Technology

Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of China’s Alibaba Group Ltd., today announced the release of more than 100 new artificial intelligence large language models open source as part of the Qwen 2.5 family of models.

Revealed at the company’s Apsara Conference, the new model series follows the release of the company’s foundation model Tongyi Qianwen, or Qwen, last year. Since then, the Qwen models have been downloaded more than 40 million times across platforms such as Hugging Face and Modelscope.

The new models range from sizes as small as a half-billion parameters to as large as 72 billion parameters. In an LLM, parameters define the behavior of an AI model and what it uses to make predictions about its skills such as mathematics, coding or expert knowledge.

Smaller, more lightweight models can be trained quickly using far less processing power on more focused training sets and excel at simpler tasks. In contrast, larger models need heavy processing power and longer training times and generally perform better on complex tasks requiring deep language understanding.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/42612055

(Asking for the civilized world.)

Google won a legal challenge Wednesday against a €1.49 billion ($1.66 billion) antitrust fine from the European Union, while chipmaker Qualcomm failed to repeal a penalty.

The rulings underscore the mixed record of outgoing EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager in defending her crackdown on Big Tech in court. She scored two major wins last week: against Google in a separate case and against Apple’s tax deal with Irish authorities.

In a 2019 decision, the European Commission said Google, owned by Alphabet (GOOGL), had abused its dominance to prevent websites from using brokers other than its AdSense platform that provided search ads. The practices that it said were illegal took place from 2006 to 2016.

Apple has rolled out macOS Sequoia as its latest software updates for supported Mac computers, along with iPadOS 18, watchOS 11 and tvOS 18. These updates introduce new features and customisation options on Apple's devices, while future updates will add support for Apple Intelligence — new features that are powered by artificial intelligence (AI) on the iPhone 15 Pro models, the new iPhone 16 lineup, and select tablets and Mac models with Apple's M-series chipsets. These software updates were first shown off at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC 2024).

Here are some of the most notable changes on macOS Sequoia, iOS 18, watchOS 11, tvOS 18, and visionOS 2. You can update eligible devices to these software versions, but it's better to back up important data before installing major operating system updates. You can also read more about Apple's iOS 18 update that is rolling out to eligible smartphones.

https://archive.is/2024.09.16-214410/https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/china-starlink-detect-stealth-fighters#selection-373.0-373.86

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 16 (Reuters) - Intel (INTC.O) lost out on a contract to design and fabricate Sony’s PlayStation 6 chip in 2022, which dealt a significant blow to its effort to build its fledgling contract manufacturing business, according to three sources with knowledge of the events.

The effort by Intel to win out over Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.O)in a competitive bidding process to supply the design for the forthcoming PlayStation 6 chip and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (2330.TW) as the contract manufacturer would have amounted to billions of dollars of revenue and fabricating thousands of silicon wafers a month, two sources said.

Intel and AMD were the final two contenders in the bidding process for the contract.

Winning the Sony (6758.T) PlayStation 6 chip design business would have been a victory for Intel's design segment and would have doubled as a win for the company's contract manufacturing effort, or foundry business, which was the centerpiece of Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger’s turnaround plan.

Mark Zuckberg’s Meta is to go ahead with controversial plans to use millions of UK Facebook and Instagram posts to train its artificial intelligence (AI) technology, in a practice that is effectively outlawed under EU privacy laws.

Meta said it had “engaged positively” with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) over the plan, after it paused similar proposals in June in the UK and EU. The pause came after the ICO warned tech firms to respect the privacy of users when building generative AI.

On Friday, the ICO made it clear it has not provided regulatory approval for the plan, but will instead monitor the experiment after Meta agreed changes to its approach. These include making it easier for users to opt out of allowing their posts to be processed for AI.

DNA testing giant 23andMe has agreed to pay $30 million to settle a lawsuit over a data breach that exposed the personal information of 6.4 million customers in 2023.

The proposed class action settlement, filed Thursday in a San Francisco federal court and awaiting judicial approval, includes cash payments for affected customers, which will be distributed within ten days of final approval.

"23andMe believes the settlement is fair, adequate, and reasonable," the company said in a memorandum filed Friday.

A report from Morgan Stanley suggests the datacenter industry is on track to emit 2.5 billion tons by 2030, which is three times higher than the predictions if generative AI had not come into play.

The extra demand from GenAI will reportedly lead to a rise in emissions from 200 million tons this year to 600 million tons by 2030, thanks largely to the construction of more data centers to keep up with the demand for cloud services.

Let's build another web browser based on Servo!

"Venture capital finance has dried up amid political and economic pressures, prompting a dramatic fall in new company formation"

Posted in technology as most of the funded companies are into technology. The most shocking piece is arguably the number of funded company pear year with a clear peak in 2018 which is 50x (!) more than last year, 2023.

By Albert Burneko

9:00 AM EDT on September 11, 2024

Mars does not have a magnetosphere. Any discussion of humans ever settling the red planet can stop right there, but of course it never does. Do you have a low-cost plan for, uh, creating a gigantic active dynamo at Mars's dead core? No? Well. It's fine. I'm sure you have some other workable, sustainable plan for shielding live Mars inhabitants from deadly solar and cosmic radiation, forever. No? Huh. Well then let's discuss something else equally realistic, like your plan to build a condo complex in Middle Earth.

...