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Infrastructure Delivery Engineering team to help build datacenters, data team to create new services

Amid widespread tech layoffs, Oracle is hiring for two new teams to help it build more cloud facilities, and services.…

Q4 results reveal AI is the answer to – or the reason for – everything: a cloud profit, wobbly ads, boosting subscriptions

Google's parent company, Alphabet, has revealed it banked $3.0 billion by extending the working life of its hardware.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The first lab-grown freshwater eel meat has been produced, potentially solving a diner's dilemma. Rampant overfishing has caused eel populations to plummet and prices to soar, but the cultivated eel could provide the delicacy guilt-free. The eel meat was produced by Forsea Foods in Israel from embryonic cells of a freshwater eel. The company collaborated with a Japanese chef to create unagi kabayaki, marinated grilled eel over rice, and unagi nigiri, a type of sushi. The company aims to scale up its operation and have the cultivated eel on sale in about two years. Japan's prime minister, Fumio Kishida, last year backed the development of a cultivated meat industry. The restaurant price in Japan is about $250 a kilogram, and Forsea Foods expects the price of the cultivated eel to match that of the wild-caught eel. [...] Forsea Foods' strategy is to target species at risk of extinction in the wild that also command high prices in restaurants and shops, with eel meeting both criteria. The very complex life cycle of eels, involving long migrations from rivers to the ocean and several distinct life stages, means it is not possible to farm them like some fish. The cultivated eel was produced using organoids, tiny bundles of tissue originally developed for use in medical research. The organoids are made of embryonic stem cells taken from fertilized eel eggs. These cells can develop into any kind of tissue and, as they grow, they self-organize into the structure of real meat. The final product also contains some plant-based ingredients. Other approaches to cultivated meat require greater use of expensive growth factor chemicals and scaffolds for cells to grow on [...]. The technique is particularly suited to fish and seafood, whose meat is fairly uniform unlike, for example, marbled beef, he said. Like other cultivated meat, the product is not produced using antibiotics or hormones. Forsea Foods is the only company known to be producing cultivated meat using this technology. The company has raised $5.2 million in investment, with more expected to be announced soon.

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Chip biz aims to sell $3.5 billion worth of its Instinct GPUs and APUs in 2024 alone

AMD is depending on its newly launched MI300 accelerators and continued AI demand to offset an otherwise challenging start to 2024.…

Todd Bishop reports via GeekWire: A Microsoft AI engineering leader says he discovered vulnerabilities in OpenAI's DALL-E 3 image generator in early December allowing users to bypass safety guardrails to create violent and explicit images, and that the company impeded his previous attempt to bring public attention to the issue. The emergence of explicit deepfake images of Taylor Swift last week "is an example of the type of abuse I was concerned about and the reason why I urged OpenAI to remove DALL-E 3 from public use and reported my concerns to Microsoft," writes Shane Jones, a Microsoft principal software engineering lead, in a letter Tuesday to Washington state's attorney general and Congressional representatives. 404 Media reported last week that the fake explicit images of Swift originated in a "specific Telegram group dedicated to abusive images of women," noting that at least one of the AI tools commonly used by the group is Microsoft Designer, which is based in part on technology from OpenAI's DALL-E 3. "The vulnerabilities in DALL-E 3, and products like Microsoft Designer that use DALL-E 3, makes it easier for people to abuse AI in generating harmful images," Jones writes in the letter to U.S. Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, Rep. Adam Smith, and Attorney General Bob Ferguson, which was obtained by GeekWire. He adds, "Microsoft was aware of these vulnerabilities and the potential for abuse." Jones writes that he discovered the vulnerability independently in early December. He reported the vulnerability to Microsoft, according to the letter, and was instructed to report the issue to OpenAI, the Redmond company's close partner, whose technology powers products including Microsoft Designer. He writes that he did report it to OpenAI. "As I continued to research the risks associated with this specific vulnerability, I became aware of the capacity DALL-E 3 has to generate violent and disturbing harmful images," he writes. "Based on my understanding of how the model was trained, and the security vulnerabilities I discovered, I reached the conclusion that DALL-E 3 posed a public safety risk and should be removed from public use until OpenAI could address the risks associated with this model." On Dec. 14, he writes, he posted publicly on LinkedIn urging OpenAI's non-profit board to withdraw DALL-E 3 from the market. He informed his Microsoft leadership team of the post, according to the letter, and was quickly contacted by his manager, saying that Microsoft's legal department was demanding that he delete the post immediately, and would follow up with an explanation or justification. He agreed to delete the post on that basis but never heard from Microsoft legal, he writes. "Over the following month, I repeatedly requested an explanation for why I was told to delete my letter," he writes. "I also offered to share information that could assist with fixing the specific vulnerability I had discovered and provide ideas for making AI image generation technology safer. Microsoft's legal department has still not responded or communicated directly with me." "Artificial intelligence is advancing at an unprecedented pace. I understand it will take time for legislation to be enacted to ensure AI public safety," he adds. "At the same time, we need to hold companies accountable for the safety of their products and their responsibility to disclose known risks to the public. Concerned employees, like myself, should not be intimidated into staying silent." The full text of Jones' letter can be read here (PDF).

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Google has confirmed to Cord Cutters News that you can now customize what games you can watch in your Multiview window. The keyword here is "games" because this feature is still limited to just sporting events at this time. From the report: One of YouTube TV's best features is the ability to offer the option to watch up to four sporting or news events at once on the same screen. The only downside has been the fact that customers have been unable to pick what games are in these windows. Instead, YouTube TV gives you a number of premade multiview options to pick from. Now, though, YouTube TV seems to be testing your ability to pick what games you want on your TV. Yesterday, YouTube TV started to give some NBA League Pass subscribers the ability to pick which games they want to watch from a handful of games in a list. From there, YouTube TV would create a multiview channel for you to watch the games you pick. Google says this feature is coming to all devices that support multiview and you can only create these channels from preselected NBA games. Sadly, you can't pick any channel you want but only from a list of preselected games to create your own multiview channel.

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For the first time, Microsoft's Q2 earnings report includes the impact of the company's $68.7 billion Activision Blizzard acquisition. "While Microsoft isn't breaking out specific numbers, it says that its overall gaming revenue increased by 49 percent, 44 points of which came from the 'net impact' of the Activision deal," reports Engadget. From the report: Microsoft's More Personal Computing division, which includes Xbox, Surface and Windows, was up 19 percent ($16.9 billion) since last year. The company says the Activision deal accounted for 15 points of that increase. It's a huge change for a division that's been severely impacted by dwindling PC sales (which affects Windows licenses and Surfaces) and struggling Xbox consoles. PC device revenues were down 9 percent for the quarter, while Xbox hardware sales were up 3 percent. Xbox content and services revenue is also up 61 percent since last year, 55 points of which comes from Activision. Overall, Microsoft reported revenues of $62 billion, up from $52.7 billion a year earlier. Microsoft's cloud division posted revenue growth of 28%, with its intelligent-cloud revenue up 20% to $25.9 billion. Meanwhile, its productivity and business-processes segment generated $19.2 billion.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: With help from the FBI, German police managed to secure nearly 50,000 bitcoin (USD $2 billion) from the operators of the defunct movie streaming portal, Movie2k. [...] Movie2K was another pirate site that showed an early interest in bitcoin. In its heyday, the site was the dominant pirate streaming portal in German-speaking countries. It generated a healthy revenue stream, part of it held in bitcoin. The operator of the site never got to spend most of it though. The site surprisingly shut down in the spring of 2013. Many suspected that legal troubles had plagued the site, something confirmed years later when Dresden police announced several arrests. It was rare to see new activity in an already-dated dossier, but the biggest surprise followed later when the police announced that $29.7m in bitcoin had been secured from the site's operators. This 'seizure' was one of the largest of its kind but the authorities estimated that the operators had more bitcoin stashed away, much more. Today, new information released by Dresden police shows that the assumption was correct. Following an investigation carried out by the Dresden General Prosecutor's Office, the Saxony State Criminal Police, and the local tax authority (INES), nearly 50,000 bitcoin were 'provisionally' secured earlier this month. The haul is worth more than $2 billion at today's exchange rate. Never before has this much bitcoin been secured by German authorities; it's also one of the largest crypto hauls worldwide. "The Bitcoins were seized after the accused voluntarily transferred them to official wallets provided by the [Federal Criminal Police Office]. This means that a final decision has not yet been made about the utilization of the Bitcoins," police write.

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No longer willing to be a friend with benefits – perhaps thanks to Big B killing OEM licenses?

Updated Dell has terminated its distribution deal for VMware products.…

sdinfoserv writes: UPS is cutting 12,000 jobs, or about 2.5% of its global workforce. The cuts mostly effect managers and contractors. Meanwhile, as the company wrestles with struggling profits and sales, workers are to return to the office five days a week and the company is "investing in artificial intelligence (AI) as it pushes to become more efficient," according to the BBC. [The job cuts are expected to reduce costs by $1 billion this year.] The BBC reports: The company said that reflected economic weakness in Europe and parts of Asia, as well as disruption in the US, where a strike threatened by staff over the summer led some customers to shift their business to rivals. UPS said it had since won back about 60% of that business and expected modest growth to start to return this year, with average daily volumes flat or up 2% in the US and flat or up 3% internationally. But its forecast was weaker than analysts had expected, sending shares down more than 7%. It also warned that costs associated with its new contract with the Teamsters union would continue to weigh on the company over the next six months. As part of that deal, the average full-time driver won a pay and benefits package worth about $170,000 a year by the end of the five-year contract in 2028.

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$423K luxury motor makes the Spirit of Ecstasy want to fly away

Mere months after launch the Rolls-Royce's Spectre EV is being recalled due to a faulty ground connection cable that could make the vehicles very hot stuff.…

Apple has lifted the embargo on the first wave of non-curated reviews of its Vision Pro headset, and the results are somewhat surprising. The initial "high" experienced upon first impressions, where reviewers laud the headset's "incredibly impressive displays" and "near perfect" tracking capabilities, has waned. In real-world conditions outside of Apple's heavily-regulated demos, the Vision Pro appears to suffer from limited productivity usecases, DRM'd apps, and half-baked features that suggest this device is still very much in the dev-kit stage. Above all, however, is the isolation experienced when using the Vision Pro. It offers very few options for wearers to socialize and share memories with one another in any meaningful way. Tim Cook may be right when he said headsets are inherently isolating. "You're in there, having experiences all by yourself that no one else can take part it," concludes Nilay Patel in his review for The Verge. "I don't want to get work done in the Vision Pro. I get my work done with other people, and I'd rather be out here with them." These are some of our favorite reviews of the Apple Vision Pro: - The Verge: Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it's not - The Wall Street Journal: Apple Vision Pro Review: The Best Headset Yet Is Just a Glimpse of the Future - Washington Post: Apple's Vision Pro is nearly here. But what can you do with it? - Tom's Guide: Apple Vision Pro review: A revolution in progress - CNET: Apple Vision Pro Review: A Mind-Blowing Look at an Unfinished Future - CNBC: Apple Vision Pro review: This is the future of computing and entertainment

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The business arm of Raspberry Pi is preparing to make an initial public offering (IPO) in London. CEO Eben Upton tells Ars that should the IPO happen, it will let Raspberry Pi's not-for-profit side expand by "at least a factor of 2X." And while it's "an understandable thing" that Raspberry Pi enthusiasts could be concerned, "while I'm involved in running the thing, I don't expect people to see any change in how we do things." CEO Eben Upton confirmed in an interview with Bloomberg News that Raspberry Pi had appointed bankers at London firms Peel Hunt and Jefferies to prepare for "when the IPO market reopens." Raspberry previously raised money from Sony and semiconductor and software design firm ARM, and it sought public investment. Upton denied or didn't quite deny IPO rumors in 2021, and Bloomberg reported Raspberry Pi was considering an IPO in early 2022. After ARM took a minority stake in the company in November 2023, Raspberry Pi was valued at roughly 400 million pounds, or just over $500 million. Given the company's gradual recovery from pandemic supply chain shortages, and the success of the Raspberry Pi 5 launch, the company's IPO will likely jump above that level, even with a listing in the UK rather than the more typical US IPO. Upton told The Register that "the business is in a much better place than it was last time we looked at it [an IPO]. We partly stopped because the markets got bad. And we partly stopped because our business became unpredictable." "It's a good thing, in that people care about us," Upton said in response to concerned hobbyists and tech enthusiasts. "What Raspberry Pi [builds] are the products we want to buy, and then we sell them to people like us," Upton said. "Certainly, while I'm involved in it, I can't imagine an environment in which the hobbyists are not going to be incredibly important." The IPO is "about the foundation," Upton said, with that charitable arm selling some of its majority stake in the business entity to raise funds and expand. "We've not cooked up some new way for a not-for-profit to do an IPO, no," he noted. [He told Ars that Raspberry Pi's business arm has had both strategic and private investors in its history, along with a majority shareholder in its Foundation (which in 2016 owned 75 percent of shares), and that he doesn't see changes to what Pi has built. He also noted that the foundation was previously funded by dividends from the business side.] "We do this transaction, and the proceeds of that transaction allow the foundation to train teachers, run clubs, expand programs, and ... do those things at, at least, a factor of 2X. That's what I'm most excited about." Upton said there would be "no change" to the kinds of products Pi makes, and that makers are "culturally important to us." [...] "If people think that an IPO means we're going to ... push prices up, push the margins up, push down the feature sets, the only answer we can give is, watch us. Keep watching," he said. "Let's look at it in 15, 20 years' time."

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More human than human, eh?

Computer scientists have found that misinformation generated by large language models (LLMs) is more difficult to detect than artisanal false claims hand-crafted by humans.…

Meta's latest update to its code generation AI model, Code Llama 70B, is "the largest and best-performing model" yet. From a report: Code Llama tools launched in August and are free for both research and commercial use. According to a post on Meta's AI blog, Code Llama 70B can handle more queries than previous versions, which means developers can feed it more prompts while programming, and it can be more accurate. Code Llama 70B scored 53 percent in accuracy on the HumanEval benchmark, performing better than GPT-3.5's 48.1 percent and closer to the 67 percent mark an OpenAI paper (PDF) reported for GPT-4. Built on Llama 2, Code Llama helps developers create strings of code from prompts and debug human-written work. Meta simultaneously launched two other Code Llama tools last fall, Code Llama -- Python and Code Llama -- Instruct, which focused on specific coding languages.

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AI and the chips that power it are at the center of the equation

Artificial intelligence and the chips that fuel its evolution have given rise to a new arms race between the US and China.…

Starbucks is taking its extra virgin olive oil-infused drinks -- which some customers previously complained of sending them straight to the bathroom ï-- nationwide beginning Tuesday. CNN: The lineup, called Oleato, launched in a few US cities last year before slowly expanding to more stores. Tuesday's launch across its US and Canada locations signifies that the chain stands behind the beverage despite subpar reviews from customers and critics. On the Oleato menu are two drinks: An oat milk latte infused with the extra virgin olive oil; and a new toffeenut iced shaken espresso with golden foam, which is vanilla sweet cream infused with extra virgin olive oil into a cold foam. The drinks debuted in Italy in 2023, with a Starbucks executive previously telling CNN that it's one of its "biggest launches we've had in decades."

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What goes together better than Redmond and respecting user preferences? Everything, really

Windows users, take notice: Microsoft's Edge browser seems to be actively importing open Chrome tabs and slurping other data from Google's browser without your permission – even if the "feature" that makes that happen is disabled. …

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) announced today that it'll start reimbursing local governments for installing solar panels and more efficient appliances after a disaster strikes. From a report: The move can help communities prepare for another calamity by equipping them with tools that just might keep the lights on when they would otherwise suffer a power outage. It's also a way for the US to deploy technologies that cut greenhouse gas emissions and stave off worsening climate disasters like storms, heatwaves, and wildfires. [...] This is the first time FEMA is funding "net-zero energy projects, including solar, heat pumps and efficient appliances" through its biggest grant program, called Public Assistance. It's available to communities recovering from a major event that the president has declared an emergency or disaster. Under the program, FEMA reimburses state, tribal, territorial, and local governments 75 percent of the cost of eligible recovery efforts. That's typically been to pay for "emergency protective measures," debris removal, and to rebuild public infrastructure.

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Russia is facing a widespread internet outage that's affected users across the country, with access to websites on the local .ru domain down. From a report: The issue was linked to a technical problem with the .ru domain's global Domain Name System Security Extensions, or DNSSEC, which is used to secure data exchanged in internet protocol networks, Russia's Digital Ministry said in a statement on Telegram Tuesday. Websites including the most popular local search engine Yandex.ru, ecommerce leaders Ozon.ru and Wildberries.ru, and apps of the country's biggest banks -- Sberbank PJSC and VTB Group -- were all affected, state-run Ria reported, citing Downradar, a traffic monitoring service.

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