good morning. Almost 600,000 federal workers were filled yesterday after the US government shut down after overcoming federal spending.
A few things that won't happen until the government returns: new defense contracts, new education grants, new environmental permits, food facility inspections, agricultural data collection, satellite data collection, new small business loan applications, new financial regulations, and most civil lawsuits (someone?).
Good luck to readers who get caught up in the crosshairs. Below is today's technical news. – Andrewneska
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Meta personalizes ads using user's AI chatbot conversations
It will be Oliver/EPA/Bloomberg/Getty Images
On December 16th, Meta will begin using conversations in AI chatbots to personalize ads that appear on Instagram and Facebook.
Meta product users cannot opt out of such customizations, but “some conversations will be automatically excluded.” According to Wall Street Journal. (It turns out that advertisers don't like to appear in the next message to talk about sex, politics, or race.
Conversations held before December 16th will also be excluded. journal “This policy does not apply to users in the UK, South Korea or the European Union at least initially.”
In many ways this was inevitable, as the majority of the predicted meta (98%!) of Meta's annual revenues come from advertising, similar to its rival Google. After all, something has to be paid Investing in all of its AI talent and infrastructure,picture? – an
UK home office ordered Apple to create a cloud backdoor
Happy Cybersecurity Awareness Month, everyone.
Big hit report in Financial Times This week, an American reader, the UK's Home Office, is revealing that they have created a new attempt to access user data in Apple's cloud, assuming that they run tea rather than coffee and run Homeland Security.
In early September, the UK government reportedly ordered Apple to “give access to encrypted cloud backups for UK users” after receiving blowback from the Trump administration on previous requests, including US customers. (The Ministry of Home Affairs will not comment on the issue as a policy issue.)
In the wake of its first attempt in January, Apple removed Icloud Advanced Data Protection, the secured cloud storage service from the UK.
Apple is determined to resist such instructions, and has hardly tempered its latest comments on the situation. – an
Thinking Machines Lab launches its first product
We are finally beginning to see what's going on with former Openai CTO Mira Murati's AI startup.
The funded company announced Tinker, Tool and Sorry on Wednesday. Flexible API– “Fine-tuned language model.”
This tool allows AI researchers to modify the algorithms and data of language models and tailor them to their needs. (Thinking machines handle training infrastructure.)
Is the fine-tuned frontier model the way AI advances? I believe that in thinking machines and their investors, including VC companies such as Accel and Andreessen Horowitz, as well as major technology players such as AMD, Nvidia, Cisco and ServiceNow.
Today, both academic groups and businesses are tweaking open source AI models to optimize them for specific applications, such as contract analysis, medical records review, and scientific problems resolution.
According to Thinking Machine, researchers from Berkeley, Princeton and Stanford use the tool, which is free for now in private beta, but is quickly managed by usage-based pricing. – an
More Technology
–Microsoft promotes Judson Althoff. Satya Nadella gives him the CEO marketing, operations and CEO title of Microsoft's commercial business.
–Google replaces assistant with Gemini. Google Smart Speakers will earn you a redesigned home app in addition to improving conversation skills and new voices.
–Intel gave a talk to add AMD as a foundry customer. If true, he's got a big win for that long-awaited chipmaking unit.
–Apple and Openai demand that they be fired from the Xai lawsuit. They argue that ChatGpt's iOS et al integration is “not explicitly exclusive.”
–A weapon for sue Qualcomm's ruling. The claims for a construction licensing agreement between Qualcomm's subsidiary Nuvia and ARM were rejected in September.
–Did the data in the North illegally claim the crypto mining tax credit? European prosecutors dig.
–Xbox Game Pass Subscription Price Jump. “Ultimate” is up $10 per month, and “PC” is up $4.50, with the rest remaining the same.
