Enlarge (credit: Hugging Face / anucha sirivisansuwan via Getty Images) On Thursday, AI hosting platform Hugging Face surpassed 1 million AI model listings for the first time, marking a milestone in the rapidly expanding field of machine learning. An AI model is a computer program (often using a neural network) trained on data to perform specific tasks or make predictions. The platform, which started as a chatbot app in 2016…

Enlarge (credit: Intel) Intel has spent most of 2024 investigating and trying to fix a problems that was causing crashes and instability for owners of its high-end 13th- and 14th-generation Core desktop processors. In April, Intel suggested that motherboard makers could be the problem because many motherboards used power settings that exceeded Intel’s defaults. By the summer, Intel had tracked down one root cause of the problems and had released…

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the federal body that sets technology standards for governmental agencies, standards organizations, and private companies, has proposed barring some of the most vexing and nonsensical password requirements. Chief among them: mandatory resets, required or restricted use of certain characters, and the use of security questions. Choosing strong passwords and storing them safely is one of the most challenging…

Enlarge / Mira Murati, Chief Technology Officer of OpenAI, speaks during The Wall Street Journal’s WSJ Tech Live Conference in Laguna Beach, California on October 17, 2023. (credit: PATRICK T. FALLON via Getty Images) On Wednesday, OpenAI Chief Technical Officer Mira Murati announced she is leaving the company in a surprise resignation shared on the social network X. Murati joined OpenAI in 2018, serving for six-and-a-half years in various leadership…

Enlarge / The future’s so bright, Mark Zuckerberg’s gotta wear shades. (credit: Meta) Thus far, Meta’s heavily money-losing Reality Labs division has been primarily focused on bulky virtual reality headsets (and some odd, display-free Ray-Ban branded sunglasses). So when Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg pulled out a 100 g pair of see-through, augmented-reality glasses at this year’s Meta Connect keynote, it represented a bit of a new direction for the company….

An Asus Zenbook UX5406S with a Lunar Lake-based Core Ultra 7 258V inside. [credit: Andrew Cunningham ] Two things can be true for Intel’s new Core Ultra 200-series processors, codenamed Lunar Lake: They can be both impressive and embarrassing. Impressive because they perform reasonably well, despite some regressions and inconsistencies, and because they give Intel’s battery life a much-needed boost as the company competes with new Snapdragon X Elite processors…

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) When security researcher Johann Rehberger recently reported a vulnerability in ChatGPT that allowed attackers to store false information and malicious instructions in a user’s long-term memory settings, OpenAI summarily closed the inquiry, labeling the flaw a safety issue, not, technically speaking, a security concern. So Rehberger did what all good researchers do: He created a proof-of-concept exploit that used the vulnerability to exfiltrate all user input…

Enlarge / Filmmaker James Cameron. (credit: James Cameron / Stability AI) On Tuesday, Stability AI announced that renowned filmmaker James Cameron—of Terminator and Skynet fame—has joined its board of directors. Stability is best known for its pioneering but highly controversial Stable Diffusion series of AI image-synthesis models, first launched in 2022, which can generate images based on text descriptions. “I’ve spent my career seeking out emerging technologies that push the…

Enlarge / The Kubuntu Focus Ir14 Gen 2. (credit: Kevin Purdy) There are lots of laptops—maybe all of them—on which you can run a Linux desktop. There are a few vendors that offer laptops with extensive Linux compatibility. And then there are a select few that specialize in Linux laptops, support them, and even customize them. Kubuntu Focus is one of the select few. It sent me one of its…

Enlarge (credit: FT) China’s demand that the public sector step up use of domestic semiconductors can best be seen within Huawei’s Qingyun L540 laptop. The “safe and reliable” device features a self-designed processor and a Chinese-made operating system, having stripped out foreign-made components and software as much as possible. The computer, which is being snapped up by governments and state groups across the country, has become the signature model of…