List of All Articles with Tag 'tech'

By Fanny Potkin and Yelin Mo SINGAPORE/BEIJING Nvidia has told customers in China it is delaying the launch

PCCW Ltd., a telecommunications, media and technology conglomerate controlled by billionaire Richard Li, is mulling a significant minority

By Foo Yun Chee BRUSSELS The European Union is considering broadening the scope of proposed cybersecurity labelling rules

Bitcoin is trading at its highest level in more than 18 months, with its price up more than 100 per cent since the start of 2023. The rally has pushed bitcoin’s market cap above $700 billion and the overall crypto market close to $1.5 trillion. The figure is still a long way from its all-time high of around $3 trillion, which was reached at the end of 2021, however some crypto analysts believe the recent gains are the beginning of another record-breaking run. Bitcoin’s hash rate – which denotes how much computing power is required to verify transactions and generate new units of the cryptocurrency through a process called mining – hit a record high this week, according to data from Blockchain.com. This signals a resilient network, with hopes of future price gains attracting an increasing number of miners. Recent reports have revealed significant investment in cryptocurrency mining from both state-backed and commercial ventures. Tether, the issuer of the stablecoin USDT is planning to invest $500 million in mining, while satellite imagery analysed by Forbes suggests Bhutan’s government is establishing a massive bitcoin mining operation in the foothills of the Himalayas. Separate data reveals that miners have been profiting from cheap energy sources to reduce their average BTC production cost by 35 per cent from $21,100 to $13,800. “This data underscores a considerably stronger profitability in the mining sector compared to the challenges experienced throughout 2022 and part of 2023,” said research analyst Matteo Greco from the fintech investment firm Fineqia International. In roughly six months, bitcoin will undergo an event known as a “halving”, which will see the amount of new bitcoins awarded to miners cut by half. The event was hardcoded into bitcoin’s underlying blockchain by its pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto, who introduced it as an anti-inflationary measure when the cryptocurrency first launched in 2009. Taking place approximately every four years, the build up to the halvings have traditionally been the most profitable time for crypto investors. “Buy bitcoin six months before a halving and sell 18 months after a halving has historically beaten ‘buy and hold’ trading strategy,” Dutch crypto trader PlanB wrote earlier this year. “The next halving is April 2024... Will this strategy work again?” Read More Google issues one-week deadline to Gmail account holders UK and South Korea issue warning over North Korea-linked cyber attacks Researchers warned of dangerous AI discovery just before OpenAI chaos Crypto experts predict which bitcoin rivals to look out for

By Foo Yun Chee BRUSSELS Businesses and tech groups on Thursday warned the European Union against over-regulating artificial

The five day week could soon be completely obsolete, if Bill Gates is to be believed. The Microsoft founder thinks that one of the results of AI will be the possibility of three day weeks becoming attainable for many people. While there are plenty of fears about the impact AI will have on the world economy and the potential dangers it poses to society, Gates believes it could mean humans ultimately have to do a lot less work to get by. Gates spoke on Trevor Noah’s What Now? podcast and the conversation turned to the possibilities that come hand in hand with AI. "If you eventually get a society where you only have to work three days a week, that's probably OK," he said. The billionaire also said that we could get to the stage where people can work fewer days to earn a living wage, as they co-exist in a world where "machines can make all the food and the stuff”. It’s not all positive, though. Gates previously warned about the dangers of AI in a blog over the summer. He wrote: "I don't think AI's impact will be as dramatic as the Industrial Revolution, but it certainly will be as big as the introduction of the PC. Word processing applications didn't do away with office work, but they changed it forever. Employers and employees had to adapt, and they did." Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter How to join the indy100's free WhatsApp channel Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings

Experts have located a legendary lost city in Egypt that never appears on maps with the help of a mummy. Ancient Egyptians had an affinity for baboons thanks to their association with the God, Babi. Experts know that they were kept as pets in captivity and had their sharpest teeth removed to make them less harmful. And it is the Egyptians’ keeping of baboons that has led experts to the location of the mysterious Egyptian city of Punt thanks to their DNA. Gisela Kopp, a geneticist at the University of Konstanz, Germany who is studying baboon DNA explained to Live Science: “There were these stories that they got them from Punt, this fabled, mysterious land.” Punt has been mentioned in documentation from ancient Egypt, but experts have never been able to determine where it would actually lie on a map. But, in recent years, experts have been able to narrow down its exact location by looking at DNA from mummified baboons which have been discovered from the time period. Kopp and a group of colleagues were able to extract usable DNA from the remains of a mummified baboon believed to be from between 800 B.C. and 540 B.C. In their study, published in the journal eLife, they then compared that DNA to the genetic information of 14 baboons from known origins to compare specific information of geographic location. It revealed the baboon’s DNA was most closely related to populations from what are coastal areas of Eritrea today. Kopp explained, “It's close to this ancient port of Adulis”. Adulis is also mentioned in records dating from 300 B.C. onwards and is known as being a place that traders travelled to for wild animals. Kopp explained that there is now a working theory that Adulis and Punt may have been essentially the same place. “Maybe the earlier Punt was in a similar location to where Adulis was [later] established,” Kopp said. The study is based on the DNA of one mummified baboon, as the attempted extraction of fragile ancient DNA from nine other baboon mummies failed to yield usable samples. Experts hope to replicate their study with more DNA samples to gain more information from different time periods. How to join the indy100's free WhatsApp channel Sign up to our free indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Elon Musk has thrown his weight behind Tesla Inc. in a labor dispute in Sweden, saying it’s “insane”

Google will begin deleting inactive Gmail, Photos and Drive accounts from next week, the technology giant has warned. The purge is part of a major update to the platform, impacting all personal Google accounts that have been left dormant for at least two years. Millions of accounts may be at risk of being permanently deleted, with some users warning that among those affected could be parents who have set up accounts to share memories and milestones with young children. Google has already begun warning users that might be impacted, saying in a blog post earlier this year that the policy would come into effect in December 2023. “We are updating our inactivity policy for Google Accounts to two years across our products,” Ruth Kricheli, Google’s vice president of product management, wrote in a blog post in May. “This update aligns our policy with industry standards around retention and account deletion and also limits the amount of time Google retains your unused personal information.” The move is aimed at protecting active Google users from security threats like phishing scams and account hijacking. Old accounts that have not been used for years are typically at risk from hackers as they may use the same passwords that have been compromised in other security breaches, which are easily available on the dark web. Any account at risk of deletion will receive “multiple notifications” before any action is taken, Google said, including to any associated recovery email addresses. The tech giant has already begun sending emails to those affected, telling users it is “to protect your private information and prevent any unauthorised access to your account even if you’re no longer using our services”. Losing access to a Gmail account could also potentially prevent people from using other online platforms and services that are associated with that email address, even if they are not related to Google. In order to keep an account active and avoid being deleted, Google users are advised to open or send an email, use Google Drive, download an app on the Google Play Store, or simply make a Google Search while logged in to the account. Any account that has posted a video to YouTube will also not be impacted, regardless of when it was last active. Google did not respond to a request for comment from The Independent, or offer any further information about how many accounts may be impacted. Read More WhatsApp warning over fee to keep old messages Why barcodes are about to check out forever Gmail users receive urgent warning before account purge Don’t believe your eyes: how tech is changing photography forever WhatsApp warning over fee to keep old messages

OpenAI researchers warned about a potentially dangerous artificial intelligence discovery ahead of CEO Sam Altman being ousted from the company, according to reports. Several staff members of the AI firm wrote a letter to the board of directors detailing the algorithm, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters. The disclosure was reportedly a key development in the build up to Mr Altman’s dismissal. Prior to his return late Tuesday, more than 700 employees had threatened to quit and join backer Microsoft in solidarity with their fired leader. The sources cited the letter as one factor among a longer list of grievances by the board leading to Altman’s firing, among which were concerns over commercialising advances before understanding the consequences. The staff who wrote the letter did not respond to requests for comment and Reuters was unable to review a copy of the letter. OpenAI declined to comment on the letter but acknowledged in an internal message to staffers a project called Q* and a letter to the board before the weekend’s events, one of the people said. An OpenAI spokesperson said that the message, sent by long-time executive Mira Murati, alerted staff to certain media stories without commenting on their accuracy. Some at OpenAI believe Q* (pronounced Q-Star) could be a breakthrough in the startup’s search for what’s known as artificial general intelligence (AGI), one of the people told Reuters. OpenAI defines AGI as autonomous systems that surpass humans in most economically valuable tasks. Given vast computing resources, the new model was able to solve certain mathematical problems, the person said on condition of anonymity because the individual was not authorised to speak on behalf of the company. Though only performing maths on the level of grade-school students, acing such tests made researchers very optimistic about Q*’s future success, the source said. Reuters could not independently verify the capabilities of Q* claimed by the researchers. Researchers consider maths to be a frontier of generative AI development. Currently, generative AI is good at writing and language translation by statistically predicting the next word, and answers to the same question can vary widely. But conquering the ability to do mathematics where there is only one right answer implies AI would have greater reasoning capabilities resembling human intelligence. This could be applied to novel scientific research, for instance, AI researchers believe. Unlike a calculator that can solve a limited number of operations, AGI can generalize, learn and comprehend. In their letter to the board, researchers flagged AI’s prowess and potential danger, the sources said without specifying the exact safety concerns noted in the letter. There has long been discussion among computer scientists about the danger posed by highly intelligent machines, for instance if they might decide that the destruction of humanity was in their interest. Researchers have also flagged work by an “AI scientist” team, the existence of which multiple sources confirmed. The group, formed by combining earlier “Code Gen” and “Math Gen” teams, was exploring how to optimise existing AI models to improve their reasoning and eventually perform scientific work, one of the people said. Altman led efforts to make ChatGPT one of the fastest growing software applications in history and drew investment – and computing resources – necessary from Microsoft to get closer to AGI. In addition to announcing a slew of new tools in a demonstration this month, Altman last week teased at a summit of world leaders in San Francisco that he believed major advances were in sight. “Four times now in the history of OpenAI, the most recent time was just in the last couple weeks, I’ve gotten to be in the room, when we sort of push the veil of ignorance back and the frontier of discovery forward, and getting to do that is the professional honor of a lifetime,” he said at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, a day before he was fired by OpenAI’s board. Additional reporting from agencies. Read More 10 ways AI will change the world – from curing cancer to wiping out humanity YouTube reveals bizarre AI music experiments AI-generated faces are starting to look more real than actual ones One of the world’s most hyped tech products just launched – and made a big mistake

NEW YORK U.S. prosecutors pressed a federal judge on Wednesday to require Binance Holdings founder and former chief

By Anna Tong, Jeffrey Dastin and Krystal Hu Ahead of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s four days in exile,