Author: Computerworld
We’ve been exploring unconventional ways to control your favorite Android device with physical gestures — y’know, real-world movements like shaking and flipping the thing in a variety of specific ways.But get this: Android also has the ability to let you interact with your phone by simply moving your face.I kid you not: A cursory glance to the left with your pretty little peepers could take the place of the typical Android Back gesture. An upward glance could open your notifications. And a coy-looking eyebrow raise could take you back to your home screen (as well as make anyone around you…
More than 150 leading artificial intelligence (AI) researchers, ethicists and others have signed an open letter calling on generative AI (genAI) companies to submit to independent evaluations of their systems, the lack of which has led to concerns about basic protections.The letter, drafted by researchers from MIT, Princeton, and Stanford University, called for legal and technical protections for good-faith research on genAI models, which they said is hampering safety measures that could help protect the public.The letter, and a study behind it, was created with the help of nearly two dozen professors and researchers who called for a legal “safe harbor” for independent evaluation of…
Widespread outages for Facebook, Instagram and Threads were reported Tuesday morning, as parent company Meta warned that many of its core services were suffering from outages.A status page went from listing all of Meta’s services as “unknown” to “major disruptions” for business tools like Ads Manager, Facebook and Instagram Shops, Meta Business Suite and Meta Admin Center, as well as Facebook Login, Graph API, WhatsApp Business API, and Marketing API.All of the outages list an inability to log in to the company’s services as the core issue, but little further information is available from Meta at this point. An email…
The best value notebook for most of us is the MacBook Air, and Apple has now updated both the 13- and 15-in. models with powerful M3 chips and the capacity to run two external displays when the lid is closed.All in all, these Macs should be more than suitable for most mobile workers.Apple in the fast laneThink back less than a year to when the company introduced its superb M2-powered 15-in. MacBook Air. That model delivered more performance than the late 2019 2.7GHz Intel Mac Pro.That surge in computational ability goes even further with the M3 update. Citing tests it…
GitHub, the online developer platform that allows users to create, store, manage, and share their code, has been on a generative AI (genA) journey since before ChatGPT or Copilot was widely available to the public.Through an early partnership with Microsoft, the dev platform adopted Copilot two-and-a-half years ago, tweaking it to create its own version — GitHub Copilot.The genAI-baed conversational chat interface is now used as a tool for both GitHub users and internal employees to assist in code development, as well as an automated help desk tool.There are people who believe as genAI continues to evolve and can produce more…
One of the hottest startups in the generative AI (genAI) market, Anthropic, has updated its flagship models to a new 3.0 standard, bringing improvements across a range of common tasks and faster processing speeds.The improvements in Claude 3 are broad-based, according to Anthropic. The model now offers fewer “incorrect” refusals to process harmless requests, better accuracy in its answers, fewer hallucinations, and better accuracy in processing visual information such as pictures and diagrams.Anthropic now offers three versions of the Claude AI: the fully-featured Opus, middle-ground Sonnet, and lightweight Haiku. Each version offers different average benchmark scores across various tasks, with…
The European Commission on Monday slammed Apple with a huge $1.95 billion fine for anti-competitive conduct in the music streaming market. In response to the decision, Apple fired back at the EU and Spotify, saying the move “just cements the dominant position of a successful European company that is the digital music market’s runaway leader.”Apple will appeal.The company also says it intends to comply with the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) within days.Apple sees it one wayApple made some telling points in its rebuke, pointing out: Spotify dominates the European streaming music market with 56% share. The app has been downloaded…
I’ve seen the future of computing; I wear it every day on my head.I’m talking, of course, about the Apple Vision Pro, the first “spatial computing” headset on the market. Though it’s not perfect — and at $3499, it’s not cheap — I can tell you after four weeks of testing and use that this augmented reality (AR) device lives up to the pre-release hype. With a blend of well-executed features and even magical moments it’s the kind of paradigm-shifting creation we haven’t seen since the original iPhone.For that reason alone, it should be on corporate radars everywhere. Your company…
The European Commission (EC) on Friday said it needs more information from Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta to assess its compliance with applicable privacy and security laws in the European Union (EU).The EC, in a statement, said Meta also needs to speed up its responses to requests in December for information, which centered on election information, terrorism and the protection of minors. The company has until March 15 to provide that information, with the new info about Meta’s pay-to-opt-out-of-tracking program due March 22.The EC noted that, like all companies doing business in the EU and subject to the Digital…
Apple is telling European customers that new EU competition laws will make iPhones less safe once the company is forced to open up its platforms to third-party App Stores. The company, not exactly happy about this, has published a 32-page white paper where it spells out the risks arising from the EU’s big experiment.The EU’s formal adoption of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) means Apple must make several changes to its App Store and business models. Changes include the introduction of support for third-party app stores, opening up to payment systems other than Apple Pay, and more.The changes are only being…