs. Amazon avoids making direct comparisons of its chips and doesn't submit its chips for independent performance benchmarks, but experts are confident the company's claims of a 4x performance increase between Trainum 1 and Trainium 2 are accurate.
#technology #ai #amazon #nvidia
Legacy tech, burnout, and AI — Google report finds the biggest worries for security leaders right now
Google Workspace's report reveals that IT leaders are more concerned about their teams being overwhelmed than about security. Nearly half (43%) of respondents believe being overwhelmed is a serious concern, indicating that current approaches are unsustainable. The report also found that 81% of organizations experience at least one security incident per year, indicating that there is much work to be done. The top breach issue is from generative AI attacks, with 31% identifying this as a primary concern.
Groundbreaking: 'Sleepy weed' shown to significantly improve sleep
Cannabinol, a lesser-known component of the cannabis plant, delivers better quality and longer sleep. Cannabis folklore has suggested for decades that aged cannabis makes consumers sleepy due to the build-up of cannabinol, but this was only recently supported by scientific evidence. Cannabinol increases total sleep time with a comparable effect to zolpidem, or Ambien. It may be best suited for patients who have trouble staying asleep or experience early morning awakening insomnia because it has a delayed onset but enduring effects.
#technology #cannabis #cannabinol #sleep
When muscles work out, they help neurons to grow, a new study shows
During exercise, muscles release a soup of biochemical signals called myokines that helps neurons grow. A recent study found that the repeated pulling on neurons during exercise helps them grow as much as when they are exposed to myokines. This suggests that exercise could be effective for treating nerve injuries.
#technology #health #muscles #neurons
Announcing .NET 9
.NET 9 includes thousands of performance, security, and functional improvements. This post looks at the highlights of the update across developer languages, workloads, and tools. There are enhancements across the entire .NET stack that enable developers to build with a unified platform and easily infuse apps with AI. The .NET team, its partners, and the .NET community will be showcasing what's new in .NET 9 at .NET Conf 2024, a three-day virtual developer event happening now (November 12-14).
#technology #dotnet #developer
Study: Growth of AI adoption slows among U.S. workers
The percentage of workers in the US who are using AI has remained largely the same over the last three months. The flattening of growth could affect the very high market valuations tied to the technology. Many workers are uncomfortable with telling their managers they use AI at work. Leaders need to encourage employees to talk about and experiment with AI out in the open to ensure the adoption of the technology.
#technology #ai #artificialintelligence #adoption #us
How much does a Tesla Powerwall cost?
The Tesla Powerwall 3 costs approximately $13,500, which includes a storage capacity of 13.5 kWh. Installation costs can add an additional $1,100 to $3,000 depending on various factors.
#tesla #powerwall #energy
How Much Does a Tesla Powerwall Cost?
Last Updated: Oct 22, 2024
The Tesla Powerwall 3 costs $15,300 before taxes including installation.
With a storage capacity of 13.5 kilowatt-hours (kWh), the Powerwall has a unit cost of $1,133 per kWh.
The Tesla Powerwall is worth it because of its storage capacity, continuous power output, 10-year warranty and affordable cost.
Perplexity brings ads to its platform
AI-powered search engine Perplexity says it'll begin experimenting with ads on its platform starting this week.
AI-powered search engine Perplexity says it’ll begin experimenting with ads on its platform starting this week.
The site will start showing ads in the U.S. to start, and they’ll be formatted as “sponsored follow-up questions.” (E.g., “How can I use LinkedIn to enhance my job search?”) These ads will be positioned to the side of answers and labeled as “sponsored.”
#perplexity #ai #searchengine #ads #revenue #technology
Brands and agency partners participating in Perplexity’s ad program include Indeed, Whole Foods, Universal McCann and PMG.
“Ad programs like this help us generate revenue to share with our publisher partners,” Perplexity wrote in a post on its blog. “Experience has taught us that subscriptions alone do not generate enough revenue to create a sustainable revenue-sharing program. [A]dvertising is the best way to ensure a steady and scalable revenue stream.”
Perplexity asserted that answers to these “sponsored questions” will still be generated by its AI — not written or edited by the brands sponsoring the questions. Advertisers also won’t get access to users’ personal info, the company said.
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23andMe reports sales decline a day after announcing plans to cut 40% of workforce
Embattled genetic testing provider 23andMe said Tuesday that revenue declined from a year earlier, a day after the company announced a cost-cutting plan.
23andMe on Tuesday reported declining revenue in its most recent quarter, a day after the company said it will cut 40% of its workforce and shutter its therapeutics business as part of a business restructuring plan.
#23andme #earnings #layoffs #revenue #technology #genetics
The embattled genetics company reported $44.1 million in revenue for the fiscal second quarter, down from $50 million in the same period last year. 23andMe's net loss narrowed to $59.1 million, or $2.32 per share, from $75.27 million, or $3.17 per share, a year ago.
23andMe said Monday that it's eliminating more than 200 jobs, discontinuing all its therapeutics programs and winding down its ongoing clinical trials "as quickly as practical." It's evaluating strategic options such as asset sales and licensing agreements to "maximize the value" of the therapeutic programs, the release said.
"We are taking these difficult but necessary actions as we restructure 23andMe and focus on the long-term success of our core consumer business and research partnerships," 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki, said in the release Monday. "I want to thank our team for their hard work and dedication to our mission. We are fully committed to supporting the employees impacted by this transition."
The company said Tuesday that it's looking to potentially raise additional capital.
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NASA awards 'sustainable' aircraft concepts $11.5M
The future of aircraft may look very similar to today’s superficially — but under the hood (or sitting next to the tailfins) they will likely be quite different. That’s the future NASA is hoping to nurture with five research awards worth $11.5 million.
The Advanced Aircraft Concepts for Environmental Sustainability 2050 (AACES) program is an early stage, long-shot initiative to identify “transformative solutions” that could inch the carbon-spewing air travel industry towards sustainability.
#nasa #technology #aircraft
These awards are nowhere near enough to make a working aircraft, of course, and these concepts are just that, concepts — but a couple million bucks can easily be the difference between a powerful new technology sitting on a shelf in a lab or getting some real-world testing.
Two of the awards are more focused than others. Electra, for instance, already has a flying prototype for its electric aircraft, and the award money will go towards advancing its existing tech. JetZero is combining a cryogenic liquid hydrogen fuel source with the unusual blended wing fuselage you see pictured up top.
The other three awards are more general. Georgia Tech will look into new fuels, propulsion systems, and configurations that seem promising for its ATH2ENA program. Pratt and Whitney will be looking into “a broad suite” of propulsion tech in pursuit of lowering fuel consumption and emissions (a harm reduction method, it seems).
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this new Linux feature makes hacking IMPOSSIBLE
#technology #techtips #linux #security !summarize
Part 1/4:
The Battle Against Memory Corruption Vulnerabilities
In the ever-evolving world of cybersecurity, memory corruption vulnerabilities remain a persistent threat. As we enter the year 2024, this issue continues to be the number one cause of hacks, posing a significant challenge to developers and security experts alike.
However, the Linux kernel is introducing a new feature called
mseal- a new system call that aims to address this problem. This innovative approach has sparked a lively debate within the Linux community, particularly from the renowned Linus Torvalds.Understanding Memory Corruption Vulnerabilities
Memory corruption vulnerabilities arise when a program fails to properly manage the memory it uses. This can happen when a buffer is overflowed, or when a program uses memory after it has been freed (use-after-free). These vulnerabilities allow hackers to gain code execution on a victim's computer, posing a significant security risk.
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Jeff Zuo, a maintainer at the Chromium organization, is well-versed in the world of memory corruption vulnerabilities. As the V8 engine within Chromium has been a source of many such vulnerabilities, Zuo has a deep understanding of the challenges posed by these attacks.
The Concept of
msealmsealis a new system call introduced in the Linux kernel that aims to address the way hackers take advantage of memory corruption vulnerabilities. The idea behindmsealis to prevent the modification of memory page permissions, a technique often used in return-oriented programming (ROP) attacks.In a traditional memory corruption attack, hackers would use a vulnerability to overflow a buffer and overwrite the return address on the stack. They could then redirect the program's execution to their own malicious code, or use ROP to chain together existing code snippets (gadgets) to achieve their desired outcome, such as making the stack executable.
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msealseeks to address this by allowing the kernel to "seal" a memory page, making it impossible to change its permissions. This effectively removes the ability for hackers to use techniques like ROP to gain control of the system.Controversy and Challenges
The introduction of
msealhas not been without controversy. Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux kernel, has expressed concerns about the design and implementation of the feature. Torvalds is known for his passionate and direct approach, and he has been vocal in his criticism ofmseal.One of the key challenges with
msealis its impact on the way the heap and stack operate. These memory regions require the ability to expand and contract, which is not possible withmseal. As a result, the stack and heap will not be sealed by default, as it would break the functionality of these critical components.The Ongoing Battle
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The battle against memory corruption vulnerabilities is an ongoing one, and the introduction of
msealis a step in the direction of hardening the Linux kernel against these attacks. While the feature has faced some criticism, it represents a continued effort to improve the security of the operating system.As the cybersecurity landscape evolves, developers and security experts will need to remain vigilant and continue to explore new ways to mitigate the risks posed by memory corruption vulnerabilities. The introduction of
msealis a testament to the Linux community's commitment to addressing these challenges and providing a more secure computing environment for users.NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang Leaves Everyone SPEECHLESS (Supercut)
#nvidia #gpu #technology #ai !summarize
Part 1/6:
The Reinvention of Computing: From Software 1.0 to Software 2.0 and Beyond
The End of the Free Ride of Moore's Law
For the past 60 years, general-purpose computing as we know it has existed. However, for the last 30 years, we've had the benefit of Moore's Law - an incredible phenomenon where, without changing the software, the hardware could continue to improve in an architecturally compatible way. This has allowed every single industry to be built on top of this foundation.
But now, we know that the scaling of CPUs has reached its limit. The free ride of Moore's Law has ended, and we can no longer afford to do nothing in software and expect that our computing experience will continue to improve, costs will decrease, and the benefits will continue to spread.
The Rise of Accelerated Computing
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To address this challenge, the company was started to accelerate software. The vision was that there are applications that would benefit from acceleration, and this acceleration benefit has the same qualities as Moore's Law for applications that were impossible or impractical to perform using general-purpose computing.
One example is real-time computer graphics, which was made possible because of NVIDIA's introduction of GPUs. However, the company felt that long-term accelerated computing could be far more impactful. There is no single magical processor that can accelerate everything in the world, as that would just be called a CPU. Instead, the computing stack needs to be reinvented from the algorithms to the architecture underneath, and connected to applications on top.
The Reinvention of the Computing Stack
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This reinvention of the computing stack has led to the acceleration of various industries, from semiconductor manufacturing and computational lithography to simulation, computer-aided engineering, and quantum computing. In each of these domains, the company has been able to accelerate the applications by 20, 30, or even 50 times, but it has required a rewrite of the software, which is why it has taken so long in each of these domains.
One of the most famous application libraries created is called CDNN, which made it possible to democratize artificial intelligence as we know it. These acceleration libraries now cover so many different domains that it appears that accelerated computing is used everywhere.
The Shift from Software 1.0 to Software 2.0
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The reinvention of the computing stack has also led to a fundamental shift in the way software is developed. The industry has moved from the traditional approach of coding algorithms (Software 1.0) to the use of machine learning, where the computer learns the patterns and relationships of massive amounts of observed data to essentially learn the function that predicts the output (Software 2.0).
This shift has led to the complete reinvention of the computing stack, from the hardware to the way software is developed and what software can do. The company has dedicated itself to advancing this field, and the result is the Blackwell system - a massive system designed to study data at an enormous scale, allowing the discovery of patterns and relationships and the learning of the meaning of various types of data.
The Future of Computing: Agentic AI and Physical AI
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The company has now developed two important platforms to leverage this technology: NVIDIA AI Enterprise and NVIDIA Omniverse.
NVIDIA AI Enterprise focuses on the creation of "agents" - large language models that can understand data, reason about tasks, and connect with other AI models to perform various tasks, such as marketing, customer service, or chip design. These agents are onboarded and evaluated, with a suite of libraries and APIs to help companies operate them.
NVIDIA Omniverse, on the other hand, is a virtual world that obeys the laws of physics, where robots can learn to be robots. This, combined with the DGX computer for training the models and the AGX Jetson for running the AI models in the physical world, represents the company's vision for the future of "physical AI" - the ability to create and deploy AI models in the real world, from autonomous vehicles to robotic factories and warehouses.
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The reinvention of computing, from Software 1.0 to Software 2.0 and beyond, is a testament to the company's dedication to advancing the field of computing and its applications. As the industry continues to evolve, the company is poised to play a crucial role in shaping the future of artificial intelligence and its integration into the physical world.
Ilya Sustekever Finally Reveals Whats Next In AI... (Superintelligence)
#technology #ai #newsonleo !summarize
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The Evolving Landscape of AI: Challenges and Opportunities
The Plateauing of Pre-Training Effectiveness
According to the Reuters article, prominent AI scientists are speaking out about the limitations of the "bigger is better" philosophy that has driven the rapid development of large language models (LLMs) like GPT-3 and ChatGPT. Eliezer Yudkowsky, a leading figure in the field of AI safety, is quoted as saying that the results from scaling up pre-training, the phase where AI models use vast amounts of unlabeled data to understand language patterns and structures, have plateaued. This suggests that the exponential growth seen in the early days of LLM development may be slowing down.
The Shift Towards Improved Reasoning
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The article highlights that companies like OpenAI are now shifting their focus towards improving the reasoning capabilities of their AI models, rather than simply scaling up the size of their training datasets and computational power. This shift is driven by the realization that simply increasing the scale of LLMs may not lead to a commensurate increase in intelligence, but rather better memorization and skill-based performance.
The S-Curve of AI Development
The article presents a visual representation of the S-curve of AI development, where periods of rapid growth are followed by plateaus and the emergence of new paradigms. The current situation, where LLMs are facing limitations in their ability to scale, is seen as a transition point where the industry is searching for the next breakthrough in AI capabilities.
The Promise and Peril of Superintelligence
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The article also touches on the concept of "superintelligence," which is meant to convey an AI system that is far more capable than a human in every domain. While the potential benefits of such a system are vast, the article highlights the significant challenges and risks that come with the development of superintelligence, emphasizing the need for careful navigation to ensure it is used for the betterment of humanity.
Conclusion
The evolving landscape of AI development, as described in the Reuters article, suggests that the industry is at a critical juncture. The limitations of the "bigger is better" approach have become apparent, leading companies to explore new avenues for improving AI capabilities. This transition period presents both opportunities and challenges, as the industry searches for the next breakthrough that could unlock the full potential of artificial intelligence, while also grappling with the profound implications of superintelligence.
Amazon takes on Temu and Shein with discount 'Amazon Haul' store
Amazon has rolled out its answer to the discounted, low-cost storefronts of Temu and Shein.
Amazon has rolled out its answer to the discounted, low-cost storefronts of Temu and Shein. The Amazon Haul store, currently available on the mobile app or mobile web browser exclusively, offers similar mass-produced, discounted items, most of which ship from China. It’s a departure from Amazon’s long-established reputation as a powerhouse of rapid delivery times since even Amazon can’t reduce the time it takes to get these overseas goods.
#amazon #temu #shein #amazonhaul #technology #retail
The landing page for Amazon Haul is reminiscent of Shein and Temu even in its design: Items appear in grids, rather than Amazon’s typical list, and shipping times and star ratings aren’t visible unless you click on an item. Some items are labeled with rocket ship emojis that warn that this $4.99 iPhone 16 Pro case is “selling fast!” Or, you might see a fire emoji declaring that the price for a three-pack of $2.89 mesh laundry bags is “crazy low.” Like its competitors, Amazon Haul also sells clothing ($16 for a pair of men’s golf pants, or $4.99 for 80s-style women’s leg warmers). In a “Staples” section, you can find an assortment of… sponges, resistance bands, hoodies, silicon baking mats, and socks.
“While Amazon continues to offer over 300 million items with fast, free delivery for Prime members […] we also hear from customers that sometimes they would love to shop ultra-low-priced products even if some of them take one to two weeks to arrive,” Amazon wrote in a blog post.
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Hot Topic data breach exposed personal data of 57 million customers
Millions of customers of Hot Topic have been informed that their personal data was compromised during an October data breach at the American retailer.
Have I Been Pwned (HIBP), the breach notification service, said this week that it alerted 57 million Hot Topic customers that their data had been compromised.
#hottopic #data #breach #customer #security #technology
The stolen data includes email addresses, physical addresses, phone numbers, purchases, genders, and dates of birth. Partial credit card data was also included in the breach, according to HIBP, including credit card type, expiry dates, and the last four digits of the card number.
Hot Topic, which has more than 640 stores across the U.S., has not yet confirmed the breach and did not respond to TechCrunch’s multiple requests for comment.
The breach occurred on October 19, according to HIBP, and was claimed by a threat actor operating under the alias “Satanic” on October 21. In a post on the cybercrime forum BreachForums, Satanic claimed to have stolen 350 million user records from Hot Topic and its affiliated brands, Box Lunch and Torrid.
The hacker initially attempted to sell the database for $20,000 and demanded a $100,000 ransom from Hot Topic to take down the information, according to a report by cybersecurity firm Hudson Rock.
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Whistleblowers allege government cover-ups of UFO incidents, intimidating witnesses at House hearing
The U.S. government has long operated a secretive UFO crash retrieval program and has routinely intimidated witnesses who know about the effort, all while engaging in a high-stakes arms race with adversaries around the world that also have transformative and possibly alien technologies.
Those were just a few of the bombshell charges from a witness at a House hearing Wednesday. It was the second hearing in the past two years focusing on “unidentified aerial phenomena,” or UAP.
#uap #government #unitedstates #whistleblower #ufo #technology
Once dismissed as pure science fiction, the issue has become a serious, bipartisan matter on Capitol Hill, in military circles and in the scientific community.
At the hearing, former military officials said the Pentagon and intelligence agencies have a vast trove of information, including high-resolution photos and videos, of UFOs that have been hidden from the public and even from Congress.
The witnesses said UAP research programs deep inside the Defense Department, CIA and other arms of the government operate with virtually no oversight and with off-the-books budgets.
Army veteran and former Defense Department official Luis Elizondo suggested to the House panel that the U.S. and its adversaries are working feverishly behind the scenes to develop military capabilities based on technology retrieved from UAP.
“Advanced technologies not made by our government, or any other government, are monitoring sensitive military installations around the globe. Furthermore, the U.S. is in possession of UAP technologies, as are some of our adversaries,” Mr. Elizondo told the hearing, hosted by two subcommittees of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.
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MIT's AI Discovers New Science - "Intelligence Explosion"
#technology #ai #newsonleo !summarize
Part 1/4:
The Rise of AI-Driven Scientific Discovery
The Changing Landscape of Scientific Research
Traditional scientific discovery has long been a manual, time-consuming process of trial and error. Researchers conceptualize potential structures and test their properties, slowly uncovering new materials and insights. However, the landscape is shifting as artificial intelligence (AI) begins to play a transformative role in this process.
Automating the Discovery Process
AI technology, leveraging advancements in deep learning, can now partially automate the materials discovery process. Trained on the composition and characteristics of existing materials, AI models can generate recipes for novel compounds predicted to possess specific desired properties. This allows researchers to access a wider range of exotic materials that may have previously been undiscovered, unlocking solutions to problems that were once considered unsolvable.
**Dramatic Improvements in Producti
[...]
Part 2/4:
The impact of AI on scientific research is profound. According to a recent study from MIT, AI assistants have enabled researchers to discover 44% more materials, resulting in a 39% increase in patent filings and a staggering 177% rise in downstream product innovation. These AI-discovered compounds possess more novel chemical structures, leading to more radical inventions.
The Uneven Impact on Researchers
However, the benefits of AI-driven discovery are not evenly distributed. The study found that the top researchers in the field benefited the most, with their productivity nearly doubling. In contrast, the bottom third of scientists saw little to no change in their output.
Automating Idea Generation
[...]
Part 3/4:
The AI technology has been able to automate 57% of the idea generation tasks, freeing up researchers to focus on the more hands-on work of evaluating the AI-generated candidate materials. This shift in responsibilities reflects a broader trend where AI takes over the more mundane, repetitive tasks, allowing humans to focus on higher-level decision-making and judgment.
The Challenge of Job Satisfaction
While the productivity gains are undeniable, the study also revealed a significant challenge. A staggering 82% of scientists reported reduced satisfaction with their work, citing decreased creativity and skill underutilization. This raises important questions about the long-term implications of AI-driven scientific discovery on the human experience and the potential loss of fulfillment in creative pursuits.
The Precipice of a New Era in AI
[...]
Part 4/4:
This research paper, combined with other recent developments, suggests that we may be at the precipice of a new stage in the evolution of artificial intelligence. Beyond the conversational language models and human-level problem solvers, we are now witnessing the emergence of "innovator" AI systems that can aid in the invention process itself.
The prospect of AI-driven scientific discovery and recursive self-improvement raises the specter of the "intelligence explosion" – a scenario where AI surpasses human intelligence, potentially leaving us far behind. As we approach the threshold of artificial super-intelligence, we must grapple with the profound implications and ensure that the integration of AI and human intelligence is balanced and beneficial for all.
Nokia acquires Rapid, the API company once valued at $1B
Nokia, once the world’s biggest mobile phone company but now mainly a provider of infrastructure and services to telecoms carriers, has made an acquisition in its bid to be a bridge between the worlds of tech and telecoms. It’s acquiring Rapid, formerly known as RapidAPI, a startup that operates an API marketplace. Nokia will be integrating Rapid into a platform it’s building to help 5G operators open their networks to more developers.
#nokia #mobilephone #rapid #api #technology
“Operators need a bridge to connect to thousands of developers to drive enterprise and consumer value creation and monetize their networks,” said Raghav Sahgal, president of Cloud and Network Services at Noka, in a statement.
The deal will include a public marketplace, enterprise services, and an enterprise-grade API hub designed for building, testing, and sharing APIs internally and externally.
Terms of the deal are not being disclosed in the official announcement. Rapid was once valued at $1 billion and counted as many as 4 million users tapping into some 40,000 APIs. The companies are not disclosing Rapid’s active users as of today except to note that it is a number in the thousands, and that APIs are in the hundreds. As Nokia is publicly traded, more financial details may come through in a future filing.
The landscape for technology has shifted drastically over the last couple of years, and many later-stage startups have found it challenging to meet the lofty forecasts they had set while raising big funding rounds in more buoyant years. (Rapid’s $1 billion valuation was based on a funding round from 2022.)
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Fitbit’s kids’ smartwatch gets family group chats
Fitbit’s Ace LTE, the smartwatch designed for ages 7+, is introducing new features to help families stay connected and get active together. On Wednesday, Fitbit’s smartwatch for kids, the Ace LTE, is introducing group chats and quests to help families stay connected and get active together.
On Wednesday, Fitbit announced a slew of new features, including group chats, family quests, a new mini-game, and two new watch faces. There’s also a new direct message feature for siblings to text and call each other using their devices.
#fitbit #technology #exercise #smartwatch
Ace LTE, launched in May, is designed to provide parents with a sense of security. It allows them to text and call their kids, track their location, and monitor their activity level. The device restricts kids’ ability to add contacts. Instead, guardians can approve and add up to 20 trusted adults to the account, ensuring that communication stays in a controlled network.
A newly introduced feature enhances this experience by enabling a group chat function within the Ace LTE device and the companion Ace app. Anyone within the Google Family can be added to the chat.
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Anthropic's Claude seeks work with the U.S. intelligence community
Anthropic's large language model Claude is preparing for work in the U.S. intelligence community.
Leading artificial intelligence company Anthropic and software giant Palantir announced a collaboration with Amazon this month to bring the Claude models to national security officials.
Kate Earle Jensen, Anthropic head of sales and partnerships, said the Claude 3 and 3.5 models delivered via Palantir’s AI Platform would help the spy agencies and military officials process large swaths of data far more effectively.
#anthropic #technology #chatbot #unitedstates #government #ai
“This will dramatically improve intelligence analysis and enable officials in their decision-making processes, streamline resource-intensive tasks, and boost operational efficiency across departments,” she said in a statement shared by Denver-based Palantir.
Palantir officials said Claude became accessible within Palantir’s platform on Amazon Web Services earlier this month. The new functionality is accessible to defense and intelligence agencies responsible for operations that depend on quickly processing data, identifying patterns, and streamlining decisions in time-sensitive situations.
An AI update is underway across the federal government, including the intelligence community. President Biden issued a National Security Memorandum on Artificial Intelligence last month that the White House said was “designed to galvanize federal government adoption of AI to advance the national security mission.” Chief artificial intelligence officers from across the government’s 18 intelligence agencies are gathering in a council to focus on standardizing approaches and best practices.
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Tesla recalls thousands of Cybertrucks over acceleration issue
Tesla on Wednesday issued its sixth Cybertruck recall this year, pulling back over 2,000 vehicles.
This concerns faulty drive inverters in Cybertrucks manufactured between November 2023 and last July. According to the recall notice, the bad inverters can cause the electric trucks to lose acceleration capabilities.
#tesla #cybertruck #acceleration #recall #automotive
“If the inverter stops producing torque, the driver loses the ability to apply torque to the vehicle using the accelerator pedal, resulting in a loss of propulsion,” the notice reads. “Which may increase the risk of a collision.”
Owners with affected vehicles must take their Cybertrucks to a Tesla dealership for a free repair.
This week’s Cybertruck recall is the sixth Tesla has issued this year. The truck debuted late last year to low sales numbers and criticism from customers, who complained about its quality and safety.
This year, Tesla recalled nearly every Cybertruck on the road over a delay in the rearview camera image, which could increase the risk of a collision. Tesla has also issued recalls covering issues with the truck’s singular windshield wiper and a loose accelerator pedal.
Despite the criticism and recall notices, Tesla’s Cybertruck has become one of the best-selling electric vehicles and the highest-selling electric truck, beating out Ford’s electric F-150.
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OpenAI is launching an AI agent that can do work for people
OpenAI will reportedly release the AI agent, code named "Operator," in January
The AI agent, codenamed “Operator,” can do tasks on behalf of a person, including coding and booking travel, Bloomberg reported, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter.
The startup plans to release the AI agent as a research preview and through its application programming interface (API), OpenAI leaders reportedly told staff in a meeting Wednesday.
#aiagent #openai #operator #technology #startup #technology
OpenAI is working on other AI-agent-related projects, including a tool that can perform tasks in a web browser, people told Bloomberg. That tool is reportedly close to completion.
OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The startup’s investor and partner, Microsoft (MSFT
+0.52%
), announced in October that its Copilot AI users could build their own autonomous agents in Copilot Studio starting this month. The autonomous agents can “understand the nature of your work and act on your behalf,” Microsoft said.
In July, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg discussed a future where everyone has an AI assistant.
“Every single restaurant, every single website will probably, in the future, have these AIs,” Huang said about Meta’s AI Studio platform, which allows users and creators to generate AI characters of themselves that can assist with different tasks.
Zuckerberg added, “Just like every business has an email address and a website and a social media account, I think, in the future, every business is going to have an AI.”
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Japan's nuclear watchdog formally disqualifies a reactor for the first time since Fukushima disaster
Japan’s nuclear watchdog on Wednesday formally disqualified a reactor in the country’s north-central region from restarting, the first rejection under safety standards that were reinforced after the 2011 Fukushima disaster. The decision is a setback for Japan as it seeks to accelerate reactor restarts to maximize nuclear power.
#japan #nuclear #fukushima #reactor #energy
The Nuclear Regulation Authority said the Tsuruga No. 2 reactor is “unfit” as its operator failed to address safety risks stemming from the presence of possible active fault lines, which can potentially cause earthquakes, underneath it.
Tsuruga No. 2, operated by the Japan Atomic Power Co., is the first reactor to be rejected under safety standards adopted in 2013 based on lessons from the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi meltdown disaster following a massive earthquake and tsunami.
“We reached our conclusion based on a very strict examination,” NRA chairperson Shinsuke Yamanaka told reporters.
The verdict comes after more than eight years of safety reviews that were repeatedly disrupted by data coverups and mistakes by the operator, Yamanaka said. He called the case “abnormal” and urged the utility to take the result seriously.
The decision is a blow to Japan Atomic Power because it virtually ends its hopes for a restart. The operator, which is decommissioning its other reactor, Tsuruga No. 1, had hoped to put No. 2 back online, but it would require an examination of dozens of faults around the reactor to prove their safety.
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AMD is laying off workers as it focuses on AI
The chipmaker's stock fell more than 2% in midday trading
Advanced Micro Devices is cutting 4% of its global workforce as it focuses on competition in the artificial intelligence chips space.
#amd #ai #technology #semiconductor
“As a part of aligning our resources with our largest growth opportunities, we are taking a number of targeted steps that will unfortunately result in reducing our global workforce by approximately 4%,” a spokesperson for AMD said in a statement shared with Quartz on Wednesday. “We are committed to treating impacted employees with respect and helping them through this transition.”
The cuts target sales and marketing roles in some divisions including consumer PC and gaming PC, Bloomberg reported, citing an unnamed person familiar with the matter. The company is reportedly still hiring.
AMD shares fell by around 2.3% during mid-day trading on Wednesday.
In October, AMD reported third-quarter revenues of $6.8 billion — slightly above Wall Street’s expectations.
“Looking forward, we see significant growth opportunities across our data center, client and embedded businesses driven by the insatiable demand for more compute,” AMD chief executive Lisa Su said in a statement.
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Bitcoin $100,000 is closer than ever
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies continue to smash records following Donald Trump's election win
Bitcoin has reached over $93,000 and shows no signs of slowing.
According to the crypto tracking website CoinGecko, the leading cryptocurrency’s new all-time is $93,477, which is over 5% up from the past 24 hours and 23% from the last week. Some analysts say Bitcoin could even cross the $100,000 threshold.
#bitcoin #crypto #trump #election #market
The recent bitcoin surge is due to Donald Trump’s reelection, which has put an expected crypto ally in the White House for the first time. And bitcoin’s price is expected to continue barreling forward as investors’ optimism and enthusiasm grows regarding Trump’s return to the Oval Office in January.
With a $1.8 trillion market cap, bitcoin is now the eighth-largest asset in the world. It surpassed silver, which has a market cap of $1.71 trillion. Bitcoin has surged more than 135,211% since 2013, meaning that a $1,000 investment back then would now be worth over $1.3 million.
Bitcoin is rallying on Trump’s victory
Trump took a pro-bitcoin stance throughout his campaign, championing the digital currency as a symbol of financial independence and an alternative to traditional banking. Labeling himself as the “crypto candidate,” Trump embraced digital assets in his campaign, even accepting donations in a range of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ether, Dogecoin, and Solana.
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Meta tweaks ad policy over EU objections
Meta announced changes to its targeted advertising policy this week after European Union regulators said the company wasn't doing enough to restrict the amount of information sold to ad agencies.
In the announcement Tuesday, Meta said it would reduce its subscription prices for Instagram and Facebook and would offer EU residents the choice to use both platforms for free without targeted advertising.
#meta #ad #eu #technology #europeanunion #advertising
Under the new rules, users who opt to use the free versions of Meta’s platforms will be shown fewer personalized ads. Meta says personalized ads help consumers and businesses find the products and customers they’re looking for.
“Although we are being put in a position where we have to offer an ads experience that delivers less value for people and businesses, we will also continue to deliver great personalized experiences that are the best outcome for people and businesses in Europe,” Meta wrote in a statement.
Meta’s no advertising tiered subscription will be reduced by 40%, from $10.60 to $6.40 a month on web and from $13.80 to $8.49 a month on mobile devices.
Meta’s policy change comes after the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled in October that Meta can’t freely use customer data and must add more guardrails.
“An online social network such as Facebook cannot use all of the personal data obtained for the purposes of targeted advertising, without restriction as to time and without distinction as to type of data,” the court wrote in its decision.
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'FYI. A Warrant Isn’t Needed': Secret Service Says You Agreed To Be Tracked With Location Data
The Secret Service has used a technology called Locate X which uses location data harvested from ordinary apps installed on phones. Because users agreed to an opaque terms of service page, the Secret Service believes it doesn't need a warrant.
#surveillance #crime #secretservice #government #technology
The emails provide deeper insight into the agency’s use of Locate X, a powerful surveillance capability that allows law enforcement officials to follow a phone, and person’s, precise movements over time at the click of a mouse. In 2023, a government oversight body found that the Secret Service, Customs and Border Protection, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement all used their access to such location data illegally. The Secret Service told 404 Media in an email last week it is no longer using the tool.
“If USSS [U.S. Secret Service] is using Locate X, that is most concerning to us,” one of the internal emails said. 404 Media obtained them and other documents through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the Secret Service.
Amazon shuts down secret project to develop fertility tracker
The project, codenamed "Encore," was part of Amazon's moonshot incubator Grand Challenge, which launched under founder Jeff Bezos.
Amazon has discontinued a secretive effort to develop an at-home fertility tracker, according to internal documents and people familiar with the matter.
#amazon #encore #fertility #tracking
The company had been working to launch a fertility monitoring device and companion smartphone app for the past four years as part of a project codenamed "Encore," said the people, who asked not to be named because they weren't authorized to speak to the press. The team sat within Amazon's Grand Challenge, also known as its Special Projects division, the sources said.
In October, Amazon told people working on the tracker that it was disbanding the team. Those being laid off will remain on Amazon's payroll until Dec. 27, but won't be expected to work during that time, according to documents reviewed by CNBC.
If staffers don't secure another job by that date, Amazon will provide them with a "lump sum" severance payment equal to one week of salary for every six months of tenure at the company, the documents said.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has been reeling in costs companywide since late 2022, when inflationary pressures and rising interest rates led to a slowdown across the tech and consumer markets. In addition to slashing more than 27,000 jobs, Jassy has shuttered several projects, ranging from a roving sidewalk robot to a telehealth offering and a rapid delivery service.
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Bernard Arnault is suing Elon Musk's X in a clash between 2 of the world's richest people
The dispute involves payment for republishing news content
Bernard Arnault, who the Bloomberg Billionaires Index says is the world’s fifth-richest man, is suing Elon Musk, which the index pegs as the richest. The dispute between the two involves an accusation that one of Musk’s companies, the social media platform X (TSLA), republished content from a number of press outlets owned by Arnault.
#x #lawsuit #bernardarnault #bloomberg #elonmusk
Fortune reports that Arnault’s Les Echos and Le Parisien newspapers are seeking compensation due to them under French law, which regulates social media companies more strictly than the U.S. does and which compels platforms to pay for content republished from the media. Arnault’s papers are joined in this action by the newspapers Le Monde Le Figaro and the Agence France-Presse news agency.
In a statement to The Telegraph, the outlets said Musk has refused to forward payment or even negotiate about the matter.
“The revenue from these rights, with the investment that it would enable its beneficiaries to make, is a boost to the plurality, independence and quality of the media, which are essential for freedom of expression and the right to information in our democratic society,” it said.
The case will likely be heard in May.
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Cisco reports fourth straight quarter of declining revenue
Cisco reported a fourth straight quarter of declining revenue even as results topped analysts' estimates. The stock slipped about 1% in extended trading.
#cisco #revenue #stock #technology #earnings
Here's how the company did in comparison with LSEG consensus:
Earnings per share: 91 cents adjusted vs. 87 cents expected
Revenue: $13.84 billion vs. $13.77 billion expected
Cisco's revenue dropped 6% in the quarter ended Oct. 26, from $14.7 billion a year earlier, according to a statement. Net income fell to $2.71 billion, or 68 cents per share, from $3.64 billion, or 89 cents per share, in the same quarter a year ago.
Networking revenue plunged 23% to $6.75 billion, slightly below the $6.8 billion consensus of analysts surveyed by StreetAccount.
Security revenue doubled to $2.02 billion, topping the StreetAccount consensus of $1.93 billion. Cisco's revenue from collaboration was $1.09 billion, a bit below the $1.04 billion consensus estimate.
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OpenAI Updates
OpenAI is releasing "Operator" in January, a tool to help people by doing tasks like booking travel and writing code automatically. OpenAI is a tool that's improving, it's not just data it's utility
BlueSky is now the #1 app as more users leave X. The advantage is that it has fewer bots, better engagement, safety tools and a friendlier atmosphere for discussions. This is basically centralized Inleo threads without the earnings
Bluesky crosses the 15 million user mark
Short-form posting platform Bluesky crossed the 15 million user mark today amid a recent surge of user signups in the wake of the US presidential election. That’s according to a stat-tracking site put together by Bluesky developer Jaz, using the Bluesky API.
#technology #bluesky
The platform, which rests on the decentralized AT Protocol, added about a million new users in the last week. Bluesky COO Rose Wang recently told The Verge that the “majority” of new users flocking to the platform have been from the US. The Bluesky app is currently at number one in the iOS app store, followed by Threads, ChatGPT, and the Google app.
Meta’s Threads is still outpacing Bluesky, having recently hit 275 million monthly users and growing at a rate of over a million signups per day. But Bluesky offers a very different experience. Both are ad-free (for now), but whereas Threads uses a single Meta-made algorithmic feed, Bluesky offers user-created algorithmic feeds in addition to its “Discover” and “Popular With Friends” ones.
New features that Bluesky has recently rolled out include video posting, pinned posts and custom fonts, and a slew of “anti-toxicity” features that let you do things like detach your posts when someone else quotes them.
These are the passwords you definitely shouldn’t be using
The password manager NordPass has once again released its annual list of the world’s most popular passwords — and the lack of creativity is just a little disheartening. For the second year in a row, “123456” has been crowned the most common password.
#technology #passwords
The same numbers topped the chart five out of the six times NordPass has compiled its lists, only to be usurped by the famed “password” in 2022. But once you get past all the QWERTYs, ABCs, and 123s, we get a little insight into what humanity thinks about when creating the line of text that protects their most personal information.
There are those who choose “iloveyou” and those who opt for “fuckyou.” Others have distinct interests, like “pokemon,” “naruto,” “samsung,” and “minecraft.” Many more are just names, like “michelle” or “ashley,” but at least some people make a half-assed attempt at creating a secure “P@ssw0rd” (which still takes less than one second to crack, by the way).
I had a bit of fun looking through the small differences in passwords across different countries, too. The UK’s list, for example, has “liverpool” near the top, while Australia’s has “lizottes” (a restaurant and live music venue that is now apparently called Flamingos Live). Other countries, like Finland and Hungary, have “salasana” and “jelszo” toward the top of their lists — both translate to “password.”
To create its list, NordPass said it used a 2.5TB database of “publicly available sources,” some of which were found on the dark web. Many of these passwords take milliseconds for a hacker to figure out, so if your password is on this list, you should probably change it to something a little more creative than “secret.” Or maybe even try passkeys!
Here are the top 10 most common passwords:
123456
123456789
12345678
password
qwerty123
qwerty1
111111
12345
secret
123123
Sonos revenue falls in the aftermath of company’s messy app debacle
Sonos is still trying to climb out from the hole it dug itself earlier this year by recklessly shipping an overhauled mobile app well before the software was actually ready. Today, just a couple weeks after the release of its latest hardware products — the Arc Ultra and Sub 4 — Sonos reported its fiscal Q4 2024 earnings. And the damage done by the app debacle is clear.
#technology #sonos
Revenue was down 8 percent year over year, which Sonos attributed to “softer demand due to challenging market conditions and challenges resulting from our recent app rollout.” During the quarter, the company sank $4 million into unspecified “app recovery investments.” (Sonos previously estimated it could spend up to $30 million to resolve all of the trouble that has stemmed from the rebuilt app.)
“To date, we have released 16 updates and restored 90 percent of missing features,” the company wrote in its earnings presentation. “Moving forward, we’ll alternate between major and minor releases. This will allow us to maintain our momentum of making improvements while also ensuring adequate beta testing.”
CEO Patrick Spence has taken accountability for the app situation, and last month, Sonos announced multiple commitments that it believes will prevent another colossal misstep like this from happening again. Some aspects of the plan are focused on more rigorous testing and greater transparency — both inside the company and out. But others, like executives potentially losing out on their annual bonuses, have been mocked by customers as meaningless, half-hearted measures.
“The Sonos flywheel remains strong, as evidenced by the fact that the number of new products per home increased in fiscal 2024,” Spence said in today’s press release. The company also reported its “all-time highest annual market share” in home theater, another positive sign at a time when morale among Sonos employees has taken a serious hit.
The rebuilt app is in a better place now, which you’d hope would be the case after several months of bug fixes and performance enhancements. The mood within Sonos community spaces like the company’s subreddit has also improved, with less of the vitriol that felt non-stop (understandably so) from late spring through the early fall.
As far as hardware is concerned, Sonos seems to be getting back on track. Early reviews of the Arc Ultra have been largely positive. (Yes, I’ll have one coming in the near future.) One early bug with the new soundbar affected Trueplay tuning and, for some customers, resulted in lackluster bass response from a paired subwoofer. Sonos just rectified this issue with a software update that went out earlier today.
But some of the company’s most loyal customers are still feeling a sense of wariness and frayed trust towards the brand. Sonos’ next major new product is rumored to be a video streaming box. I’m still flummoxed as to just how the company plans to stand out from competitors in that space. But hopefully there won’t be another major controversy to derail the product, as was the case with the Sonos Ace headphones.
Smart sleep is worth the cost
A better night’s sleep, every night, and you don’t have to do anything to make it happen. Sounds like the, ahem, dream, right? Also sounds like a line you might hear from some infomercial salesman at 4 in the morning when you can’t sleep and are willing to try anything. Turns out, the promise is real. It’s just really, really, really expensive.
#technology #gadgets
On this episode of The Vergecast, The Verge’s Victoria Song tells us about her adventures in sleep gadgets. We talk for a while about the Eight Sleep Pod 4 Ultra, a mattress pad that costs $4,700 and requires a subscription. And might just be worth it, if a better night’s sleep is worth it to you. We also talk about the Oura Ring 4, the whole sleepmaxxing trend, the Ozlo Sleepbuds, and other ways you can use tech to improve your shut-eye. Most of it doesn’t count five grand, we promise.
After that, The Verge’s Allison Johnson comes on the show to make the case for human DJs. After spending some time with Spotify’s AI DJ, she discovered that a near-infinite playlist of songs she loves, curated by a near-human DJ that knows her name, is still not what she’s looking for. We talk about why, and what it says about how we should be mixing the human and the artificial in our day-to-day lives.
Finally, we answer a question on the Vergecast Hotline (call 866-VERGE11, or email vergecast@theverge.com!) about Samsung’s Frame TV. Nilay Patel takes us through the pros and cons of this odd screen and its many imitators, and we talk about what to do when you feel like you need a TV but maybe you don’t particularly want one.
And I can imagine the potential that people can have with the help of AI.
In this case, creating videos on YouTube using music created by AI. In addition to being unique songs (I believe, just like we see in the images), they are ours (copyright?).
Whoever explores this, I think they will benefit a lot on YouTube. I think I'm going to start making some videos with my daughter. She can already imitate the choreography in the videos. It's very funny and interesting because she's only 2 years old.
Example:
Other:
OpenAI LEAK: "AI progress will HALT" | GPT-5 is Slowing Down
#openai #gpt5 #ai #technology !summarize
Part 1/6:
The Limits of Scaling: Open AI's Shift in AI Development
The AI world has been abuzz with the hype surrounding large language models like GPT-4 and the promise of ever-increasing intelligence through scaling. However, recent developments at Open AI suggest that this scaling approach may be hitting its limits, leading the company to explore new strategies for advancing AI capabilities.
Questioning the Scaling Laws
The release of Open AI's latest model, Orion, has raised some eyebrows. Contrary to expectations, the improvements in Orion were not as revolutionary as many had anticipated, leading to questions about the validity of the scaling laws that have underpinned the rapid progress in AI.
[...]
Part 2/6:
The idea that simply feeding more data and computing power into larger models will naturally lead to smarter and more capable AI is now being challenged. Orion's performance, which excels in certain language tasks but falls short in others like coding, suggests that the path to universal AI intelligence may not be as straightforward as once believed.
The Limits of Data and the Rise of Synthetic Data
Another challenge facing Open AI is the dwindling supply of high-quality data to train their models. The company has essentially "scraped the web dry" of available data sources, leading them to explore the use of AI-generated synthetic data to train future models.
[...]
Part 3/6:
However, this approach is not without its critics. Concerns have been raised about the potential for an "inbreeding effect," where the new models become too similar to the old ones, stifling innovation. There are also worries about the compounding of small mistakes as the synthetic data is used to train subsequent models, leading to a potential "collapse" in the quality of the AI systems.
Shifting Focus: Improving Models Post-Training
In response to these challenges, Open AI is shifting its focus towards developing techniques to improve models after the initial training phase. Reinforcement learning and human feedback are being used extensively to fine-tune models like ChatGPT, making them more helpful and safer.
[...]
Part 4/6:
The introduction of "reasoning models" like the O1, which take time to ponder and process information, suggests a move away from the "spit out the first answer" approach. This shift reflects a deeper change in Open AI's mission, prioritizing safety, alignment, and meaningful enhancements to human capabilities over the pursuit of ever-larger models.
The Future of AI: Specialized Tools or a Single Powerful Model?
As the limitations of scaling become more apparent, the question arises: is the future of AI in specialized tools rather than a single, powerful "one AI to rule them all"? While some areas may be plateauing, AI is still making significant strides in complex tasks like coding, problem-solving, and scientific breakthroughs.
[...]
Part 5/6:
This shift in approach could have far-reaching implications for the AI infrastructure investments being made by tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and Nvidia. If the focus moves away from building massive, general-purpose models, the need for specialized hardware and software may change, potentially disrupting the current trajectory of the industry.
Conclusion
The developments at Open AI suggest that the AI world is entering a new phase, where the size of the model alone is no longer the sole determinant of success. Instead, the focus is shifting towards creating AI systems that are genuinely helpful, safe, and aligned with human values.
[...]
Part 6/6:
As the industry grapples with the limits of scaling and the challenges of data availability, the future of AI may lie in a more nuanced and specialized approach, with a greater emphasis on post-training techniques and the development of tools tailored to specific tasks and domains. This transition could have far-reaching implications for the direction of AI research and investment, as the industry adapts to the evolving landscape of AI development.
Cheap Used EVs Will Flood The Market In The Next Two Years, Experts Say
Over a quarter of a million EVs will come off lease by the end of 2026, so keep your eyes peeled for deals.
Nearly 280,000 EV leases will end in the next two years, according to J.D. Power.
These cars will likely flood the used car market.
That's because most lessees will find it cheaper to just lease a new EV instead of buying out their old one.
#evs #cheap #automotive
The next two years will be a roller coaster ride for new and used electric vehicle prices in the United States. According to a new study from J.D. Power, over a quarter of a million EV leases will end by the time 2026 comes to a close, flooding the market with potentially very affordable battery-powered cars.
That’s good news for people who are looking to get an EV but don’t quite have the money to buy a new one. But there’s more good news: the people returning their slightly used EVs might find it cheaper to just lease a new one instead of buying off their two- or three-year-old car when the contract ends.
That’s because prices for new zero-emissions cars are projected to go down even more, coupled with the introduction of more models from several automakers. Just look at General Motors–it already has nine electric cars on sale, but more are on the way, together with more affordable versions of the currently available models. BMW, Hyundai, Kia, Stellantis and others will also diversify their portfolio.
Article
The AI Factory: What It Is & Its Key Components
In the digital age, you must understand the AI factory and how it can help you implement AI technologies into business operations.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is crucial to business strategy, with 42 percent of large companies deploying it to enhance operations and gain a competitive edge.
At this revolution’s heart is the AI factory, which enables you to automate processes and make more informed decisions by integrating AI into business operations.
If you want to harness AI’s potential, understanding how the AI factory functions is essential.
#aifactory #ai #technology #business #future
Become an AI-First Firm
Establishing and maintaining your organization’s AI factory is essential to fostering innovation and efficiency. By using AI to automate complex tasks and generate data-driven insights, you can improve decision-making processes and compete in a dynamic market.
To capitalize on AI’s opportunities, you need a solid understanding of the AI factory’s core principles and applications. AI Essentials for Business can equip you with practical skills and strategies for building a responsible AI-powered organization.
Hi, @taskmaster4450le,
This post has been voted on by @darkcloaks because you are an active member of the Darkcloaks gaming community.
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What Is the AI Factory?
The AI factory transforms internal and external data into actionable insights through advanced analytics.
According to the Harvard Business Review, AI factories power millions of Google’s daily ad auctions, determine ride availability on digital platforms like Uber, set Amazon’s product prices, and even manage robots that clean Walmart’s floors.
“The AI factory, as its output, does three things,” says Harvard Business School Professor Karim Lakhani, who co-teaches the online course AI Essentials for Business with HBS Professor Marco Iansiti. “Predictions, pattern recognition, and process automation.”
Those outputs allow you to:
Forecast events—like customer behavior or inventory needs—to enhance decisions and customer retention
Identify data trends to uncover and adapt to opportunities and risks
Automate routine tasks—from customer service to medical image analysis— by combining predictions and pattern recognition
If you want to improve your decision-making and help your organization be more AI-driven, here are the four components that power the AI factory.
4 Components of the AI Factory
A key component of the AI factory is the data pipeline, a semi-automated, systematic process for gathering, cleaning, integrating, and securing company data to ensure it’s sustainable and scalable for AI technologies.
The process, known as datafication, transforms raw data into a usable format for AI models. High-quality data is crucial because AI models’ accuracy and reliability heavily depend on their inputs’ quality.
“As the saying goes: ‘Garbage in, garbage out,’” Lakhani says in AI Essentials for Business. “If your data isn't set up in a way that enables you to learn from across your enterprise or your customers, you're going to have garbage coming out of your AI factory.”
For example, Amazon uses a sophisticated data pipeline to manage and analyze vast amounts of customer data, including browsing histories and purchase behaviors. Through cleaning and organizing that data, its AI models can accurately predict customer preferences and personalize recommendations.
Establishing a strong data pipeline requires setting up systems and processes. Without a foundation of clean, well-organized data, the AI factory can’t effectively support decision-making and innovation.
Beyond a strong pipeline, you need algorithms to transform data into actionable insights that allow you to anticipate trends and make data-driven decisions.
“Data by itself doesn't do anything,” Iansiti says in AI Essentials for Business. “You actually need to figure out which algorithm you're going to choose. You're going to figure out what type of algorithm you need. You need to figure out what to do with it.”
Not every algorithm is created equal. With a range of data types, you must select one that aligns with your business goals and objectives. That involves considering your data’s characteristics and the predictions or outcomes you want to achieve.
In the automotive industry, for example, Tesla's goal of creating safe, efficient autonomous vehicles drives its algorithm choices. It uses advanced machine-learning algorithms to analyze camera, sensor, and radar data to generate real-time predictions that guide steering, braking, and acceleration decisions.
By choosing algorithms designed to handle complex data inputs and make accurate predictions, Tesla continually refines its technology to enhance safety and the driving experience.
Your AI factory’s effectiveness similarly depends not just on your data’s quality but your algorithm’s sophistication and suitability.
Software infrastructure provides the foundational architecture that supports your AI factory’s data pipeline and algorithm.
“Infrastructure is actually a really important point,” Lakhani says in AI Essentials for Business. “You can have the fanciest data pipelines, the fanciest algorithms—but if your infrastructure can't make this work, can't do this at scale, then you run into problems.”
Infrastructure is the AI factory’s backbone, connecting internal teams and external users to streamline operations. It includes the hardware, software, and networks that manage data storage, processing, and movement.
For example, while Netflix's early algorithms were advanced, its infrastructure couldn’t handle large-scale processing, creating a poor recommendation experience. To address that, Netflix invested in more scalable cloud-based infrastructure to process large volumes of data and deliver accurate recommendations to millions of subscribers—significantly enhancing the user experience and helping maintain a high retention rate compared to competitors.
The AI factory’s final component is the experimentation platform, where your team can test, refine, and optimize AI models and predict outcomes based on different conditions.
“The experimentation platform is important because your algorithms are basically going to generate a range of hypotheses,” Lakhani says in AI Essentials for Business. “They're going to say, take action X to increase customer satisfaction, take action Y to potentially increase sales, take action Z to change the dynamics of who pays first.”
Your hypotheses can include questions like:
Will a new pricing algorithm increase sales?
Can a machine-learning model more accurately predict customer churn?
Will a new AI-based process improve operational efficiency?
By providing a space to innovate and test, your experimentation platform can enable you to explore AI’s possibilities, adjust to changes, and seize market opportunities.
“Your job with the experimentation platform is to take those predictions from your algorithmic development and test them to say that, ‘In fact, are these predictions doing what they are supposed to be doing?’” Lakhani says in AI Essentials for Business.
New Research Proves AGI Was Achieved...
#ai #technology #newsonleo !summarize
Part 1/4:
The Surprising Effectiveness of Test-Time Training for Abstract Reasoning
Recent research from MIT has shed light on a significant development in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). The paper, titled "The Surprising Effectiveness of Test-Time Training for Abstract Reasoning," explores the performance of language models on a challenging benchmark known as the ARC (Abstract Reasoning Challenge) Benchmark.
The ARC Benchmark, created by Francis Chollet, a senior staff engineer at Google, is designed to be a kind of "IQ test" for machine intelligence. Unlike traditional benchmarks, the ARC Benchmark is resistant to memorization, requiring models to possess a deeper understanding of core knowledge, such as elementary physics, object recognition, and counting. This makes it particularly challenging for large language models (LLMs), which often excel at tasks within their training distribution but struggle with novel problems requiring complex reasoning.
[...]
Part 2/4:
The MIT researchers investigated the effectiveness of a technique called "test-time training," which involves temporarily updating the model parameters during inference using a loss derived from the input data. This approach allowed them to significantly improve the performance of LLMs on the ARC Benchmark, surpassing human-level reasoning for the first time.
The key to their success was a multi-step process that involved transforming the input data (e.g., flipping the image vertically or horizontally) and then using a hierarchical voting method to aggregate the predictions from these transformed inputs. This resembles a search for agreement or consistency across the outputs, ensuring that the chosen answer is the one that appears most frequently across the variations.
[...]
Failed to generate video summary: fetch failed
Part 1/4:
The Surprising Effectiveness of Test-Time Training for Abstract Reasoning
Recent research from MIT has shed light on a significant development in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). The paper, titled "The Surprising Effectiveness of Test-Time Training for Abstract Reasoning," explores the performance of language models on a challenging benchmark known as the ARC (Abstract Reasoning Challenge) Benchmark.
The ARC Benchmark, created by Francis Chollet, a senior staff engineer at Google, is designed to be a kind of "IQ test" for machine intelligence. Unlike traditional benchmarks, the ARC Benchmark is resistant to memorization, requiring models to possess a deeper understanding of core knowledge, such as elementary physics, object recognition, and counting. This makes it particularly challenging for large language models (LLMs), which often excel at tasks within their training distribution but struggle with novel problems requiring complex reasoning.
[...]
Part 2/4:
The MIT researchers investigated the effectiveness of a technique called "test-time training," which involves temporarily updating the model parameters during inference using a loss derived from the input data. This approach allowed them to significantly improve the performance of LLMs on the ARC Benchmark, surpassing human-level reasoning for the first time.
The key to their success was a multi-step process that involved transforming the input data (e.g., flipping the image vertically or horizontally) and then using a hierarchical voting method to aggregate the predictions from these transformed inputs. This resembles a search for agreement or consistency across the outputs, ensuring that the chosen answer is the one that appears most frequently across the variations.
[...]
Part 3/4:
The results of this study are quite remarkable. The researchers achieved a state-of-the-art public validation accuracy of 61.9%, matching the average human score on the ARC Benchmark. This is a significant achievement, as the ARC Benchmark is considered one of the most challenging benchmarks in AI, designed to be resistant to the strengths of current LLMs.
The implications of this research are far-reaching. It suggests that explicit symbolic search may not be the only path to improved abstract reasoning in these models. The ability to perform well on out-of-distribution problems, such as those presented in the ARC Benchmark, is a crucial step towards achieving Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) – a system that can perform most economically valuable work at least as well as humans.
[...]
Part 4/4:
Furthermore, this research aligns with the insights shared by experts like Shane Legg from Google DeepMind and Demis Hassabis, co-founder of DeepMind. They have emphasized the importance of search and model-building in achieving true creativity and problem-solving capabilities beyond simply mimicking existing data.
The surprising effectiveness of test-time training for abstract reasoning suggests that we may be closer to AGI than previously thought. As researchers continue to explore and refine these techniques, it will be fascinating to see how AI systems evolve and whether they can truly surpass human-level reasoning across a wide range of tasks and domains.
I woke up studying English with my son who has an exam. Now it's time to share #selfies in this #threadcast.
my Wednesday face at what cost #selfis #memories
At least you have a face to show. LOL
Selfie eating banana #selfie
I think you stole Olivia's banana, because she looks at you angry.
I think so hahaha
Always so handsome.
Always welcome your complements :)
!BBH !DOOK
You just got DOOKed!
@bradleyarrow thinks your content is the shit.
They have 11/60 DOOK left to drop today.
Learn all about this shit in the toilet paper! 💩
@mamaemigrante! @bradleyarrow likes your content! so I just sent 1 BBH to your account on behalf of @bradleyarrow. (12/100)
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Please don't use that knife on your pretty face 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽.. I don't like seeing knife close to the face...
That's to show that I can be dangerous if I am disturbed.
Smile 😊😊😊... Please don't be dangerous to me because I intend giving you a friendly disturb ... 🤣🤣🤣
Lol
!DOOK
Hahahaha, don´t worry, I just put it in the drawer.
You almost scared the hell out of me, I was half way to heaven 👀👀🤣🤣..
You just got DOOKed!
@calebmarvel01 thinks your content is the shit.
They have 12/200 DOOK left to drop today.
Learn all about this shit in the toilet paper! 💩
Its as milky as your face, looking pretty 😉...
Please can I have some?
Well, it's not milk, it's chocolate! hahaha
If you had arrived earlier, I would have shared you.
Well, I just saw it's creamy nature
Lol
What a smiling face 😊😊😊... Smile is a good medicine 🙂🙂..
Definitely true, when you walk around with a smile, it seems that everything around you is positive.
You are very correct 😊😊.
How is your day going Over there?
Very busy, but I'm going at my own pace, accomplishing everything. Although sometimes I feel like I'm Jack Nicholson in the movie The Shining, when he sat down to write.
Are you working in a press?
https://img.inleo.io/DQmYUTANGQ2qUjHkSCX1Vik2arC2zy5E5k4ddztECaFXi8q/photo_4924983056830410132_y%20(1).jpg
Me encanta verlas allí, simplemente genial y divertido. muchísimo éxito. Un abrazo.
Hello foodie Lions 🦁! Happy Wednesday. Welcome to today's show. 🥗🍲🫕
This is the #threadcast for Day 141 of the #foodtalk on Leo 13/11/2024 for 12/11/2024. It's time for some meal inspirations and food conversation. Don't forget to use #foodtalk in your comments.
Discussion
More about food with tips and tricks will be dropped in the threadcast. Upvote the comments you find interesting & connect with others. Let's have fun. #foodie
From GPT Web Browser
Prompt: Give me some delicious recipes from around the world.
Exploring international recipes can be a great way to experience different cultures! Here are some delicious recipes from various parts of the world that are both flavorful and not too complicated to make:
Shakshuka (Middle Eastern)
Shakshuka is a dish of poached eggs in a rich tomato sauce with spices.
Ingredients:
Check the instructions in the comments. 👇
#foodtalk #Shakshuka #poachedeggs #food #tomatosauce
Image source
Shakshuka (Middle Eastern) Recipe. 👈 Begin here.
Instructions:
Find the rest in the food talk threadcast Day 142.
#foodtalk #shakshuka #poachedeggs #food #tomatosauce
That looks soooo good. Italians make something very similar to that. It's called Eggs in Purgatory.
Came in handy during lent when we couldn't eat meat on Fridays and I don't care for fish.
#foodtalk
Welcome to another episode of the #foodtalk on Leo, Day 141, feel free to share your meal and #food #recipes in your location and around the world. Join the conversation and earn some rewards.
Oh yeah 🤣🤣🤣, I will also be supporting the curations too .... Lol
But you need to curation this my reply first 🤣🤣🤣🤣...
Just kidding 😂😂..
!DOOK
You just got DOOKed!
@calebmarvel01 thinks your content is the shit.
They have 3/200 DOOK left to drop today.
Learn all about this shit in the toilet paper! 💩
Am I seeing a roasted meat or fried?
Its rice and beans, maybe I can manage this for dinner...
Please drop you location so that we can deliver
My dear friend, inLeo is the location 🤣🤣... We need a live delivery 🚚🚚🚚..
okay I'm coming
Looking at this can make you
hungry
Who is hungry
I am hungry, but not this kind of food. I just needed the beans only.. lol
Maybe @winanda would go for this..
okay then
Oh yeah 😂👍👍.
!DOOK
You just got DOOKed!
@calebmarvel01 thinks your content is the shit.
They have 8/200 DOOK left to drop today.
Learn all about this shit in the toilet paper! 💩
@calebmarvel01 I got your favorite
This is pretty cool my dear... You are about leading me into the temptation of eating this right away... Lol
!DOOK
You just got DOOKed!
@calebmarvel01 thinks your content is the shit.
They have 5/200 DOOK left to drop today.
Learn all about this shit in the toilet paper! 💩
lol😂🤣
Eating Golfeado. A baked sweet wheat flour roll, in the style of cinnamon rolls. It is served with cheese or fried plantains.
Hmm...although I can't see it clearly, I guess it will be yummy. I love the sound of fried plantain, I can imagine how sweet it will be.
Are we going for food this morning? 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣...
I don't like breaking my fast because am a slow eater 😅😅... Lol
@rollando.silva, what about you?
I had mint water and some diced cucumber for breakfast. It was refreshing and perfect to start my day.
I don't remember when last I ate cucumber because I don't have fat to burn... Lol
Am also a slow eater tooo boss
How slow do you eat bro?
slower than a snail
Thats creepily slowly... Lol
yea
Hive five to you lady 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣....
Nice one. I guess your order will go for 5 $HIVE, but wait, that might just get you a burger.
Lol
Please can you send me the burger...
Am hungry for bite 😋🤤😋🤤...
This guy is creepily angry...
Finally hit the 60 referral milestone... those last 3 took a while! #cent #sapphirecrypto
Have you been able to claim some rewards?
Saw a thread about a dude ranting 2 days ago that he'd refer people and couldn't claim his referral rewards
I think the withdrawal limit is quite high... haven't tried, just letting them pile up!
Okay, the dude said there is supposed to be a claim button appearing at a point. I also read from a different conversation when someone said it was 1000 Leo tokens. Have you crossed that and did a claim button appear?
I am almost there... 925
Oh, then I think you'd be able to confirm that claim soon.
But wow, that's some great achievement.
GG fren! 100 is the next target
Definitely!
But Big congrats for pulling that number of people onboard. Its not an easy task. Well done.
Hi everyone,
So excited to join the community!
Let's make the future together
welcome aboard #newlion
Welcome to the family :) !BBH !DOOK
You just got DOOKed!
@bradleyarrow thinks your content is the shit.
They have 12/60 DOOK left to drop today.
Learn all about this shit in the toilet paper! 💩
@makefuture! @bradleyarrow likes your content! so I just sent 1 BBH to your account on behalf of @bradleyarrow. (13/100)
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#hive
Whats next?
Q- Whats next?
Ans- Consolidation at the current level.
#freecompliments
Or, back to 18cents?
No...no....no....18 cents is a thing of past now.
#freecompliments
I like your optimism :) !BBH !DOOK !PIMP
Pessimism is not an option particularly when the macro trend is bullish.
It's just a matter of time.
#freecompliments
You just got DOOKed!
@bradleyarrow thinks your content is the shit.
They have 9/60 DOOK left to drop today.
Learn all about this shit in the toilet paper! 💩
@milaan! @bradleyarrow likes your content! so I just sent 1 BBH to your account on behalf of @bradleyarrow. (9/100)
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#newsonleo #liotes
Investment firm Ark Invest has predicted that a second Trump presidency may bring a sea change in the crypto landscape of US
link ⬇️
https://coinmarketcap.com/academy/article/trump-administration-may-change-crypto-landscape-cathie-woods-ark-invest-predicts?lid=lmhsj9zxbg94
Welp! Vacation is over and it's time to get back in that truck and drive. See you on the highway.
Drive on.
Have a great time.
#freecompliments
Thank you!
New YouTube short up! Please show me some love!!! Thank you to the 2-3 people who already did!
I just did and I've sent some love from Inleo to the video. I've subscribed too great channel man
thanks a lot!!! 🙏
it was my pleasure anything for a fellow lion
let me go check it out and subscribe. Love from Defilion bro
Was part of the 3.
Thank you!!!
oh i just saw this let me go check it out🏃🏃🏃
The reason I have been a little quiet of late… support a Crypto Bro!😎 #cent #sapphirecrypto
Excellent friend, all the clothes look incredible. Can they be purchased?
Yep, the store is live. I will be doing a 15% discount across all store items as an Opening Special. It goes live tomorrow and finishes on the 22nd.
In an interview, answer "Why should we hire you?" by focusing on how you can help the company, not just yourself or your personal skills.
You'll make em think you're there for them and that's really what they're looking for
JUst type here , right here
OOh I just did
I just types
A comeback for not typing here for a while. It is that easy
A few simple lines
To say hello or goodbye
And check back later
To see who replied.
No one replied so have some tokens. :) !BBH !DIY !DOOK
You just got DOOKed!
@pepetoken thinks your content is the shit.
They have 23/400 DOOK left to drop today.
Learn all about this shit in the toilet paper! 💩
And that's Dope.
Thanks for engaging.
And encouraging me with the token 😃
@monica-ene! @pepetoken likes your content! so I just sent 1 BBH to your account on behalf of @pepetoken. (24/100)
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You can query your personal balance by
!DIYSTATSThat's good to know.
Will do just that.
“Continual effort, not strength or intelligence, is the key to unlocking our potential.” Winston Churchill
Congratulations on your win and good luck today !DOOK !BBH
You just got DOOKed!
@bitcoinman thinks your content is the shit.
They have 13/400 DOOK left to drop today.
Learn all about this shit in the toilet paper! 💩
@sacra97! @bitcoinman likes your content! so I just sent 1 BBH to your account on behalf of @bitcoinman. (13/50)
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Young people should buy homes instead of stocks, especially with a 30-year mortgage.
It’s one of the safest, long term investment on Earth
Be careful though
We are probably in a housing bubble
Not right now.
I don't think its applicable to all countries. Gold might be a safer investment. In my opinion.
I was very happy to make tutorials for LEODEX v1. It was a good proof of concept, but needed some work for mainstream use. With LEODEX v2 on the horizon, we'll certainly see some improvements and I'll gladly make some walkthroughs once again.
V2 will eliminate 80% of the steps
They'l be shorter blog posts then 🦁
Leo is already working on LeoDEX V2 😳 this platform updates like crazy. I like that. I'll have to be using LeoDEX then but I barely make transactions just engagement
That would be very helpful. Hopefully sooner rather than later.
Drop the link! I'm going to add it on my blog!
https://inleo.io/@alex-rourke/how-to-swap-from-btc-to-hive-with-leodex-cpe
I made this one a few months ago, and video hosting has been unavailable on the blockchain. I'll just use a regular video hosting platform to upload more detailed video walkthroughs soon.
It happened.
Long awaited...
I wonder how long we will see this price range. I hope we go to 50 cents and then 80 cents until February.
I am glad I witness this era, more greens is expected.
Cheers
Just wonderful to wake up to! Just converted some $HIVE into $HBD and made some +50%
Parabolic jump in the price and this shows that WE ARE ALIVE!!! And when this will continue, hoarders of users new or old will come back. But we are early to the party, so we should be set.
The dream become true, haha!
What wonderful morning $HIVE
Congrats to all that kept building through the bear market!
Now its pay day for the once who kept building :)
Good thing we all did!
!BBH
@rainbowdash4l! @thebighigg likes your content! so I just sent 1 BBH to your account on behalf of @thebighigg. (2/50)
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Good morning to be a part of the HIVE ecosystem
I wish I had invested my life savings yesterday
#gmfrens $BTC $ETH $HIVE
Ah I see HIVE pumps...
it pumped all the way to 0.30 USD and I started panicking because I knew a lot of people would want to dump for profits and that 30 cents lasted for like 5 mins and started dropping. Will it come back there again?
who knows HIVE always does its own thing
Hi, @solymi,
This post has been voted on by @darkcloaks because you are an active member of the Darkcloaks gaming community.
Get started with Darkcloaks today, and follow us on Inleo for the latest updates.
I’m calling it:
The dump is over! 0.25 is our new support level 🔥 🔥 🔥
let's see......the higher the better
well this may not age well lololol
Gud support level, we movin' on up man. !BBH !DIY !DOOK
You just got DOOKed!
@pepetoken thinks your content is the shit.
They have 25/400 DOOK left to drop today.
Learn all about this shit in the toilet paper! 💩
@selfhelp4trolls! @pepetoken likes your content! so I just sent 1 BBH to your account on behalf of @pepetoken. (26/100)
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You can query your personal balance by
!DIYSTATSEither you are a green newbie, or a wise OG - you should spare a few minutes to read this
I think It is achievable but not in this bull cycle, next one. If we get thousands of users and respect in other communities, we can get even to 5-10 bucks...
Hi, @shebe,
This post has been voted on by @darkcloaks because you are an active member of the Darkcloaks gaming community.
Get started with Darkcloaks today, and follow us on Inleo for the latest updates.
I've read it and I agree with the potential of $LEO coupled with the one of $HIVE. #hive already pumps hard today and we might see that pulling many second layer tokens along the way. Let's hope things will only improve from here.
I will check it out
Who let the bulls out? 😅
https://inleo.io/@leofinance/leo-tokenomics-and-the-coming-bull-run-100m-leo-e1
Wow the maximum total supply is 50 million only. And the current circulating supply is 20 million.
It is just a matter of time
We could very well see LEO trading at 1 usd and beyond
#freecompliments
Wait, wha---?!!!! $HIVE $LEO $HBD #crypto #bullish #bbh #cent
We're just getting started
Back home from the night shift. Now 2 days off. It was quite exciting to see the bitcoin rally and I really believe that we will hit 100k this year. $BTC
#bitcoin #nightshift
My First Cut, First Love, First Crypto #hive is pumping
Y(our) hardwork will finally pay of one day in this Trump's Presidency
#gmfrens #uganda
Leodex 2.0
Thanks @onealfa
The new presidency is beginning to reveal its shape and priorities as key positions are being filled.
#trump
Bitcoin is rapidly advancing toward the $100,000 milestone, with prices currently approaching $90,000 amid what analysts call the “Euphoria Zone” in Bitcoin’s market cycle
#bitcoin #crypto #cent #dailydook
It hit 90 and came back down
It's long over due !DOOK !BBH
You just got DOOKed!
@bitcoinman thinks your content is the shit.
They have 7/400 DOOK left to drop today.
Learn all about this shit in the toilet paper! 💩
@vasiga! @bitcoinman likes your content! so I just sent 1 BBH to your account on behalf of @bitcoinman. (7/50)
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I wished I had more money right now so I could buy more $LEO 🥲
Still have the option to earn some more by posting and threading which is great compare to other chains. 😀
Yes its such a big plus!
But I still have much much #fomo 😅
Crypto Contest October 8: Monkey $POX kept ranging last month #crypto
BIcoin nears 90k, is it time to start DCA out??
Picture here not showing up
#feedback
Ooooooh LEO is at 6 cents.
I secretly hate it right now cause I wanna buy MOAR!!!!!
im ticked too. Leo Dex is not trading and i wanted more so bad.
Does $DOGE get pushed thanks to the new #us government department? #cent #crypto
really nice to see 😃
Is Doge really at 42 cents? WTF?
When the lighting is just perfect! #photographers #photography #photocast #nature #landscape
if hive reach’s $1 or Leo $0.50, I’ll be earning enough for most of my living expenses here.
Instead of cashing out, I plan on leveraging my stake to help me grow a bridge between web2 and web3, then turning those other platforms into both an income stream and a way to bring more people back to hive and strengthen the ecosystem.
Feel free to copy my model!
Same, at those prices, and if I kept earning the same amount I earn now of both, I'll be able to cover all of my expenses with that money alone.
Actually, scratch that... Even at $1 HIVE OR $0.50 LEO. It doesn't have to be both.
Sadly, I'll still need to cash out from time to time... Time will tell.
maybe you could do it the other way around, cash out some earnings here later to start a business or build up some other cash flow?
I think your YouTube could do well if you play around with it and find what works
We'll see how that goes!
Bit bored, still waiting at the gate for my very delayed flight, should be boarding in 40mins but plane is not there yet. 😅
Had time to reply to the telegram raid, only 3 likes missing. 👍
hope you're having a successful trip man
just picked up 2200 $LEO
get them before you cannot afford them.
10x Research indicates that retail cryptocurrency trading in South Korea has skyrocketed, with daily volumes on Upbit and Bithumb surpassing $26 billion, an impressive 85% greater than the total volume of the local stock market.
ahhhh I see. So todays pump wasn’t a hive pump, it was a South Korea crypto pump
Based on the information you're right to say that.
Although today's workout under the orange lights included a benchmark challenge I went in with the approach of it being just a normal session.
My wife Tiffany and I have a running event coming up in a few weeks and I'm currently dealing with a bit of a heel issue but I have gotten through the recent workouts but putting extra pressure on myself to try and match or beat my personal record could make my heel issue worse.
So I had a great workout and chose to run most of the 12 minute for distance challenge at a 6.5 mile per hour set and forget it for most of the challenge and then bumped it up to 6.7 and ended at a 7 mile per hour all out.
My personal best was back in 2020 where I ran 1.68 miles in twelve minutes and since then it's been nowhere near that but today was definitely way off at only 1.32 miles in the twelve minute challenge.
#movetoearn #fitness
The Mets are dumbs. They don't even use Actifit.
Session Endured and Flowed - My Actifit Report Card: November 12 2024
For how long we can survive $HIVE? #cent #crypto
@nenio Sea lions — Lobos Marinos (En/Es) | PhotoFeed Contest - Wildlife Photography #photography #nature
#spanish #gosh
$BTC rises with this price. #hive #leo #btc #cent
Good morning, friend
Do you think $HIVE will hit $0.4 soon? Waking up to this is amazing. So what has been holding it down?
GM Lions. 🦁
#cent #crypto
It hit 0.46 around 3:00 am out local time... I was awake when it happened and I was shocked 😳😳😳...
Wow! That's amazing. I remember when it was that value and I hope it would pump way above that in December.
WHen I checked it, 1 HBD was about 3.220 HiVe
All the way from 4.936 that I last saw ..
Things are going pretty well 😊😊..
Hope it keeps pumping.
I want it to cross 1.0
Same here. It will be amazing. Same with LEO.
Leo at 6 cents. Told you it would 3x before Hive did.
If you follow my subscriber content you would have make a killing.
30 cents is closer than you realize. Are you in for a 5x or a 10x
Get on the train folks! It's pulling away!
just hoping to see hive and Leo do well... 10x or more doesn't matter
There are too many tokens out there and let's hope that our favorite ones do well.
Hi, @simplegame,
This post has been voted on by @darkcloaks because you are an active member of the Darkcloaks gaming community.
Get started with Darkcloaks today, and follow us on Inleo for the latest updates.
If we get one more pump I'm gonna turn 20% of my loose hive into HBD...maybe even buy premium for a year
The prediction market data suggested growing optimism regarding Bitcoin’s price potential. Odds have surged from 8% to 38% for Bitcoin reaching or exceeding $100K by the end of 2024
#bitcoin #crypto #cent
Setting a goal today. To go to the beach and swim at least a few minutes
Let’s see if I ll make it
that's a good one. Have a great day
Un buen rato manejando para completar las entregas en #americantrucksimulator, solo me falta una #spanish #hivenftgamelatino
Eso es genial hermano, también puedes grabarlo en pantalla y compartirlo con nosotros en tu blog 😅😅😅.
!DOOK
You just got DOOKed!
@calebmarvel01 thinks your content is the shit.
They have 2/200 DOOK left to drop today.
Learn all about this shit in the toilet paper! 💩
De hecho hace unas horas compartí un video en mi blog, gracias por tu visita amigo.
También creé una publicación de blog de mi juego #needforspeed... no dudes en compartir tu enlace conmigo para que pueda verlos...
!DOOK
You just got DOOKed!
@calebmarvel01 thinks your content is the shit.
They have 4/200 DOOK left to drop today.
Learn all about this shit in the toilet paper! 💩