Consumer technology and entertainment both move in cycles. After years of wanting smaller smartphones, we

TL;DR: As of June 13, you can upgrade to Windows 10 Pro for only $29.99

Applied Materials Inc., the biggest maker of semiconductor-making machinery, expects sales to decline in the current quarter, though

The death toll from raging floods in Libya’s port town of Derna surged to at least 5,000, as

There will be a Valorant Night Market in August 2023, likely around Aug. 9, that will offer players randomized discounted gun skins.

As the Supreme Court decides the fate of affirmative action, most people in the U.S. say the court should allow consideration of race as part of the admissions process

TAMPA BAY, Fla. & LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 20, 2023--

US president Joe Biden and vice president Kamala Harris joined Instagram’s Threads after the White House said Elon Musk’s sharing of an antisemitic conspiracy theory on X was “unacceptable”. Within an hour of joining the rival Meta-owned platform, Mr Biden’s profile garnered over two million followers. “Folks, it’s President Biden,” the official US president’s account posted on Threads. “You’re hearing from me today from a new platform, but my message to you hasn’t changed: Right now, we face an inflection point – one of those challenging moments in history where the decisions we make today will determine decades to come,” the president said. Several accounts on the X rival app responded to the post, calling for a ceasefire amid Israel’s invasion of Gaza, and posting “Free Palestine” along with words of support for Palestinians. Mr Biden joining Threads ahead of a presidential election could boost the platform’s legitimacy and bring more followers to the app. The White House’s decision comes as X, formerly Twitter, is embroiled in a controversy over the platform’s owner Mr Musk endorsing a post falsely asserting that Jewish people “have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them”. The conspiracy theory was among the hateful ideas referenced by the gunman who carried out the deadliest antisemitic attack in US history, killing 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018. Mr Musk immediately faced backlash for sharing the post at a time when Jewish people were facing an increasing amount of hostility due to the Israel-Hamas conflict which began on 7 October. “It is unacceptable to repeat the hideous lie behind the most fatal act of antisemitism in American history at any time, let alone one month after the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust,” Andrew Bates, a spokesperson for the White House, said in a statement. Watchdog group Media Matters for America said earlier that it found advertisements for companies like IBM, Apple and Oracle were being placed alongside antisemitic content on X. A number of companies, including Apple, Disney, Discovery, Warner Bros, and Paramount Global have paused their ads on X. The latest incident marked yet another effect of X failing to moderate harmful content. It also points to the Biden administration’s efforts to turn to more social media platforms to engage with users ahead of the 2024 presidential elections. Mr Musk responded on Sunday saying X would be filing a “thermonuclear lawsuit” against Media Matters “and all those who colluded in this fraudulent attack on our company.” Responding to the Tesla Titan’s post, Media Matters president Angelo Carusone called Mr Musk a “bully who threatens meritless lawsuits”. “Musk admitted the ads at issue ran alongside the pro-Nazi content we identified. If he does sue us, we will win,” Mr Carusone said. X has not responded to The Independent’s request for comment. Read More Musk files defamation suit against Media Matters over Nazi X post claims Elon Musk and Trump aide want journalists jailed over X Hitler exposé Elon Musk insists he’s not antisemitic after sharing antisemitic post SpaceX Starship rocket loses contact after reaching space: Live updates Disney, Apple suspend ads on Musk’s X after he agrees with antisemitic tweet SpaceX to launch world’s biggest rocket again after first attempt ended in explosion

Google has unveiled a major new update to its AI chatbot Bard that significantly improves its powers of logic and reasoning. The latest version of the ChatGPT rival is now capable of both writing and executing code by itself, the tech giant announced, allowing it to figure out problems on a far deeper level than current generative AI systems. Google’s artificial intelligence tool is able to perform the new tasks through a new technique called “implicit code execution”, which enables Bard to detect computational prompts and run code in the background. The result is that Bard should theoretically be able to respond more accurately to mathematical tasks and coding questions, as it will have already tested the outcomes that it proposes. Until now, large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Bard have been better suited to language and creative tasks, as they draw from their training data to predict what word will come next when talking about a specific subject. This allows them to produce text quickly but without deep thought, making them weaker when it comes to areas like reasoning and mathematics. “Our new method allows Bard to generate and execute code to boost its reasoning and maths abilities,” Google wrote in a blog post on Wednesday. “With the latest update, we’ve combined the capabilities of both LLMs and traditional code to improve accuracy in Bard’s responses. Through implicit code execution, Bard identifies prompts that might benefit from logical code, writes it ‘under the hood,’ executes it and uses the result to generate a more accurate response.” The new method improved Bard’s accuracy for coding and maths problems by roughly 30 per cent during internal tests, Google claimed. Accuracy remains one of the biggest issues with AI chatbots, with Google warning that despite the upgrade, Bard “won’t always get it right”. Unreliable or fabricated information generated by these AI tools is known as hallucinations, and they are typically delivered in a confident way that can be even more misleading for the user. ChatGPT creator OpenAI announced a potential new method to improve AI misinformation last month, involving two AI systems debating each other until they agree on the correct answer. Read More What is superintelligence? How AI could wipe out humanity – and why the boss of ChatGPT is doomsday prepping 10 ways AI will change the world – from curing cancer to wiping out humanity

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission brought enforcement actions against three decentralized finance firms and signaled that more

KAWASAKI, Japan--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jun 14, 2023--

By Jonathan Stempel NEW YORK Coinbase, the largest U.S. cryptocurrency platform, said it will ask a judge to