AI and AR can supercharge ‘ambient computing’

AI and AR can supercharge ‘ambient computing’

“Sal awakens; she smells coffee. A few minutes ago her alarm clock, alerted by her restless rolling before waking, had quietly asked ‘coffee?’ and she mumbled ‘yes.’ ‘Yes’ and ‘no’ are the only words it knows.” Then, the alarm clock tells the coffee maker to get busy — and Sal’s morning has begun. This scenario was described by Mark Weiser, a computer scientist and the CTO  at Xerox PARC…

Google documents filed in antitrust case show efforts to push data collection limits

Google documents filed in antitrust case show efforts to push data collection limits

For almost as long as it has existed, Google has been at the center of controversies around its data strategy, ranging from privacy concerns, data retention with its related cybersecurity implications, and compliance, to the debate about what kind of limits there should be for leveraging data. A series of Google internal documents, which were…

Hollywood unions OK AI-cloned voices in commercials

Hollywood unions OK AI-cloned voices in commercials

Hollywood actors’ union SAG-AFTRA said it has signed an agreement with talent marketplace Narrativ to let advertisers buy the rights from actors to recreate their voices using AI. According to Reuters, the agreement allows the actors themselves to set the price for the digital voice copy, provided that it is at least equivalent to SAG-AFTRA’s minimum wage…

Convenience has a cost, privacy has iPhone

Convenience has a cost, privacy has iPhone

The battle between privacy and convenience in artificial intelligence (AI) has truly begun, as Google introduces its own Pixel take on AI smartphones, making a subtle (and unwise) indirect dig at Apple for being open to working with others. Because open beats closed, right? The new Pixel 9 range ships with support for Gemini AI, Google’s ChatGPT/Apple…

Microsoft patches six actively exploited vulnerabilities

Microsoft patches six actively exploited vulnerabilities

Microsoft fixed 88 vulnerabilities on Tuesday as part of its monthly patching cycle. Six of those flaws were already being actively exploited in the wild before a patch was available and another four were publicly disclosed, putting the total number of zero-day vulnerabilities covered in this release at 10. Of the 88 vulnerabilities patched only…

Windows 365 — Microsoft’s cloud-based OS explained

Windows 365 — Microsoft’s cloud-based OS explained

Microsoft introduced Windows 365 three years ago, a service that lets the company cut partners out of the money-making loop by providing virtual PCs to customers. Rather than provide only the operating system or the OS and bits of other software — notably productivity applications in the form of Office — Microsoft also serves up ersatz hardware,…

Notion adds charts to help visualize work projects

Notion adds charts to help visualize work projects

Notion users can now create charts to display data held in the productivity app, providing a new way to visualize information such as project status.   Notion Charts, available to paid users as of Tuesday, includes options for bar, donut, and line charts. These are accessible via the new “chart” view in Notion databases that appears…