OpenAI saved its biggest announcement for the last day of its 12-day “shipmas” event. On Friday, the company unveiled o3, the successor to the o1 “reasoning” model it released earlier in the year. o3 is a model family, to be more precise—as was the case with o1. There’s O3 and O3-mini, a smaller, distilled model fine-tuned for particular tasks. OpenAI makes the remarkable claim that O3, at least in certain conditions, approaches AGI—with significant caveats. More on that below. Why call the new model o3, not o2? Well, trademarks may be to blame. According to The Information, OpenAI skipped O2…
Author: Olsi
Before the elections, the cybersecurity team of U.S. vice president and then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris reached out to Apple asking for help, according to Forbes, after a tool that’s designed to detect spyware on iPhones flagged anomalies on two devices belonging to campaign staffers. Apple declined to forensically analyze the phones, per Forbes. The company’s response is no surprise to the digital defenders working with at-risk populations often targeted by spyware. In the last few years, Apple has been sending notifications to targets and victims of government spyware, alerting them that they may have been hacked and directing them to…
Google said Friday that the company is expanding Gemini’s latest in-depth research mode to 40 more languages. The company launched the in-depth research mode earlier this month, allowing Google One AI premium plan users to unlock an AI-powered research assistant of sorts. The in-depth function works in a multi-step method, from creating a research plan to finding relevant information. Then, based on that information, the tool performs a search again to extract knowledge. After repeating that process a few times, it creates a report. Gemini’s supported languages include Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Danish, French, German, Gujarati, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kannada,…
Google Photos is one of those apps that seems to constantly get new features. The updates aren’t always game-changing, but they’re much appreciated nonetheless. Google Photos is getting another such update in the form of a new “Albums” section that will be available when viewing a photo or video. When looking at a photo/video in Google Photos, swipe up to view the details. Above the “Location” section, you should now see a new “Albums” area indicating which album that file is a part of. You’ll see the album name and how many items are in it. You can also tap…
If you’re struggling to come up with last-minute gift ideas, an Amazon Fire TV Stick makes for a great stocking stuffer, and it won’t break the bank. And while these streaming devices are pretty cheap, to begin with, the following offer makes buying one all the more appealing:For a limited time, when you purchase the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K through Amazon or Best Buy, you’ll only pay $28. At full price, this model sells for $50. We tested this tried-and-true streamer all the way back in 2020, and reviewer Ryan Waniata said, “Amazon’s Fire TV Stick 4K offers killer…
Rayman is a beloved video game mascot that’s appeared in 45 different games since his debut in 1995, but he hasn’t made a mainline appearance since cameoing in Mario + Rabbids: Spark of Hope. When Ubisoft said Rayman would be in the new game Captain Laserhawk: The Game, fans got a bit excited—but that was quickly dashed as it became clear Captain Laserhawk is a new blockchain game featuring NFTs. Captain Laserhawk isn’t a traditional Rayman game. In fact, he has little to nothing to do with the game. It’s a top-down multiplayer shooter, but before you can even play,…
What happens when a chemical engineer, who’s previously built a hydrogen-powered drone, becomes a venture capitalist? Energy Revolution Ventures, that’s what. Marcus Clover, Co-Founder and Partner at ERV, told The Tech Spot. I studied at Cambridge and thought I was going into oil and gas. I ended up getting hired as employee number one for an aerospace startup. We were building a hydrogen-powered drone for telecom applications.” After doing that for five years, he joined another firm putting hydrogen fuel cells in heavy-duty vehicles: “I saw firsthand, as an engineer working in this space, how much innovation was happening in…
The newest online-only school greenlighted by the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools comes with a twist: The academic curriculum will be taught entirely by AI. Charter schools — independently operated but publicly funded — typically get greater autonomy compared to traditional public schools when it comes to how subjects are taught. But Unbound Academy’s application, which proposes an “AI-driven adaptive learning technology” that “condenses academic instruction into a two-hour window,” is a first for the model. (Unbound’s founders have been running a similar program at a “high-end private school” in Texas, which appears to be in-person.) Unbound’s approach leans…
With the introduction of the new OG mode, Fortnite has brought back the traditional Battle Royale gameplay. This mode returns players to the island they were on during the first season of Chapter 1. Not only has the island been brought back, but the original art style, loot pool, weapon sounds, and even some of the original techniques that players use to win the coveted Victory Royale battle have also returned. One of the most well-known broken tricks that gave rise to a powerful meta in the early days of Fortnite was the Double Pump. Despite the fact that the…
Star Citizen is the stuff dreams are made of, even if the long development time may feel more like a never-ending fever dream. Cloud Imperium Games has raised more than $750 million in funding and spent over 12 years building up Star Citizen’s world piece by piece, and now up to 500 players can wander across the same galactic server in the new Pyro system. Cloud Imperium says it still has improvements it wants to make before releasing a stable version, so consider Star Citizen 4.0 something like an alpha. Even if it isn’t all the way finished, this latest update…
