OpenAI, the Elon Musk-founded artificial intelligence startup behind popular DALL-E text-to-image generator, announced on Tuesday the release of its newest picture-making machine POINT-E, which can produce 3D point clouds directly from text prompts. Whereas existing systems like Google's DreamFusion typically require multiple hours — and GPUs — to generate their images, Point-E only needs one GPU and a minute or two.

OpenAI

3D modeling is used across a variety industries and applications. The CGI effects of modern movie blockbusters, video games, VR and AR, NASA's moon crater mapping missions, Google's heritage site preservation projects, and Meta's vision for the Metaverse all hinge on 3D modeling capabilities. However, creating photorealistic 3D images is still a resource and time consuming process, despite NVIDIA's work to automate object generation and Epic Game's RealityCapture mobile app, which allows anyone with an iOS phone to scan real-world objects as 3D images. 

Text-to-Image systems like OpenAI's DALL-E 2 and Craiyon, DeepAI, Prisma Lab's Lensa, or HuggingFace's Stable Diffusion, have rapidly gained popularity, notoriety and infamy in recent years. Text-to-3D is an offshoot of that research. Point-E, unlike similar systems, "leverages a large corpus of (text, image) pairs, allowing it to follow diverse and complex prompts, while our image-to-3D model is trained on a smaller dataset of (image, 3D) pairs," the OpenAI research team led by Alex Nichol wrote in Point·E: A System for Generating 3D Point Clouds from Complex Prompts, published last week. "To produce a 3D object from a text prompt, we first sample an image using the text-to-image model, and then sample a 3D object conditioned on the sampled image. Both of these steps can be performed in a number of seconds, and do not require expensive optimization procedures."

OpenAI

If you were to input a text prompt, say, "A cat eating a burrito," Point-E will first generate a synthetic view 3D rendering of said burrito-eating cat. It will then run that generated image through a series of diffusion models to create the 3D, RGB point cloud of the initial image — first producing a coarse 1,024-point cloud model, then a finer 4,096-point. "In practice, we assume that the image contains the relevant information from the text, and do not explicitly condition the point clouds on the text," the research team points out. 

These diffusion models were each trained on "millions" of 3d models, all converted into a standardized format. "While our method performs worse on this evaluation than state-of-the-art techniques," the team concedes, "it produces samples in a small fraction of the time." If you'd like to try it out for yourself, OpenAI has posted the projects open-source code on Github.

Apple has expanded its self-repair program once again. As noted by Six Colors and The Verge, folks in the US can now try to fix issues with the M1 iMac, M1 Mac mini, Mac Studio and Apple Studio Display themselves with genuine parts, repair manuals and tools.

The self-repair program is designed for those who have the time, patience, skills and confidence to carry out fixes at home, rather than taking their busted device to an Apple Store or third-party repair shop, or shipping it to Apple. You can buy all the parts and rent the tools you need, but at checkout you'll need to enter a code from the relevant manual to show that you've actually read the document.

Apple debuted the Self Service Repair program in April by offering manuals and parts for select iPhone models in the US. Since then, it has expanded the program to Mac laptops and more territories. 

Apple introduced the program ahead of right-to-repair rules likely coming into force in the US and Europe. In 2021, President Joe Biden signed an executive order focused on bolstering competition in the US economy, partly in the tech sector. Among other things, it urged the Federal Trade Commission to ban "anticompetitive restrictions on using independent repair shops or doing DIY repairs of your own devices and equipment." 

The agency has taken a stronger stance on such issues. In July, it announced settlements with three companies (including Weber and Harley-Davidson), which it accused of threatening to unlawfully void warranties if consumers used third-party repair parts or independent repair shops.

After obtaining Senate approval last week, the No TikTok on Government Devices Act could become law thanks to the $1.7 trillion spending bill federal lawmakers unveiled early Tuesday morning. In addition to allocating more funding for Ukraine and earmarking $40 billion for natural disaster recovery efforts across the US, the sprawling 4,155-page bill includes provisions that would prohibit the use of TikTok on government-owned phones and other devices.

While some Republican lawmakers are pushing for a country-wide ban on TikTok, the spending bill stops short of prohibiting all government use of TikTok. If passed, the legislation would order the General Services Administration and Office of Management and Budget to create guidelines for staff at executive agencies to remove TikTok from government-owned devices by mid-February. The draft legislation allows congressional staff and elected officials to continue using the app. It also carves out some exceptions for law enforcement agents and officials.

"We're disappointed that Congress has moved to ban TikTok on government devices — a political gesture that will do nothing to advance national security interests — rather than encouraging the Administration to conclude its national security review," TikTok spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter told Engadget.

"The agreement under review by [The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States] will meaningfully address any security concerns that have been raised at both the federal and state level. These plans have been developed under the oversight of our country's top national security agencies — plans that we are well underway in implementing — to further secure our platform in the United States, and we will continue to brief lawmakers on them."

The proposed ban comes after at least 11 states, including Georgia and South Dakota, prohibited TikTok on government-owned devices. Political concerns over TikTok hit a high earlier this month after FBI Director Chris Wray said China could use the app to collect user data. TikTok has tried to address those concerns. As of June, the app began routing all domestic traffic through Oracle servers in the US. At the same time, TikTok and parent company ByteDance pledged to delete US user data from their own data servers in the US and Singapore.

After Google announced Stadia's shutdown earlier this year, Ubisoft said it would help users transfer their purchases to PC. We got more detail today, as the publisher says it will provide free PC versions of all Ubisoft games bought on Stadia. The publisher also has other perks to make the transition as smooth as possible for jilted users of Google's platform.

Anyone who bought Ubisoft games on Stadia should see the PC versions of those games appear in their Ubisoft Connect accounts at no extra cost. If your Stadia and Ubisoft accounts aren’t yet linked, connect them before Stadia shuts down on January 18th to get the PC games. Additionally, if you played Ubisoft games with cross-progression (complete list), you can pick up your progress on PC where you left off on Stadia.

Ubisoft notes any unspent virtual currency won’t transfer. Still, if you use it in Stadia before January 18th, the purchased items will move to PC (but only for games supporting cross-progression). Meanwhile, Stadia gamers who subscribed to Ubisoft+ Multi-Access (the company's plan that lets you play on multiple devices) will receive an email telling them how to sign up directly through the Ubisoft+ website. As a bonus, subscribers will also get a free month of Ubisoft+. The publisher notes that US residents can continue streaming Ubisoft+ games through Amazon Luna, and those living elsewhere will get a discount on Ubisoft+ Multi-Access for six months. Additionally, If you bought or subscribed to any Ubisoft content on Stadia, you'll receive one free month of GeForce Now Priority.

The perks are on top of Google's refunds for all game purchases, so Ubisoft's PC games are a no-charge consolation prize. Investing in a cloud-gaming platform requires customers to trust that their purchases won’t be all for naught if the platform fails, but at least Google and its partners are doing what they can to make it right.

This is likely the final photo that NASA's Mars InSight lander will ever send back to Earth. The robot has been snapping pics and gathering data about the Martian environment since landing on the planet in November 2018 — and it's been steadily accumulating dust on its solar panels that entire time. As NASA predicted earlier this year, the layer of debris has finally become too thick for the solar panels to operate. The InSight Twitter account officially said goodbye on December 19th with a final image from the surface of Mars.

"My power’s really low, so this may be the last image I can send," the tweet reads. "Don’t worry about me though: my time here has been both productive and serene. If I can keep talking to my mission team, I will – but I’ll be signing off here soon. Thanks for staying with me."

You're welcome, metal astronaut.

InSight touched down on Mars on November 26th, 2018. It set up a seismometer on the Martian surface and collected data about marsquakes, which helped NASA scientists compile a clearer picture of the planet's interior structure. Over the past four years, InSight provided data on more than 500 quakes and at least one meteoroid impact. From these reports, NASA researchers concluded Mars' core is about half the size of Earth's and likely composed of lighter elements than previously thought.

NASA announced in May 2022 that InSight would likely go dark by the end of the summer, due to the dust settling on the lander's solar panels. InSight had recently celebrated its fourth anniversary on Mars when it stopped communicating with NASA. In a blog update on December 19th, the agency said the following:

"On Dec. 18, 2022, NASA’s InSight did not respond to communications from Earth. The lander’s power has been declining for months, as expected, and it’s assumed InSight may have reached its end of operations. It’s unknown what prompted the change in its energy; the last time the mission contacted the spacecraft was on Dec. 15, 2022. The mission will continue to try and contact InSight."

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) researchers have developed a way to monitor breathing based on tiny changes in WiFi signals. They say their BreatheSmart deep-learning algorithm could help detect if someone in the household is having breathing issues.

WiFi signals are almost ubiquitous. They bounce off of and pass through surfaces as they try to link devices with routers. But any movement will alter the signal's path, including how the body moves as we breathe, which can change if we have any issues. For instance, your chest will move differently if you're coughing.

Other researchers have explored the use of WiFi signals to detect people and movements, but their approaches required dedicated sensing devices and their studies provided limited data. A few years ago, a company called Origin Wireless developed an algorithm that works with a WiFi mesh network. Similarly, NIST says BreatheSmart works with routers and devices that are already available on the market. It only requires a single router and connected device.

The scientists changed the firmware on a router so that it would check "channel state information,” or CSI, more frequently. CSI refers to the signals that are sent from a device, such as a phone or laptop, to the router. CSI signals are consistent and the router understands what they should look like, but deviations in the environment, such as the signal being affected by surfaces or movement, modify the signals. The researchers got the router to request these CSI signals up to 10 times per second to gain a better sense of how the signal was being modified.

The team simulated several breathing conditions with a manikin and monitored changes in CSI signals with an off-the-shelf router and receiving device. To make sense of the data they collected, NIST research associate Susanna Mosleh developed the algorithm. In a paper, the researchers noted that BreatheSmart correctly identified the simulated breathing conditions 99.54 percent of the time.

Mosleh and Jason Coder, who heads up NIST’s research in shared spectrum metrology, hope developers will be able to use their research to create software that can remotely monitor a person's breathing with existing hardware. “All the ways we’re gathering the data is done on software on the access point (in this case, the router), which could be done by an app on a phone,” Coder said. “This work tries to lay out how somebody can develop and test their own algorithm. This is a framework to help them get relevant information.”

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg misled Congress and the American public about how early he knew about the threat Cambridge Analytica posed to Facebook user privacy, according to a newly published US Securities and Exchange Commission document. The sworn deposition was obtained by Zamaan Qureshi, a policy advisor with the Real Facebook Oversight Board. 

In 2019, Zuckerberg told the SEC he was aware of Cambridge Analytica at least as early as 2017. At the start of that year, Zuckerberg sent an email to Facebook staff asking about an article Motherboard published about the data firm. The Vice News outlet was one of the first English-language publications to detail Cambridge Analytica's use of online data to build psychographic profiles. 

The SEC asked Zuckerberg if that was the first time he had become aware of the firm. "I think that's probably right," he told the Commission. "My guess is I heard of them before. And that this was after seeing a couple of mentions of what they were claiming to do, I wanted to ask people who I trusted what their assessment was."  

Zuckerberg also considered explicitly calling out Cambridge Analytica in a statement he made about Facebook's attempts to combat Russian election meddling in the fall of 2017. His first draft called for him to state: "We are already looking into foreign actors including Russian intelligence actors in other Soviet states and organizations like Cambridge Analytica.” However, on the day of the livestream, he at best alluded to the firm, saying Facebook was investigating "organizations like the campaigns, to further our understanding of how they used our tools.”

The timeline Zuckerberg provided to the SEC contradicts the one he gave during sworn testimony before the House Financial Services Committee in 2019. "I'm not sure of the exact time, but it was probably around the time it became public, I think it was around March of 2018. I could be wrong, though," he told Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  

When asked to comment on Real Facebook Oversight Board's findings, Meta pointed Engadget to its 2019 Federal Trade Commission settlement, which saw the company agree to pay $5 billion in financial penalties and implement new privacy measures. “This has been a settled case for over three years," a Meta spokesperson added. The office of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did not immediately respond to Engadget's comment request.

The findings are likely to prompt new questions about Facebook's handling of Cambridge Analytica. To this day, the scandal is the largest in Meta's history. The data firm harvested information from as many as 87 million Facebook profiles and may have passed on that data to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and the Brexit campaign.

The United States Postal Service said it expects to buy more than 66,000 electric vehicles by the end of 2028 in a significant change from previous plans. In February, the USPS said it would purchase 5,000 fully electric versions of the Next Generation Delivery Vehicle, with gas-powered trucks accounting for the remaining 45,000 of the initial order. After pushback from the Biden administration and resistance to that from the USPS, the agency has graduallyincreased the proportion of EVs in the order.

Now, the postal service aims to buy at least 60,000 Next Generation Delivery Vehicles by 2028, at least 75 percent of which will be electric models. Starting in 2026, the USPS expects that all NGDV acquisitions will be electric versions. The NGDVs are expected to start operating on delivery routes late next year. In addition, the agency plans to buy another 21,000 off-the-shelf EVs through 2028.

Overall, the USPS plans to buy 106,000 delivery vehicles by the end of 2028 to start replacing its aging, inefficient and not-as-safe fleet of more than 220,000 vehicles. That means the agency still expects to buy around 40,000 gas-powered models over the next six years. The USPS said in a statement that the feasibility of fully electrifying the fleet "will continue to be explored." However, it believes there will be more EV availability in the future, which will certainly help.

The agency expects to spend $9.6 billion on these vehicle purchases and related infrastructure, $3 billion of which is from Inflation Reduction Act funding. "The $3 billion provided by Congress has significantly reduced the risk associated with accelerating the implementation of a nationwide infrastructure necessary to electrify our delivery fleet," Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said. "While most of the electric vehicle funding will continue to come from Postal Service revenues, we are grateful for the confidence that Congress and the Administration have placed in us to build and acquire what has the potential to become the largest electric vehicle fleet in the nation."

Sifu’s long-awaited Arenas mode will arrive next March. Developer Sloclap made the announcement through IGN, which shared a trailer for the upcoming DLC. The studio first teased the mode last April when it published a free content roadmap for Sifu. At the time, Sloclap said the update would arrive in the winter of 2022. However, true to its initial promise, the mode will include new outfits for players to unlock.

“Successfully completing the arenas will progressively unlock a massive new modifiers batch, which doubles the current game's amount and notably brings alternative moves to the Kung Fu palette of our main character,” Sloclap told IGN. “Completing the new Arenas challenges will also unlock new cheats and exclusive new outfits.” If you haven’t had a chance to play Sifu yet because it’s not available on Xbox, there’s more good news. The arrival of the Arenas mode update will coincide with the game’s release on Xbox and Steam. Sloclap promised to share more information about both news items soon.

Amazon has agreed to change some business practices in the European Union as part of legally binding commitments with the bloc's executive branch. The European Commission said the deal will put antitrust investigations over how Amazon treats third-party sellers to bed for the time being. Amazon will need to abide by the commitments for between five and seven years or it could face hefty fines.

"Today’s decision sets new rules for how Amazon operates its business in Europe. Amazon can no longer abuse its dual role [as both marketplace and seller] and will have to change several business practices," Margrethe Vestager, the Commission's executive vice-president in charge of competition policy, said in a statement. "They cover the use of data, the selection of sellers in the Buy Box and the conditions of access to the Amazon Prime Program. Competing independent retailers and carriers as well as consumers will benefit from these changes opening up new opportunities and choice."

The deal includes several preliminary commitments Amazon made in July. Among other things, it will rank all sellers equally in the Buy Box, which displays an item from a specific seller so customers can quickly purchase it. Amazon said it will display a second Buy Box if another seller offers the product with a significantly different price and/or delivery time.

Third-party sellers in the EU will be able to offer their products through Prime without having to use Amazon's delivery or logistics services. Additionally, Amazon will not use any non-public data relating to third-party sellers to benefit its own business, including logistics or creating copycat versions of popular products.

The final deal includes some additional commitments, such as making it easier for third-party sellers to directly contact their Amazon customers so they can provide similar delivery services to those offered by Amazon. The company will also need to create a way for sellers and carriers to file complaints if they suspect it isn't complying with the commitments.

Amazon said it disagreed with some of the Commission’s preliminary conclusions. However, it told the Associated Press that, “We are pleased that we have addressed the European Commission’s concerns and resolved these matters.”

The settlement applies for five years in most cases. The Prime and second Buy Box commitments will last for seven years. The deal is legally enforceable in the European Economic Area save for Italy. That country's competition authority has imposed its own penalties on Amazon.

If EU regulators determine that Amazon isn't sticking to the terms of the deal, the Commission can fine the company up to 10 percent of its global annual revenue without having to find an infringement of antitrust rules. Based on Amazon's 2021 revenue, that fine could be as much as $47 billion. Alternatively, the EC could fine Amazon five percent of its daily turnover for every day that it doesn't comply with the terms of the deal.

EU regulators brought formal antitrust charges against Amazon in November 2020, accusing the company of abusing its dual position. The Commission opened an investigation over the use of non-public data the previous year. In a separate investigation, the EC found that Amazon "abused its dominance on the French, German and Spanish markets for the provision of online marketplace services to third-party sellers." Amazon is still facing scrutiny on these issues in the US and the UK.