Enlarge / AI-generated image by FLUX.1 dev: “A beautiful queen of the universe holding up her hands, face in the background.” (credit: FLUX.1) On Thursday, AI-startup Black Forest Labs announced the launch of its company and the release of its first suite of text-to-image AI models, called FLUX.1. The German-based company, founded by researchers who developed the technology behind Stable Diffusion and invented the latent diffusion technique, aims to create…

Enlarge / Even mainstream CPUs like the Core i5-13400 could theoretically be affected by Intel’s crashing issues. (credit: Andrew Cunningham) Intel will be releasing a microcode update to prevent further damage to crashing 13th- and 14th-generation desktop processors sometime this month if it can stick to its previously announced schedule. This fix should be available via BIOS updates from PC and motherboard makers and from Microsoft as a Windows update….

Enlarge / Samsung’s 2022 The Frame is one of the edge-lit TVs that RTINGs tested. (credit: Samsung) Thin LCD-LED TVs are appealing because they’re easy to find space for and are aesthetically pleasing. To stay slim, most thin TVs, like Samsung’s The Frame pictured above, use edge-lit backlights. But beyond the image quality limitations of these designs, new testing from RTINGs suggests that there are inherent flaws in edge-lit TV…

Enlarge / Apple CEO Tim Cook. (credit: Lionel Hahn/Getty Images) Apple reported its earnings results for the third quarter of the 2024 fiscal year, and it satisfied investors’ expectations at the top level with 5 percent growth year over year. The company set a third-quarter record with $85.8 billion in revenue. Despite that growth, a couple of key things investors were concerned about—overall iPhone sales and revenue in China—slipped downward,…

Enlarge (credit: Maria Korneeva via Getty Images) On Wednesday, US Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.), Marsha Blackburn (R.-Tenn.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), and Thom Tillis (R-NC) introduced the Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe (NO FAKES) Act of 2024. The bipartisan legislation, up for consideration in the US Senate, aims to protect individuals from unauthorized AI-generated replicas of their voice or likeness. The NO FAKES Act would create legal recourse…

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) A familiar debate is once again surrounding Cloudflare, the content delivery network that provides a free service that protects websites from being taken down in denial-of-service attacks by masking their hosts: Is Cloudflare a bastion of free speech or an enabler of spam, malware delivery, harassment and the very DDoS attacks it claims to block? The controversy isn’t new for Cloudflare, a network operator that has…

Enlarge / A marketing image by Microsoft for the desktop version of Skype. (credit: Microsoft) If you’ve used Microsoft’s Skype in recent years, you’ve probably noticed that the user experience is less than ideal because of the pervasiveness of ads in the software. Fortunately, that’s going to change in a new update coming to all platforms in the near future. In the latest release notes for Skype Insider build 8.125,…

Enlarge (credit: Tim Goode/PA Images via Getty Images) Reddit CEO Steve Huffman is standing by Reddit’s decision to block companies from scraping the site without an AI agreement. Last week, 404 Media noticed that search engines that weren’t Google were no longer listing recent Reddit posts in results. This was because Reddit updated its Robots Exclusion Protocol (txt file) to block bots from scraping the site. The file reads: “Reddit…

Enlarge / A stock photo of a robot whispering to a man. (credit: AndreyPopov via Getty Images) On Tuesday, OpenAI began rolling out an alpha version of its new Advanced Voice Mode to a small group of ChatGPT Plus subscribers. This feature, which OpenAI previewed in May with the launch of GPT-4o, aims to make conversations with the AI more natural and responsive. In May, the feature triggered criticism of…

Enlarge A mysterious family of Android malware with a demonstrated history of effectively concealing its myriad spying activities has once again been found in Google Play after more than two years of hiding in plain sight. The apps, disguised as file-sharing, astronomy, and cryptocurrency apps, hosted Mandrake, a family of highly intrusive malware that security firm Bitdefender called out in 2020. Bitdefender said the apps appeared in two waves, one…