Category: News

How Google and Microsoft’s AI integration will affect the environment

In the past few months, going through the internet to check the latest news has become incomplete without stumbling on articles based on AI. It was back in November 2022, when OpenAI launched its chatbot AI ChatGPT, quickly becoming a rage on the internet. ChatGPT has grown hugely popular in the tech world clocking in the 100 million user milestone in just two months. This led other tech giants like Microsoft to implement chatbot AI technologies in their own services like the search engine Bing. Google has also announced its ‘experimental conversational AI service’ named Bard. While we can all be in awe of AI technologies advancing to the point where we can use them on our mobile devices, the environmental effect of the same cannot be ignored. So what exactly will be the ecological effect of the current AI race? Let’s find out –

How Google and Microsoft’s AI race can affect the planet

Tech giants like Google and Microsoft will use large language models to improve their search engine results. The big players in the tech industry claim that by the integration of AI, search engines will gain the ability to analyse and summarise complex data and offer ‘human-like’ responses to user queries. For both Google and Microsoft, maintaining computer systems to help the current search engines is already a daunting task. It is a resource-intense operation that already takes a lot of computing power. Thus, the integration of AI chatbot technology will make the operation even heavier leading to more energy consumption.

Wired recently reported that the power needed to train a single AI can produce a huge amount of carbon emissions. On the other hand, internet usage produces almost 4% of total global greenhouse gas emissions. The report mentions that experts have warned that the computing power required to combine AI with search engine queries could increase up to 5 times for tech giants like Microsoft and Google. Naturally, with more computers required to fulfil the power needs, greenhouse emissions will also go up. It will be interesting to see how major tech players are planning to tackle this issue.

 

 

 

Rihanna’s Super Bowl performance breaks Twitter

Who would’ve thought that a Super bowl performance could break Twitter? But if the performance was headlined by Rihanna then it does not sound like something that’s unbelievable. Queen Riri performed during the Super Bowl Halftime show where her abdomen gained more attention than the performance altogether. As Rihanna opened the show with Bitch Better Have My Money people were quick to notice her bulging stomach leading to pregnancy speculation online. As a result and naturally, Twitter went into a frenzy leading to an outage!

Rihanna’s Super Bowl performance breaks Twitter

The ‘Diamonds’ singer powered a medley of some of her best songs while suspended on a platform high above the field for the Super Bowl Halftime show. The part that got the internet shocked the most was that she did it while pregnant with her second child. Soon after the performance, her representatives confirmed to the Associate Press that Rihanna is indeed pregnant and expecting her second child which took over the internet by a storm. Fans quickly took to Twitter to basically stan on Queen Riri which led to 9,922 Twitter outages as reported by Downdetector.

 

While the website that tracks user-reported outages mostly reported outages within the application, there were also some issues reported with Twitter’s website portal. The reported crash is likely linked to the high volume of posts made about the performance just moments after the halftime show ended. Super Bowl Sunday has always been a huge traffic driver for social media as NFL, the halftime show, advertisements, and movie trailers all gain major attractions.

The speculations of Rihanna expecting a second child went rampant on Twitter as topics like ‘SHES PREGNANT’ started hitting the trending page on the platform. What fueled the fire was her cradling her stomach which appeared to be sporting a baby bump throughout her performance. Her halftime show medley performances included some of her best songs like – Bitch Better Have My Money, Where Have You Been?, Only Girl in the World, We Found Love, Rude Boy, Work, Wild Thoughts, Pour It Up, All of the Lights, Run This Town, Umbrella, and Diamond. Check out some of the funniest tweets from Rihanna’s pregnancy reveal below –

 

Exploring the Red Planet: NASA’s Mars Mission Aboard Blue Origin’s New Glenn

NASA’s search for life beyond Earth has been ongoing for many years, and one of the key locations of interest is the planet Mars. In order to further explore the red planet, NASA has collaborated with Blue Origin, a private aerospace company, to send the next Mars mission on their new spacecraft, the New Glenn. This new spacecraft is a heavy-lift reusable rocket that has been designed to carry both crew and cargo into space.

The spacecraft New Glenn is named after John Glenn, the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth, and it has been designed to be one of the most advanced rockets in operation today. It is nearly 270 feet tall and features seven BE-4 engines that generate over 3 million pounds of thrust. This powerful rocket will be capable of launching payloads of up to 45 tons into space, making it one of the most capable rockets in the world.

NASA’s Mars mission will be a crucial step in our search for life beyond Earth. Mars has long been a target of interest for scientists due to its similarities to Earth, and recent discoveries of water on the planet have only increased our curiosity. The Mars mission will be designed to study the planet’s geology, climate, and search for evidence of past or present life. This mission will involve multiple spacecraft, including orbiters, rovers, and landers, all of which will be launched on the New Glenn.

The use of Blue Origin’s New Glenn for NASA’s Mars mission is significant for several reasons. Firstly, the New Glenn has been designed to be highly reusable, which will allow for cost-effective launches in the future. This is a major advantage for NASA, as it will allow the organisation to send multiple missions to Mars without incurring significant costs. Additionally, New Glenn’s advanced technology will ensure that the Mars mission will be carried out efficiently and effectively.

Twitter Blue launched in India: Here’s everything you need to know

After months of anticipation and doubts about whether Twitter Blue will make its way to India, the premium membership service has finally landed. The controversial Twitter Blue subscription is now available in India where users can now access the company’s paid services by paying ₹650 per month for the website-exclusive platform, and ₹900 for iOS and Android users. Twitter was always known to be a microblogging platform but has been changing its course to becoming a full-fledged social media platform even offering ad revenues under Elon Musk’s leadership. So what is all the hype about? What does Twitter Blue offer to users who will shell out ₹900 per month? Check it out below –

Longer Tweets

A major appeal of Twitter revolved around users having a character limit of 280. However, with the Twitter Blue subscription, users can now send tweets up to 4,000 characters long. This feature also extends to quote tweets and replies. Users can also include media in their longer posts. Arguments on Twitter are undoubtedly going to turn spicy!

Fewer Advertisements

If someone is shelling out ₹900 for a Twitter Blue subscription then the least they can expect is a completely ad-free experience. However, that is not the case with Twitter Blue as they will see fewer ads than the people using the standard version. Under Musk’s Twitter leadership, ads have begun to show up under the replies section which is annoying, to say the least. But now you can pay nearly 1K every month to not see them.

Post Longer Videos

Earlier, users could only post videos up to 140 seconds on Twitter but with Twitter Blue, they can share videos up to 60 minutes. The option to post longer videos has been introduced in order to help content creators and live bloggers monetize their videos on Twitter. An interesting use of this new feature I witnessed on Twitter was users posting full-length movies broken down into two or more parts. I guess we’re watching films on Twitter now?

The verified checkmark

The predominant attraction of the Twitter Blue subscription is users getting the verified checkmark. Though I do not understand the appeal of the checkmark as clicking on it on a user’s profile reveals that it only exists cause the user has subscribed to Twitter Blue. If Twitter wouldn’t be snitching on users for basically buying the checkmark then it would’ve been a different ball game altogether. Besides the Blue tick, users also get access to features like editing tweets, bookmark folders, custom app icons, and NFT profile images.

 

 

 

Sony India launches the new NW-A306 Walkman

Sony today announced the latest addition to the Walkman® series family, NW-A306. Designed for listeners to enjoy music the way the artist intended with high-quality audio in a compact form factor.

Lightweight and compact design for maximum portability

The new Sony Walkman NW–A306 is a stylish and compact music player, that lets consumers download and stream more of the music they love. Weighing just 199 grams, it is lightweight with the comfort and function of both a 3.6” touch screen and tactile physical music controls, the NW-A306 series delivers exceptional music experiences right from the users’ pocket

Designed for audiophiles with Hi-Res Audio Wireless

The NW-A306 is designed for audiophiles looking for premium sound and style. With the S-Master HX digital amp technology, independently developed for Walkman® is compatible with the native DSD format. It reduces distortion and noise across a wide range of frequencies, for rich and full-bodied sound, further enhanced by new high-quality sound lead free solder. It uses Edge-AI (Artificial Intelligence), DSEE Ultimate™ (Digital Sound Enhancement Engine) which upscales compressed digital music files in real time. Restoring acoustic subtleties and dynamic range provides a deep and rich listening experience.

Long lasting battery life for extended audio experience

The NW-A306 boasts a great battery life compared to previous models so listeners can immerse themselves in more of their music for a longer duration. It has a battery life of up to 36 hours1 of 44.1kHz FLAC playback, up to 32 hours1 of 96kHz FLAC high resolution audio playback, or even up to 26 hours with the streaming service apps to meet the demand of consumers.

Wi-Fi® compatible for direct download and music streaming

Further learning from its predecessor models, consumers can enjoy DSEE Ultimate for upscaling their music in NW-A306, whether it is Wi-Fi® streamed or downloaded. Now listeners can also enjoy DSEE Ultimate with wireless headphones.

Price and Availability 

The NW-A306 Walkman will be available across all Sony Centres, major electronic stores, Headphone Zone and e-commerce portals in India from 9th February 2023 onwards. It is priced at Rs 25,990 in the Indian market. 

Disney cuts 7,000 jobs unveiling vast restructuring

In what comes as a shocking revelation in the entertainment industry, Disney has announced that it is planning to lay off 7,000 workers to cut costs across the company. Disney’s CEO Bob Iger who recently took command of the company again after retiring for nearly two years announced the layoffs and company-wide restructuring on Wednesday. Bob stated that the move is “necessary to address the challenges we’re facing today” The rumours about layoffs began emerging right after Iger took over the CEO position again sidelining Bob Chapek back in November 2022 after stepping down in 2020.

Disney announces layoffs

While there have been headlines about the tech industry facing major layoffs due to the economic slowdown, this will be the first major layoff taking place in the entertainment industry. Disney is making the changes as a part of its efforts to reduce costs in a challenging economic environment. Iger revealed that the company is targeting $5.5 billion of cost savings across the company and the layoffs will help in achieving that number. However, it is not revealed which departments will be affected by the layoffs yet. The $3 billion out of the $5.5 billion target will be availed by slashing content except for sports. The remaining $2.5 billion will be made from non-content cuts like layoffs and more. Disney executives have revealed that about $1 billion in cost-cutting was already underway since the last quarter.

As of October 1, 2022, Disney employed 220,000 people thus eliminating 7,000 jobs result in about 3% of its workforce getting axed. Before the announcement, the company released an earnings report that exceeded expectations set by Wall Street. Disney clocked $23.5 billion in revenue over the three months ending in December marking an 8% growth over the same period a year prior. On the other hand, the company’s streaming service, Disney+ actually lost subscribers for the first time since its launch in 2019. The company’s streaming platform lost around $1.5 billion last quarter and dropped a whopping 2.4 million subscribers. During his call with investors, Bob Iger stated that the company will be taking a hard look at the cost of everything they make. One can expect a lot of changes to the content Disney puts out in the next year and more.

 

Microsoft announces new Bing and Edge browser with ChatGPT AI

The race to bring AI to the mainstream consumer has begun with a fiery start. It was ChatGPT that shook up the literary world with its amazing skills be it in having conversations with people or writing essays and scripts. Then came Google who just recently announced its Google Bard chatbot AI having similar skills. Though it is not available for the general public just yet, it is in the extensive testing stage getting ready to be unleashed to the world. What was not expected though is Microsoft to quickly introduce its newer version of the search engine Bing. The new search engine has been upgraded with the same technology that underpins the chatbot ChatGPT.

Microsoft steps into the AI race

Microsoft will be launching the enhanced search engine Bing with chatbot AI coupled with new AI-enhanced features for its Edge browser. The company promises that the two will provide a new experience for both browsing the web and finding information on the web. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced the new products in an event stating “it’s a new day in search” The CEO added that the basic experience of web search has not changed in decades but the addition of AI will improve it significantly delivering information more quickly than the traditional ways.

The ‘AI Race’ analogy is not something just I am propagating as even Nadella believes, “The race starts today, and we’re going to move and move fast”

The company also showcased some demos of what it’s calling “The new Bing” I personally would’ve gone with Bing 2.0 but to each his own! Microsoft showed a number of searches as examples. In one of the demos, Bing was asked to prepare an itinerary for each day of a 5-day trip to Mexico City. The chatbot was quick to prepare an itinerary alongside links to sources for more information. One advantage of the New Bing over ChatGPT is that it can retrieve news even about recent events. Microsoft has revealed that all the features are powered by an upgraded version of ChatGPT 3.5, the OpenAI language model that powers ChatGPT. This is called the ‘Prometheus Model’ by Microsoft and the company says it is more powerful than GPT 3.5.

Google unveils ChatGPT rival named ‘Bard’

ChatGPT quickly became a topic of divided discussion all over the internet since its inception in November 2022. While some considered the chatbot AI to be a step in the right direction, others feared the concept altogether. Whether we like it or not, the chatbot AI is here to stay as now Google has announced its very own ChatGPT rival titled Bard. Google’s chatbox AI is based on its controversial LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications). The announcement comes only a few days after Google CEO Sundar Pichai revealed its development in an earnings call. It is reported that Google management labelled ChatGPT as ‘Code Red’ when the AI platform received a positive response from users around the world. Here is everything you need to know about Google’s chatbox AI Bard –

What is it?

Similar to ChatGPT, Google Bard is also an AI-powered chatbot that can offer solutions to your queries in a conversational way. Google has revealed that Bard draws information from the internet in order to provide high-quality and fresh responses. It is powered by LaMDA at its core which is Google’s language model built on Transformer, a neural network architecture. It was Google Research back in 2017 that invented and then open-sourced Transformer back in 2017. Readers will be surprised to know that ChatGPT relies on GPT-3 language model which was also built on Transformer.

Google Bard Access

As of now, Google Bard is not available for testing to the general public. Only a select few users have access to Google’s chatbot AI. In order to receive greater feedback on the chatbot AI, Google is releasing a lightweight model version of LaMDA that requires significantly less computing power. The post shared by Sundar Pichai reads that Google will combine external feedback with their own internal testing in order to ensure Bard’s responses are up to quality along with safety and groundedness in real-world information.

This will be the second time Google is trying its luck with LaMDA as it was back in July 2022 when a former employee had branded the AI sentient. Blake Lemoine, a former software engineer at Google has claimed that the language model offered sexist and racist responses. While Google has been working on its own language model for a while, it halted its public rollout due to the allegations from its employee. It will be interesting to see how this supposedly sentient chatbot AI turns out to be.

Safer Internet Day: How to protect yourself on the internet

People born in the 80s and 90s have surely seen the internet take over the way we communicate with one another. Social media and other internet avenues have transformed how people spend their time, with the majority spending it on the internet. The Internet is the only place where people can find all kinds of information on a wide range of topics. Users can indulge in the topics of their liking be it cooking or pop culture and even find a community sharing the same interest. While it has made our lives convenient, there is also a flip side to the internet with the dangers of cyber crimes. In order to raise awareness about the dark side of the Internet, Safer Internet Day is celebrated every day.

Internet surfing is a common practice these days thus it is easy for us to forget the danger it poses. Today, services like even banking and education are online which ask us to fill out sensitive information on web portals. Negligence while using the internet could result in financial loss, data leak, and /or misuse of personal information. In order to ensure internet safety, here are some rules you must follow while surfing the web:

Strong Passwords

Most people tend to use weak passwords which they can easily remember. However, it is really important for users to select complex passwords which cannot be easily guessed. When the complexity of the password is higher, the chances of it getting cracked goes down considerably. Thus it is advised for users to not use their names followed by their birthdates as their passwords. Other classic examples also include the mother’s name, the pet’s name, the significant other’s name, and more.

Two-factor authentication

Social media hacking has sadly emerged to be a common practice in today’s time where many innocent users fall prey to cyber crimes. Many social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook have the option of two-factor authentication where users can link their devices to their SIM number and/or receive security codes via mail. This enables users to get additional security for their accounts as just login and password credentials do not give access to the account. Enabling two-factor authentication on social media accounts prevents them from getting hacked easily.

Do not download files from unknown sources

I know it can be tempting to download the latest Marvel film on your phone/laptop just a day after it releases through piracy and/or torrent websites. However, doing so is only allowing viruses into your device with open hands. Consider downloading a file from shady websites as inviting someone into your house and they bringing uninvited guests along with them, doesn’t sound good right?

Use safe browsers

Some may not be aware of this but access to your web activity and data is sold to the highest bidding internet giants around the world that make millions using your data. Thus, it is really important to use a safe browser that does not save your private data. Brave and Firefox are some of the options for users looking to safely surf the internet without their data getting leaked.

Do not click on pop-ups

At this point, the record has been scratched multiple times about how internet users should not click on notorious pop-up advertisements. One can never be sure what is behind the pop-up as it can contain malware. Also, one can never be sure if the pop-up will close once you click the close window.

Tech layoffs hit Dell as it plans to slash 5% of its workforce

It was back in 2022 when the significant headlines coming from the tech industry revolved around layoffs. Major tech players like Google, Twitter, Microsoft, and more decided to let go of a big chunk of their employee force due to plummeting stocks and economic slowdown. It was expected that the tech industry would make a considerable recovery in 2023 but the first quarter of 2023 paints a different picture. Now, joining other tech players is the PC giant Dell, which is gearing up to lay off 6,650 or roughly 5% of its employees.

Dell layoffs

Dell Technologies is going through massive changes as the PC and infrastructure giant has laid off 6,650 of its employees. This amounts to roughly 5% of its global workforce of 133,000. Jeff Clarke, vice chairman and co-COO of Dell Technologies wrote a letter to employees announcing layoffs stating that the steps taken to stay ahead of the downturn impacts that enabled strong quarters in a row are now no longer enough. The message was titled ‘Preparing for the road ahead’ where Clarke revealed that growth has been declining in Dell’s primary PC business. Dell reported PC sales plummeted by nearly 30 per cent in the third fiscal quarter.

While it is confirmed that Dell will layoff a big chunk of its employee force, it is still unknown where they will occur inside the company. The structural changes being implemented are still unknown and the founder, Chariman, and CEO Michael Dell not making the layoffs announcement has raised eyebrows too.

It was previously reported that Dell was implementing several cost-cutting measures like pause on hiring and limits on travel. However, the recent letter by Dell’s COO states that the measures are no longer enough. The letter viewed by Bloomberg also states that the company views department reorganization and job reductions as an opportunity to drive efficiency. After the reduction of employees, Dell will reach its lowest employee force in about six years. According to a March 2022, only one-third of the company’s employees are US-based. The company is expected to provide further information on the financial impact of the job cuts during the fiscal fourth-quarter results on March 2.

 

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