Apple made some big changes to the base models of the iPhone 16 line, but the iPhone 16 Pro models looked the same as they have for the past few years. But it looks like Apple is making some big changes to the iPhone 17 Pro Max’s design, at least if these fake renders from the Russian YouTube account Wylsacom are correct. Based on the rumours that this mock-up is based on, the iPhone 17 Pro Max will look nothing like the iPhones that came before it. A new horizontal triple-lens camera section is on the back panel. It looks…
Author: David
OpenAI announced on Monday that ChatGPT-powered internet search will be open to all users. This makes OpenAI an even bigger threat to Google’s dominance. The tech company in San Francisco added search engine features to its ChatGPT generative AI chatbot at the end of October, but only paid users could use them. The company said that the new public feature lets users get “fast, timely answers” with links to relevant web sources. This is information that they could only get by using a standard search engine before. With the update to ChatGPT, the AI robot can give you information from…
Twitter’s Threads is testing a tool that will let you schedule posts, Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, said. People who get to test this function won’t be able to plan when to reply. According to him, they want to find a good mix between giving people more control over their Threads posts and still letting people talk to each other in real time. In the three-dot menu in the composer, people who are part of the test will see a link to plan posts. All of your planned posts will show up in the drafts folder. You can change…
It is now being looked into by two Digital Services Act (DSA) authorities. On Tuesday, the European Union said it had started a formal process to look into election risks, especially the recent elections in Romania. The investigation will mostly look into TikTok’s recommender systems and the “risks linked to the coordinated inauthentic manipulation or automated exploitation of the service,” as the Commission put it. The EU will also look at how TikTok handles political ads and material that people pay for. The group said in a press release, “As for both parts, one of the things the Commission is…
For a Facebook security breach that touched millions of users and that the company told everyone about in September 2018, Meta was fined €251 million, which is about $263 million. Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) issued the fine on Tuesday in line with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). It is not the biggest GDPR fine Meta has received since the rules went into effect more than five years ago, but it is a significant punishment for a single security breach. Since July 2017, when the company was still called Facebook, a video upload feature came out with a…
In early 2025, Waymo will start trying its self-driving car technology in Tokyo. This will be the first time that the Alphabet company’s robotaxis have driven on public roads outside of the U.S. Waymo is taking its technology on “road trips” to different places to test it. Each city has its own challenges, which is why the move to Japan is part of this program. The Waymo robotaxis will have to deal with moving on the left side of the road and a very crowded city in Tokyo. Up until now, those road trips have mostly been to a dozen…
Suchir Balaji, a former OpenAI researcher, was found dead in an apartment in San Francisco eight days before his body was found. The 26-year-old’s name was in a lawsuit against his former company that could have big effects on the future of AI and the internet. The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in December of last year, saying they used “millions” of stories from the newspaper without permission to train their popular ChatGPT model. The companies have said they didn’t break any copyright laws. Business Insider saw court papers that show on November 18 the lawyers for the…
Apple (AAPL) has a lot to be happy about on the 44th anniversary of its initial public offering (IPO). The tech industry leader has had a year of pretty steady growth, with shares going up by almost 29%. This week, Apple also released a software update that adds a link between Siri and ChatGPT, which is a long-awaited step forward for artificial intelligence (AI). Apple has been in the spotlight a lot lately since the iOS 18.1 update added Apple Intelligence. Users are still getting used to the new AI features on their iPhones. Some of the new tools that…
Preeti Lobana has been hired by Google to run its India business. This is a key post that had been open since July, when Sanjay Gupta was promoted to Asia-Pacific president. Lobana used to be vice president of advertising technology at Google. He now leads the company as it promotes its AI products in India, where competition in the digital market is growing. In 2016, she started working for Google. India is one of Google’s most important foreign markets. The company has spent billions of dollars to help Indians of all ages get online and to digitise their businesses. The…
OpenAI has finally put out the real-time video features for ChatGPT that it showed off almost seven months ago. During a livestream on Thursday, the company said that Advanced Voice Mode, ChatGPT’s tool for having conversations that sound like they are between people, is getting better. People who have paid for ChatGPT Plus, Team, or Pro can use the app to point their phones at things and get responses almost instantly. With advanced voice mode and vision, you can also share your screen and see what’s on someone else’s screen. It can, for instance, explain different settings choices or offer…
Microsoft has shown off the newest member of its Phi family of creative AI models. Microsoft says that the new model, called Phi-4, is better than the ones that came before it in a number of ways, especially when it comes to answering maths problems. That’s partly because the training data was better. As of Thursday night, Phi-4 can only be used for study under a Microsoft research license agreement and on Microsoft’s brand-new Azure AI Foundry development platform, which has very limited access. The size of this Microsoft small language model is 14 billion parameters, and it will be…
Just before the holidays, WhatsApp revealed that it had added new video calling features, such as the ability to choose who can join a group video call, better resolution, and a new look for the call tab on the desktop. Meta has taken another step towards making WhatsApp a good alternative to Google Meet or Zoom for both personal and business talks. You can already call everyone in a group chat because the texting app lets you do that. But sometimes you don’t need or want to call everyone in the group and bother them. Now, the company is adding…
The honest selfie-sharing app BeReal, which is popular with Gen Z, changed how it asks users to agree to tracking right after it was bought by the French mobile games company Voodoo this summer. A privacy report has been made against the pop-up that happened as a result. If the bloc’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is broken, companies can be fined up to 4% of their global annual sales. European private rights not-for-profit Group The complaint, which was made by noyb, says that BeReal is using sneaky methods (also known as “dark patterns”) to get people to agree to…
A few years ago, Australia passed a law that requires platform giants like Meta, which owns Facebook, and Google, which owns YouTube, to work with news publishers to pay for resharing media. Big Tech had to make deals with local news sites because of the News Media Bargaining Code. But Meta has stopped advertising news around the world on its platforms, and in March, it shocked Australian publishers by telling them that deals worth about $70 million would not be renewed. After Meta’s shocking move a few months ago, the Australian government is getting ready to respond. According to the…
Skype, the phone and messaging app owned by Microsoft, has quietly stopped letting users add cash to their accounts and buy Skype phone numbers. This is bad news for anyone who still uses it. Instead, Skype is switching into SaaS mode, which means that users are being forced to sign up for monthly plans for both local and international Skype-to-phone calls. This will likely affect millions of people. Microsoft said last year that Skype had 36 million daily active users, which is the most current information they gave out. Microsoft did not make the change official: It wasn’t known about…
Google revealed Willow, its newest and best quantum computer chip, on Monday. The tech world was interested in Google’s claims about the chip’s speed and dependability, but it was an even stranger claim tucked away in a blog post about the chip that really got people’s attention. Hartmut Neven, the founder of Google Quantum AI, said in a blog post that this chip was so fast that it must have drawn computer power from other worlds. So, the chip’s work shows that there are multiple universes and that “we live in a multiverse.” This Is The Passage: It’s amazing how…
Generative AI has been used in a lot of bad ways, like making up academic papers and copying artists. Now it seems to be showing up in state efforts to influence people. A recent report from the Massachusetts-based threat intelligence company Recorded Future says that commercial AI voice generation products, such as tech made public by the hot startup ElevenLabs, “very likely” helped with a recent campaign. The report talks about a Russian-backed effort to weaken Europe’s support for Ukraine. It was called “Operation Undercut,” and it used AI to make voiceovers for fake or false “news” videos. The videos…
A California district court judge said on Tuesday that Automattic and its CEO Matt Mullenweg must allow WP Engine to access WordPress.org again. Mullenweg owns this site and it is a library for themes and plugins. Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin said that WP Engine should be able to access WordPress.org, themes, plugins, and sites the same way they did on September 20, when Mullenweg called WP Engine a “cancer to WordPress” at an event and started a public war against it. Soon after, he stopped WP Engine from going to WordPress.org. A third-party WordPress hosting company called WP Engine sued Automattic…
Data-mining software company Palantir Technologies recently passed Pentagon contractor and aerospace supplier RTX in market cap. This shows that the outlook for the military industry is changing. Palantir provides AI-powered tools to government, civilian, and business clients. This year, the company’s shares have gone up 345%, valuing the business at $174 billion at the end of the trading day on Friday. That is more than RTX, which has a market cap of $157 billion and has grown 40% this year. RTX is the parent company of Raytheon, Collins Aerospace, and Pratt & Whitney. It’s also more than Boeing’s $115 billion,…
(Parhlo World) -The Information reported on Sunday that President-elect Trump’s transition team has asked Google, Microsoft, Meta Platforms, and three other big tech companies to a meeting in the middle of December to talk about how to stop people from selling drugs online. The report also said that on Thursday, staff from the three tech giants, as well as Snap and TikTok, were emailed by someone working for Trump’s transition team and Jim Carroll, who was Trump’s drug czar during his first term. The emails were meant to invite the staff to a call. The person told the Information that…
Mom of Elon Musk, Maye Musk, was on FOX Business not long ago. She talked about how people see billionaires, her son’s friendship with Trump, and even how she sat in on Elon’s meetings. Maye had some interesting things to say about Elon Musk and how the media talk about him when she talked to host Stuart Varney. Maye said right away that she likes “to sit in on meetings” with Vivek Ramaswamy and her son, among other well-known people. She gave a sneak peek into these meetings by saying that they had just talked about getting government workers back…
OpenAI’s AI-powered chatbot platform, ChatGPT, now has a new, very expensive membership plan. Confirming rumors that came out this morning, OpenAI announced ChatGPT Pro, a new $200-a-month plan that gives users full access to all of OpenAI’s models, including the o1 “reasoning” model. “Power users of ChatGPT will be interested in ChatGPT Pro,” said Jason Wei, a member of OpenAI’s technical staff, during a livestreamed press conference on Thursday. “These are the people who are already pushing the models to the limits of their abilities in tasks like math, programming, and writing.” o1 and other thinking models try to check…
This year, Bluesky has grown very quickly thanks to a lively community of posters, the ability for users to make their own changes, and a decentralized system that doesn’t force users to follow the decisions of a billionaire CEO. But one thing that isn’t clear about Bluesky is how the platform will make money in the long run and whether it will use ads, which are a popular way for websites to make money. So far, $15 million has been raised for the business, and CEO Jay Graber tells Parhlo World that other investors are already interested. Bluesky has hinted…
A commercial robotaxi service has been started in Abu Dhabi by the ride-hailing giant Uber and the Chinese company WeRide, which makes technology for self-driving cars. This is Uber’s first foreign service for self-driving cars. Uber has been quickly forming agreements with self-driving car companies in a wide range of industries, such as delivery, ride-hailing, and trucking. Wayve, Serve Robotics, Aurora Innovation, Waabi, and other companies are also partners. Still, investors are worried that companies like Waymo and maybe even Tesla, which are making new technologies, will be too good for companies like Uber to compete with. Waymo announced plans…
Display expert Ross Young says that Apple’s long-rumored folding iPhone will come out in late 2026. It will give the “stagnating” market for foldables a new spark. For years, we’ve been hoping for an iPhone that folds in half, and more and more people think it will happen in 2026. There’s more rumours about a folding iPhone. A new report from a well-known industry expert says Apple will enter the foldables market in 2026 and give the whole industry a boost. It comes from Ross Young of Display Supply Chain, a company that helps tech companies plan for the future…
Because of an unprecedented cyberattack on phone companies like AT&T and Verizon, U.S. officials have told people to use encrypted texting apps to keep their messages safe from hackers in other countries. It was called “Salt Typhoon” by Microsoft, and it was one of the biggest leaks of U.S. information in history. It hasn’t been fully fixed yet. During a news call on Tuesday, officials refused to say when the country’s phone lines would be free of outsiders. Government sources told NBC News that China broke into AT&T, Verizon, and Lumen Technologies to spy on users. A representative for the…
Trump’s choice to lead the Drug Enforcement Administration is pulling out just two days after being named. He is claiming the “gravity” of the job as the reason. On Sunday, Trump chose Chad Chronister, who is the sheriff of Hillsborough County, Florida, to lead the DEA. He said it was the “honour of a lifetime” and that he was “deeply humbled by this opportunity to serve our nation” at the time. But on Tuesday, Chronister wrote on X that he had changed his mind. “Over the past several days, as the gravity of this very important responsibility set in, I’ve…
People thought it was one of the worst tech deals ever when Elon Musk paid $44 billion for Twitter. After two years, an election, and a boom in creative AI, it seems like a better deal now. Wedbush Securities tech analyst Dan Ives said soon after the deal finished in October 2022 that it would “go down as one of the most overpaid tech acquisitions in the history of M&A deals on the Street.” Musk borrowed $13 billion to buy Twitter, which is now called X. This deal has turned out to be the worst merger financing deal for banks…
Another safety expert has told OpenAI that they are leaving the company. Rosie Campbell, a policy worker at OpenAI, wrote on Substack on Saturday that her last week at the company was over. She said she was leaving because Miles Brundage, the senior policy assistant who led the AGI Readiness team, quit in October. The AGI Readiness team was broken up when he left, and its members were sent to work in different parts of the company. The AGI Readiness team told the company how safe it is for the world to handle AGI, which is a hypothetical form of…
This is how Amazon’s AWS cloud computing unit has slowly become a big player in the call/contact center space. In 2017, Amazon launched Amazon Connect, a cloud-based (and AI-focused) call center service. These days, businesses like U.S. Bank, Air Canada, and Dish Network use the site for customer service. The company announced a number of updates to Connect at its re:Invent conference in Las Vegas. These updates, which are driven by the Amazon Q platform and focus on AI, are not a surprise. The company that made AWS first started out as a voice-only service that worked on bringing AI…
These days, it seems like every tech company and startup is working on an AI agent or program that can complete complex tasks with little to no human intervention. When they become accessible, these agents will have a lot of complicated tasks to accomplish, like making hotel and trip reservations and payments. The founders of the new business /dev/agents, who were instrumental in creating Android in the early days of smartphones, feel that a new OS is necessary to unleash the full potential of AI agents. Android co-founder and CEO David Singleton (shown above) stated, “As a developer, it was…
In an effort to grow its user base, Reddit is focussing on foreign countries like the Philippines, Brazil, India, and the United Kingdom. Reddit COO Jen Wong told CNBC that over half of the site’s users are located outside the United States. Wong singled out India, a country whose English-speaking people are actively discussing Bollywood and cricket. “India’s economy is booming. She informed the publication that there is a significant possibility in India. In October, CEO Steve Huffman announced plans to increase the company’s translation efforts in order to reach more than 30 nations by 2025 with its machine-learning-based translation…
Researchers in the field of security have discovered that three seemingly unrelated individuals—a venture financier, a recruiter from a large corporation, and a recently employed remote IT worker—were actually operatives for the North Korean dictatorship. At Cyberwarcon, an annual conference in Washington DC centred around cyberthreats, security experts presented their latest assessment of the North Korean threat on Friday. The researchers expressed concern about a persistent effort by North Korean hackers to impersonate job applicants at multinational firms. Their goals were to gain trade secrets that would assist the weapons program of the North Korean leadership and make money for…
Instant speech meetings, like Slack’s Huddles, are coming to Google Chat. These let you quickly switch to a voice or video call from within a chat. No changes will be made to the name of the feature, though. Google will keep calling it “Huddles.” If you are in Google Chat and want to start a huddle quickly, click on the drop-down menu next to the chat icon and choose “Start the huddle.” It will start out as a talk call, but like with Google Meet, users can swap screens or turn on video. Also Read: There Are New Tools Added…
On Wednesday, U.S. phone company T-Mobile said that hackers had “no access” to its users’ calls, text messages, and voicemails during a cyberattack that is affecting internet and phone companies across the board. Jeff Simon, T-Mobile’s chief security officer, said in a statement that the company had seen “attempts to infiltrate our systems” in the past few weeks. Simon said that the attacks came from another telecoms company that was tied to T-Mobile’s network. No name was given to that company. Simon said, “We quickly cut off access to the provider’s network because we think it was hacked and may…
Spotify said in a blog post for developers on Wednesday that it would no longer let developers who are making third-party apps with its Web API access some features of the music streaming service, like song and artist suggestions. It looks like the company is making it hard for outside developers to use info from Spotify users to make AI apps. Spotify told Parhlo World in an email, “We’re making changes to our public APIs as part of our ongoing work to address the security challenges that many companies face today.” It thinks that some developers have been abusing its…
Researchers in security have found two zero-day flaws that were not known before. These are being used by RomCom, a hacking group with ties to Russia, to attack people in Europe and North America who use Firefox or Windows devices. There is a hacking group called RomCom that is known to attack computers and get into computers without permission for the Russian government. The group was recently linked to a hacking attack on the Japanese tech giant Casio. It is also known for being hostile to groups that support Ukraine, which Russia invaded in 2014. Researchers from the security company…
The FCC has given SpaceX the green light to go ahead with its plans to offer a direct-to-phone version of its Starlink satellite internet service. T-Mobile will be the service provider, and there are a few conditions that must be met. The plan goes back to the summer of 2022, when SpaceX and T-Mobile first said they were looking into ways for T-Mobile customers to get Starlink access on their phones. They said at the time that the service would start in 2023, but it’s now the end of 2024 and it’s just now getting approved by the government. The…
A satirical newspaper called The Onion won an auction earlier this month to buy conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ website InfoWars and other linked assets. But the sale is now in limbo because a federal judge put a temporary hold on the deal. Elon Musk threw another wrench in the works on Monday when he said he didn’t agree with giving InfoWars’ X accounts to the new owners. An objection made on Monday in bankruptcy court by X Corporation says that it owns all X accounts on its platform, even the ones run by Alex Jones and InfoWars. Elon Musk’s platform…
The U.S. Department of Commerce announced today that it has given $7.865 billion to chip giant Intel under the U.S. CHIPS and Science Act. This is a federal law that President Joe Biden signed into law in 2022 to encourage more semiconductors to be made in the U.S. The number is much lower than the highest amount that could be given. In March, the White House said that it had made a deal with the Department of Commerce to give Intel a grant of “up to” $8.5 billion. All of this is happening at the same time that Intel is…