Microsoft is attempting to bolster sales of the Xbox Series S ahead of the holiday

Just two weeks after fleeing his home with barely more than the clothes on his back and the phone in his pocket, 23-year-old Ashot Gabriel is at a tech conference promoting one of the last things he has left: his startup. He is one of more than 100,000 ethnic Armenian refugees who were forced out of Nagorno-Karabakh in late September when Azerbaijani forces retook control of the breakaway enclave. Alongside his two brothers – who evacuated in a single car with their parents and a grandparent on 28 September – Gabriel is now attempting to start a new life from temporary accommodation in Armenia’s capital of Yerevan. “We lost our property, but we also lost ourselves,” he says. “We have lost our previous lives. We are starting everything from scratch.” His online marketing startup, Brothers in Business (BIB), was offered a last-minute stand at the DigiTech Expo, with organisers hoping that technology will help offer a solution for the country. As a landlocked nation lacking the natural resources of its historically hostile neighbours, Armenia’s nascent tech industry is seen as a way to achieve sovereignty and future stability in the long term, while also assisting with the humanitarian crisis in the short term. The country was once a tech hub in the region – one of the world’s first computers was built in Armenia – but much of Armenia’s talent left following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. A new scene emerged when émigrés returned to the country after finding success in Silicon Valley, establishing the country’s internet network and providing a foundation for startups to emerge. There are now an estimated 300 pre-seed-stage startups in Armenia, and around 100 seed-stage startups, in fields ranging from quantum computing to electric bikes. “We have this vision: Tech is the ultimate direction that will help Armenia to succeed,” says Narek Vardanyan, CEO of Prelaunch.com, whose company acts as a platform to help local startups establish themselves on the market. “We are landlocked, we have no natural resources. All we have is talent. And our only way we can develop is technology,” he says. “We don’t have a backup plan. There is no Plan B. We are betting everything on technology.” Armenia’s most successful startup so far is Picsart, an online photo editor that has grown to become the country’s only unicorn – a company with a valuation north of $1 billion. Picsart is among those offering their resources to help refugees, fast-tracking the launch of an educational program that will be offered for free to refugees and war veterans, training and reskilling them in everything from machine learning to graphic design. Hayk Sahakyan, a creative director at Picsart, says there has been a “huge number” of people interested so far, including children. This idea of building up Armenia’s tech industry through education can be found through two privately funded initiatives that are providing free courses in STEM subjects to tens of thousands of young people throughout the country. The first is TUMO, which provides free supplemental education to 12-18 year olds in creative technologies, ranging from game development to music. Since the first TUMO centre opened in Yerevan in 2011, dozens of centres have sprung up throughout Armenia and the rest of the world, including hubs in Berlin, Paris and Los Angeles. One of its six core centres and three smaller “Box” centres had to be abandoned during the Azerbaijani offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh last month. “External circumstances can literally kill us. But whenever anyone asks me whether Armenia has a future, it’s here,” says Zara Budaghyan, head of communications at TUMO. “Technology has the potential to provide a more stable economy, but also better lives. International support has been lacking. We need to rebuild by ourselves. We are broken. But this gives us something to believe in.” The second educational initiative is a network of technology, science and engineering laboratories set up in rural communities, offering children from 10-18 free after school classes. Established by UATE – a business association that also runs the DigiTech Expo – several of the labs in Nagorno-Karabakh also had to be shut down in September. UATE chief executive Sargis Karapetyan, who grew up in the region, says around 200 of his relatives were among the refugees. Karapetyan considered cancelling the DigiTech conference, saying there is still a deep distrust of Azerbaijan. There are fears that the annex was only part one. The next stage, which US Secretary of State Antony Blinken believes could happen “within weeks”, could be an invasion to establish a land corridor between the two parts of Azerbaijan. When asked what prompted the decision to persevere with the tech conference despite personal tragedy and the threat of further chaos, Karapetyan replies: "Technology will save the world.” Read More Scientists receive powerful ‘radio burst’ that travelled billions of years Mark Zuckerberg uses Meta’s new AI Ray-Bans to braid daughter’s hair Solar energy is set to eclipse fossil fuels as world passes ‘tipping point’ Scientists receive powerful ‘radio burst’ that travelled billions of years Mark Zuckerberg uses Meta’s new AI Ray-Bans to braid daughter’s hair Solar energy is set to eclipse fossil fuels as world passes ‘tipping point’

Social media can profoundly harm the mental health of youth, particularly adolescent girls, the U.S. Surgeon General warned

From Dutch ovens to luggage, Amazon Basics products are already affordable, but with these deals happening now, you stand to save even more.

Extreme heat is ripping through southern Europe and parts of Germany, with the next blast from the Sahara

When it comes to getting paid — and paid back — most people and businesses want their money as quickly as possible.

US officials believe Chinese hackers could still have access to sensitive US computer networks they've targeted in recent months as a top American cyber official told CNN he is concerned about the "scope and scale" of the activity.

TL;DR: ExpressVPN is the best service for unblocking streaming sites. Unblock your Peacock subscription with

Clean air remains elusive on the US East Coast as smoke and haze from the worst Canadian wildfires

YouTube has revealed a host of new, musical artificial intelligence experiments. The features let people create musical texts by just writing a short piece of text, instantly and automatically generating music in the style of a number of artists. Users can also hum a simple song into their computer and have it turned into a detailed and rich piece of music. The new experiments are YouTube’s latest attempt to deal with the possibilities and dangers of AI and music. Numerous companies and artists have voiced fears that artificial intelligence could make it easier to infringe on copyright or produce real-sounding fake songs. One of the new features is called “Dream Track”, and some creators already have it, with the aim of using it to soundtrack YouTube Shorts. It is intended to quickly produce songs in people’s style. Users can choose a song in the style of a number of officially-licensed artists: Alec Benjamin, Charlie Puth, Charli XCX, Demi Lovato, John Legend, Papoose, Sia, T-Pain, and Troye Sivan. They can then ask for a particular song, deciding on the tone or themes of the song, and it can then be used in their post on Shorts. Another is called Music AI Tools, and is aimed to help musicians with their creative process. It came out of YouTube’s Music AI Incubator, a working group of artists, songwriters and producers who are experimenting with the use of artificial intelligence in music. “It was clear early on that this initial group of participants were intensely curious about AI tools that could push the limits of what they thought possible. They also sought out tools that could bolster their creative process,” YouTube said in an announcement. “As a result, those early sessions led us to iterate on a set of music AI tools that experiment with those concepts. Imagine being able to more seamlessly turn one’s thoughts and ideas into music; like creating a new guitar riff just by humming it or taking a pop track you are working on and giving it a reggaeton feel. “We’re developing prospective tools that could bring these possibilities to life and Music AI Incubator participants will be able to test them out later this year.” The company gave an example of one of those tools, where a producer was able to hum a tune and then have it turned into a track that sounded as if it had been professionally recorded. The tools are built on Google Deepmind’s Lyria system. The company said that was built specifically for music, overcoming problems such as AI’s difficulties with producing long sequences of sound that keep their continuity and do not break apart. At the same time, Deepmind said it had been working on a technology called SynthID to combine it with Lyria. That will put an audio watermark into the sound, which humans cannot hear but which can be recognised by tools so that they know the songs have been automatically generated. “This novel method is unlike anything that exists today, especially in the context of audio,” Deepmind said,. “The watermark is designed to maintain detectability even when the audio content undergoes many common modifications such as noise additions, MP3 compression, or speeding up and slowing down the track. SynthID can also detect the presence of a watermark throughout a track to help determine if parts of a song were generated by Lyria.” The announcement comes just days after YouTube announced restrictions on unauthorised AI clones of musicians. Earlier this week it said that users would have to tag AI-generated content that looked realistic, and music that “mimics an artist’s unique singing or rapping voice” will be banned entirely. Those videos have proven popular in recent months, largely thanks to online tools that allow people to easily combine a voice with an existing song and create something entirely new, such as Homer Simpson singing popular hits. Those will not be affected straight away, with the new requirements rolling out next year. Read More AI-generated faces are starting to look more real than actual ones Elon Musk unveils new sarcasm-loving AI chatbot for premium X subscribers New tech listens to your belly gurgling and monitors how well you are New tech listens to your belly gurgling and monitors how well you are SpaceX is launching the world’s biggest rocket – follow live Instagram users warned about new setting that could accidentally expose secrets

Valorant Patch 7.0 features Team Deathmatch, a new progression system, and Deadlock, a new Sentinel with a deadly ability kit.

Prime Day is in the rear view — it wrapped up on Wednesday — but