By Siôn Geschwindt Last week, Elon Musk’s Starlink internet service was installed at the White House. A week before that, Donald Trump promoted Tesla on the White House front lawn, after rallying people to buy the company’s cars and stock.  The Trump administration’s endorsements of Musk’s companies are attracting growing scrutiny. Critics argue that they’re breaking laws and threatening democracy. For the world’s richest man, the relationship is also causing business problems. One involves Italy’s plans for Starlink. The country has halted talks for a proposed €1.5bn contract with the service, defence minister Guido Crosetto said in an interview Saturday.   “Everything has come…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

Researchers at the University of Cambridge, together with the Alan Turing Institute, Microsoft Research, and the European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecasts, have developed a new AI-based weather forecasting system — Aardvark Weather — that could revolutionize the field of meteorology.

Aardvark Weather can apparently provide weather forecasts that are tens of times more accurate, while requiring dramatically less computing power than modern systems. “Aardvark is thousands of times faster than all previous methods of weather forecasting,” Professor Richard Turner of Cambridge’s Department of Engineering, who led the research, said in a statement.

The AI system achieved this by replacing the entire process of weather forecasting with a single machine-learning model; it can take in observations from satellites, weather stations and other sensors and then generate both global and local forecasts.

In the past, a forecast required several different models, each of which relies on a supercomputer and a support team to run. With Aardvark Weather, the same work can be completed in just a few minutes and with a standard desktop computer.

The results were published in the journal Nature.

Source:: Computer World

We’re now in the century sci-fi writers made their fortunes writing about — and hardware manufacturers seem keen to explore new products and processes that make some of those predictions a reality. Just as Minority Report comes pretty close to predicting visionOS and Spatial Computing, so too will a whisper of Ringworld be reflected in the hard but soft metal substance Apple might use in future devices, principally the folding iPhone.

Liquid Metal has been around in the Apple-verse for a long time. It’s a zirconium- and titanium-based alloy stronger than steel and more flexible than aluminium; the company has licensed it since around 2010 for use as the SIM card removal tool that looks like it wants to be a paper clip and once found in the box with iPhones. While it doesn’t share all the same qualities as Larry Niven’s “Unobtanium” used to make the Ringworld space station, it does at least deliver resilience and flexibility and it’s the latter that matters according to Apple analyst, Ming-Chi Kuo.

He says Apple will use liquid metal to make the foldable hinge in the so-far-unannounced or confirmed folding iPhone it hopes to introduce next year. 

Pour me another

Kuo explains that Apple wants to use the substance to build a folding device that is flatter and more durable than existing devices of its type, as well as having a hardly discernible crease. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has previously told us that Apple really wants to build a fold mechanism that isn’t visible when unfolded and does not deteriorate in use.

To achieve this, key iPhone fold components including hinges will be crafted from liquid metal. The analyst predicts Android device makers will soon follow suit, which is good news for exclusive liquid metal supplier, Dongguan EonTec, the analyst said. Apple’s 21st-century take on a folding device is likely to be thin, like the iPhone 16e, and almost certainly built to the high-end design aesthetic Apple maintains across its product range. It will also have a high-end price to match, which implies this will be the device to slam ostentatiously on the table during board meetings. 

Et tu, Siri?

While the hardware seems to be coming into view, it’s clear that one essential component isn’t yet in place, and that’s Siri. Only two weeks ago, Kuo told us Apple wants to position the device as a true AI-driven iPhone, with the power of artificial intelligence artfully combined with the large display. The snag? Siri isn’t ready yet, which has made for big staffing changes within Apple’s Siri team. Reflecting the strategic importance of AI to Apple, CEO Tim Cook has put Apple’s best product designers in to sort Siri out, moving former Siri boss John Giannandrea aside to make way for genius engineer Mike Rockwell, who led Vision Pro development. (Giannandrea hasn’t left the company, incidentally, but seems to have been given a more limited sphere of responsibility and is no longer reporting directly to Cook, who has lost confidence in his ability to execute on product development.)

Apple’s Game Of Thrones is interesting, but what it truly represents is the importance the company attaches to Siri on iPhones — and not just iPhones. Apple has a number of additional products in the pipeline, including a home control device, some of which have allegedly also been delayed due to contextual Siri’s no-show. In that light, the fact that a folding iPhone is expected to become a poster child for AI on a mobile device depends on what the new Siri team can build.

No pressure, then.

What else do we know about the folding iPhone? In development intermittently since at least 2014, Apple’s hardware engineers now seem to feel the tech and the time is right for the device. Kuo tells us to expect a 7.8-in. display when unfolded and a 5.5-inch display at rest. You’ll have rear and front camera, eSIM, Apple’s C2 5G modem,  and Touch ID as a side button. The device should be as slim as 9mm when closed but isn’t expected to appear until next year’s main iPhone refresh cycle in late 2026. Final specifications will be set in stone later this year. Apple will likely follow this up by developing and optimizing the manufacturing process in preparation for mass production next year.

But a lot depends on getting those Siri improvements in place.

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Source:: Computer World

By Deepti Pathak At its Amplify 2025 event, HP announced a new addition to its Omen gaming laptop family,…
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By Siôn Geschwindt Fuelled by $15bn in financing, Northvolt was supposed to be Europe’s great battery success story — a homegrown champion capable of competing with Asian and American giants.   So when Northvolt filed for bankruptcy last week, after months of job cuts, restructuring, and multiple failed attempts to raise more money, it dealt a massive blow to Europe’s ambitions to ramp up domestic production of lithium-ion batteries, which power everything from EVs to smartphones.  In the wake of Northvolt’s precipitous fall from grace, everyone from politicians and investors to the company’s own employees has voiced their opinions on what went wrong. Among…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

By Robert Brull The United States has long understood a simple truth: war is won not by size alone, but by speed and creativity. Indeed, innovation has always been crucial in conflict. Armour made knights safe until the crossbow came along. High walls protected cities until cannons emerged. Trenches were made obsolete by fast-moving mechanised forces. The lesson: a military that cannot innovate is one that falls behind. Yet Europe remains stuck with an outdated model of defence procurement – one that favours a handful of bloated contractors doing the same old thing over the fresh ideas of startups and entrepreneurs. Against a…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

By Deepti Pathak Instagram hassimplifiedaddingmusic toposts, butthings do not always go as we would like. Whether you aredealingwithregional blocks,…
The post Why Can’t I Add Music to My Instagram Post: 5 Fixes appeared first on Fossbytes.

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Adobe is working with Microsoft to develop an AI agent that can generate graphics and design content from within the Microsoft 365 interface.

The Adobe Express Agent, still under development, will allow users to create and embed graphics directly within productivity applications such as Word and PowerPoint, according to Aubrey Cattell, vice president for Adobe’s Creative Cloud Developer Platform and Services.

The company touted the move during this week’s Adobe Summit, but has not said when the generative AI (genAI) tool would be released; it will ultimately be available to Microsoft 365 customers as a Copilot plugin. 

“We’re building it in partnership with [Microsoft] as they kind of build out their strategy for all third-party agents,” Cattell said.

The agent can create an image for the document, suggest options to generate images, or ask questions. Users can specify within the 365 chatbot interface what images they want  to embed in documents, and the tool will then generate them.

Adobe already has a cloud-based Adobe Express app, which uses generative AI (genAI) to create content for documents, flyers, social media posts and resumes. The tool runs in browsers and mobile devices. 

The Adobe Express Agent is different, as it takes cues from a Word or PowerPoint document and can understand user intent, allowing it to create “something that’s more visual here to express ideas,” Cattell said in an interview.

“You can draw the context from what’s in the document to help you generate something that’s more germane,” Cattell said.

Once users request an image, the agent relies on Adobe’s Firefly text-to-image and text-to-design generative AI model to create content. For example, users might have a concept of a social media post or an ad campaign, which can be described to the Adobe Express Agent.

“It would generate that image and you could just drag it right into your document or into your PowerPoint presentation,” Cattell said.

A basic version of Adobe Express is already available for free. (Adobe has also integrated it  into Wix for website creation, and in Box to store and edit images.)

Adobe has also shipped an Adobe Express custom GPT for ChatGPT where users can request an image using the conversational interface. But there’s an advantage to integrating the agent with the Microsoft 365 interface.

“It’s literally a Copilot to the artifacts that knowledge workers are creating — [it] is super powerful and definitely levels us up,” Cattell said.

She stressed that Adobe’s platform strategy is to “be where our users are in the places where they’re getting work done.”

Besides creating more engaging content, Adobe’s tools are designed to be safe, understanding that organizations or creators can’t afford “oops” moments, said Liz Miller, vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research.

“These are truly agentic additions to a worker’s day,” Miller said. “For Adobe, agents are interactive, they reason, they are autonomous, they take action. This definition is wildly important, not just for Adobe but for their customers as well.”

Source:: Computer World

Signal is standing its ground to protect its app’s security, threatening on Wednesday to leave France if encryption backdoor requirements are enacted, just as it said it would do in Sweden.

“Those hyping this bad law have rushed to assure French politicians that the proposal isn’t breaking encryption. Their arguments are as tedious as they are stale, as they are laughable. For those catching up, let’s review the basics: end to end encryption must only have two ends—sender and recipients. Otherwise, it is backdoored,” wrote Signal CEO Meredith Whittaker in a post on X.

“Whatever method is devised to add a third end—from a perverted PRNG in a cryptographic protocol, to vendor-provided government software grafted onto the side of secure communications that allow said government to add themselves to your chats—it rips a hole in the hull of private communications and is a backdoor.”

The Signal CEO added: “This is why, as always, Signal would exit the French market before it would comply with this law as written. At this moment especially, there is simply too much riding on Signal, on our being able to forge a future in which private communication persists, to allow such pernicious undermining.”

Whittaker shared similar thoughts when government officials in Sweden last month attempted a similar end run around encryption. 

Like all legislative bodies, the French legislators are debating various approaches to encryption and it’s not yet clear whether they will end up demanding an encryption backdoor. 

But even setting aside the French authorities’ ultimate decision, Whittaker’s argument about the cybersecurity disaster that will result from undermining encryption is valid.

“Communications don’t stay within jurisdictional boundaries, which means a hole created in France becomes a vector for anyone wanting to undermine Signal’s robust privacy guarantees anywhere,” Whittaker wrote. “Instead of contending with unbreakable math, they only have to compromise a French government employee, or the vendor-provided software used to sideload government operatives into your private chats.”

This encryption backdoor argument is also hitting many other governments globally. Apple, for example, is currently appealing an encryption backdoor demand from the UK, and the United States is chiding those same UK officials for even trying to demand an encryption backdoor. 

The underlying issue here is not limited to government encryption backdoors. If either side of an encrypted conversation is intercepted, the same problem occurs. The Ukrainian military, for example, is now fighting an aggressive phishing campaign that plants malware, oftentimes a keylogger, that bypasses the encryption even more effectively than would a backdoor.

Endpoint interception has also turned around and bitten the cyber crooks themselves. Europol officials in December stumbled on a cyberthief that cleverly used an app that made messages disappear a few minutes after being read. But, given that experienced thieves know enough to not trust other thieves, one of the recipients screen-captured a discussion about money-sharing with his colleagues. That act made all of his encrypted messages readable for law enforcement. 

Many issues with backdoors, say analysts

Analysts are concerned about the growing demands for backdoors. Aisling Dawson, digital security industry analyst at ABI Research, saw Whittaker’s post and said that many government encryption proposals “fail to display an understanding of the technical implications of such a backdoor” and that these governments “face the prospect of increasing numbers of organizations exiting their marketspace, triggering economic losses and reducing the number of security vendors within the ecosystem, or creating the potential for legal and judicial challenges to proposed regulatory action.”

Dawson also saw the encryption backdoor attempts as dangerous. 

“The use of terms like ‘side-client scanning’ within these proposals are complicating and perhaps deliberately obfuscating governments’ intentions with regard to these new proposals which is, at its core, a desire for more backdoors into vendors’ secure communications,” Dawson said. “Piercing through vendors’ cryptographic wall to create a governmental backdoor creates a hole, and it seems fantastical to believe cybercriminals and malicious attackers won’t also attempt to exploit that hole.”

Dawson also argued that there are legal issues raised by backdoors, above and beyond cybersecurity and privacy concerns.

“France’s proposal raises challenges when it comes to prospective defendants challenging any evidence obtained via surveillance through an encryption backdoor, given that the bill inhibits disclosure of any surveillance operations to defendants,” Dawson said. “This fundamentally runs against defendants’ right to hear and challenge evidence placed against them per their ECHR [European Convention on Human Rights] Article 6 fair trial rights.”

Other analysts shared similar concerns.

Fred Chagnon, principal research director at Info-Tech Research Group, said the encryption backdoor approach being debated by the legislators in France is somewhat different than what some other governments are considering.

“France wants to take a different approach with a ‘ghost participant,’ which would allow government entities to silently join encrypted conversations, basically creating a backdoor in real time,” Chagnon said. “Governments need to engage with these [encryption] providers to find a solution that doesn’t fundamentally weaken security instead of pushing for regulations that force companies to break their own encryption.”

And Anshel Sag, a principal analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy, has more general concerns about the government activities throughout Europe around encryption.

“I think this is an unsettling trend we’re starting to see from European governments, the UK’s request of Apple being a similar issue. Backdoors are inherently problematic because they simply give bad actors opportunities to take advantage of those backdoors as well,” Sag said. “Additionally, they create a false sense of security and safety that is no longer there because of the backdoor. Backdoors are simply antithetical to the security and safety that so many of these companies have built their reputations on.”

Source:: Computer World

By Siôn Geschwindt Finnish startup Distance Technologies emerged from stealth last year with a technology it claims can turn any transparent surface into a mixed reality (MR) display. Now, it has teamed up with Patria to trial the tech on the defence firm’s armoured vehicles. The partners will jointly develop a heads-up display for Patria’s six-wheel drive armoured personnel carrier. The system will display 3D tactical data, terrain mapping, and AI-driven military insights directly onto the windshield, allowing military personnel to see in low-visibility environments like darkness and smoke.  The MR technology promises to eliminate the need for additional screens or clunky headsets.…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

By Deepti Pathak Learning new slang terms and abbreviations is essential to communicate successfully in the constantly changing world…
The post RS Meaning in Texts Explained: Use Cases & Examples appeared first on Fossbytes.

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By Deepti Pathak HP has launched its new series of AI-powered commercial laptops to drive productivity and collaboration. The…
The post HP Launches New Commercial EliteBook Laptops: Price & Features appeared first on Fossbytes.

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An industry generative artificial intelligence (genAI) alliance, the AI Infrastructure Partnership (AIP), on Wednesday announced that xAI, Nvidia, GE Vernova, and NextEra Energy were joining BlackRock, Microsoft, and Global Infrastructure Partners as members. But given that the announcement specified no financial commitments or any other details, analysts doubted it would make much of a difference.

Still, even though the massive global momentum behind genAI is unlikely to be changed by the announcement, the addition of the two energy companies to the group was an implicit acknowledgement that the ever-increasing power requirements of genAI data centers need serious attention.

Scott Bickley, advisory fellow at Info-Tech Research Group, said that the massive resources behind this initiative, including Blackrock, which reported in January that it held assets worth $11.6 trillion, making it the world’s largest money manager, can make the difference.

Source:: Computer World

Sales of virtual reality (VR) headsets fell by 12% in 2024 compared to the previous year, according to a new report from analyst firm Counterpoint. The decline markers the third year in a row sales have fallen — and it is mainly on the consumer side that demand is low.

The best performer is Meta, which has a 77% market share, followed by Sony, Pico, DPVR, and Apple.

When it comes to Apple, interest in the pricey Vision Pro has increased among business users. But the headset, which went on sale just over a year ago, is still only available in 13 countries and territories.

Counterpoint expects demand for VR headsets to remain low this year, though interest in smart glasses with augmented reality (AR) capabilities is expected to increase significantly.

Source:: Computer World

By Siôn Geschwindt The European Space Agency has released the first major batch of data from its “dark universe” telescope Euclid. What’s inside could change our understanding of dark matter and the expansion of the universe. The data comprises just one week’s worth of deep field images from three points in space. They make up just 0.4% of the vast area Euclid will capture, which scientists say will be the largest 3D map of the sky ever created. With one scan of each region so far, Euclid has already spotted 26 million galaxies, each potentially containing millions of stars and billions of planets.…This story continues at The Next Web

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By Hisan Kidwai The iPhone camera shutter sound is pretty iconic and helpful in letting you know when you’ve…
The post How to Turn Off Camera Sound on iPhone: 3 Ways appeared first on Fossbytes.

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By Deepti Pathak Abbreviations and acronyms change daily, so keeping up with the latest slang can be difficult if…
The post TS Meaning in Texts Explained: Use Cases & Examples appeared first on Fossbytes.

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New PCs introduced Tuesday by Dell sport high-powered Nvidia GPUs designed to help workers test AI models before deployment.

The new AI PC lineup includes laptops and desktops with Nvidia’s latest Blackwell Ultra and Blackwell GPUs, which provide the muscle needed to test compute-intensive AI models. AI PCs are designed to run generative AI tools and models more efficiently than standard PCs.

“These AI developer PCs will make it much easier for developers to prototype, to test and even scale their models into production environments,” said Kevin Terwilliger, vice president and general manager for consumer, commercial and gaming PCs at Dell.

The announcement coincides with Nvidia’s rollout of its latest GPU Blackwell Ultra at the GTC conference in San Jose. The GPU is the successor to the red-hot Blackwell GPU, which racked up $11 billion in sales in the most recent quarter.

The Pro Max series of workstations bring hardware previously used in data centers to desktops. “These systems will redefine AI developer experiences by really bridging the gap between desk side experimentation and enterprise scale AI deployment,” Terwilliger said.

The new Pro Max with GB300 packs the tightly coupled Blackwell Ultra GPU and Grace CPU, both made by Nvidia. It includes 784GB of unified system memory — 288GB HBM3e memory and 496GB of LPDDR5X memory.

Developers can test and prototype AI models with up to 460 billion parameters on the Pro Max with GB300. The system delivers 20 petaflops of performance with the FP4 data type, which is a low-precision measure for inferencing.

The Pro Max with GB10 includes Nvidia’s Blackwell GPU — a generation behind the Blackwell Ultra — and the Grace CPU. Developers will be able to work with AI models with up to 200 billion parameters on a  PC that delivers 1 petaflop of FP4 performance.

The systems are slated to be available later this year, include Nvidia’s DGX Base OS or Ubuntu Linux, and will be preconfigured with Nvidia’s AI software.

Desktop prototyping makes it easy to determine the size and performance of AI models, according to Terwilliger. “Once you right size it for the data set, then it’s appropriate to then scale it into the data center,” he said.

Some Dell customers need a secure test environment where they can tune some of their own data, said Matt Toolan, a Dell spokesman. For example, customers have tested different digital assistants to determine whether chat capabilities and responses were meaningful and on target, Toolan said.

Anshel Sag, principal analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy, was skeptical about Dell’s claim of using Pro Max PCs to scale AI models to data centers.

Instead, the AI tools more about making the deployments of on-device AI smoother, Sag said. “I don’t really think PC workloads are really useful for data-center scale deployments. I do believe Dell is uniquely positioned to enable hybrid AI that are entirely on-premise,” Sag said.

Dell also announced Pro Max laptops with RTX Pro GPUs based on the Blackwell architecture. The company claimed the PCs will be up to 36% faster than the previous-generation Precision PCs.

The Dell Pro Max laptops have “tandem” OLED displays, haptic touchpads, lattice-less keyboards and 8-megapixel IR cameras. The systems come with Intel Core Ultra Series 2 or AMD Ryzen processors, offer screen sizes from 14-in. to 18-in., and will ship later this year. 

Dell did not provide pricing information for the systems.

Source:: Computer World

If you’re looking for an AI PC, why wouldn’t you be looking for a Mac?

After all, Apple’s systems are built for privacy and security and, thanks to Apple Silicon, are now quite capable of running big generative AI (genAI) models swiftly in-house — and at a fraction of the energy costs of Windows-based systems. While a move to Apple won’t suit every company or even every situation, it’s absolutely true that the platform is a viable one for AI, and has remained so for some time.

To understand how viable Macs are for running AI in your business, consider the recently-launched M3 Ultra Mac Studio. Apple made impressive claims for these systems on launch. It told us its highest-end Mac Studio was 16.9 times faster than the M1 Ultra Mac Studio at generating tokens using a large language model (LLM) with hundreds of thousands of parameters. That neat claim was recently put to the test when YouTuber Dave Lee showed us that the most highly specified M3 Ultra Mac Studio is capable of running a 671-billion-parameter AI model natively on the system at under 200 watts of energy. (He used DeepSeek RI, of course.)

A supercomputer on your bookshelf

That’s an amazing statistic; it means you can run a powerful genAI models using DeepSeek on a system that fits on a shelf above your desk, which must be a compelling proposition to any enterprise purchaser considering deployment of an in-house self-hosted system for AI. It’s even more impressive when you consider that comparable performance on traditional PCs would require multiple GPUs and consume 10 times as much energy. 

(You might be able to find some way to put together a PC-based cluster to deliver the same kind of performance, but it is arguable that you’ll still spend the $14,000 you’d need to drop to get the most powerful Mac desktop. (In some cases, you might not need quite as much of a system.)

What this all means — or should mean — is that the enterprise landscape is ripe for Apple. After all, the company’s devices are private by design, secure by nature, and deliver performance and energy consumption advantages other PCs at the same price points don’t match. Not only do they deliver this, but they also have the processor horsepower it takes to run AI natively.

If you just need to run smaller AI models, then an M4 MacBook Air also has you covered, allowing most businesses to now consider Mac-based and self-hosted AI deployments for a range of use cases.

Apple, the perfect endpoint AI solution

While buffeted by bad news elsewhere in its business, the Mac has become a bright star for Apple, thanks to Apple Silicon. While Apple Intelligence might have let the company down, Apple Silicon has not. That matters quite a lot, given a recent report from IDC Research claiming that four-in-five (80%) of PCs sold this year will be AI PCs, though there are some challenges to that.

Apple helps meet those challenges, of course. IDC’s survey revealed that while nearly all organizations are using or intend to use cloud-based AI platforms, the security and data privacy inherent to these systems remains the biggest challenge to broad deployment, even more than cost.

While most business users are looking at the ever-expanding plethora of enterprise-focused cloud-based AI systems, they are really concerned about what happens to their data when shared in the cloud, particularly in regulated industries where compliance matters, such as healthcare.

That’s driving many enterprises seeking to deploy AI to search for solutions that let them deploy genAI tools on endpoints — self-hosted AI that runs natively on a device they own and have in their own office, in other words.

That, of course, is what Apple’s Macs — and certainly its Mac Studio — are more than capable of doing. 

AI models for the few

There’s a lot more to running AI in business than text summaries, automated writing tools, Microsoft Copilot, or even super-smart Webex AI bots; enterprise users are seeking to build or buy their own bespoke AI packages capable of learning from their own heavily curated business data and helping them with their business. That’s not software that necessarily comes in a box (digital or otherwise), but is software that, at best for ultimate privacy and security, runs natively on the device.

Apple Silicon is more than up to the task. (And you get an annual free OS upgrade of what is arguably the most secure operating system, too.)

You can follow me on social media! Join me on BlueSky,  LinkedIn, and Mastodon.

Source:: Computer World

By Siôn Geschwindt Aerospike rocket engines are the stuff of legend in the space industry. Conceived in the 1960s, their unique spiked-nozzle design promises better efficiency, reusability, and performance at all altitudes. But their complexity — and the shutdown of major space programmes towards the end of the 20th century — meant they never entered the mainstream.  But now, startups are dusting off old designs and using new technologies to revive aerospike engines for modern spaceflight. One of these ventures is Spain’s Pangea Aerospace. Founded in 2018, Pangea has been operating under the radar for most of its seven-year history. But today, the…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web