Month: October 2024

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has now raised $6.6 billion in a new funding round that values the company at $157 billion, nearly doubling its previous valuation of $86 billion, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

The funding round comes with strings attached: Investors have the right to withdraw their money if OpenAI does not complete its planned conversion from a nonprofit (with a for-profit division) to a fully for-profit company.

Venture capital firm Thrive Capital led the funding round with a $1.25 billion investment. Microsoft, a longtime backer of OpenAI to the tune of $13 billion, contributed just under $1 billion to the latest round. New investors joined the round, including SoftBank with a $500 million investment and Nvidia with $100 million.

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OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has now raised $6.6 billion in a new funding round that values the company at $157 billion, nearly doubling its previous valuation of $86 billion, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

The funding round comes with strings attached: Investors have the right to withdraw their money if OpenAI does not complete its planned conversion from a nonprofit (with a for-profit division) to a fully for-profit company.

Venture capital firm Thrive Capital led the funding round with a $1.25 billion investment. Microsoft, a longtime backer of OpenAI to the tune of $13 billion, contributed just under $1 billion to the latest round. New investors joined the round, including SoftBank with a $500 million investment and Nvidia with $100 million.

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Best Buy is selling a Windows laptop from Asus for  $110. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a great Windows laptop. Normally priced at $180, the he Asus E410KA has just 4GB of RAM and 64GB of eMMC storage. There’s no backlit keyboard, and the processor is a 6-watt Intel Celeron N4500 dual-core chip based on […]

The post Daily Deals (10-02-2024) appeared first on Liliputing.

Recently, chemists at Binghamton University learned that many tattoo inks in the US contain different pigments than those listed, or unlisted additives. One might expect the European Union, with its stricter regulations, to have fewer issues on that score, but according to a new paper published in the journal Analyst, that's not the case, particularly for green and blue tattoo inks. Most had components that were not listed on the label, and some included banned ingredients.

“Our work cannot say anything about the safety of tattoos, but we think it's an important first step in addressing the question ‘Are tattoos safe?’" said co-author John Swierk, a chemist at Binghamton University. “If we don't know what's in a bottle of tattoo ink, then we cannot figure out what might be causing an adverse event in the near and long term, whether that’s an allergic reaction or something more serious. As a team, we aren't anti-tattoo, we just believe that clients and artists have a right to know what's in the inks they are using.”

As previously reported, typical tattoo ink contains one or more pigments (which give the ink its color) within a "carrier package" to help deliver the pigments into the skin. The pigments are the same as those used in paints and textiles. They can be either small bits of solids or discrete molecules, such as titanium dioxide or iron oxide (for white or rust-brown colors, respectively). As for the carrier packages, most ink manufacturers use grain or rubbing alcohol, sometimes with a bit of witch hazel added to the mix to help the skin heal after the tattooing process. There may also be other additives to adjust the viscosity and keep pigment particles suspended in the carrier package.

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Microsoft's push to get Windows and Office users to buy Microsoft 365 subscriptions can be irritating, but to the company's credit, it's one of the few that has continued to sell buy-once, use-forever versions of its flagship software after launching a subscription model. This week the company has officially launched Microsoft Office 2024, a new "locked-in-time" update to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other apps for people who don't want the continuously developed Microsoft 365 versions.

For end users, Office Home 2024 gets you Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote for $149.99. Office Home & Business 2024 costs $249.99, which adds Outlook "and the rights to use the apps for commercial purposes." Both licenses cover a single PC or Mac.

New Office Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) products are also being released for businesses and other organizations; Office LTSC Professional Plus 2024 for Windows also includes the Access database management app. Project 2024 and Visio 2024 are also still being offered as standalone products.

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The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has filed charges against Amazon, alleging that the e-commerce giant has illegally refused to bargain with a union representing drivers who are frustrated by what they claim are low wages and dangerous working conditions.

Back in August, drivers celebrated what they considered a major win when the NLRB found that Amazon was a joint employer of sub-contracted drivers, cheering "We are Amazon workers!" At that time, Amazon seemed to be downplaying the designation, telling Ars that the union was trying to "misrepresent" a merit determination that the NLRB confirmed was only "the first step in the NLRB’s General Counsel litigating the allegations after investigating an unfair labor practice charge."

But this week, the NLRB took the next step, signing charges soon after Amazon began facing intensifying worker backlash, not just from drivers but also from disgruntled office and fulfillment workers. According to Reuters, the NLRB accused Amazon of "a series of illegal tactics to discourage union activities" organized by drivers in a Palmdale, California, facility.

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DirecTV's agreement to buy the Dish satellite and streaming TV business from EchoStar is facing opposition from Dish creditors who would be forced to take a loss on the value of their debt.

Dish creditors "plan to block a distressed exchange that's a key part of its tie-up with rival DirecTV, according to people familiar with the matter," Bloomberg reported today. "A group of steering committee investors has gained a blocking position in order to negotiate with the company, the people said. They may even explore a better outcome through litigation, said some of the people." The Bloomberg article was titled, "Dish-DirecTV Deal Sparks Creditor Revolt Over $1.6 Billion Loss."

As Bloomberg notes, "Dish needs consent from its bondholders to exchange old debts for notes issued out of the new combined entity" in order to complete the deal. A previous Bloomberg article said that "just over two-thirds of [Dish] bondholders in each series of notes have to agree to the exchange, with the deadline set for October 29." EchoStar executives argue that debt holders will benefit from the merger by "owning debt of a stronger company with lower leverage," the article said.

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Sonos' controversial app update in May was "obviously a failure," Sonos CEO Patrick Spence told Reuters today.

When the update launched in May, customers revolted over missing features, like the ability to search music libraries, edit song and playlist queues, and set sleep timers. In addition, some already purchased hardware, especially older models, began having problems.

In a note to investors on Tuesday, Sonos said that "more than 80 percent of the app's missing features have been reintroduced." The app should be "almost 100 percent restored in the coming weeks." Sonos has been updating the app every two weeks in an effort to bring it to parity with the old one.

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Telekom-Konkurrenten wollen bei der Kupferabschaltung möglichst viele Kunden des Unternehmens gewinnen. Der Breitbandverband Anga legt einen Plan vor. (Festnetz, Telekom)

Die Russell Hobbs SatisFry XXL Heißluftfritteuse ist derzeit für 69,99 Euro bei Amazon im Angebot. Der Deal ist befristet und kann jederzeit enden. (Amazon, Technik/Hardware)