ArduinoMania

• Read more about EVs Have The Potential to Release 1,850 Times More Carbon Emissions Than Traditional Vehicles; Says Emissions Analytics
• Log in or register to post comments

Elon Musk, who sued OpenAI for violating its non-profit mission and chasing profits, allegedly wanted the organization to merge with Tesla when it was starting to plan its transition into a for-profit entity in order to accomplish its goals. Well, either that or get full control of the company, OpenAI said in a blog post. The organization responded to Musk's lawsuit by publishing old emails from 2015 to 2018 when he was still involved in its operations. 

When OpenAI introduced itself to the world back in 2015, it announced that it had $1 billion in funding. Apparently, Musk was the one who suggested that figure, even though OpenAI had raised less than $45 million from him and around $90 million from other donors. "We need to go with a much bigger number than $100M to avoid sounding hopeless... I think we should say that we are starting with a $1B funding commitment... I will cover whatever anyone else doesn't provide," he wrote, according to the company. 

In 2017, OpenAI's leaders realized that they truly did need a lot more money — billions of dollars — because artificial intelligence required vast quantities of computing power. That's when they started discussing its transition into a for-profit structure. OpenAI said Musk was involved in the planning and originally wanted majority equity, control of the initial board of directors and the CEO position. However, the organization felt that it was against its mission to give one person absolute control over it. They couldn't get to an agreement, and Musk reportedly withheld funding while talks were ongoing.

Musk then forwarded an email to OpenAI in 2018, which suggested attaching the organization to Tesla so that the automaker could provide its funding. He explained in his letter that he believed it was "the only path that could even hope to hold a candle to Google." OpenAI didn't say how their discussions progressed after that, but Musk's idea obviously didn't push through, and he soon left the company. In the last email from Musk that the organization posted, he said his "probability assessment of OpenAI being relevant to DeepMind/Google without a dramatic change in execution and resources is 0%." 

In his lawsuit, Musk accused OpenAI of being a "closed-source de facto subsidiary" of Microsoft, which uses its AI technology for products like Bing after investing $13 billion into the company. "Microsoft stands to make a fortune selling GPT-4 to the public, which would not be possible if OpenAI — as it is required to do — makes the technology freely available to the public," the lawsuit argued. OpenAI said Musk was aware its mission did not imply open sourcing its artificial intelligence technology, though. It released an email in which Ilya Sutskever, its co-founder and chief scientist, told Musk: "As we get closer to building AI, it will make sense to start being less open. The Open in OpenAI means that everyone should benefit from the fruits of AI after its built, but it's totally OK to not share the science." Musk then responded with "Yup."

"We're sad that it's come to this with someone whom we've deeply admired — someone who inspired us to aim higher, then told us we would fail, started a competitor, and then sued us when we started making meaningful progress towards OpenAI's mission without him," the company wrote in its post. After Musk filed his lawsuit, the company sent internal memos to its staff denying his allegations. Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon said in one memo that Musk's claims "may stem from [his] regrets about not being involved with the company today." Sam Altman said in another memo that he misses the person he knew who competed with others by building better technology. He also responded to a five-year old tweet from Musk thanking him for defending Tesla.

Musk's lawsuit accuses OpenAI of breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and unfair competition. He is currently seeking a jury trial and wants the court to order OpenAI to follow its "longstanding practice of making AI research and technology" available to the public, as well as to prohibit it from using its technology for the financial benefit of Microsoft and any other particular organization or individual. Musk has yet to respond to OpenAI's post.

• Read more about New Short-Range Wireless Microcontrollers for Wearables and Smart Objects
• Log in or register to post comments

Last year TikTok rolled out a new monetization system for streamers called the Creativity Program to encourage longer videos that allow it to sell more ads. Now, the company is rolling the scheme out widely with a new name, the Creator Rewards Program, that only pays for videos longer than one minute. 

"The Creator Rewards Program will continue rewarding high-quality, original content over a minute long with an optimized rewards formula focused on 4 key areas: originality, play duration, search value and audience engagement," the company wrote. 

TikTok noted that longer content is more lucrative with “with total creator revenue increasing by over 250 percent within the last 6 months, and the number of creators making $50,000 each month nearly doubling” since the beta began. 

TikTok

TikTok is also expanding its subscription features for creators. Previously, only live streamers could access offerings like exclusive (paid) content, badges and personalized emoji, but now the company is expanding these benefits beyond live streams.

"In the coming weeks, eligible creators can sign up to access a new way to strengthen their community with added value through exclusive content and benefits, while providing their most engaged communities an opportunity to connect even deeper with their favorite creators," TikTok wrote.

The company’s Creator Fund, which had no minimum requirement for video length and ended last year, was often criticized for low payouts. Last year, streamer Hank Green shared that he made about 2.5 cents per 1,000 views on the platform — a fraction of his YouTube earnings and about half of what he earned on TikTok prior to the fund.

By comparison, select streamers embraced the beta Creativity Program. Some (with subscriber numbers varying from a half million to several million) received payouts ranging in the low thousands to nearly $100,000 per month, "a complete 180" from what they saw in the Creator Fund, according to one creator.

That said, audiences have been uncertain about longer videos. In a TikTok internal survey from last year, nearly 50 percent of users said videos over a minute in length were "stressful," and a third of users watched videos online at double speed, according to a Wired report from earlier this year.

How to pay creators is not TikTok's only challenge at the moment. Yesterday, a group of US lawmakers introduced a new bill that would force parent ByteDance to sell TikTok in order for the app to remain in the United States.

Mini has promised to go all electric by 2030, a date that seemed pretty far off back in 2021 but right now is starting to sound not that far off at all. While the company's prior battery-powered efforts have been great, it's going to take something more serious and more practical to convert the masses to the wonders of electrification.

That something might just be the 2025 Mini Countryman. While Mini will offer this car with a gasoline-burning engine if you're feeling traditional, the star of the lineup will be the new, $45,200, all-electric Countryman SE. With 313 horsepower and 363 pound-feet of torque, it's quick, and with way more cargo space, it's practical too.

But how does it drive? That's what we headed to Portugal to find out, and while the extra volume and weight of the new Countryman does come with some compromises, it's an engaging SUV to drive with a fantastic interior that's just a few software updates away from perfection. Full the full preview, watch the video up top.

A group of lawmakers have introduced a new bill that would force ByteDance to sell TikTok in order for the app to remain available in the United States. The “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act” would prohibit US app stores and web hosting services from distributing TikTok unless it divested from parent company ByteDance.

The bill is the latest in a long line of attempts by lawmakers and other officials to ban or force a sale of the app. Former President Donald Trump attempted to force a sale of TikTok in 2020, but was ultimately unsuccessful. The Biden Administration has also pressured the company to divest. And a US District Court Judge recently blocked an attempt to ban the app in Montana.

The new bill, which comes from a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House, takes a different approach. It would give ByteDance a six-month window to sell TikTok before app store-level bans would come into effect. It would also require TikTok and other apps to “provide users with a copy of their data in a format that can be imported” into competing apps. And though TikTok is referenced several times in the text of the bill, the legislation would open the door for bans on other “foreign adversary-controlled” apps if the president deemed them to be a national security threat.

“This bill is an outright ban of TikTok, no matter how much the authors try to disguise it,” TikTok said in a statement. “This legislation will trample the First Amendment rights of 170 million Americans and deprive 5 million small businesses of a platform they rely on to grow and create jobs.”

TikTok CEO Shou Chew has maintained that a divestment would not fully address officials’ concerns about US user data. The company has spent years trying to address national security concerns about its service with an initiative called Project Texas. Under the plan, created as a result of years of negotiations with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), US users’ data would be separated into US-based servers and government officials would be able to oversee audits of TikTok’s source code and other aspects of its operations.

The Washington Post reported last year that TikTok’s negotiations with CFIUS had been recently “revived amid doubts the [Biden] administration has the authority to ban TikTok on its own.” If Congress was able to pass the new bill, it would clear up such questions and create a new process for forcing ByteDance's hand. 

Microsoft is pulling the plug on Android apps for Windows. The company said it’s ending support for Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA), the underlying component behind the Amazon Appstore (and other Android apps) in Windows 11. Microsoft told Engadget it was responding to “evolving customer needs.”

Microsoft first said in 2021 that Windows 11 would be able to run Android apps. When it arrived the following year, users could install the Amazon Appstore, and some individual Android apps were found in the Microsoft Store. The rollout was viewed as an answer to the dual threats of Android apps on Chromebooks and iOS apps on Apple Silicon Macs.

A Microsoft spokesperson clarified to Engadget why it’s now terminating the feature. “As part of our commitment to meeting evolving customer needs, we periodically update our product offerings,” they said. “This involves introducing new technical innovations and retiring products. Microsoft remains dedicated to an open platform and ecosystem, and we look forward to continuing to bring the best experiences and apps to Windows.”

With Microsoft blazing full-tilt into all things AI, it may now see its past attempts at making Windows a dramatically better touch-focused platform as no longer worth the resources. Another possibility, as The Verge speculates, is that people hunting for Android apps on Windows expected the full Google Play Store experience — not Amazon’s variant, which has an inferior overall selection.

Microsoft says customers who installed the Amazon Appstore (or other apps and games using WSA) on their Windows 11 machines before Tuesday can keep using them until March 5, 2025. Meanwhile, Amazon clarified that its Appstore and associate apps will no longer be discoverable in the Microsoft Store beginning on Wednesday. In addition, developers can no longer submit new apps for the Amazon Appstore on Windows, but those with existing ones can continue to submit updates for them until this time next year.

As for what’s next for Microsoft, the company is rumored to launch new Surface devices on March 21. The Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 are expected, with the company possibly marketing them as its first AI PCs.

Microsoft will reveal the Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 on March 21, according to a report. This isn't likely to just be a matter of a hardware refresh, however. Microsoft is expected to call these systems its first AI PCs, as Windows Central notes.

The devices are set to be equipped with new Intel Core Ultra or Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite-based processors that feature the latest neural processing units to boost AI capabilities. They're said to approximately match the iPad Pro and MacBook Pro in terms of efficiency and performance.

The Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 are expected to be among the first machines to support upcoming AI features in Windows 11. Along with on-device Copilot support, these functions are expected to include real-time live captions and translations, upscaling for games, frame rate smoothing, upgraded Windows Studio Effects and something that (at least for the time being) is seemingly called AI Explorer.

Windows Central suggests the latter will be the feature that sets AI PCs apart from regular computers. AI Explorer will apparently work across any app and let you search through documents, web pages, images and chats using natural language. It's believed that the feature will create a history of everything you do on your computer and make it searchable. The tool is said to be capable of understanding context and suggesting tasks based on what's on the screen. AI Explorer is also expected to support text-based image editing. According to the report, these AI features are likely to roll out as part of this fall's 24H2 update for Windows 11.

As for what else to expect from Microsoft's next laptops, both are said to have all-day battery life. The Surface Pro 10 is slated to include an anti-reflective, HDR-capable OLED screen. Rumors suggest it will have a front-facing ultrawide webcam and an NFC reader.

The Surface Laptop 6 is believed to have a more significant redesign compared with its predecessors. Along with thinner bezels and rounded corners, it's expected to have a haptic touchpad, a dedicated key for Copilot and a revamped group of ports. It's also slated to be the first Surface Laptop with an Arm variant. The report suggests that the Intel versions of each system will ship in April, with the Snapdragon variants to follow in June.

Amid complaints that its search results have declined in quality, Google is tweaking its algorithms to do a better job of weeding out spammy or automated content. The company says the ranking updates, arriving in May, will “keep the lowest-quality content out of search.” Of particular note, Google says its engine will be better at eradicating today’s automated (read: AI-generated) content that’s harder to spot.

Google says it’s taking what it learned from a 2022 algorithmic tuneup to “reduce unhelpful, unoriginal content” and applying it to the new update. The company says the changes will send more traffic to “helpful and high-quality sites.” When combined with the updates from two years ago, Google estimates the revision will reduce spammy, unoriginal search results by 40 percent.

“This update involves refining some of our core ranking systems to help us better understand if webpages are unhelpful, have a poor user experience or feel like they were created for search engines instead of people,” Google product management director Elizabeth Tucker wrote. “This could include sites created primarily to match very specific search queries.”

Google sounds like it’s targeting AI-generated SEO spam with its notes about scaled content abuse. The company says it’s strengthening its approach to the growing problem of sites that generate garbage automated articles (as well as zeroing in on old-fashioned human-created spam).

“Today, scaled content creation methods are more sophisticated, and whether content is created purely through automation isn’t always as clear,” Tucker said. Google says the changes “will allow us to take action on more types of content with little to no value created at scale, like pages that pretend to have answers to popular searches but fail to deliver helpful content.”

AI-generated content farms shotgun-blasting content to game the system are an increasing problem, so Google’s changes — if they’re as effective as promised — will be welcome. Although sites spamming that content exclusively may be easier to spot, it will be interesting to see if scenarios where once-reputable outlets experimenting with AI-generated spam (CNET and Sports Illustrated are recent examples) will be affected.

Another change to the algorithm will tackle the practice of otherwise reputable sites hosting low-quality content from third parties designed to leech off the site’s good name. Google provides the example of an educational site hosting a third-party payday loan review. “We’ll now consider very low-value, third-party content produced primarily for ranking purposes and without close oversight of a website owner to be spam,” Tucker wrote.

Finally, Google’s updates will allegedly do better at rooting out expired domains bought by someone else and transformed into click mills. The search engine will begin treating those websites as spam.

You won’t see the improvements immediately as Google is giving site owners a two-month notice to adapt accordingly. The search engine changes will take effect on May 5.

Apple has rolled out updates for many of its operating systems and none are more impactful than the changes to iOS — at least in the European Union. With the arrival of iOS 17.4, Apple is adhering to strict new rules in the bloc when it comes to the App Store. Apple now officially supports third-party app stores on iPhones in the EU, while developers can offer third-party payment options. Web browser makers no longer need to base their apps on Apple's WebKit, while Apple is opening up the NFC chip to wireless payments that have nothing to do with Apple Pay.

While those game-changing updates are limited to the EU, iOS 17.4 does have some snazzy new features for folks elsewhere too. Apple Podcasts now offers automatic transcriptions in English, Spanish, French and German. The text will be highlighted in sync with the audio to make it easy to follow along. You'll be able to search the text and tap it to start playing the audio at a certain point. 

Elsewhere, there are a bunch of new emoji for you to enjoy. They include a mushroom, phoenix, lime, broken chain and shaking heads. Apple has also updated 18 people and body emoji so that you can face them in either direction.

Other updates concern features like battery health, Siri (with the ability to read received messages in any supported language), stolen device protection and virtual card numbers for Apple Cash. Thanks to a caller ID update, when am Apple-verified business calls, you'll see its name, logo and department title. There are a slew of bug fixes too.  

Along with iOS 17.4, Apple has also released iPadOS 17.4, which has many of the same changes including the App Store updates to comply with the EU's Digital Markets Act. The company is also expected to roll out visionOS 1.1 (for Apple Vision Pro), macOS 14.4, watchOS 10.4 and HomePod 17.4 imminently.