Browsing: Technology

It was announced today that Apple would be introducing the new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros with Apple’s next-generation pro silicon, M2 Pro and M2 Max, which will deliver even superior power efficiency and battery life to pro users. With its M2 Pro and M2 Max processors, MacBook Pro tackles demanding tasks, including effects rendering, which is up to six times faster than the fastest Intel-based MacBook Pro, as well as color grading, which is up to two times faster. As a result of Apple’s silicon, MacBook Pro has the longest battery life ever achieved by a Mac. A number…

The Azure cloud service from Microsoft now provides general access to OpenAI’s software. The company stated that more businesses would be able to utilize OpenAI’s large language models, including DALL-E 2 and Codex. The company also plans to add OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot to the service in the near future. Microsoft will make available a “fine-tuned version” of ChatGPT that has been trained to run on Azure AI infrastructure. In 2019, Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI to help bring “secure, trustworthy, and ethical” artificial intelligence to the public, while focusing on Azure AI supercomputing. Both companies have been expanding their…

After Virgin Orbit reported an anomaly that prevented its rocket from reaching orbit early on Tuesday, Britain’s attempt to become the first European nation to launch satellites into space ended in bitter disappointment. The “horizontal launch” mission left from the coastal town of Newquay, southwest England, carrying Virgin’s LauncherOne rocket under the wing of an aircraft called the “Cosmic Girl”, and was then released over the Atlantic Ocean. “An anomaly appears to have prevented us from reaching orbit,” according to the company. It is a further blow to European space ambitions after an Italian-built Vega-C rocket was unable to lift…

In a report published on Monday, Semafor quoted people familiar with the matter as saying Microsoft Corporation is discussing investing $10 billion in OpenAI, the owner of ChatGPT. This would value the San Francisco-based company at $29 billion. A number of other venture capital firms have contributed to the funding round. Deal documents have been sent to prospective investors in recent weeks, with the intention of closing the round by the end of 2022, according to Reuters. According to a Wall Street Journal report, OpenAI is in discussions to sell existing shares at a valuation of roughly $29 billion. This…

In one of the largest Twitter data breaches ever, 400 million Twitter users’ data was up for sale on the dark web. One day earlier, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) announced their investigation into a previous Twitter data leak that affected over 5.4 million users. In late November, a previous breach was found. A sample of data was posted on a hacker forum to prove its authenticity. User information includes email, name, username, follower count, creation date, and sometimes phone number. In the hacker’s sample data, there are some really high-profile user accounts. Data from the sample includes Alexandria…

Meta, Facebook’s parent company, will pay $725 million to settle a class-action lawsuit filed in 2018. Following Facebook’s revelation that 87 million users’ data had been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica, tied to former President Donald Trump’s election campaign, a lawsuit was filed. Cambridge Analytica obtained Facebook user data through an app developed by a third party. The “This is Your Digital Life” app was downloaded by only 270,000 Facebook users, but its permissions allowed it to access their friends’ data. The developer passed the 87 million-user dataset on to Cambridge Analytica, contravening Facebook’s terms of service. Many of the…

The Twitter San Francisco offices have been stripped out, fulfilling predictions that 75% of the company’s employees would be laid off. Somewhere, Elon Musk found even more people to fire as tumbleweeds blew through Twitter’s empty halls and empty office spaces. As first reported by Tech Crunch, the flailing social media company laid off half of its remaining public policy team this week. According to a report from The Information, the platform also cut additional engineering staff responsible for site infrastructure last Friday. Managing legal and civil interactions regarding topics such as speech rights, privacy, and safety is/was the responsibility…

The Mars InSight lander has been withdrawn from service by NASA four years after arriving on the surface of the red planet, the U.S. space agency announced on Wednesday. When two consecutive attempts to re-establish radio contact with InSight ended in failure, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Los Angeles determined the mission had ended. InSight’s solar-powered batteries had run out. Due to an increasing accumulation of dust on the solar panels and its inability to recharge its batteries, NASA predicted that the spacecraft would reach the end of its operational life in a matter of weeks. Engineers at JPL…

India’s maiden human space flight – the H-1 mission – is to be launched in the fourth quarter of 2024, India’s Minister of State for Space, Science, Technology, Earth Sciences and Atomic Energy, Dr. Jitendra Singh said. India’s overall human space flight programme is known as Gaganyaan. This is a major achievement made possible under Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership. “In view of the paramount importance of crew safety, two test vehicle missions without crew are planned before the H-1 mission to demonstrate the performance of the crew escape system and parachute-based deceleration system for different flight conditions,” Singh…

The European Commission, which is the executive arm of the EU, has found Meta to be in violation of EU antitrust law. This is because it has distorted competition in the markets for online classified ads. In its decision, the Commission expressed concern over Meta’s decision to pair its personal social network, Facebook, with the Facebook Marketplace service. The Facebook Marketplace service allows users to list items for sale. It is possible that Meta could be fined up to $11.8 billion if it is found guilty of the charges. In its decision, the Commission took issue with Meta’s decision to…