Month: April 2024

Enlarge / Tech brands love hollering about the purported thrills of AI these days. (credit: Getty)

Logitech announced a new mouse last week. A company rep reached out to inform Ars of Logitech’s “newest wireless mouse.” The gadget’s product page reads the same as of this writing.

I’ve had good experience with Logitech mice, especially wireless ones, one of which I'm using now. So I was keen to learn what Logitech might have done to improve on its previous wireless mouse designs. A quieter click? A new shape to better accommodate my overworked right hand? Multiple onboard profiles in a business-ready design?

I was disappointed to learn that the most distinct feature of the Logitech Signature AI Edition M750 is a button located south of the scroll wheel. This button is preprogrammed to launch the ChatGPT prompt builder, which Logitech recently added to its peripherals configuration app Options+.

Enlarge / Tech brands love hollering about the purported thrills of AI these days. (credit: Getty)

Logitech announced a new mouse last week. A company rep reached out to inform Ars of Logitech’s “newest wireless mouse.” The gadget’s product page reads the same as of this writing.

I’ve had good experience with Logitech mice, especially wireless ones, one of which I'm using now. So I was keen to learn what Logitech might have done to improve on its previous wireless mouse designs. A quieter click? A new shape to better accommodate my overworked right hand? Multiple onboard profiles in a business-ready design?

I was disappointed to learn that the most distinct feature of the Logitech Signature AI Edition M750 is a button located south of the scroll wheel. This button is preprogrammed to launch the ChatGPT prompt builder, which Logitech recently added to its peripherals configuration app Options+.

Enlarge / Drops of the blood going onto an HIV quick test. (credit: Getty | BRITTA PEDERSEN)

Trendy, unproven "vampire facials" performed at an unlicensed spa in New Mexico left at least three women with HIV infections. This marks the first time that cosmetic procedures have been associated with an HIV outbreak, according to a detailed report of the outbreak investigation published today.

Ars reported on the cluster last year when state health officials announced they were still identifying cases linked to the spa despite it being shut down in September 2018. But today's investigation report offers more insight into the unprecedented outbreak, which linked five people with HIV infections to the spa and spurred investigators to contact and test nearly 200 other spa clients. The report appears in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

The investigation began when a woman between the ages of 40 and 50 turned up positive on a rapid HIV test taken while she was traveling abroad in the summer of 2018. She had a stage 1 acute infection. It was a result that was as dumbfounding as it was likely distressing. The woman had no clear risk factors for acquiring the infection: no injection drug use, no blood transfusions, and her current and only recent sexual partner tested negative. But, she did report getting a vampire facial in the spring of 2018 at a spa in Albuquerque called VIP Spa.

Enlarge / Drops of the blood going onto an HIV quick test. (credit: Getty | BRITTA PEDERSEN)

Trendy, unproven "vampire facials" performed at an unlicensed spa in New Mexico left at least three women with HIV infections. This marks the first time that cosmetic procedures have been associated with an HIV outbreak, according to a detailed report of the outbreak investigation published today.

Ars reported on the cluster last year when state health officials announced they were still identifying cases linked to the spa despite it being shut down in September 2018. But today's investigation report offers more insight into the unprecedented outbreak, which linked five people with HIV infections to the spa and spurred investigators to contact and test nearly 200 other spa clients. The report appears in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

The investigation began when a woman between the ages of 40 and 50 turned up positive on a rapid HIV test taken while she was traveling abroad in the summer of 2018. She had a stage 1 acute infection. It was a result that was as dumbfounding as it was likely distressing. The woman had no clear risk factors for acquiring the infection: no injection drug use, no blood transfusions, and her current and only recent sexual partner tested negative. But, she did report getting a vampire facial in the spring of 2018 at a spa in Albuquerque called VIP Spa.

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  The HMD Pulse base model. [credit: HMD ]

HMD has been known as the manufacturer of Nokia-branded phones for years now, but now the company wants to start selling phones under its own brand. The first is the "HMD Pulse" line, a series of three low-end phones that are headed for Europe. The US is getting an HMD-branded phone, too—the HMD Vibe—but that won't be out until May.

Europe's getting the 140-euro HMD Pulse, 160-euro Pulse+, and the 180-euro Pulse Pro. If you can't tell from the prices, these are destined for Europe for now, but if you convert them to USD, that's about $150, $170, and $190, respectively. With only $20 between tiers, there isn't a huge difference from one model to the next. They all have bottom-of-the-barrel Unisoc T606 SoCs. That's a 12 nm chip with two Cortex A75 Arm cores, two A55 cores, an ARM Mali-G57 MP1, and it's 4G only. Previously, HMD used this chip in the 2023 HMD Nokia G22. They also all have 90 Hz, 6.65-inch, 1612×720 LCDs, 128GB of storage, and 5,000 mAh batteries.

As for the differences, the base model has 4GB of RAM, a 13 MP main rear camera, an 8 MP front camera, and 10 W wired charging. The Plus model upgrades to a 50 MP main camera, while the Pro model has 6GB of RAM, a 50 MP main camera, 50 MP front camera, and 20 W wired charging. There is a second lens camera on the back, but it appears to be only a 2 MP "depth sensor" on all models.

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  The HMD Pulse base model. [credit: HMD ]

HMD has been known as the manufacturer of Nokia-branded phones for years now, but now the company wants to start selling phones under its own brand. The first is the "HMD Pulse" line, a series of three low-end phones that are headed for Europe. The US is getting an HMD-branded phone, too—the HMD Vibe—but that won't be out until May.

Europe's getting the 140-euro HMD Pulse, 160-euro Pulse+, and the 180-euro Pulse Pro. If you can't tell from the prices, these are destined for Europe for now, but if you convert them to USD, that's about $150, $170, and $190, respectively. With only $20 between tiers, there isn't a huge difference from one model to the next. They all have bottom-of-the-barrel Unisoc T606 SoCs. That's a 12 nm chip with two Cortex A75 Arm cores, two A55 cores, an ARM Mali-G57 MP1, and it's 4G only. Previously, HMD used this chip in the 2023 HMD Nokia G22. They also all have 90 Hz, 6.65-inch, 1612×720 LCDs, 128GB of storage, and 5,000 mAh batteries.

As for the differences, the base model has 4GB of RAM, a 13 MP main rear camera, an 8 MP front camera, and 10 W wired charging. The Plus model upgrades to a 50 MP main camera, while the Pro model has 6GB of RAM, a 50 MP main camera, 50 MP front camera, and 20 W wired charging. There is a second lens camera on the back, but it appears to be only a 2 MP "depth sensor" on all models.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

In the world of AI, what might be called "small language models" have been growing in popularity recently because they can be run on a local device instead of requiring data center-grade computers in the cloud. On Wednesday, Apple introduced a set of tiny source-available AI language models called OpenELM that are small enough to run directly on a smartphone. They're mostly proof-of-concept research models for now, but they could form the basis of future on-device AI offerings from Apple.

Apple's new AI models, collectively named OpenELM for "Open-source Efficient Language Models," are currently available on the Hugging Face under an Apple Sample Code License. Since there are some restrictions in the license, it may not fit the commonly accepted definition of "open source," but the source code for OpenELM is available.

On Tuesday, we covered Microsoft's Phi-3 models, which aim to achieve something similar: a useful level of language understanding and processing performance in small AI models that can run locally. Phi-3-mini features 3.8 billion parameters, but some of Apple's OpenELM models are much smaller, ranging from 270 million to 3 billion parameters in eight distinct models.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

In the world of AI, what might be called "small language models" have been growing in popularity recently because they can be run on a local device instead of requiring data center-grade computers in the cloud. On Wednesday, Apple introduced a set of tiny source-available AI language models called OpenELM that are small enough to run directly on a smartphone. They're mostly proof-of-concept research models for now, but they could form the basis of future on-device AI offerings from Apple.

Apple's new AI models, collectively named OpenELM for "Open-source Efficient Language Models," are currently available on the Hugging Face under an Apple Sample Code License. Since there are some restrictions in the license, it may not fit the commonly accepted definition of "open source," but the source code for OpenELM is available.

On Tuesday, we covered Microsoft's Phi-3 models, which aim to achieve something similar: a useful level of language understanding and processing performance in small AI models that can run locally. Phi-3-mini features 3.8 billion parameters, but some of Apple's OpenELM models are much smaller, ranging from 270 million to 3 billion parameters in eight distinct models.