TechDesk

TechDesk, 4 days ago (edited 1 day ago) to ai

Microsoft has announced it is making its controversial Recall feature, announced alongside its new Copilot+ PCs last month, something you will have to opt-in to use.

The feature, which will screenshot everything you do on your computer, is something privacy advocates and security experts have warned could be a “disaster” for cybersecurity. Microsoft had originally planned to turn Recall on by default, but now the company says users will need to “proactively choose to turn it on.” @theverge has more.

https://flip.it/l7foLL

#AI #Microsoft #Cybersecurity #Tech

TechDesk, 6 days ago to tech

Microsoft announced that it’s reopening a Windows Insider Beta Channel for PCs still running Windows 10, which will be used to test “new features and more improvements to Windows 10 as needed.” This comes despite the company’s intention to end support for the aging yet stubbornly popular operating system in October 2025. Read more from Ars Technica: https://flip.it/xCtSdz
#Tech #Technology #Microsoft #Windows

TechDesk, 5 days ago to Tamagotchi

A 27-year old mystery was solved this week when a collector figured out how to unlock secret characters on the Mothra Tamagotchi, first released in Japan in 1997.

@404mediaco reports a Discord user named rhubarb_pie found out how to unlock the “Moll & Lora” twins as playable characters through a very specific three-week gaming process, something that was previously thought to have occurred through a “battery glitch.”

https://flip.it/d22tOS

#Tamagotchi #RetroTech #Tech

TechDesk, 5 days ago (edited 2 days ago) to ai

An artist-run, anti-AI social platform called Cara has grown from 40,000 to 650,000 users in just a week, as artists leave Instagram in their thousands to protest against Meta’s AI policies.

Artists aren’t happy that the social media giant is using public posts on its platforms to train its generative AI systems, with no way to opt out for U.S. users. Meta’s loss is Cara’s gain, but such a jump in users hasn’t come without its challenges. @TechCrunch has more.

https://flip.it/Ibdy_2

#AI #Meta #Instagram #Art #Tech

TechDesk, 6 days ago to tech

Call it the battle of the voice assistants. A Tech Radar editor tested Apple’s Siri against Google Gemini and Samsung’s Bixby. He made a list of 25 tasks he expected the AI to complete and graded them all on each. One of them easily outdid the others. Take a guess as to which one it was. https://flip.it/gqv-IQ
#Tech #Siri #Gemini #Bixby #AI

TechDesk, 2 days ago to tech

Microsoft has made the white version of the Xbox Series X official. The new console option won’t include a disc drive and will be entirely digital. Learn more from @theverge. https://flip.it/.C4ZJX
#Tech #Technology #Microsoft #Xbox

TechDesk, 2 days ago to tech

New York’s state legislature has passed a bill that would prohibit social media companies from showing “addictive feeds” to children under 18 without parental consent. Tech Crunch has more, including where the bill goes next and how “addictive feed” is being defined.
https://flip.it/8cubJE
#Tech #Technology #SocialMedia #Law #Politics #NewYork

TechDesk, 3 days ago to tech

Siri was always supposed to be more than it was. Since the voice assistant’s initial launch in 2011, Siri has become, for most people, either a way to set timers or a useless feature to be avoided at all costs. Now, 13 years later, it sounds like it might actually be ready. @theverge has more: https://flip.it/eLOXuz
#Tech #Technology #AI #Apple #Siri

TechDesk, 5 days ago to ai

Have you ever wished you could understand what your dog is saying? AI could be the answer. The researchers involved in a new study say that AI models like Wav2Vec2 can identify a dog’s “gender, emotion, and breed” based on their bark. To test the accuracy of the models, they used two different sets of data to train the AI models and then compared the results.

One was trained on human speech and then fine-tuned with the barks, while the other was trained only on the barks. The researchers found that the model pre-trained with human speech did better at understanding and identifying the secret language of dogs. BGR has more.

https://flip.it/6t-R8r

#AI #Tech #Dogs

TechDesk, 6 days ago to tech

Here’s a secret you may not have known if you bought a new iPad, iMac or MacBook. Apple has quietly added a Thread radio to several new Macs and iPads released since September 2023. @theverge has more, including which models on which they found evidence of Thread testing: https://flip.it/-R.XMr
#Tech #Apple #SmartPhone #iPhone #iPad #Mac

TechDesk, 6 days ago to tech

Capital One is teaming up with fin tech companies Stripe and Ayden to crack down on fraud. Tech Crunch has more on the unusual collaboration between the banking stalwart and the newer payment giants, including what spurred Capital One to make the move. https://flip.it/_ErGMU
#Tech #Technology #Business #FinTech

TechDesk, 8 days ago to Spotify

Has Spotify’s loyal user base given it the confidence to raise its prices for the second time in a year?

According to research firm Antenna, Spotify’s listeners are the least likely to cancel among any of the major video or audio streaming services in the U.S., with its growth and cancellation rates “much, much better” than its peers, reports @bloomberg.

While overall subscriber growth is slowing across all streaming services, last year Spotify managed to produce its best year of user growth and second-best year of subscriber growth. Can it sustain that and keep its subscriber base engaged at its new prices?

https://flip.it/cxgnLJ

#Spotify #Streaming #Music #Tech

TechDesk, 7 days ago to ai

An entirely new way to forecast the weather, using artificial intelligence, is sending “shockwaves through the field of meteorology." The results are said to be already outperforming traditional, physics-based models on tasks like hurricane forecasting, reports @arstechnica.

The secret to this success? Good data. With enormous data sets of in-depth weather information going all the way back to 1940, there is plenty of information to help AI learn, understand and predict weather patterns. What could this mean for the future of weather reporting? Here’s more.

https://flip.it/Xhydbm

#AI #Weather #Tech

TechDesk, 7 days ago to tesla

Are Tesla’s days of dizzying growth already behind it? @FastCompany reports that shares for the electric car manufacturer are down nearly 30% this year, and have fallen by more than 50% since their 2021 high, wiping out around $600 billion in market value.

Even some of the company’s diehard believers have started to distance themselves by selling off shares in recent months. “I think the story is over, is the best way to say it,” said one. Here’s more.

https://flip.it/JL8swO

#Tesla #ElonMusk #Investment #Tech #ElectricVehicles

TechDesk, 9 days ago to tech

Want to become a major player among venture capitalists? A dishwashing job may be a good place to start your journey. VC Wesley Chan worked three jobs in high school, including washing lab beakers, to bring money home to his family. It wasn’t easy, but today Chan is the cofounder and managing partner of FPV Ventures, a two-year-old firm with a $450M VC fund. TechCrunch has more on Chan’s fascinating rise. https://flip.it/vCAf_R
#Tech #Technology #VentureCapital #FPV

TechDesk, 9 days ago to tech

Ticketmaster parent company Live Nation took 11 days to confirm a massive data breach that may have affected 560 million customers. The company acknowledged the breach in a regulatory filing late Friday evening. @theverge has more: https://flip.it/VAfuAE
#Tech #TicketMaster #Data #DataBreach #Technology

TechDesk, 11 days ago to ai

Back in 2022, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei chose not to release the super-powerful AI chatbot, Claude, that his company had just finished training, opting instead to focus on further internal safety testing. That move likely cost the company billions — three months later, OpenAI launched ChatGPT.

Having a reputation for credibility and caution in an industry that appears to have thrown a large chunk of it to the wind is not a bad thing though. Claude is now in its third iteration, but that caution remains, with the company pledging not to release AIs above certain capability levels until it can develop sufficiently robust safety measures.

TIME’s interview with Amodei gives an insight into what the AI industry might look like when safety is considered a core part of the strategy.

https://flip.it/COiwDU

#AI #Anthropic #ChatGPT #Tech #Interview

TechDesk, 11 days ago to internet

Two new studies published in the journal of Science this week offer a deeper insight into the spread of misinformation on social media, offering evidence that it not only changes minds, but that a small group of committed “supersharers” — predominately older Republican women — were responsible for the vast majority of the “fake news” in the period looked at.

The studies, by researchers at MIT, Ben-Gurion University, Cambridge and Northeastern, were independently conducted but complement each other well. @TechCrunch has more.

https://flip.it/6fN4-y

You can also read the full reports here:

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https://flip.it/i-HVZr

#SocialMedia #Misinformation #Research #MIT #Tech

TechDesk, 11 days ago to tech

In Abu Dhabi, the Autonomous Racing League has been testing driverless motor racing, and last month 10,000 people descended on the Yas Marina race track to watch the first four-car driverless race. Hazel Southwell was one of them, and she reports on it for @arstechnica.

From the cars to the tech to the competition, she got a front row seat for all the thrills and spills from the inaugural race. Is it the future of motorsport? Probably not, she writes, but is “strangely exciting” and an “interesting test lab” all the same. Here’s more.

https://flip.it/EcRAPQ

#DriverlessCars #MotorRacing #Tech

TechDesk, 12 days ago to tesla

Tesla has issued a strongly worded letter to its shareholders, slamming the proxy advisory firm recommending investors reject Elon Musk’s compensation plan — which is valued as high as $56 billion.

Titled “What Glass Lewis Got Wrong About Tesla,” the letter claims that the firm “omits key considerations, uses faulty logic, and relies on speculation and hypotheticals,” reports Bloomberg.

Throw in some "unabashed cheerleading" of Musk as a leader, and you have to wonder just how much say the Tesla CEO had in the letter’s wording, says Futurism. Here’s more.

https://flip.it/beOFlV

#ElonMusk #Tesla #Tech

TechDesk, 12 days ago to Instagram

If you’ve been on Instagram in the past 48 hours, you will more than likely have seen the AI-generated “All Eyes on Rafah” image. It’s now been shared more than 44 million times.

Having a relatively palatable AI image go viral, while real on-the-ground footage is regularly being hidden by Meta’s algorithm, has caused real debate online. Some are calling it performative, while others believe that “regardless of the means, the message and momentum is needed.” @Mashable has more.

https://flip.it/ba7u92

#Instagram #SocialMedia #Rafah #Viral #Tech

TechDesk, 12 days ago to apple

There have been a lot of rumors about Apple working with OpenAI to use ChatGPT in the forthcoming iOS 18 update. However, a new report has revealed that discussions have been going on for the best part of a year, and that has got Microsoft worried about how this could impact its own deal with the AI giant. @9to5Mac has more.

https://flip.it/gJzMzu

#Apple #Siri #iOS18 #Microsoft #OpenAI #ChatGPT

TechDesk, 12 days ago to gaming

Cheating doesn’t pay, isn’t that how the saying goes? Except when a judge orders it to, of course.

Activision has been awarded a $14.4 million judgement in its lawsuit against a website that was selling cheat software giving players unfair advantages in Call of Duty games. Activision claimed it harmed the reputation of the game and ruined the game experience for non-cheating players. The judge agreed, and also ruled the domain must be transferred to Activision’s control. Gamesradar has more.

https://flip.it/HgHYtX

#CallofDuty #Activision #Gaming

TechDesk, 13 days ago to ai

From eating rocks to putting glue on pizza, Google’s AI Overviews has given us a good laugh and plenty of memes over the past week, thanks to the many hilariously inaccurate answers it has given to several search queries.

However, these clearly wrong answers are not the problem we should be focusing on, argues @FastCompany. “It’s the errors that don’t call attention to their ridiculous selves that could do the most damage to Google Search and everyone who relies on it.” Here’s more.

https://flip.it/LOs.4J

#AI #Google #AIOverview #Tech

TechDesk, 13 days ago (edited 13 days ago) to TikTok

The Biden administration reportedly rejected an offer from TikTok’s parent company ByteDance in 2022, that would have given it extraordinary influence over the world’s most popular app.

The proposal would have allowed federal officials to pick TikTok’s U.S. operation’s board of directors, given the government veto power over each new hire and seen TikTok pay an American company that contracts with the Defense Department to monitor its source code.

It even offered to give federal officials a “kill switch” that would shut the app down in the United States, if it was determined to be a threat. So why was it declined? The Washington Post has more (may require subscription).

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/05/29/tiktok-cfius-proposal-rejected/?pwa[…]lamVjdGVkLyJ9.DgdWa2wf7yaiVFuybiYvMOw8ajrXfWXkSg-vejF8S8Y

#TikTok #TikTokBan #ByteDance #Biden #SocialMedia #Tech