Monday, January 8, 2024

Amazon, Google, and Microsoft received licenses to establish HQs in Riyadh, after the government planned to halt contracts to companies without regional HQs (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg:
Amazon, Google, and Microsoft received licenses to establish HQs in Riyadh, after the government planned to halt contracts to companies without regional HQs  —  - Global firms had Jan. 1 deadline to shift regional HQs  — Saudi Arabia wants multinationals to have local offices



Sources: Nvidia plans to begin mass producing its chips designed for China, the H20, L20, and L2, in Q2 2024, after the original November 2023 goal was delayed (Reuters)

Reuters:
Sources: Nvidia plans to begin mass producing its chips designed for China, the H20, L20, and L2, in Q2 2024, after the original November 2023 goal was delayed  —  U.S. chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA.O) plans to begin mass production in the second quarter of 2024 of an artificial intelligence (AI) …



Q&A with University of Michigan researchers about their research into the effectiveness of using prompts to assign interpersonal and professional roles to LLMs (Sisi Wei/The Markup)

Sisi Wei / The Markup:
Q&A with University of Michigan researchers about their research into the effectiveness of using prompts to assign interpersonal and professional roles to LLMs  —  A conversation with Mingqian Zheng, Jiaxin Pei, and David Jurgens  —  Happy New Year.  It's Sisi here.



Sunday, January 7, 2024

Xreal unveils the $699 Air 2 Ultra glasses, adding dual 3D cameras to map the wearer's environment and enable hand tracking, with shipments starting in March (Adi Robertson/The Verge)

Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Xreal unveils the $699 Air 2 Ultra glasses, adding dual 3D cameras to map the wearer's environment and enable hand tracking, with shipments starting in March  —  Augmented reality company Xreal has revealed a new entry in its Air glasses lineup: the $699 Air 2 Ultra.



A look at Apple's preparations for the Vision Pro's US launch and main challenges in 2024, like lagging in generative AI, reviving revenue growth, and antitrust (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
A look at Apple's preparations for the Vision Pro's US launch and main challenges in 2024, like lagging in generative AI, reviving revenue growth, and antitrust  —  Apple has a big year ahead for new products, but also faces challenges ranging from trying to catch up in AI to dealing with changes to the App Store.



An interview with Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes about the state's efforts to curb AI-manufactured deceptions ahead of the upcoming 2024 US elections (A Martínez/NPR)

A Martínez / NPR:
An interview with Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes about the state's efforts to curb AI-manufactured deceptions ahead of the upcoming 2024 US elections  —  NPR's A Martinez talks with Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes about the use of artificial intelligence to curb AI-manufactured threats …



How Midjourney v6 and DALL-E 3 produce "plagiaristic outputs", even when not directly asked to do so, which could expose users to copyright infringement claims (IEEE Spectrum)

IEEE Spectrum:
How Midjourney v6 and DALL-E 3 produce “plagiaristic outputs”, even when not directly asked to do so, which could expose users to copyright infringement claims  —  This is a guest post.  The views expressed here are solely those of the authors and do not represent positions of IEEE Spectrum or the IEEE.



Saturday, January 6, 2024

Users say X is increasingly showing malicious crypto ads, including links to crypto drainers, fake airdrops, and Telegram channels promoting pump and dumps (Lawrence Abrams/BleepingComputer)

Lawrence Abrams / BleepingComputer:
Users say X is increasingly showing malicious crypto ads, including links to crypto drainers, fake airdrops, and Telegram channels promoting pump and dumps  —  Cybercriminals are abusing X advertisements to promote websites that lead to crypto drainers, fake airdrops, and other scams.



Adam Mosseri says Threads had some issues with "low quality recommendations" over the last few weeks and should get "much better over the next few weeks" (Jay Peters/The Verge)

Jay Peters / The Verge:
Adam Mosseri says Threads had some issues with “low quality recommendations” over the last few weeks and should get “much better over the next few weeks”  —  Adam Mosseri says that Threads has had some issues with what he calls “low quality recommendations” over the last few weeks.



The British Library will spend £6M-£7M, or 40% of its reserves, to recover from an October 2023 cyber attack that has rendered most of its services inaccessible (Financial Times)

Financial Times:
The British Library will spend £6M-£7M, or 40% of its reserves, to recover from an October 2023 cyber attack that has rendered most of its services inaccessible  —  London-based institution faces spending millions of pounds to rebuild most digital services



Daniel Stenberg, founder of open-source project curl, says easy access to LLMs is resulting in junk AI-assisted bug reports, wasting developer time and energy (Daniel Stenberg/daniel.haxx.se)

Daniel Stenberg / daniel.haxx.se:
Daniel Stenberg, founder of open-source project curl, says easy access to LLMs is resulting in junk AI-assisted bug reports, wasting developer time and energy  —  I have held back on writing anything about AI or how we (not) use AI for development in the curl factory.  Now I can't hold back anymore.



Friday, January 5, 2024

Samsung debuts Designed for Samsung Gaming Hub accessories for the cloud Gaming Hub on its smart TVs, including a new controller from PDP (Kyle Bradshaw/9to5Google)

Kyle Bradshaw / 9to5Google:
Samsung debuts Designed for Samsung Gaming Hub accessories for the cloud Gaming Hub on its smart TVs, including a new controller from PDP  —  Ahead of CES 2024, Samsung is taking the wraps off of a new officially licensed accessory program for the cloud “Gaming Hub” available on its line of Smart TVs …



CertiK: over $1.8B were lost across 751 crypto hacks in 2023, down 51% YoY from $3.7B in 2022; Q3 recorded the most losses at over $686M (Ezra Reguerra/Cointelegraph)

Ezra Reguerra / Cointelegraph:
CertiK: over $1.8B were lost across 751 crypto hacks in 2023, down 51% YoY from $3.7B in 2022; Q3 recorded the most losses at over $686M  —  CertiK co-founder Ronghui Gu told Cointelegraph that, all things considered, 2023 was a “positive development” for blockchain security.  —  Total views



Tesla recalls virtually every car it ever sold in China, or more than 1.6M, due to potential issues with Autopilot, after a similar recall in the US in December (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg:
Tesla recalls virtually every car it ever sold in China, or more than 1.6M, due to potential issues with Autopilot, after a similar recall in the US in December  —  - Carmaker will deploy over-the-air software upgrade to cars  — Move mirrors recall of 2 million vehicles in the US last month



Finland, Canada, the US, and other countries are testing tech for passport-free travel, including facial recognition and a "digital travel credential" (Matt Burgess/Wired)

Matt Burgess / Wired : Finland, Canada, the US, and other countries are testing tech for passport-free travel, including facial recogniti...