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Microsoft To Sell Xbox Games Directly Through Android App

Pre, 11/10/2024 - 5:22md
Microsoft will offer direct game purchases through its Xbox app for Android starting November, following a U.S. court ruling against Google's app store monopoly. The move allows Microsoft to circumvent Google's revenue cut on in-app purchases and signals renewed focus on mobile gaming, bolstered by its recent $75.4 billion Activision Blizzard acquisition.

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US Officials Race To Understand Severity of China's Salt Typhoon Hacks

Pre, 11/10/2024 - 4:45md
U.S. officials are racing to understand the full scope of a China-linked hack of major U.S. broadband providers, as concerns mount from members of Congress that the breach could amount to a devastating counterintelligence failure. From a report: Federal authorities and cybersecurity investigators are probing the breaches of Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies. A stealthy hacking group known as Salt Typhoon tied to Chinese intelligence is believed to be responsible. The compromises may have allowed hackers to access information from systems the federal government uses for court-authorized network wiretapping requests, The Wall Street Journal reported last week. Among the concerns are that the hackers may have essentially been able to spy on the U.S. government's efforts to surveil Chinese threats, including the FBI's investigations. The House Select Committee on China sent letters Thursday asking the three companies to describe when they became aware of the breaches and what measures they are taking to protect their wiretap systems from attack. Spokespeople for AT&T, Lumen and Verizon declined to comment on the attack. A spokesman at the Chinese Embassy in Washington has denied that Beijing is responsible for the alleged breaches. Combined with other Chinese cyber threats, news of the Salt Typhoon assault makes clear that "we face a cyber-adversary the likes of which we have never confronted before," Rep. John Moolenaar, the Republican chairman of the House Select Committee Committee on China, and Raja Krishnamoorthi, the panel's top Democrat, said in the letters. "The implications of any breach of this nature would be difficult to overstate," they said. Hackers still had access to some parts of U.S. broadband networks within the last week, and more companies were being notified that their networks had been breached, people familiar with the matter said. Investigators remain in the dark about precisely what the hackers were seeking to do, according to people familiar with the response.

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OpenAI's GPT Store has Left Some Developers in the Lurch

Pre, 11/10/2024 - 4:00md
OpenAI's GPT Store, launched in January 2024, has failed to deliver on promised revenue-sharing for most small developers. Despite CEO Sam Altman's earlier statements about paying creators, only a select few have been invited to a pilot program, Wired is reporting. Developers like Josh Brent Villocido, whose Books GPT was featured at launch, remain excluded from monetization opportunities. Many GPT creators report lack of analytics and unclear performance metrics. Some have devised workarounds, placing affiliate links or ads within their GPTs.

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Asahi Linux Brings Support For AAA Gaming To Apple Silicon Macs

Pre, 11/10/2024 - 1:00md
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Liliputing: The Fedora Asahi Remix GNU/Linux distribution is now shipping with alpha versions of OpenGL, OpenCL, and Vulkan graphics drivers that allow you to play some games on Macs with M1 or M2 series processors. But there are a few things to keep in mind. One is that most of the PC games you're likely going to want to play are designed to run on Windows PCs with DirectX drivers and x86 processors. So there's some emulation required to get them to run on Macs with ARM-based processors, a Linux-based operating system, and Vulkan drivers. Some of the work was also made possible by the folks at Valve, who developed the Proton software that allows many PC games to run on Linux. And during a live demo at XDC 2024, developer Alyssa Rosenzweig demonstrated the Steam game client loading and running on an Apple Silicon Mac running Asahi Linux. For that reason, it takes a lot of RAM -- according to the Asahi team, "most games require 16GB of memory due to emulation overhead." So you're probably not going to be able to do much entry-level gaming on an entry-level Mac with just 8GB of RAM. Some of the titles that have been confirmed to be playable include Cyberpunk 2077, The Witcher 3, Fallout 4, Control, Portal 2, and Ghostrunner. But there's a difference between playable and smooth. Developers say performance improvements will be required before "newer AAA titles" can run at 60 frames per second or higher. But less demanding games like Hollow Knight should run at full speed.

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US Military Spaceplane To Perform Orbital Maneuvers

Pre, 11/10/2024 - 10:00pd
In a rare disclosure, the U.S. Space Force announced that its secretive X-37B spaceplane will execute a series of maneuvers before returning back to Earth. SpaceNews reports: The reusable spacecraft, which has been in orbit since December 28, 2023, will perform aerobraking maneuvers to alter its trajectory around Earth, the Space Force said Oct. 10. This technique involves making multiple passes through the planet's upper atmosphere, using atmospheric drag to modify the vehicle's orbit while conserving fuel. These maneuvers also are intended to showcase responsible space operations, the Space Force said. The aerobraking enables the spaceplane to change orbits and comply with space debris mitigation rules by safely discarding the service module. The X-37B, manufactured by Boeing, is jointly operated by the U.S. Space Force and the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office. Since its launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the spaceplane has been conducting radiation effect experiments and testing space domain awareness technologies in a highly elliptical orbit. [...] After completing its aerobraking maneuvers, the X-37B will resume its testing and experimentation objectives. Once these are accomplished, the vehicle will de-orbit and return to Earth, utilizing its autonomous landing system to touch down horizontally like a conventional aircraft. The Space Force has not disclosed the expected duration of the current mission.

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Man Learns He's Being Dumped Via 'Dystopian' AI Summary of Texts

Pre, 11/10/2024 - 7:30pd
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Wednesday, NYC-based software developer Nick Spreen received a surprising alert on his iPhone 15 Pro, delivered through an early test version of Apple's upcoming Apple Intelligence text message summary feature. "No longer in a relationship; wants belongings from the apartment," the AI-penned message reads, summing up the content of several separate breakup texts from his girlfriend -- that arrived on his birthday, no less. Spreen shared a screenshot of the AI-generated message in a now-viral tweet on the X social network, writing, "for anyone who's wondered what an apple intelligence summary of a breakup text looks like." Spreen told Ars Technica that the screenshot does not show his ex-girlfriend's full real name, just a nickname. This summary feature of Apple Intelligence, announced by the iPhone maker in June, isn't expected to fully ship until an iOS 18.1 update in the fall. However, it has been available in a public beta test of iOS 18 since July, which is what Spreen is running on his iPhone. It works akin to something like a stripped-down ChatGPT, reading your incoming text messages and delivering its own simplified version of their content. On X, Spreen replied to skepticism over whether the message was real in a follow-up post. "Yes this was real / yes it happened yesterday / yes it was my birthday," Spreen wrote. In response to a question about it being a fair summary of his girlfriend's messages, he wrote, "it is." We reached out to Spreen directly via email and he delivered his own summary of his girlfriend's messages. "It was something along the lines of i can't believe you just did that, we're done, i want my stuff. we had an argument in a bar and I got up and left, then she sent the text," he wrote. How did he feel about getting the news via AI summary? "I do feel like it added a level of distance to it that wasn't a bad thing," he told Ars Technica. "Maybe a bit like a personal assistant who stays professional and has your back even in the most awful situations, but yeah, more than anything it felt unreal and dystopian."

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Elon Musk Unveils Tesla Cybercab, Robovan and Updated Optimus Robot

Pre, 11/10/2024 - 5:40pd
At Tesla's "We, Robot" event at Warner Bros. Studios tonight, Elon Musk unveiled the Tesla Cybercab, Robovan, and an updated version of the Optimus robot. Slashdot is at the event capturing photos and getting demos of everything announced. You can follow along on X. Below is a summary of each of the offerings. Tesla Cybercab: The Tesla Cybercab is a futuristic, fully autonomous robotaxi designed without a steering wheel or pedals, positioned to revolutionize mass transit with extremely low operating costs. It features a sleek design with upward-opening butterfly doors and a compact cabin that seats two passengers. Musk said the Cybercab uses inductive charging instead of a traditional plug-in. "Something we're also doing is and it's really high time we did this is inductive charging. So the robotaxi has no plug it just goes over the inductive charger and charges so yeah, it's kind of how it should be." The vehicle is expected to cost under $30,000. Regulatory approval will be needed before it can go into production, which is projected to begin by 2026 or 2027. Tesla Robovan: The Tesla Robovan is a dustbuster-shaped electric passenger van featuring sliding glass doors, a bright interior, and carriage-style seating for up to 20 passengers. "One of the things we want to do and we've seen this with the CyberTruck is we want to change the look of the roads the future should look like the future," said Musk. Musk also claimed that autonomy will "turn parking lots into parks," as fewer cars will be needed and they won't sit idle for most of the day. Pricing and release details were not disclosed. Tesla Optimus: The updated Tesla Optimus robot is a humanoid designed to handle everyday tasks, such as retrieving packages or serving drinks. Optimus walked on stage and interacted with attendees, though its current capabilities are still limited. Elon Musk envisions the robot as a transformative product, with plans to produce millions of units at a price of around $20,000. "It'll be able to do anything you want. So it can be a teacher, babysit your kids, it can walk your dog, mow your lawn, get the groceries, just be your friend, serve drinks. Whatever you can think of, it will do." Optimus is expected to start performing useful tasks by the end of the year, with broader availability projected by the end of next year. In closing, Musk said: "I think this will be the biggest product ever of any kind. Because I think everyone of the 8 billion people of Earth, I think everyone's going to want their Optimus buddy." Developing...

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AMD Launches AI Chip To Rival Nvidia's Blackwell

Pre, 11/10/2024 - 2:45pd
AMD is launching a new chip to rival Nvidia's upcoming Blackwell chips, which Nvidia called the "world's most powerful chip" for AI when unveiled earlier this year. CNBC reports: The Instinct MI325X, as the chip is called, will start production before the end of 2024, AMD said Thursday during an event announcing the new product. If AMD's AI chips are seen by developers and cloud giants as a close substitute for Nvidia's products, it could put pricing pressure on Nvidia, which has enjoyed roughly 75% gross margins while its GPUs have been in high demand over the past year. In the past few years, Nvidia has dominated the majority of the data center GPU market, but AMD is historically in second place. Now, AMD is aiming to take share from its Silicon Valley rival or at least to capture a big chunk of the market, which it says will be worth $500 billion by 2028. AMD didn't reveal new major cloud or internet customers for its Instinct GPUs at the event, but the company has previously disclosed that both Meta and Microsoft buy its AI GPUs and that OpenAI uses them for some applications. The company also did not disclose pricing for the Instinct MI325X, which is typically sold as part of a complete server. With the launch of the MI325X, AMD is accelerating its product schedule to release new chips on an annual schedule to better compete with Nvidia and take advantage of the boom in AI chips. The new AI chip is the successor to the MI300X, which started shipping late last year. AMD's 2025 chip will be called MI350, and its 2026 chip will be called MI400, the company said.

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Fidelity Says Data Breach Exposed Personal Data of 77,000 Customers

Pre, 11/10/2024 - 2:02pd
TechCrunch's Carly Page reports: Fidelity Investments, one of the world's largest asset managers, has confirmed that over 77,000 customers had personal information compromised during an August data breach, including Social Security numbers and driver's licenses. The Boston, Massachusetts-based investment firm said in a filing with Maine's attorney general on Wednesday that an unnamed third party accessed information from its systems between August 17 and August 19 "using two customer accounts that they had recently established." "We detected this activity on August 19 and immediately took steps to terminate the access," Fidelity said in a letter sent to those affected, adding that the incident did not involve any access to customers' Fidelity accounts. Fidelity confirmed that a total of 77,099 customers were affected by the breach, and its completed review of the compromised data determined that customers' personal information was affected. When reached by TechCrunch, Fidelity did not say how the creation of two Fidelity customer accounts allowed access to the data of thousands of other customers. In another data breach notice filed with New Hampshire's attorney general, Fidelity revealed that the third party "accessed and retrieved certain documents related to Fidelity customers and other individuals by submitting fraudulent requests to an internal database that housed images of documents pertaining to Fidelity customers." Fidelity said the data breach included customers' Social Security numbers and driver's licenses, according to a separate data breach notice filed by Fidelity with the Massachusetts' attorney general. No information about the breach was found on Fidelity's website at the time of writing.

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Amazon Dreams of AI Agents That Do the Shopping For You

Pre, 11/10/2024 - 1:20pd
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Amazon might not have ChatGPT, but it has a roadmap that includes developing even more advanced forms of artificial intelligence -- including AI agents that are hell-bent on helping you buy stuff. The ecommerce company is already sprinkling ChatGPT-like AI over its website and apps -- today announcing, among other enhancements, AI-generated shopping guides for hundreds of different product categories. Executives at the company say its engineers are also exploring more ambitious AI services, including autonomous AI shopping agents that recommend goods to a customer or even add items to their cart. "It's on our roadmap. We're working on it, prototyping it, and when we think it's good enough, we'll release it in whatever form makes sense," says Trishul Chilimbi, a VP and distinguished scientist at Amazon who works on applying the company's core AI to its products and services. Chilimbi says the first step toward AI agents will likely be chatbots that proactively recommend products based on what they know of your habits and interests, as well as a grasp of broader trends. He acknowledges that making this feel nonintrusive will be crucial. "If it's no good and annoying, then you'll tune it out," he says. "But if it comes up with surprising things that are interesting, you'll use it more." [...] Like many tech companies, Amazon is looking beyond chat and turning its attention toward the potential of so-called agents, which use LLMs but attempt to carry out useful tasks on users' behalf either by writing code on-the-fly, inputing text, or moving a computer's cursor. Future AI agents might, for instance, navigate various websites to sort out a parking ticket, or they might operate a PC to file a tax return. Getting LLM-powered programs to do this reliably is elusive, however, because such tasks are vastly more complex than simple queries and require a new level of precision and reliability. Amazon's agents are, of course, likely to be more focused on helping customers find and buy whatever they need or want. A Rufus agent might notice when the next book in a series someone is reading becomes available and then automatically recommend it, add it to your cart, or even buy it for you, says Rajiv Mehta, a vice president at Amazon who works on conversational AI shopping. "It could say, 'We have one bought for you. We can ship it today, and it will arrive tomorrow morning at your door. Would you like that?'" Mehta says. He adds that Amazon is thinking about how advertising can be incorporated into its model's recommendation. Chilimbi and Mehta say that eventually, an agent might go on a shopping spree when a customer says, "I'm going on a camping trip, buy me everything I need." An extreme, though not impossible, scenario would involve agents that decide for themselves when a customer needs something, and then buy and ship it to their door. "You could maybe give it a budget," Chilimbi says with a grin.

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Ubuntu 24.10 'Oracular Oriole' Released, Celebrating 20 Years of Ubuntu

Pre, 11/10/2024 - 12:40pd
Ubuntu 24.10 'Oracular Oriole', the latest version of the popular Linux distro, introduces several enhancements including a revamped GNOME Initial Setup for ARM64 devices, updated file management features, and a more seamless experience with dialog boxes that adjust to aspect ratios. Celebrating Ubuntu's 20th anniversary, this release also "offers a few touches for those who want to go down memory lane," reports Tom's Hardware. "When the system boots up, you'll see the 20 Years Ubuntu logo right at the bottom of the screen. You can also set the desktop background to the original Ubuntu 4.10 wallpaper, and a Warty Brown accent color is an available option if you want to complete the feel. To round out the experience, Ubuntu 24.10 uses the original startup sound from 4.10, which plays every time you log in." From the report: The most significant change, as OMG! Ubuntu notes that ARM64 devices now use GNOME Initial Setup, which offers a cleaner, slicker way of setting up the operating system after the first install. When I set up Ubuntu 24.10 in a virtual machine in my MacBook Air, it felt easier to install and use than my MacBook and Windows laptops. We also get updated dialog boxes that adjust based on the Windows aspect ratio, making it useful for portrait devices like smartphones and tablets. Several other quality-of-life updates in Ubuntu 24.10, like new File Manager features, make navigating your bookmarks and internal drives easier on the sidebar. Apps also now use the default File Manager when browsing your hard drive, providing a more seamless experience. And, if you run a search on non-indexed folders, you'll find an info button that will explain why your search query is taking longer than usual.

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Windows 11's New Passkey Design Includes Cloud Syncing, 1Password Integration

Pre, 11/10/2024 - 12:00pd
Microsoft is enhancing passkey support in Windows 11 with a redesigned Windows Hello experience that allows users to sync passkeys to their Microsoft account or third-party providers like 1Password and Bitwarden. The Verge reports: A new API for third-party password and passkey managers means developers can plug directly into the Windows 11 experience, so you can use the same passkey from your mobile device to authenticate on your PC. Right now it's possible in some apps to do this through QR codes and other ways to authenticate from a mobile device, but Microsoft's full support means the passkeys experience on Windows is about to get a lot better. Microsoft is also redesigning the Windows Hello prompt, including the ability to setup syncing of passkeys to your Microsoft account or saving them elsewhere. Once you've completed a one-time setup process you can use facial recognition, fingerprint, or PIN to authenticate with a passkey across multiple Windows 11 devices. Windows Insiders will get access to these new passkey features "in the coming months."

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Hacktivists Claim Responsibility For Taking Down the Internet Archive

Enj, 10/10/2024 - 11:20md
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: The Internet Archive and Wayback Machine went down on Tuesday following a sustained cyber attack. In addition, the Archive's user data has been compromised. If you've ever logged into the site to pore over its ample archives, it's time to change your passwords. [...] A pro-Palestenian hacktivist group called SN_BLACKMETA has taken responsibility for the hack on X and Telegram. "They are under attack because the archive belongs to the USA, and as we all know, this horrendous and hypocritical government supports the genocide that is being carried out by the terrorist state of 'Israel,'" the group said on X when someone asked them why they'd gone after the Archive. The group elaborated on its reasoning in a now-deleted post on X. Jason Scott, an archivist at the Archive, screenshotted it and shared it. "Everyone calls this organization 'non-profit', but if its roots are truly in the United States, as we believe, then every 'free' service they offer bleeds millions of lives. Foreign nations are not carrying their values beyond their borders. Many petty children are crying in the comments and most of those comments are from a group of Zionist bots and fake accounts," the post said. SN_BLACKMETA also claimed responsibility for a six-day DDoS attack on the Archive back in May. "Since the attacks began on Sunday, the DDoS intrusion has been launching tens of thousands of fake information requests per second. The source of the attack is unknown," Chris Freeland, Director of Library Services at the Archive said in a post about the attacks back in May. SN_BLACKMETA launched its Telegram channel on November 23 and has claimed responsibility for a number of other attacks including a six-day DDoS run at Arab financial institutions and various attacks on Israeli tech companies in the spring.

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The FBI Secretly Created a Coin To Investigate Crypto Pump-and-Dump Schemes

Enj, 10/10/2024 - 10:42md
The FBI created a cryptocurrency as part of an investigation into price manipulation in crypto markets, the government revealed on Wednesday. From a report: The FBI's Ethereum-based token, NexFundAI, was created with the help of "cooperating witnesses." As a result of the investigation, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged three "market makers" and nine people for allegedly engaging in schemes to boost the prices of certain crypto assets. The Department of Justice charged 18 people and entities for "widespread fraud and manipulation" in crypto markets. The defendants allegedly made false claims about their tokens and executed so-called "wash trades" to create the impression of an active trading market, prosecutors claim. The three market makers -- ZMQuant, CLS Global, and MyTrade -- allegedly wash traded or conspired to wash trade on behalf of NexFundAI, an Ethereum-based token they didn't realize was created by the FBI. "What the FBI uncovered in this case is essentially a new twist to old-school financial crime," Jodi Cohen, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Boston division, said in a statement. "What we uncovered has resulted in charges against the leadership of four cryptocurrency companies, and four crypto 'market makers' and their employees who are accused of spearheading a sophisticated trading scheme that allegedly bilked honest investors out of millions of dollars."

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The True Cost of Game Piracy: 20% of Revenue, According To a New Study

Enj, 10/10/2024 - 10:01md
A new study suggests game piracy costs publishers 19% of revenue on average when digital rights management (DRM) protections are cracked. Research associate William Volckmann at UNC analyzed 86 games using Denuvo DRM on Steam between 2014-2022. The study, published in Entertainment Computing, found cracks appearing in the first week after release led to 20% revenue loss, dropping to 5% for cracks after six weeks. Volckmann used Steam user reviews and player counts as proxies for sales data.

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DOJ Indicates It's Considering Google Breakup Following Monopoly Ruling

Mër, 09/10/2024 - 9:00pd
In a new 32-page filing (PDF), the Department of Justice indicated that it was considering a possible breakup of Google as an antitrust remedy for its search and advertising monopoly. The remedies necessary to "prevent and restrain monopoly maintenance could include contract requirements and prohibitions; non-discrimination product requirements; data and interoperability requirements; and structural requirements," the department said in the filing. CNBC reports: The DOJ also said it was "considering behavioral and structural remedies that would prevent Google from using products such as Chrome, Play, and Android to advantage Google search and Google search-related products and features -- including emerging search access points and features, such as artificial intelligence -- over rivals or new entrants." Additionally, the DOJ suggested limiting or prohibiting default agreements and "other revenue-sharing arrangements related to search and search-related products." That would include Google's search position agreements with Apple's iPhone and Samsung devices -- deals that cost the company billions of dollars a year in payouts. The agency suggested one way to do this is requiring a "choice screen," which could allow users to pick from other search engines. Such remedies would end "Google's control of distribution today" and ensure "Google cannot control the distribution of tomorrow."

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Researchers Claim New Technique Slashes AI Energy Use By 95%

Mër, 09/10/2024 - 5:30pd
Researchers at BitEnergy AI, Inc. have developed Linear-Complexity Multiplication (L-Mul), a technique that reduces AI model power consumption by up to 95% by replacing energy-intensive floating-point multiplications with simpler integer additions. This method promises significant energy savings without compromising accuracy, but it requires specialized hardware to fully realize its benefits. Decrypt reports: L-Mul tackles the AI energy problem head-on by reimagining how AI models handle calculations. Instead of complex floating-point multiplications, L-Mul approximates these operations using integer additions. So, for example, instead of multiplying 123.45 by 67.89, L-Mul breaks it down into smaller, easier steps using addition. This makes the calculations faster and uses less energy, while still maintaining accuracy. The results seem promising. "Applying the L-Mul operation in tensor processing hardware can potentially reduce 95% energy cost by element wise floating point tensor multiplications and 80% energy cost of dot products," the researchers claim. Without getting overly complicated, what that means is simply this: If a model used this technique, it would require 95% less energy to think, and 80% less energy to come up with new ideas, according to this research. The algorithm's impact extends beyond energy savings. L-Mul outperforms current 8-bit standards in some cases, achieving higher precision while using significantly less bit-level computation. Tests across natural language processing, vision tasks, and symbolic reasoning showed an average performance drop of just 0.07% -- a negligible tradeoff for the potential energy savings. Transformer-based models, the backbone of large language models like GPT, could benefit greatly from L-Mul. The algorithm seamlessly integrates into the attention mechanism, a computationally intensive part of these models. Tests on popular models such as Llama, Mistral, and Gemma even revealed some accuracy gain on certain vision tasks. At an operational level, L-Mul's advantages become even clearer. The research shows that multiplying two float8 numbers (the way AI models would operate today) requires 325 operations, while L-Mul uses only 157 -- less than half. "To summarize the error and complexity analysis, L-Mul is both more efficient and more accurate than fp8 multiplication," the study concludes. But nothing is perfect and this technique has a major achilles heel: It requires a special type of hardware, so the current hardware isn't optimized to take full advantage of it. Plans for specialized hardware that natively supports L-Mul calculations may be already in motion. "To unlock the full potential of our proposed method, we will implement the L-Mul and L-Matmul kernel algorithms on hardware level and develop programming APIs for high-level model design," the researchers say.

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Bitcoin Creator Is Peter Todd, HBO Film Says

Mër, 09/10/2024 - 4:02pd
A new HBO documentary claims Canadian developer Peter Todd is Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous founder of bitcoin. The documentary's director, Emmy-nominated filmmaker Cullen Hoback, "comes to the conclusion by stitching together old clues and new ones," reports Politico. In the film's finale, Hoback confronted Todd and said: "It seems like you had these deep insights into bitcoin at the time?" Todd replies: "Well, yeah, I'm Satoshi Nakamoto." From the report: The admission, however, is not necessarily a smoking gun. Todd, who is a vocal backer of Ukraine and Israel on his X feed, is known to invoke the claim "I am Satoshi" as an expression of solidarity with the creator's bid for privacy. In an email to CoinDesk prior to the documentary's release, Todd reportedly denied he was the bitcoin creator: "Of course I'm not Satoshi," he said. If Todd is widely accepted as bitcoin's creator, the revelation would end more than a decade of speculation over the identity of a person whose work spawned a global, multibillion-dollar craze for digital currencies: a mania that has pushed back the frontiers of finance but also enabled widespread fraud and other illicit activities. Todd is not unknown to enthusiasts of the stateless money system. As a longstanding bitcoin core developer known for communicating publicly with "Satoshi" before his disappearance from crypto forums in 2010, his name has always carried weight in the community. But he was rarely considered a prime suspect. A 39-year-old graduate of Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto, Todd would have been 23 when the famous bitcoin white paper that first laid out the vision for the decentralized money system was being completed. Todd previously told a podcast he was about 15 years old when he first started communicating with key crypto influencers, known as the cypherpunks. "In investigations like these, digital forensics can only take you so far; they're like a compass," Hoback told POLITICO before the documentary aired. "Real answers can only be found offline."

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Foxconn Building Nvidia Superchip Facility In Mexico

Mër, 09/10/2024 - 3:25pd
Foxconn has chosen Mexico for the site of the world's largest manufacturing facility for Nvidia's GB200 superchips. These chips are a "key component of the U.S. firm's next-generation Blackwell family computing platform," notes Reuters. From the report: "We're building the largest GB200 production facility on the planet," said Benjamin Ting, Foxconn senior vice president for the cloud enterprise solutions business group. Nvidia said in August that it had started shipping Blackwell samples to its partners and customers after tweaking its design, and expected several billion dollars in revenue from these chips in the fourth quarter. Ting said the partnership between his company and Nvidia was very important and everyone was asking for Nvidia's Blackwell platform. "The demand is awfully huge," Ting said at the company's annual tech day in Taipei, standing next to Nvidia's vice president for AI and robotics, Deepu Talla. Speaking to reporters later, Foxconn Chairman Young Liu said the plant was being built in Mexico, and that the capacity there would be "very, very enormous". He did not elaborate. Foxconn already has a large manufacturing presence in Mexico and has invested more than $500 million to date in the state of Chihuahua. Liu said the company's supply chain was ready for the AI revolution, adding its manufacturing capabilities include the "advanced liquid cooling and heat dissipation technologies necessary to complement the GB200 server's infrastructure."

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Apple Potentially Facing Worst Leak Since iPhone 4 Was Left In a Bar

Mër, 09/10/2024 - 2:45pd
"Alleged photos and videos of an unannounced 14-inch MacBook Pro with an M4 chip continue to surface on social media, in what could be the worst product leak for Apple since an employee accidentally left an iPhone 4 prototype at a bar in California in 2010," writes MacRumors' Joe Rossignol. From the report: The latest video of what could be a next-generation MacBook Pro was shared on YouTube Shorts today by Russian channel Romancev768, just one day after another Russian channel shared a similar video. The clip shows a box for a 14-inch MacBook Pro that is apparently configured with an M4 chip with a 10-core CPU and a 10-core GPU, 16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, three Thunderbolt 4 ports, and a Space Black finish. According to the "About This Mac" software menu shown in the video, the MacBook Pro in the video is allegedly an unreleased November 2024 model. [...] Apple is well known for having a culture of secrecy, so this magnitude of leak is rarely seen for its products. As previously mentioned, this could be the most significant leak for Apple since Gizmodo obtained and shared photos of an iPhone 4 prototype that a then-employee of the company accidentally left behind at a bar in California. In that case, Apple got law enforcement involved, but how it acts this time around remains to be seen.

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