Enlarge / If you get hired for this position, you’ll be provided an assistant. It’s this guy. This guy is your assistant. His name is “Googly.” Google is a company in transformation—but “from what“ and “to what“ are not always clear. To catalog and examine Google’s moves in this new era of generative AI, Ars Technica is hiring a Senior Technology Reporter to focus on Google, AI, Android, and search….

Enlarge In June, Runway debuted a new text-to-video synthesis model called Gen-3 Alpha. It converts written descriptions called “prompts” into HD video clips without sound. We’ve since had a chance to use it and wanted to share our results. Our tests show that careful prompting isn’t as important as matching concepts likely found in the training data, and that achieving amusing results likely requires many generations and selective cherry-picking. An…

Enlarge (credit: AMD) AMD had planned to launch its first round of Ryzen 9000-series desktop processors by the end of July, but those plans have changed thanks to a very non-specific problem found with the first batch of processors that AMD sent out to its partners. The six- and eight-core Ryzen 9600X and 9700X are now slated to launch on August 8, and the 12- and 16-core Ryzen 9900X and…

Enlarge / CrowdStrike’s Falcon security software brought down as many as 8.5 million Windows PCs over the weekend. (credit: CrowdStrike) Security firm CrowdStrike has posted a preliminary post-incident report about the botched update to its Falcon security software that caused as many as 8.5 million Windows PCs to crash over the weekend, delaying flights, disrupting emergency response systems, and generally wreaking havoc. The detailed post explains exactly what happened: At…

Enlarge (credit: Getty) The Amazon business unit that focuses on Alexa-powered gadgets lost $25 billion between 2017 and 2021, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported this week. Amazon claims it has sold more than 500,000 Alexa devices, which included Echo speakers, Kindle readers, Fire TV sets and streaming devices, and Blink and Ring smart home security cameras. But since debuting, Alexa, like other voice assistants, has struggled to make money….

Enlarge (credit: Benj Edwards / Getty Images) In the AI world, there’s a buzz in the air about a new AI language model released Tuesday by Meta: Llama 3.1 405B. The reason? It’s potentially the first time anyone can download a GPT-4-class large language model (LLM) for free and run it on their own hardware. You’ll still need some beefy hardware: Meta says it can run on a “single server…

Enlarge / Intel’s Core i9-13900K. (credit: Andrew Cunningham) For several months, Intel has been investigating reports that high-end 13th- and 14th-generation desktop CPUs (mainly, but not exclusively, the Core i9-13900K and 14900K) were crashing during gameplay. Intel partially addressed the issue by insisting that third-party motherboard makers adhere to Intel’s recommended default power settings in their motherboards, but the company said it was still working to identify the root cause…

Enlarge (credit: Carl the Person/YouTube) Smart TV owners have been subjected to a growing amount of ads and tracking. Ad fatigue, only worsened by a trend that sees streaming providers trying to force customers into subscriptions with commercials, is understandable. We’re at the point where someone would rather use a broken laptop dangling off a TV than be subjected to the watchful eye of the TV’s native operating system. Earlier…

Enlarge / A bad update to CrowdStrike’s Falcon security software crashed millions of Windows PCs last week. (credit: CrowdStrike) By Monday morning, many of the major disruptions from the flawed CrowdStrike security update late last week had cleared up. Flight delays and cancellations were no longer front-page news, and multiple Starbucks locations near me are taking orders through the app once again. But the cleanup effort continues. Microsoft estimates that…

Enlarge / Researchers write, “In this image, the person on the left (Scarlett Johansson) is real, while the person on the right is AI-generated. Their eyeballs are depicted underneath their faces. The reflections in the eyeballs are consistent for the real person, but incorrect (from a physics point of view) for the fake person.” (credit: Adejumoke Owolabi) In 2024, it’s almost trivial to create realistic AI-generated images of people, which…