Computers & Linux News
Best Banks for Joint Accounts for January 2023 - CNET
These joint checking accounts make it easy to combine money and manage shared expenses.
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BuzzFeed Says It Will Use AI To Help Create Content, Stock Jumps 150%
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: BuzzFeed said Thursday that it will work with ChatGPT creator OpenAI to use artificial intelligence to help create content for its audience, marking a milestone in how media companies implement the new technology into their businesses. Jonah Peretti, the company's co-founder and chief executive, told employees in a memo that they can expect "AI inspired content" to "move from an R&D stage to part of our core business." Peretti elaborated that the technology will be used to create quizzes, help with brainstorming, and assist in personalizing content to its audience. BuzzFeed, for now, will not use artificial intelligence to help write news stories, a spokesperson told CNN.
"To be clear, we see the breakthroughs in AI opening up a new era of creativity that will allow humans to harness creativity in new ways with endless opportunities and applications for good," Peretti said. "In publishing, AI can benefit both content creators and audiences, inspiring new ideas and inviting audience members to co-create personalized content." "When you see this work in action it is pretty amazing," Peretti added, vowing to "lead the future of AI-powered content." The news sent BuzzFeed's sagging stock skyrocketing more than 150% in trading Thursday to more than $2 a share. Further reading: CNET Used AI To Write 75 Articles
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FDA to Make Long-Awaited Changes to Blood Donation Rules - CNET
The new proposals remove restrictions on gay and bisexual men that go back to the 1980s, instead focusing on individual health assessments for giving blood.
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Best Video Doorbell Cameras of 2023 - CNET
We've tested the best doorbell cameras of 2023. From Arlo to Ring and Wyze, these are the best video doorbells on the market, no matter your needs.
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Japan, Netherlands To Join US in Chip Controls on China
Japan and the Netherlands are poised to join the US in limiting China's access to advanced semiconductor machinery, forging a powerful alliance that will undercut Beijing's ambitions to build its own domestic chip capabilities, Bloomberg News reported Friday, citing people familiar with the negotiations. From the report: US, Dutch and Japanese officials are set to conclude talks as soon as Friday US time on a new set of limits to what can be supplied to Chinese companies, the people said, asking not to be named because the talks are private. Negotiations were ongoing as of late Thursday in Washington. There is no plan for a public announcement of restrictions that will likely be just implemented, the people said.
The Netherlands will expand restrictions on ASML Holding NV, which will prevent it from selling at least some of its so-called deep ultraviolet lithography machines, crucial to making some types of advanced chips and without which attempts to set up production lines may be impossible. Japan will set similar limits on Nikon. The joint effort expands on restrictions the Biden administration unveiled in October that were aimed at curtailing China's ability to manufacture its own advanced semiconductors or buy cutting-edge chips from abroad that would aid military and artificial-intelligence capabilities.
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NASA Webb Telescope Zooms in on One of Solar System's Oddest Objects - CNET
The space agency's next-generation observatory grabbed a detailed view of asteroid Chariklo and its unusual rings.
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Apple Devising Software To Help Anyone Build AR Apps, To Drive Headset Sales
Apple is developing software that offers an easy way for users of its upcoming mixed-reality headset to build their own augmented reality apps, as part of an effort to drive mass adoption of the device by broadening the array of content for it, The Information reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: With the software tools, Apple hopes that even people who don't know computer code could tell the headset, via the Siri voice assistant, to build an AR app that could then be made available via Apple's App Store for others to download. The tool, for example, could allow users to build an app with virtual animals moving around a room and over or around real-life objects without the need to design the animal from scratch, program its animations and calculate its movement in a 3D space with obstacles.
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Amazon Fresh Grocery Delivery Is Going to Cost More Starting Next Month - CNET
Prime members will have to pay a delivery fee on orders under $150. Previously, delivery was free on most orders over $35.
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Low-Carbon Energy Investments Matched Fossil Fuels in 2022, Report Says - CNET
Investment in the energy transition hit $1.1 trillion in 2022, matching the investment in fossil fuels for the first time, according to research group BloombergNEF.
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AI Wildfire Detection Bill Gets Initial Approval in Colorado
A year after the most destructive wildfire in the state's history scorched nearly 1,100 homes, Colorado lawmakers are considering joining other Western states by adopting artificial intelligence in the hopes of detecting blazes before they burn out of control. From a report: A Colorado Senate committee on Thursday unanimously voted to move forward a bill to create a $2 million pilot program that would station cameras on mountaintops, and use artificial intelligence to monitor the footage and help detect early signs of a wildfire. The bill will move to the state Senate Appropriations Committee next.
"It can detect just a wisp of smoke and it's that type of situation in remote areas that could save forests and homes and properties and lives," Democratic state Sen. Joann Ginal, one of the bill's sponsors, said in the hearing. The deployment of AI is part of an ongoing effort by firefighters to use new technology to become smarter about how they prepare and better position their resources. Fire lookout towers once staffed by humans have largely been replaced by cameras in remote areas, many of them in high-definition and armed with artificial intelligence to discern a smoke plume from morning fog.
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New Mexico Law Seeks Solar on Every Roof, and an EV Charger in Every Garage
Senator William Soules of New Mexico has submitted SB 77 for consideration with the state's legislature. The proposed law, which is currently only a few sentences, proposes that in July of 2023, all newly built homes must be constructed with a solar power system and a plug for electric vehicles. From a report: The law states that for each square foot of heated area, a new home must have at least one watt of solar photovoltaics. Specifications for the electric vehicle charging receptacle were not provided. For homes of 1,900 square feet to 3,000 square feet, the law would require a solar power system of at least 1.9 kWdc to 3.0 kWdc. If we assume that a solar installation costs $3 per watt at the time of construction, the law would add between $5,700 and $9,000 to the price of a new home. However, the effective price of such a system would actually be $3,450 to $5,000, after applying New Mexico's 10% income tax credit and the 30% federal tax credit. The price of electricity in New Mexico is generally lower than most of the country, but the amount of sunlight is above average. As a result, the payback period in the state is likely to fall in the seven to nine year range. New Mexico also has a strong net metering program.
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Google Created an AI That Can Generate Music From Text Descriptions, But Won't Release It
An impressive new AI system from Google can generate music in any genre given a text description. But the company, fearing the risks, has no immediate plans to release it. From a report: Called MusicLM, Google's certainly isn't the first generative AI system for song. There's been other attempts, including Riffusion, an AI that composes music by visualizing it, as well as Dance Diffusion, Google's own AudioML and OpenAI's Jukebox. But owing to technical limitations and limited training data, none have been able to produce songs particularly complex in composition or high-fidelity. MusicLM is perhaps the first that can.
Detailed in an academic paper, MusicLM was trained on a data set of 280,000 hours of music to learn to generate coherent songs for descriptions of -- as the creators put it -- "significant complexity" (e.g. "enchanting jazz song with a memorable saxophone solo and a solo singer" or "Berlin '90s techno with a low bass and strong kick." Its songs, remarkably, sound something like a human artist might compose, albeit not necessarily as inventive or musically cohesive. [...] That's not to suggest MusicLM's flawless -- far from it, truthfully. Some of the samples have a distorted quality to them, an unavoidable side effect of the training process. And while MusicLM can technically generate vocals, including choral harmonies, they leave a lot to be desired. Still, the Google researchers note the many ethical challenges posed by a system like MusicLM, including a tendency to incorporate copyrighted material from training data into the generated songs.
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Man City vs. Arsenal Livestream: How to Watch FA Cup Soccer From Anywhere - CNET
The fourth-round clash marks the first meeting of this season's Premier League title rivals, as Pep Guardiola's City take on Mikel Arteta's Gunners.
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'Carnival Row' Season 2 Is Almost Here: Let's Jog Our Memories - CNET
There's a lot happening in the Burgue on Prime Video. Here's where Philo, Vignette and the rest stand.
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Apple Brings Mainland Chinese Web Censorship To Hong Kong
An anonymous reader shares a report: When Safari users in Hong Kong recently tried to load the popular code-sharing website GitLab, they received a strange warning instead: Apple's browser was blocking the site for their own safety. The access was temporarily cut off thanks to Apple's use of a Chinese corporate website blacklist, which resulted in the innocuous site being flagged as a purveyor of misinformation. Neither Tencent, the massive Chinese firm behind the web filter, nor Apple will say how or why the site was censored. The outage was publicized just ahead of the new year. On December 30, 2022, Hong Kong-based software engineer and former Apple employee Chu Ka-cheong tweeted that his web browser had blocked access to GitLab, a popular repository for open-source code. Safari's "safe browsing" feature greeted him with a full-page "deceptive website warning," advising that because GitLab contained dangerous "unverified information," it was inaccessible. Access to GitLab was restored several days later, after the situation was brought to the company's attention.
The warning screen itself came courtesy of Tencent, the mammoth Chinese internet conglomerate behind WeChat and League of Legends. The company operates the safe browsing filter for Safari users in China on Apple's behalf -- and now, as the Chinese government increasingly asserts control of the territory, in Hong Kong as well. Apple spokesperson Nadine Haija would not answer questions about the GitLab incident, suggesting they be directed at Tencent, which also declined to offer responses. The episode raises thorny questions about privatized censorship done in the name of "safety" -- questions that neither company seems interested in answering: How does Tencent decide what's blocked? Does Apple have any role? Does Apple condone Tencent's blacklist practices?
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AWS, Microsoft, Google Among Businesses Owed Money After FTX Collapse
AWS, Google and Microsoft are among creditors owed money after the FTX crypto exchange filed for bankruptcy in November. From a report: Since the once-hyped company went south, founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas in December, with charges including campaign finance violations and money laundering offences. He has maintained his innocence. In the meantime, Judge John Dorsey, overseeing the case, said names of creditors owed money should not be published until after a hearing in early January. Although names of individual investors have not been released, companies and institutional investors have been published.
Among them are a long list of enterprise tech companies presumably providing FTX's supporting technology. Cloud providers AWS, Microsoft and Google are among them. Data analytics platform Looker -- owned by Google -- is also on the list, as is marketing software HubSpot, file-sharing outfit Dropbox, and code repository GitHub. Device manufacturer Apple and webhosting firm GoDaddy are also named. It is impossible to say how much each company might be owed, although FTX has said $3.1 billion was outstanding to its top 50 creditors. Estimates suggest there are in the region of 1 million creditors, with the greatest two single claims being $226 million and $203 million.
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HBO's 'The Last of Us' Renewed for Second Season - CNET
Looks like HBO's adaptation will be diving into Part 2 of the beloved PlayStation video game series.
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Squiggle Drop Touches Down on Apple Arcade - CNET
My lines don't squiggle squiggle, they drop.
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Yale-Harvard Snub of US News Rankings Opens Way for More Exits
First, Yale Law School. Now, Harvard Medical School. One by one, some of the nation's top graduate programs are quitting the great who's-up-who's-down scorecards of higher ed: US News & World Report's rankings. From a report: Harvard, No. 1 on the publication's latest medical-school list for research, joins a growing boycott of the most famous name in US college rankings. This week, the medical schools of Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania announced they will no longer participate. Yale kicked off the movement in November, and was followed soon after by Harvard, Penn and Georgetown University law schools. The big question now is whether the movement will trickle down to undergraduate institutions. Critics of the rankings say their methodology is flawed and fail to represent the student experience, while supporters argue the lists are valuable guides for students. While this may put pressure on undergraduate colleges to reconsider their participation, those who study the rankings say the exodus might take some time.
Love 'em or hate 'em, they exert a powerful hold over institutions, students, parents and even recruiters. For some schools, sliding in the rankings can mean lost funding. Undergraduate schools have been tight-lipped about what happens next, although many admissions officers privately question the rankings' value. The criticism has been mounting for years. "I am convinced that the rankings game is a bit of mishegoss -- a slightly daft obsession that does harm when colleges, parents, or students take it too seriously," Princeton University President Christopher L. Eisgruber wrote in a 2021 op-ed in the Washington Post. In August, US Education Secretary Miguel Cardona called rankings "a joke."
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Intel Sunsets Network Switch Biz, Kills RISC-V Pathfinder Program
Intel's disastrous Q4 2022 earnings found the company losing $661 million and its margins crashing to the lowest point in decades, so it isn't surprising that the company announced new cost-cutting measures. From a report: That includes news that it would no longer invest in new products for its networking switch business, effectively sunsetting the unit much like it recently decided to end its Optane Memory business. Surprisingly, Intel also pulled the rug from under its respected RISC-V Pathfinder program without a formal announcement, raising questions about its commitment to its other broad investments in the RISC-V ecosystem.
"NEX continues to do well and is a core part of our strategic transformation, but we will end future investments in our network switching product line, while still fully supporting existing products and customers," said Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger. "Since my return, we have exited seven businesses, providing in excess of $1.5 billion in savings," he added. However, Gelsinger also noted that he is still doing a thorough analysis across Intel's portfolio to look for other cost-saving measures in areas that don't generate strong returns. Intel's networking switch business stems from acquiring Barefoot networks in 2019 for an undisclosed sum (the company had raised $144 million over several investment rounds). The Tofino series of network switches gave Intel yet another tool in its arsenal of data center 'adjacencies' that it could leverage to expand its data center revenue. However, this unit faces stiff competition from entrenched players like Broadcom, Cisco, and Nvidia's Mellanox, making it an easy cost-cutting target.
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