Month: April 2025

Steigende Cyberangriffe erfordern fundierte Incident-Response-Kompetenzen. Dieser Online-Workshop zeigt, wie IT-Verantwortliche im Ernstfall schnell und strukturiert reagieren und Sicherheitsvorfälle effektiv analysieren. (Golem Karrierewelt, Sicherheitslücke)

OpenAI today announced a significant expansion of ChatGPT's customization and memory capabilities. For some users, it will now be able to remember information from the full breadth of their prior conversations with it and adjust its responses based on that information.

This means ChatGPT will learn more about the user over time to personalize its responses, above and beyond just a handful of key facts.

Some time ago, OpenAI added a feature called "Memory" that allowed a limited number of pieces of information to be retained and used for future responses. Users often had to specifically ask ChatGPT to remember something to trigger this, though it occasionally tried to guess at what it should remember, too. (When something was added to its memory, there was a message saying that its memory had been updated.)

Read full article

Comments

Remember when teachers demanded that you "show your work" in school? Some fancy new AI models promise to do exactly that, but new research suggests that they sometimes hide their actual methods while fabricating elaborate explanations instead.

New research from Anthropic—creator of the ChatGPT-like Claude AI assistant—examines simulated reasoning (SR) models like DeepSeek's R1, and its own Claude series. In a research paper posted last week, Anthropic's Alignment Science team demonstrated that these SR models frequently fail to disclose when they've used external help or taken shortcuts, despite features designed to show their "reasoning" process.

(It's worth noting that OpenAI's o1 and o3 series SR models deliberately obscure the accuracy of their "thought" process, so this study does not apply to them.)

Read full article

Comments

After modest success with its first two smartwatches, OnePlus was poised to release a third-generation smartwatch early this year. Unfortunately, the company had to delay the Watch 3 from February to April, and now the previously announced $330 price tag is nowhere to be seen. Instead, the OnePlus Watch 3 has launched at an eye-watering $500, and you can probably guess why.

The OnePlus Watch 3 was all set for release a few months ago, but early reviewers spotted an embarrassing typo on the device. Like most smartwatches, OnePlus printed the watch's key specs on the bottom of the housing. Part of that text was supposed to read "Made in China," but instead, it said "Meda in China." Oops.

OnePlus delayed the launch so it could correct the mistake on retail units. However, the US-China trade relationship has deteriorated dramatically in the intervening weeks. Since the watch is meda made in China, it is subject to tariffs—the amount of Trump's China tariffs is changing on an almost daily basis, but it's currently 145 percent.

Read full article

Comments

"No ads, no hosts, no sponsors, just games." The Triple-i Initiative's pitch for its now-annual showcase of games, crafted by studios working somewhere between "Solo dev or very small team" and "Investor-minded conglomerate with international offices," promises a lot of peeks at games without a lot of chatter, and once again it delivered.

Last year's showcase debuted titles like Norland, Slay the Spire 2, and The Rogue Prince of Persia, along with updates from Darkest Dungeon 2, Palworld, and Vampire Survivors. This year featured looks at titles from the Deep Rock universe, the cloning-yourself-to-survive curiosity The Alters, an Endless Legend 2 that continues tweaking the 4X formula, and more.

Below are five selected highlights for the Ars crowd, along with some notable other announcements. The full list is not yet up on the Triple-i site, but you can see what jumped out from the full showcase.

Read full article

Comments

Back in 2023, we reported on the unveiling of the first full-size 3D digital scan of the remains of the RMS Titanic—a "digital twin" that captured the wreckage in unprecedented detail. Magellan Ltd, a deep-sea mapping company, and Atlantic Productions conducted the scans over a six-week expedition. That project is the subject of the new National Geographic documentary Titanic: The Digital Resurrection, detailing several fascinating initial findings from experts' ongoing analysis of that full-size scan.

Titanic met its doom just four days into the Atlantic crossing, roughly 375 miles (600 kilometers) south of Newfoundland. At 11:40 pm ship's time on April 14, 1912, Titanic hit that infamous iceberg and began taking on water, flooding five of its 16 watertight compartments, thereby sealing its fate. More than 1,500 passengers and crew perished; only around 710 of those on board survived.

Titanic remained undiscovered at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean until an expedition led by Jean-Louis Michel and Robert Ballard reached the wreck on September 1, 1985. The ship split apart as it sank, with the bow and stern sections lying roughly one-third of a mile apart. The bow proved to be surprisingly intact, while the stern showed severe structural damage, likely flattened from the impact as it hit the ocean floor. There is a debris field spanning a 5×3-mile area, filled with furniture fragments, dinnerware, shoes and boots, and other personal items.

Read full article

Comments

Google has long been on the lookout for ways to break Microsoft's stranglehold on US government office software, and the current drive to cut costs may be it. Google and the federal government have announced an agreement that makes Google Workspace available to all agencies at a significant discount, trimming 71 percent from the service's subscription price tag.

Since Donald Trump returned to the White House, the government has engaged in a campaign of unbridled staffing reductions and program cancellations, all with the aim of reducing federal spending. It would appear Google recognized this opportunity, negotiating with the General Services Administration (GSA) to offer Workspace at a lower price. Google claims the deal could yield up to $2 billion in savings.

Google has previously offered discounts for federal agencies interested in migrating to Workspace, but it saw little success displacing Microsoft. The Windows maker has enjoyed decades as an entrenched tech giant, leading the 365 productivity tools to proliferate throughout the government. While Google has gotten some agencies on board, Microsoft has traditionally won the lion's share of contracts, including the $8 billion Defense Enterprise Office Solutions contract that pushed Microsoft 365 to all corners of the Pentagon beginning in 2020.

Read full article

Comments

For quick reminders and can’t-miss memos, sticky notes are effective tools, and I'd argue that the simplicity of the sticky note is its best attribute. But the ease behind propping up sticky notes also means that it’s easy for people to find their desks covered in the things, making it difficult to glean critical information quickly.

Rocketbook, a Boston-based company that also makes reusable notebooks, thinks it has a solution for sticky note overload in the form of an app that interprets handwriting and organizes reusable sticky notes. But not everyone has the need—or time—for a dedicated sticky notes app.

Rocketbook’s Reusable Sticky Notes

Like Rocketbook’s flagship notebooks, its Reusable Sticky Notes rely on erasable pens that allow you to use the paper repeatedly. The Reusable Sticky Notes work with the Rocketbook app (available for iOS or Android), which transforms the sticky notes into images that are automatically stored in the app and can be emailed to specified people (as a PDF) or shared with third-party apps.

Read full article

Comments

The Food and Drug Administration is reinstating telework for staff who review drugs, medical devices, and tobacco, according to reporting by the Associated Press. Review staff and supervisors are now allowed to resume telework at least two days a week, according to an internal email obtained by the AP.

The move reverses a jarring return-to-office decree by the Trump administration, which it used to spur resignations from federal employees. Now, after a wave of such resignations and a brutal round of layoffs that targeted about 3,500 staff, the move to restore some telework appears aimed at keeping the remaining talent amid fears that the agency's review capabilities are at risk of collapse.

The cut of 3,500 staff is a loss of about 19 percent of the agency's workforce, and staffers told the AP that lower-level employees are "pouring" out of the agency amid the Trump administration's actions. Entire offices responsible for FDA policies and regulations have been shuttered. Most of the agency's communication staff have been wiped out, as well as teams that support food inspectors and investigators, the AP reported.

Read full article

Comments

Chinese companies that sell to US customers on Amazon are reportedly preparing to raise prices or quit the US market because of tariffs imposed by President Trump. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has meanwhile confirmed that he expects the cost of tariffs to be passed on to US buyers.

Reuters talked to several individual sellers and a Chinese trade association that represents over 3,000 Amazon sellers for an article published today. "It'll be very hard for anyone to survive in the US market" because "the entire cost structure gets entirely overwhelmed" by the tariffs, Reuters was told by Wang Xin, who leads the Shenzhen Cross-Border E-Commerce Association. Xin also "not[ed] the tariffs could also lead to customs delays and higher logistics costs."

Trump increased tariffs on China imports to 125 percent yesterday even as he announced a 90-day pause on tariff hikes affecting other countries. The total tariffs are 145 percent because the newly raised tariff "comes on top of a 20 percent fentanyl-related tariff that Trump previously imposed on China," CNBC wrote today.

Read full article

Comments