Latest News - Page 503

Most people have encountered the strange coincide of having a conversation about a topic and then picking up their phone, opening a social media app and seeing an advertisement for that very thing that was just being discussed.

Some people, including myself, have reported this coincidence happening multiple times, leading to the assumption tech giants have access to the microphone in a smartphone and listen to people's conversations to better hone targeted advertisements. Despite this anecdotal evidence, social media giants such as Meta's Facebook have denied using any listening software for advertising purposes, but a recent report by 404 Media revealed through leaked pitch decks the technology exists.

The 404 Media report cited a leaked pitch deck about "Active Listening" software that accessed a smartphone microphone to monitor conversations and gather data. That data was then combined with behavioral data for more precise targeted advertising per user. The leaked pitch deck came from Cox Media Group (CMG), which cites Amazon, Google, and Facebook as partners. Following the release of the report, Google has since dropped CMG from its Partner Program list.

A few select companies in the technology sector are leading the exponentially growing push into artificial intelligence (AI) development, and Elon Musk has seemingly pushed ahead of everyone by switching on what he's calling the world's most powerful AI training system.

According to Musk, the team at xAI began working on the AI training system 122 days ago, and they were able to stand it up completely in that brief amount of time. The new system consists of 100,000 NVIDIA H100 GPUs and has been named "Colossus". Additionally, Musk revealed that Colossus isn't completely finished, as it's expected to gain another 100,00 NVIDIA H100 GPUs over the "next few months".

Musk's claim that xAI has built the "most powerful" AI training system is based on the number of GPUs or training horsepower the system has available to it, which is estimated to be more than any other system publicly revealed. Musk's new AI training model will likely be used to train X's large language model, which powers the social media platform's AI chatbot, Grok.

Brazil recently ordered its telecommunications regulator to block access to X following a Supreme Court Justice's determination that X violated federal regulations on content moderation and failed to appoint a legal representative in the country.

The debacle between Elon Musk's social media platform and Brazil revolves around Brazilian courts demanding X remove content the court believes harms democratic institutions in Brazil, which could impact an upcoming election. The Supreme Court also ordered X to have a legal representative in the country per its federal laws, which the social media platform failed to do.

Moreover, the Supreme Court's orders involved freezing the financial assets of Starlink, a product created and produced by SpaceX, Elon Musk's privately owned space-fairing company. Alexandre de Moraes, the Supreme Court Justice that signed off on the orders viewed Musk's social media platform X and Starlink as one in the same. Furthermore, the freezing of financial assets in Brazil was to reportedly ensure SpaceX paid its court-ordered fines.

A beluga whale was discovered with a camera mount harness that stated "Equipment of St. Petersburg," which led to online speculation the whale was used for covert Russian intelligence operations.

The whale was originally discovered in 2019 and quickly gained the attention of thousands of people for the ambiguity surrounding its camera harness. Over the next five years, the whale, which was promptly named Hvaldimir, was spotted several times and has even been the star of a few viral clips that depicted the whale returning a dropped GoPro and even playing fetch with humans.

Unfortunately for those fond of the whale, and perhaps even Russian intelligence agencies, Hvaldimir was recently discovered deceased by Norwegian non-profit Marine Mind, which has been tracking the location of the whale for quite some time. The team posted the news on Instagram and wrote that it's not obvious how Hvaldimir died, and that the whale was only approximately half of its total lifespan.

A new Bloomberg report has revealed that NVIDIA is being investigated for antitrust violations related to its market dominance in the AI chip market.

According to the report, NVIDIA and other companies in the space have received subpoenas or legally binding requests to provide information on their AI chip practices. The investigation into NVIDIA specifically will look into whether the company is "making it harder to switch to other suppliers and penalizing buyers that don't exclusively use its artificial intelligence chips."

Furthermore, before the reports about NVIDIA being hit with subpoenas, the company's stock price fell by approximately 9% on Tuesday, resulting in more than $279 billion in market value being wiped away. While that definitely sounds like a bag Tuesday, it hasn't even made a dent in NVIDIA's overall growth, as the company has still more than doubled its stock value since the beginning of the year.

The portable PC gaming handheld market is rapidly growing thanks to Linux devices like the Steam Deck and Windows handhelds like the ROG Ally, Legion Go, and MSI Claw. So much so that the integrated GPUs inside the Steam Deck and the Radeon 780M found in a range of Windows handhelds are now some of the most popular AMD GPUs, according to the latest Steam hardware survey.

For several years, the Chinese-based Ayaneo has been developing and creating impressive PC gaming handhelds, using the Indiegogo platform to offer its products to a range of international PC gamers. Highly sought after, with stylish designs and powerful hardware, this week we've got some excellent news for US shoppers - Ayaneo handhelds are now being stocked at retailer Best Buy.

However, it's not quite a slam dunk. Only two Ayaneo handhelds are currently available, with the high-end Ayaneo Kun, which features an 8.4-inch 1600p display and AMD Ryzen 7 7840U chip, currently priced higher than its direct competition - a somewhat eye-watering $999.00 USD.

Acer has just unveiled its new Predator Orion 7000 desktop PC which is the world's first system to have Intel's next-generation Core Ultra 200 series "Arrow Lake-S" desktop CPUs.

The new Predator Orion 7000 systems will feature Intel Arrow Lake-S processors, up to 128GB of DDR5 memory, and an NPU integrated into the Arrow Lake CPU for AI workloads just like the just-released Core Ultra 200V series "Lunar Lake" laptop processors.

Inside, Acer is baking in a custom Cyclone X 360 system fan and CPU cooler, a 360mm AIO liquid cooling system that is engineered to maintain optimal temperatures, combining enhanced airflow, efficient heat dissipation, and superior thermal management to ensure your system performs at its best during intense gaming and heavy workloads. It also looks fantastic.

OpenAI is close to releasing new AI models that will be 100x more powerful than GPT-4, with OpenAI Japan teasing GPT-Next, and it's 100x more powerful than GPT-4 without wasting more computing resources.

The new codenamed "Strawberry" AI model was teased alongside "Orion", with Strawberry ending up as GPT-Next and expected by the end of the year, while Orion will be unleashed in 2025. OpenAI's new GPT-Next aka Strawberry has something researchers call "System 2 thinking".

What is System 2 thinking? This will allow GPT-Next to take the time to deliberate and reason through problems, versus just predicting longer and longer sets of tokens to complete its responses. System 2 thinking has impressive results: scoring over 90% on the MATH benchmark, a collection of advanced mathematical problems, reports Reuters.

China has threatened "severe economic retaliation against Japan" if Tokyo continues restricting sales and servicing of chipmaking equipment to Chinese companies, reports Bloomberg.

In the report, the outlet adds that this complicates US-led efforts to cut the world's second-largest economy off from the world of advanced technology, mostly semiconductor manufacturing equipment, although Chinese companies are still getting ASML machines into the country.

Senior Chinese officials have "repeatedly outlined" that position in recently meetings with Japanese officials, "according to people familiar with the matter". One of the fears in Japan is that Toyota Motor Corp. privately told officials in Tokyo that Beijing could react to new semiconductor controls by cutting Japan's access to critical minerals that are essential to automotive production.

AMD has announced that its new Ryzen AI 300 series "Strix Point" APU-powered laptops will be getting their big Copilot+ updates in November, unleashing new AI features in Windows 11.

The company launched its new Strix Point APUs in July, with laptops powered with the new Ryzen AI 300 series processors that started shipping last month. I've walked away very, very impressed with the new ASUS Zenbook S16 OLED laptop with its Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 "Strix Point" APU doing an incredible job using just 33W of power.

But, the AI-powered Copilot+ functionality is next to useless on AI processors right now, but with the free Windows update in November, we'll get support for AMD's new Ryzen AI 300 series "Strix Point" processors and some AI functionality at last with Copilot+ support.

Surprising no one, WB Games is heavily prioritizing the development of Hogwarts Legacy 2.

A follow-up to Hogwarts Legacy is in the works at Warner Bros Discovery's video games division. The news comes a year after the game broke $1 billion in sales shortly after launch, and amassed over 22 million copies sold throughout 2023.

At a recent Bank of America conference, WB Discovery chief financial officer Gunnar Wiedenfels revealed that a Hogwarts Legacy sequel is of utmost importance for its gaming unit, and strongly hinted that the game could have online multiplayer of some sort as well.

Nintendo's R&D spending hit a new record high in Fiscal Year 2024 as the company prepares to launch new Switch console hardware.

Evidence strongly suggests that the new Switch 2 system has entered--or may be entering--mass production. Two of Nintendo's component suppliers (Hosiden and Weltrend) are ramping up spending on production lines. Nintendo, in turn, has also been boosting its R&D spending throughout the years, and in FY24, it reached a new all-time high.

According to Nintendo's financial records, the Japanese games company spend a record 137.7 billion yen (or around $911 million) on research and development throughout the April 2023 - March 2024 period. This represents 8% of its net sales for the fiscal year.

Increased spending at Hosiden, the Japanese component manufacturer that helps make Nintendo's current-gen Switch JoyCons, indicates that Nintendo's new Switch 2 console may be entering (or may have already entered) mass production.

As per MST Financial analyst David Gibson, Japanese electronics firm Hosiden has ramped up capital expenditures on production equipment for its amusement segment. Gibson goes on to say that Nintendo is Hosiden's main buyer in this segment, and apparently the company provides analog sticks for Switch JoyCons and also helped make the Switch's AC adapter. This increased spending could point towards Switch 2 systems entering principal production and assembly at hardware plants.

The news also lines up with previous reports that further indicate Switch 2 consoles are gearing up for mass production for global markets. Chinese electronics company Weltrend is readying power management integrated circuits (PMICs) for "new models" of the Xbox, Switch, and PlayStation consoles.

Windows 11 is getting a new layout for its virtual keyboard specifically tailored to allow those with a gamepad to type on it using the peripheral.

The nifty innovation for those of us who like to use an Xbox controller with their PC has been introduced with the latest Windows 11 preview build in beta. Build 22635 actually came out last week, but has just been updated with this additional piece of functionality.

Microsoft tells us:

Intel's new Core Ultra 200V series "Lunar Lake" processors ship with next-gen Xe2 "Battlemage" integrated GPUs that offer some gigantic improvements in performance, right after AMD launches its Ryzen AI 300 series "Strix Point" APUs with upgraded RDNA 3.5-based Radeon 890M GPUs.

The new Xe2 "Battlemage" GPU has a 50% performance increase over Xe "Alchemist" inside of Meteor Lake, with more improvements in ray tracing through improved ray tracing units, better utilization of the CPU cores versus Alchemist Xe-LPG GPUs.;

Intel compares its Xe GPUs on the Core Ultra 7 155H "Meteor Lake" CPU against the new flagship Core Ultra 9 288V "Lunar Lake" CPU in a bunch of games, delivering a 31% uplift in performance, and in some games, over 60-70% more performance over Alchemist. Very nice to see.

Intel has officially launched its new Core Ultra 200V series "Lunar Lake" processors, to take on the next-generation thin-and-light laptop market against AMD and Qualcomm.

The company has tweaked virtually everything under the hood of Lunar Lake, with new P-Cores and E-Cores, a massively upgraded integrated GPU, and even more AI performance. Intel is also debuting on-package memory with its new Core Ultra 200V series "Lunar Lake" CPUs -- RAM that is next to the chip itself.

Intel is using its new Lion Cove P-Cores for more performance than the previous-generaiton, and Skymonth E-Cores that are tuned for efficiency. For Lunar Lake, Intel is using Low-Power variants of its E-Cores called LP-E, which sit on a dedicated low-power island.

The Black Myth: Wukong saga continues as Microsoft has issued a new statement on why the Chinese best-selling game has yet to release on Xbox consoles.

Black Myth: Wukong was originally supposed to launch on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC, but has only launched on PS5 and PC. Since its release in late August, the action RPG has become a mega-hit across the globe, selling over 10 million copies on just PS5 and PC combined. So...where's the Xbox version?

Insider reports indicate that Sony had some sort of exclusivity deal with Black Myth: Wukong. The details aren't extensively clear, but the information points to Sony Interactive Entertainment helping assist Wukong's development in an effort to speed up the game's launch on PS5. This may not have been a traditional marketing deal, however, as Sony has not attached any sort of exclusivity disclaimer to Wukong's promo materials on the platform.

NVIDIA's various Taiwan-based systems and AI server part suppliers (cabinets, assembly, liquid cooling components, and more) expects orders for GB200 NVL36 AI servers to start in mid-September, with the higher-end GB200 NVL72 AI server cabinets expected in the second half of October.

In a new report from Ctee, we're learning that the "market generally believes" the GB200 AI server orders will be "launched as expected" with NVL36 and NVL72 AI server cabinets in mid-September, and late-October, respectively. GB200 is crucial for NVIDIA, as it's expected that out of the 5 million Blackwell chips to be produced in 2025, around 80% of them will be used in GB200.

Each of the GB200 AI GPUs cost around $30,000 each, with the GB200 Superchip (CPU + GPU) costs upwards of $70,000. NVIDIA's new NVL72 AI server cabinet costs around $3 million per AI server, filled with 72 x B200 GPUs and 36 x Grace CPUs. The NVL36 AI server cabinet features 36 x B200 AI GPUs and 16 x Grace CPUs.

Sony has reportedly "locked down marketing rights" to Rockstar's game-changing GTA 6 for its PlayStation 5 and upcoming beefed-up PlayStation 5 Pro consoles.

On the XNC podcast recently, "MAGG" said that we're going to learn during Rockstar's second trailer for GTA 6 that "Sony has locked down marketing rights for GTA 6 for the PS5 and PS5 Pro only". Colt asked what would that mean for Xbox, to which he replied: "nothing, they're still getting it... it's just not going to get the marketing exposure, that's all".

Sony would be silly not to throw whatever money they need to at Rockstar, for what will arguably be the largest entertainment release of all time (not just gaming, but music sales, box office records, etc) with GTA 6. It has been killing it in console sales with the PlayStation 5 demolishing Microsoft's and its weak Xbox sales, and has a beefed-up PlayStation 5 Pro console right around the corner.

TSMC is expected to build its third chip plant in Japan as early as 2030, joining the Taiwanese semiconductor leader and its recent "Nightless Castle" project which saw a new fab built in Japan in under 2 years with 24-hour work days.

Taiwan's Minister of Economic Affairs, Kuo Jyh-huei, said he expects a new plant to be built that will make advanced chips in Japan, continuing on TSMC's fabs in Kumamoto Prefecture, but didn't specify an exact location. The minister said during an interview with Kyodo News: "experienced engineers are essential in producing advanced chips. Japan lacks enough experience so (such skilled engineers) will not be available until 2030 or later".

The minister also said he's willing to work together with Japan on training up skilled engineers, with Japan's next steps in the semiconductor business vital: it is fortifying supply chains for semiconductors, so working with Taiwan is paramount to Japan's future in the industry.