List of All Articles with Tag 'tech'

Google will not have to face allegations by dozens of states that the tech giant's design of its search results page has harmed rivals, such as Yelp or Expedia, a federal judge ruled in an opinion unsealed Friday, just weeks before the closely watched antitrust case is set to go to trial.

India backtracked Friday on its sudden plan to curb laptop and tablet imports without a license, giving companies

Alphabet Inc.’s Google will face a scaled-down antitrust suit over its search business after a federal judge threw

A U.S. judge hearing the Justice Department's lawsuit against Alphabet's Google alleging it broke antitrust law in search

Google will now alert people when their personal information appears online – and make it easier to get it removed. The new tools are aimed at giving people more control over the information and images of them that appear online, the company said. New rules on personal explicit images mean that users will be able to request that explicit images of themselves are taken down from search results. That extends to situations where someone has willingly uploaded explicit content themselves and then later wants it to be removed from search results. The same policy applies to personal information generally. That too will not only appear in Google’s tools but will also be easier to have removed. Google has long had policies that are intended to help people have non-consensual explicit imagery removed from search results. But the changes mean that people can have that content removed even when it was uploaded consensually at the time. In its update, Google stressed that it was only able to remove content from Google search, and that doing so would not affect its availability on other websites or search engines. But removing any unwanted images from search results should make them much more difficult to find. The new features are part of an expansion of Google’s “Results about you” tool, which it first made available last year. When it was launched, it was intended to make it easier for people to request the removal of search results that contain personal information, such as phone numbers or home addresses. Now it has been improved so that it is proactive in finding search results that include that information. Users will be able to access the dashboard and see any web results that include that contact information. Users will then be able to access an improved form to ask to have those taken down. The dashboard is available only in the US and in English for now. Google said it was “working to bring it to new languages and locations soon”. Read More Google Assistant will be ‘supercharged’ with AI like ChatGPT and Bard Google warns Gmail users they could be about to lose their account Apple gives update on its plans for AI – and says it is coming to every product

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are “virtually embedded in every product”, Apple chief executive Tim Cook has said, amid ongoing questions over the company’s plans. In recent months, as hype over AI has increased and most of Apple’s competitors have rolled out new features making use of the technology, Apple has stayed largely silent on its plans. During its recent Worldwide Developers Conference keynote event, for instance, it did not mention the world artificial intelligence at all. That has led to concerns from some analysts that the company is failing to keep up with the quickly advancing technology, and that it could miss out on the opportunities it could bring. But Tim Cook said Apple has been looking into artificial intelligence “for years” and that it was increasing that investment. Mr Cook made the comments as the company revealed its latest results, which showed a slump in sales of many of its products that was slightly offset by the increasing success of its services division. He also said that the technology are central the design of its products, indicating that it was wrong to suggest that Apple had not yet integrated the technologies into its products. “We view AI and ML as fundamental core technologies. And they are virtually embedded in every product that we build,” Mr Cook told CNBC in an interview. “On a research basis, we’ve been doing research for on AI and machine learning, including generative AI, for years,” he added. The chief executive also said that Apple’s focus on artificial intelligence was one of the reasons that the results showed an increase in spending on research and development. “We’re going to continue investing and innovating and responsibly advancing our products with these technologies to help enrich people’s lives,” Cook said. “Obviously, we’re investing a lot, and it is showing up in the R&D spending that you’re looking at.” Read More Apple results show sales slumping Apple planning new version of AirTags – but not for some time The iPhone 15 is going to help Apple achieve one very big dream

Apple’s sales have fallen, and will continue to fall, the company warned in its latest results. But the company’s long-term investment in services – such as its streaming TV and music platforms and other monthly subscriptions – helped offset the fall in the number of people buying products such as iPhones and iPads. Apple shares dropped about 2% after the company predicted what could be the fourth quarter in a row of declining sales. For the just-ended period, strength in services drove the profit beat, but weaker than expected sales of Apple‘s most famous device, the iPhone, underwhelmed investors. Executives said iPhone sales would improve in the fourth quarter, but did not say how much. Apple is in a delicate position, with its entrenched iPhone battling for share against Android rivals in a mature market, while its next big product - the Vision Pro mixed-reality headset announced in June - is not yet in the hands of consumers. Apple said sales for the fiscal third quarter ended July 1 fell 1.4% to $81.8 billion and earnings per share rose 5% to $1.26. That topped analyst expectations of $81.69 billion and $1.19 per share, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. Weaker iPhone sales were balanced by strong sales in the services segment that contains Apple TV+ and by sales in China that grew 8% year over year. Apple Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri said the company expects a year-over-year revenue performance in the company’s fiscal fourth quarter ending in September similar to the drop the company reported on Thursday. That sales forecast is below analyst expectations of roughly flat fiscal fourth-quarter sales of $90.19 billion, according to Refinitiv data. “There is a real concern about when volume picks up and what the horizon is for iPhone sales growth,” said Daniel Newman, chief executive and principal analyst at research firm Futurum Group. Apple pegged the gross profit margin in the September quarter at 44% to 45%, above analyst expectations of 43.4%, according to Refinitiv data. While Appleexpects growth in its service segment that contains Apple TV+, iPad and Mac sales will fall by “double digits,” Maestri said on the call. Apple‘s research and development spending also hit $22.61 billion for the fiscal year so far, about $3.12 billion higher than at this point in the previous year. Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook told Reuters in an interview that the increased R&D spending was in part driven by work on generative artificial intelligence, the same field that is driving spending at other big technology companies. “We’ve been doing research across a wide range of AI technologies, including generative AI, for years. We’re going to continue investing and innovating and responsibly advancing our products with these technologies to help enrich people’s lives,” Cook said. “Obviously, we’re investing a lot, and it is showing up in the R&D spending that you’re looking at.” In the meantime, Apple appeared to outperform what has been the weakest smartphone market in China in almost a decade. Overall smartphone sales declined 8% in China in the calendar second quarter to their lowest levels since 2014, according to Counterpoint Research. By contrast, Cook told Reuters that Apple‘s iPhone sales in China grew by “double digits” and that sales were also high in other segments in China. That helped Apple push sales in its greater China region to $15.76 billion, from $14.60 billion in last year’s same quarter. “This was really done by attracting a quarterly record of switchers to the iPhone, as well as having a strong upgrader activity,” Cook said. “We also set quarterly records in China for both wearables, home and accessories, and services.” Apple said iPhone sales were $39.67 billion, below analyst expectations of $39.91 billion, according to Refinitiv data. Cook said the installed base of iPhones hit a new high but gave no numbers. “The company continues to face headwinds caused by waning growth in the smartphone market,” said Insider Intelligence analyst Jeremy Goldman. “All eyes are now on its earnings call for any potential Vision Pro or AI-related announcements that could further push the boundaries of their business model.” Apple‘s services segment, which includes its Apple TV+ service which has announced a deal to carry Major League Soccer, had $21.21 billion in revenue, compared with analyst estimates of $20.76 billion, according to Refinitiv data. Cook said Apple now has 1 billion subscribers on its platform, which includes both Apple services and third-party apps, up from 975 million a quarter ago. The company’s wearables business, which includes the Apple Watch and AirPods, had revenue of $8.28 billion, compared with analyst estimates of $8.39 billion, according to Refinitiv data. Mac and iPad sales were $6.84 billion and $5.79 billion, respectively, compared with analyst estimates of $6.62 billion and $6.41 billion, according to Refinitiv data. “Almost half of the Mac buyers during the quarter were new to the product, and we continue to see strong upgrader activity to Apple Silicon,” Cook told Reuters. Additional reporting by Reuters Read More Apple planning new version of AirTags – but not for some time The iPhone 15 is going to help Apple achieve one very big dream New iPhone might have a mysterious button on its side – and this is what it could do iPhone users urged to check their photo library amid fears they could be deleted Rumours are growing about some bad iPhone news Meta’s Twitter rival Threads sees ‘steep drop in daily users by 80 per cent’

A chemical reaction that gives food flavour could have helped evolution, one study suggests. According to New Scientist, the Maillard reaction is when the temperature between sugars and amino acids rises above approximately 140°C. It often occurs in food such as toasted bread, meats and roasted vegetables. Caroline Peacock at the University of Leeds wanted to explore whether it could happen at lower temperatures. To do this, scientists added iron or manganese minerals to a solution made up of sugar glucose and the amino acid glycine. When the substance was incubated at 10°C, the process was sped up by around 100 times. The temperature is said to be similar to the seabed at the edges of continents. Peacock and the team discovered that the Maillard reaction also occurs on the ocean floor, where iron and manganese minerals are often found. If this is the case, it could cause the carbon in sugars and amino acids to be stored in "large, complex polymers that microbes find harder to ingest," Peacock said, as per the publication. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter "If you can get your carbon through the 1-metre danger zone [at the top of the sea floor], where carbon generally is attacked and degraded and turned back into carbon dioxide by microbes, that will lock it away from the atmosphere," she explained. The team estimated that the minerals could lock away roughly 4 million tonnes of carbon every year. If this process didn't exist, the atmosphere could have warmed by a further 5°C over the past 400 million years, the study suggested. "This process has such a profound impact on atmospheric oxygen," she says. "Because complex life forms require higher levels of oxygen, as they’re more energetically demanding, we think it’s reasonable to surmise this process had a hand in creating conditions required for complex life." Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

So far this year, we’ve mostly been seeing artificial intelligence pop up on our timelines as a tool for creating trivial things like odd news songs from classic bands or bizarrely sexualised images of classic artworks However, it looks like AI had a vital practical implementation recently after spotting a dangerous asteroid heading close to Earth that was originally missed by scientists. A 600-foot asteroid named 2022 GN1 was found thanks to a new algorithm, and it was revealed that our planet had a close shave with the object last year. As it’s now been revealed, 2022 GN1 flew a relatively close 4.5 million miles from Earth in September 2022. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter It sounds like a huge distance, but it falls within the definition of a potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA). At the time, it was completely missed due to it being obscured by starlight from objects in the Milky Way. The algorithm, named HelioLinc3D, spotted the object after observing data from the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) telescope. The team leader behind the algorithm, Mario Jurić, released a statement saying: “This is just a small taste of what to expect with the Rubin Observatory in less than two years, when [the algorithm] HelioLinc3D will be discovering an object like this every night. “But more broadly, it’s a preview of the coming era of data-intensive astronomy. From HelioLinc3D to AI-assisted codes, the next decade of discovery will be a story of advancement in algorithms as much as in new, large, telescopes.” Meanwhile, scientists think they have come up with a new approach to mitigating global warming: put up a giant “umbrella” in space to protect the Earth from excess sunlight. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Google unveiled new privacy updates this week that lets US users have a wee bit more control over the search results that pop up about themselves online.

By Daniel Wiessner The U.S. workplace safety regulator said Amazon.com Inc has subjected workers at yet another of

The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday cracked down on a massive illegal robocall operation responsible for billions of auto-warranty scam calls in recent years, with regulators imposing a record $300 million fine on what authorities said is the largest such network it has ever investigated.