Month: April 2023

Enlarge / An AI generated image of a "colorful data center." (credit: Midjourney)

On Thursday, Amazon released a new suite of AI technologies, including foundational large language models (LLMs) called Titan and a cloud computing service called Bedrock, reports Reuters. The move comes as competitors Microsoft and Google integrate AI chatbots into their search engines and cloud operations.

Recently, LLMs like OpenAI's GPT-4 and its instruction-tuned cousin ChatGPT have become one of the hottest stories in tech, inspiring large investments in AI labs and shaking up business operations in major players. LLMs, often grouped with similar technologies under the umbrella term "generative AI," can take any kind of written input and transform, translate, or interpret it in different ways.

In response, Amazon's cloud computing division, Amazon Web Services (AWS), has designed its new AI technologies to help companies develop their own chatbots and image-generation services (such as OpenAI's DALL-E). As with Microsoft's Azure cloud platform that powers OpenAI's models, Amazon stands to reap financial rewards from renting out the computing muscle to make its own brand of generative AI happen.

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  The Asus ROG Phone 7. This is the Ultimate model. [credit: Asus ]

Some companies may be giving up on the idea of Android gaming phones, but not Asus, which is releasing the ROG Phone 7 today. It has all the trademark "gamer" laser-beam design language and flashy LEDs, but also some wild engineering additions when it comes to cooling your super-hot phone.

Specs include a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC, 16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, and—the highlight of the spec sheet—a whopping 6000 mAh battery with 65 W charging. The display is a 165 Hz,  6.78-inch, 2448×1080 Samsung AMOLED. The phone has two USB-C ports, one on the side and one on the bottom, and a headphone jack. There are three rear cameras, a 50 MP main camera, a 13 MP wide-angle, and a 5 MP macro, while the front camera is 32 MP.

There are two models, the ROG Phone 7 and ROG Phone 7 Ultimate. The specs are the same; the ultimate just adds a rear "ROG Vision" display. This is a 2-inch OLED display with six different modes to show things like the time, charging level, an incoming call, or a few purely aesthetic animations. The Ultimate model also interfaces better with a clip-on fan accessory, the "AeroActive Cooler 7."

Enlarge / This highly magnified scanning electron microscopic (SEM) image depicts a number of spirochete bacteria, atop a culture of cotton-tail rabbit epithelium cells. (credit: CDC/David Cox)

A California man is the first person in the Western US to have a confirmed infection with a curious bacterium that has lurked in the region for over two decades—and researchers fear the pathogen may finally be emerging there.

The bacterium is Borrelia miyamotoi, a corkscrew-shaped spirochete that is spread by black-legged ticks and causes a rare disease called hard tick relapsing fever. The spiraled microbe is a relative of the more well-known Borrelia burgdorferi spirochete, the bacterium that causes Lyme disease. But B. miyamotoi has many notable differences from its cousin, including its inconspicuous spread.

While Lyme disease was first reported in 1975 in the US and B. burgdorferi first identified in 1982, B. miyamotoi was only identified in ticks in 1995 in Japan. But once discovered, it was soon found in many other places, including Europe and many parts of North America. Ticks collected in California as early as 2000 were found to carry the new spirochete, for example. Yet, the first cases of disease caused by B. miyamotoi in the US were only first confirmed in 2013 in the Northeast. Until now, no confirmed cases have been reported in the western part of the country, despite the bacterium's prevalence in adult black-legged ticks (Ixodes pacificus) being similar to that of B. burgdorferi, the Lyme disease spirochete.

Enlarge / Not the actual FTX headquarters. (credit: Getty Images | guenterguni)

FTX's new leadership has recovered $7.3 billion in assets and is considering whether to restart the cryptocurrency exchange, a company lawyer reportedly said during a hearing at US Bankruptcy Court in Delaware yesterday. The "$7.3 billion in cash and liquid crypto assets" is "an increase of more than $800 million since January," Reuters reported.

"The situation has stabilized, and the dumpster fire is out," FTX attorney Andy Dietderich said at the hearing. Dietderich was also paraphrased as saying that "FTX is negotiating with stakeholders about options for restarting its crypto exchange, and it may make a decision on that in the current quarter."

FTX founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, who is facing 13 criminal charges, is accused of improperly diverting billions of dollars of FTX customer funds to sister company Alameda. Bankman-Fried received about $2.2 billion in payments and loans from FTX entities, FTX said last month. Three other former executives have already pleaded guilty to criminal fraud charges.

Enlarge / The Windows Handheld Mode proof-of-concept even has a cute little icon. (credit: Microsoft/Twitter user _h0x0d_)

The Steam Deck's default Linux operating system and the Proton translation layer can run a surprising number of PC games well, but to maximize compatibility and flexibility (and to use it like a PC when you're not gaming), installing Windows is always an option. There are also alternate handheld PC designs like the AYA Neo that ship with Windows by default.

But Windows isn't an ideal operating system for the Steam Deck, at least not out of the box. Its mouse-and-keyboard-oriented user interface isn't comfortable or convenient to use on a small handheld system like the Steam Deck. Windows 11 makes some allowances for touchscreens, but its buttons and menus can still be hard to tap on such a small screen. The controller doesn't work outside of Steam, including on Windows' touchscreen keyboard, and installing drivers and launching games for the first time can be a pain.

Microsoft is aware of the problems running Windows on the Steam Deck and other similar handheld Windows PCs, and at least some developers inside the company have spent time thinking of ways to address them. That’s the thrust of a leaked presentation (posted in two parts by Twitter user _h0x0d_) about a new “Handheld Mode” for Windows, developed as part of an internal Microsoft hackathon in September 2022.

Enlarge (credit: SOPA Images / Contributor | LightRocket)

[Update: On Thursday afternoon, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents arrested Jack Teixeira "without incident," The Washington Post reported.]

The leader of a private Discord server who allegedly leaked top-secret military documents has now been identified by “a trail of evidence” as Jack Teixeira, "a 21-year-old member of the intelligence wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard," The New York Times reported. US officials are now seeking to talk to Teixeira after days of searching for the leaker, including coordinating with Discord after the private server was deleted.

An earlier Washington Post report had identified the leaker as OG, a young man who was allegedly working on a military base while posting photos of hundreds of confidential documents for months on a private Discord server before US authorities caught on.

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  0:15—Amid the floating islands on display here, we briefly see a mountaintop with smoky tendrils on the left side of the scene. The smoke is extremely reminiscent of Ganondorf's flowing red hair, which we'll see up close at 1:18. [credit: Nintendo ]

For years after Nintendo's 2019 announcement of a Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild sequel, we had to subsist on one relatively brief gameplay trailer for any hint of how the much-anticipated Tears of the Kingdom would play. Today, as we approach the game's planned May release, Nintendo has shared what it says is the final trailer for the game, the third public gameplay tease in as many months.

As we wait for our first hands-on time with the first Zelda title in six years, we've gone through that last trailer practically frame by frame to pick out every interesting feature and speculative tidbit we could. Here's a quick look at some moments that your eyes may have quickly glossed over on first viewing, along with trailer time codes to check them out in full context for yourself.

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  0:15—Amid the floating islands on display here, we briefly see a mountaintop with smoky tendrils on the left side of the scene. The smoke is extremely reminiscent of Ganondorf's flowing red hair, which we'll see up close at 1:18. [credit: Nintendo ]

For years after Nintendo's 2019 announcement of a Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild sequel, we had to subsist on one relatively brief gameplay trailer for any hint of how the much-anticipated Tears of the Kingdom would play. Today, as we approach the game's planned May release, Nintendo has shared what it says is the final trailer for the game, the third public gameplay tease in as many months.

As we wait for our first hands-on time with the first Zelda title in six years, we've gone through that last trailer practically frame by frame to pick out every interesting feature and speculative tidbit we could. Here's a quick look at some moments that your eyes may have quickly glossed over on first viewing, along with trailer time codes to check them out in full context for yourself.